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makeusfreefromthisfandom · 4 years

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just sending some appreciation and good vibes to my people for the new year <3

kisses from me bc you all hold a very special place in my heart 💝

Also veryyy long post ahead I’m sorry I had to include everyone Aakklaksks 😭😭

@ominous-meme 🖤 sabah! You were my very first mutual on here I hope you know that! I can’t even begin on how excited I got when I found out you were a fellow desi girl and I will always appreciate you being there and advising me! <3 I love our street racing au! talks ! I’m glad I have someone to share ideas with <33

@weebsausage 🖤 dude omg!!! 😭😭😭 pls I literally forgot how we became moots I’m so sorry I have a tiny brain 😪 but I think we literally just messaged each other and started talking about free! ANYWAYS TYSM FOR PUTTING ME ON HXH I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU FOR THAT WTF ITS LIKE MY FAV ANIME EVER I HAVE BECOME HXH TRASH AJSJSJBS ❤️❤️ but other than that thank you for being a really great friend to me and I hope this year is nothing but good things for you <33

@dokifluffs 🖤 you were also one of my first moots on here! I honestly could not believe when you followed me back bc ur like my biggest inspo! 😭 you’re so precious omg I always look forward talking to you and get excited when I see a notif from you still! I hope the new year treats you well and brings good things in your life! Lots of love from me bae 🥰❤️

@syrenblubs 🖤 ah my most relatable person LOL. Omg syren ur my little bestie on here and I’m so glad we’re mutuals! I love our natsuya talks and OML THE C****** RAID! ALSJJSJSJSJJS AND DESI PARENTS AKSJJSNS. Just thank you for always interacting with me even tho I SUCK at responding 😭❤️❤️❤️ ilyyysmmmmmm

@linak 🖤 baby omg where do I even begin. Back when I had literally no one to talk to on here, you would be the one NEVER failing to send me a gm/gn message! You always bring a stupid smile to my face 😭 I’m so freaking glad that we are friends I literally cannot put into words!! Ty for always listening to me and letting me open up to you ❤️ love you always.

@croctears 🖤 vixxx ahhh!!! I’m so glad we became mutuals on this shitty app! You’re one of the highlights of my day and I love talking to you sm 😫 especially if it’s about Sou 😏😏 keep being amazing bae! Kisses mwuah mwuah 😽😽

@xakusa 🖤 Marty bby! 🥰 literally the only person I’m going to share my man natsu with 🙄 our conversations are always so RANDOM and out of nowhereeeee lollll but we also just go along with it and I love that! You are an angel and this year better be giving you what you deserve! Lots of love from my end 😽😽😽 kissies from me and natsuya <3

@cafelixie 🖤 I will keep saying this and I will never stop. YOU!!! ARE!!! THE!!! ACTUAL!!! DEFINITION!!! OF!!! PRECIOUS!!!! Need I say more? You’ve made my day countless times and I always look forward to seeing you in my messages/inbox!! Baby I freaking love you I really don’t know what else to say 😭❤️

@skippyskeppy 🖤 I will never forget the first time we interacted my Kisumi enthusiast 😙🤝 I love it sm whenever I see you pop into my inbox with a random hc about semi semi or Kisumi, Albert now too! You are an amazing person. A really amazing person. I hope you know that ❤️

@keeijiakaashi 🖤 I remember seeing your little comments under my posts before we became moots and OMGGGG YOU ARE SO CUTE AISJJSJSJS ALSO RIN ENTHUSIAST??? YES PLEASE!!! Tysm for always interacting with me and making yourself known as the ultimate sweetest person on my blog! Ilyyyyy ❤️❤️❤️

@animatedarchives 🖤 we have your fellow love of the kirishimas to thank for us becoming moots! You’re so cute soph omg 😫 I love how we literally have brainrots of the same characters LIKE MR GOJO LEECH SATORU!!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD OR PAY RENT!!! Ahh you’re irreplaceable soph! Never fail to make me smile like an idiot <33

@natsuya-enthusiast 🖤 how did we not become moots sooner wtf??? Do yk how alone I felt when I had no one to discuss my obsession of natsu with when I first made this blog 😪 AND THEN I REALIZED U WERE ONE OF MY FIRST FOLLOWERS???? ANYWAYS U ARE THE BIG SIS I NEVER HAD ALWAYS PULLING THROUGH W THAT LIFE ADVICE BAHAHAHA ilysm gaby wtf 😭😡😡😡❤️❤️❤️

@moonlitspring 🖤 do you even realize how happy I got when I realized there was another ACTIVE free! blog 😡😡 ajsjjsjs you are such an amazing writer and PERSON sky!!! You’ve been nothing but the sweetest and I hope we get to interact more this year and share our love of free! together <3

@ayumiko 🖤 laís you are such an angel! I absolutely adore both you and your edits/gifs smmm 🥰 you are so kind and I hope 2021 is also <333

@dalggina 🖤 omg??? YGO bae??? 😤😤 I thought literally everyone had forgotten ab it LOL THEN YOU CAME ALONG ❤️❤️ I’m really glad we interacted precious person! And I hope that you have a great year! ALSO YOU BETTER NOT STRESS YOURSELF OUT TOO MUCH FROM WORK OR IM MANIFESTING MR ATEM TO COME GET YOU 😡

@stormikujo 🖤 omg bby! We haven’t talked in awhile! I hope you are doing well! ❤️❤️❤️ ahhh I’m glad I got you into free otherwise we wouldn’t even have interacted 😫 I love talking to you stormi!! And I hope this year brings great things fro you! Lots of love ❤️❤️❤️

@aj-writes-here 🖤 omg hey girl 😼😼 you’re definitely one of the coolest people I’ve talked to on here for sure! Hope you’ve been enjoying hq and free! Your welcome for putting you on that simp train 😼 anyways, ilysm aj!! I really wish the best for you this year! Stay amazing as you always are, ily!! ❤️❤️

@attackonfics 🖤 wtf 😭😭 I don’t deserve you???? You’ve been nothing but the sweetest to me and also responsible for my unhealthy obsession with mr 5’2 angry gremlin >:(( jkjk but seriously, ty for the food 😌. ANYWAYS QUEEN I HOPE YOUVE BEEN TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF AND TREATING YOURSELF AS!!! YOU!!! SHOULD!!! VIRTUAL HUGS 😽😽 💝

@browsing-my-favourite-fandoms 🖤 Shizen! You are too good for this world! 😭 you are such a genuine person, you deserve nothing but happiness ❤️ I really hope that this year does that for you. I’ll keep checking in from time to time! Ilysm! ❤️

@inum4ki 🖤 sera...please...just invest in a personal guide or smth. Asksksknsjs n e wayzzz seeing you in my inbox is always so much fun! Sousuke really deserves more love and you are bringing it to the table hun 😤😤 also you’re a fellow inumaki enthusiast too??? Yes please. You deserve all the happy things in 2021 <3

@sneezefiction 🖤 Gracie!! I love how easy it is to get along with you! You are truly one of the best people I’ve met on this app and I’ll forever be grateful for our friendship <3 you give off such great vibes all the time omg giving you a huge virtual hug and here’s to more interactions this year! 🥰😽😽😽

@velvetfireworks 🖤 bbyyy!! 🥰 everytime we interact even if it’s not a whole lot, you’re always the sweetest what 😭 I love you and you’re writing so much omggg you are so talented!! I get super excited when I see myself get tagged in one of your stuff 😆 I hope we get to interact more in the future! Have a great New Years ❤️❤️❤️

@a8mine 🖤 stop being so mean to me 😡😡 !!!!!! ig ily anyways tho 🙄 you’re energy is honestly unmatched (in a good way!!) and it’s rare to meet people like that! You’re so funny omg and your random hcs and cursed discourses always have me dying 😭😭 you’re so cool hanna ily 😪✌️ <333

@giorvanna 🖤 ahh rena! Your blog and edits are *chefs kiss* I love our random semi brainrot sessions 🥰🥰 I hope we interact more in the future but in the meantime I’m sending you good vibes and lots of virtual hugs bc you deserve them queen ❤️❤️❤️

@seijohlogy 🖤 hey hey jaestar 🤩🤩 you are such a cool person??? Omg I’m so glad that we’re friends and randomly invade each other’s inboxes 😆 you are so kind! This year better be kind to you too or else 😡😡 I hope that after Ms rona decides to move her ass over, you get to go to Disneyland and take!! Me!!! With!! You!! Love you jae bae ❤️❤️

@prettysetterbaby 🖤 hey sexc 🤩🤩 no idea why you followed me but glad you did bc you are such a sweet and chaotic person!! I loveeeeee <333 I hope we get to interact more bc you are just genuinely such a fun person to interact with! Ilyyy

@datecho 🖤 yet another just genuinely sweet person! The world doesn’t deserve you! You’re so fun to interact with and a hottie??? omg shoto and kags better get off their asses rn and come get you or I will 🤩🤩 ly bae! have a great New Years! ❤️❤️

@miyasangel 🖤 we haven’t interacted much yet but ahaha talking about suna and sending my fanart to you is sm fun! Did I tell you that I also have a wip of Atsumu as a street racer? 😏 have a great year Arden bae! Kisses 😽

@aikk00 🖤 hi hi! We don’t interact on a daily or anything but when we do, omg!!! You are the most easy person to get along with 😭 you have such a good heart along with the talent???omg??? You are UNMATCHED babe! I hope this year brings you many more opportunities! Stay amazing love ❤️ ily and your art very much ❤️ I’m also still very embarrassed from fucking up the credits from last time. I’m so sorry bae 😭❤️❤️

@kurooskult 🖤 ma’am you might as well be the definition of bad bitch 😪🤝 ok but besides that, interacting with you is sm fun??? Like we don’t even have to be moots on your blog to feel just as included and loved! You are such a queen for that! Here’s to more mila x kuroo content in 2021 and he better be doing special for you as he should !!

It’s still the 31st here but THANK YOU ALL FOR MAKING MY COUPLE OF MONTHS ON HERE BEARABLE!!! This sounds like a goodbye post Oml-

I love you all very much. I suck at words, but I hope you know that. ❤️

#precious ppl✨<3 #OK NOW GN IVE BEEN UP FOR TOO LONG

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merryfortune · 4 years

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Day 26 / Lips

Clover and Violets 2021

Ship: Lassieshipping | Asuka/Junko/Momoe/Rei

Universe: GX

Word Count: 1,347

Rating: T

Tags: Secret Relationships, Polyamory, Misunderstandings

Edit: so you guys weren’t just gonna tell me only half of this fic posted, huh, is that it?

Loose lips sink ships, Rei reminded herself as she saw something that maybe she shouldn’t have seen.

She pulled herself back behind the endless bookcases of the Obelisk Blue Dorm and she felt her heart race and her cheeks hue with warm pinkness. For someone so obsessed with love and romance, Rei was actually quite shy when it came to the minutiae of it. But only because in this instance, she thought she might have seen something salacious. Scandalous. Hilarious given it was only the chastest kiss between Asuka and Junko in the library. Oh, it had been so romantic, Rei could have swooned. Junko sitting at the table, quibbling with her pen as she tried to take notes. Asuka sashaying back towards her, putting her hands on the edge and then initiating a surprise kiss. They looked so good together in the dim, dust mite ridden light that came in shafted sunbeams through the library’s sky-lights in the ceiling. All secluded and to themselves but here’s the thing. Rei could have sworn that it was Junko and Momoe who were a thing. Her heart hammered in her chest as she saw what she thought was adultery. Momoe was so sweet, sweet as a peach, there was no way that her girlfriend and their mutual best friend would do something so harmful to her behind her back such as kiss on the lips together - and who knows what else. Rei waited a moment and then she stole another glance at them. She just knew this had to have been bad luck; Chronos giving her a free pass to the Library because he wanted to see her excel and join his ranks was too good to be true. This was clearly karma for accepting a nicetie from such a harsh teacher. She saw that Momoe had returned and they were giggling amongst one another. It was as though the kiss between Asuka and Junko had never even so much as happened. She clearly did know. Oh, this was horrible. Rei had never known either Asuka nor Junko to be so cruel but apparently, even girls as nice as they were capable of horrible things too. Since they were clearly going to be there for a long while, Rei slunk out the way she had came. Sticking close to the bookcases and getting out there. Studying be damned. She didn’t need to pass biology anyway; this was a school for card games, why did they need to know punnett squares, anyway? But after witnessing such an event, Rei felt something awaken in her. A sense of duty and justice to her friend, Momoe, perhaps? A betrayal of her own eyes and what she saw; maybe they had just been talking and she had imagined or misunderstood what she had seen. Either way, Rei began to fixate on how Asuka, Junko, and Momoe behaved around one another. Junko and Momoe were always super-duper cuddly with one another. Sometimes even involving Asuka in their impromptu hand holding and arm linking. And Rei watched carefully how Asuka would stiffen before softening into whatever affection that Junko and Momoe were sharing between themselves and then inviting Asuka into it. She couldn’t help but wonder if that initial aversion from Asuka was an admission of guilt, that she knew she was doing some terrible to Momoe by having Junko in secret? Rei didn’t know and she kept having to look away, like a voyeur, because she didn’t want to get caught. She knew that this wasn’t her business but she was boiling up and over about it because she didn’t want Momoe to be hurt but she didn’t want Asuka and Junko to be either. All of it, seeming, to be the glisten on lips. Because it had started with a glimpse of Rei seeing lips where they maybe shoudln’t have been but she had begun to fixate on Asuka’s. And Junko’s. And Momoe’s too for good measure. They all seemed so soft and pretty, especially compared to her own. Rugged and chapped. She wondered what sort of lip balms that they used - and likely shared among each other. And just as Rei was on her way to the dining hall to hopefully score an egg sandwich, she saw Momoe and Asuka together. She wondered where Junko was and at first they were talking but as she walked by, she saw it in the corner of her eye. Another kiss. It was melancholic with the late afternoon sun filtering through the branches; it sort of seemed like a thank you kiss, sweet but with eyes open, shared in full, both girls standing up straight, not even holding hands. Rei stopped in her tracks so that she could gawk and unfortunately, Asuka and Momoe had noticed.

Momoe giggled, “Rei, you pervert,” she teased, “get over here.”

Rei’s face went red. She nodded and she very stiltedly walked over. Just as she arrived, so did Junko who had drinks for three and not four.

"Oh, hey, Rei what’re you up to?” Junko asked as she handed out a water to Asuka, a peach iced tea to Momoe, and kept a diet cola for herself.

“She was being a lookie-loo again.” Momoe told her.

“It’s not like she meant either times…” Asuka offered as Momoe tilted her drink to Asuka so she could unscrew the lid.

Momoe smiled at the small gesture that was otherwise unacknowledged.

“I’m sorry!” Rei said. “I didn’t mean to, um, see either of that.”

“Thank you for keeping it to yourself but, er, you still sort of gave it away in your body language. Everyone can tell you’ve been tense about something for the past few days.” Asuka said.

“I’m sorry!” Rei said again. “For, um, thinking you were an adulterer, Asuka. And to you, Momoe, Junko, I knew that Junko would never go behind your back to kiss Asuka but I’m kind of confused. Who's dating who?”

Junko laughed. “We all are, silly.”

“O-oh, um, really… how?” Rei asked.

“The same you would if you were only dating one person, I guess.” Momoe shrugged. “Works for us, we get a lot of crushes after all.”

“True, true.” Junko said. “I have no idea how Asuka here puts up with us given she is very, very slow to develop any feelings for anyone.”

Asuka blushed. “That’s not quite true.” In her flushedness, she was quick to change the topic of conversation. “But we like to keep it on the downlow since it is a bit unusual, you are right about that, Rei. It can be difficult to explain…”

“I - I see.” Rei stammered out. Her eyes were all huge and starstruck - Junko and Momoe couldn’t help but notice.

Junko leaned in and Rei’s heart jumped to her chest. She could smell the kind of tropical lip balm that Junko used. “But now you’re curious aren’t you, aren’t you, girlie?” Junko teased. Rei made a tiny hand gesture, “Only a little…” she murmured.

“It’s natural to be curious about that sort of thing.” Asuka assured her. “Okay, well, I am…” Rei admitted.

“I think three’s just not big enough yet, you know.” Junko said, flicking her attention to Momoe.

Momoe giggled, “Me too.” she agreed.

Asuka sighed. There they went again. Getting more crushes but she had to admit. If it was Rei, she wouldn’t mind. And poor Rei. She was standing there still, not quite sure what to do with herself as it was a bit above her head but she did look cute with her eyes all lit up like that and her own lips a little slack. Only to be kissed on the cheeks from both sides from Junko and Momoe. A sparkly, fizzy kiss on one side and a sweet, fruitier kiss on the other and it just made her go all red and smiley and her heart beating a million miles an hour because she was right to have a fixation. Junko and Momoe really did have nice lips. Now it would just have to be Asuka’s turn next.

#femslash #femslashfeb2021 #femslash february #lassieshipping #yugioh gx #gx #yugioh #asuka tenjoin #saotome rei #junko makurada #hamaguchi momoe #writing tag #clover and violets #clover and violets 2021 #this feels like hot garbage but at least it didn't crash google docs?????

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womenhoodlooniness · 3 years

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Mean Girls: Private School Edition

During the infamous quarantined lockdown of March 2020, not only did my procrastination habits worsened due to me having to lose all sense of time but it made me reflect amidst all the silence.

This might sound selfishly cliche but if it was not for the whole world shut down, I would have not been able to come to terms relating to my self-worth.

Let's time travel back to my high school days: 2015-2019.

Yes, I'm getting old.

So I went to an all-girls, private high school in Burbank, IL. At first, I thought I was going to hate it. All of my other friends were going to public schools within the Chicagoland area and here I am, the only person going to a school that nobody has ever even heard of.

As if looking like the most big-headed whitest chick at my school didn't make me feel like an outcast enough.

To be blunt, it did make me feel uncool. But I understood my parents wanted me to have a good education that was not at a sleazy neighborhood school.

Even if it did mean taking my voice out of it completely.

Long story short, I ended up liking the school. It felt like a crackhouse made for girls. Meaning, it really was a place for us girls to wind down, get comfortable, and not having to worry about any boys. It was a place of femme empowerment but also endearing chaos.

However, there is always a price to everything beloved.

Last year, when the peaks of quarantined lockdown were at an all-time high, I allowed myself to do a lot of retrospect thinking.

A lot of this thinking was rooted in how my experiences at the private high school were actually fueled by naiveness and all things non-endearing. This retrospect made me question a current friendship I was undergoing at the time in quarantine, questioning if it was really meant to be.

I was friends with two girls at the time. Let's call them X and Z. Mostly because it sounds cool.

I was friends with X for the longest. We remained friends even after the private high school shut down and had to part ways during our sophomore-junior year. I thought she was cool. We had similar music tastes, taught me things I did not know and just overall looked at her as a big sister. Mind you, I was too naive to even think of the other side of our friendship.

Z was a mutual friend that was also close friends with X. I found her cool as she did with me, but she and X were more considered as each other's best friend than all of three of us combined.

But there's a twist to it all: Z actually used to be my bully in freshman year of high school. To put it short, she bullied me because she thought I was "weird" even though I never even tried to talk to her. She would always have a way to tease and make fun of me.

At first, I would try and laugh along but after a while, it started to feel forced because it would barely hit me at times that she could not stand me. Like all bullies, she had the tendency to feel above me since apparently I was seen as a target: The weird, quiet girl.

Who would have thought?

On top of that, X would actually laugh at the "jokes" Z would use against me! Yeah, the same girl I was friends with the longest...go ahead, call me stupid now.

I even brought it up to X at a later time and her response?

"That was just my humor at the time."

Ah yes, creepily looking at my old Facebook profile pictures and laughing at them is DEFINITELY the humor to have. Even after that sketchy comment I still was friends with her for about another year or so. I would rant about her behavior more but I'll just save that for another post...

Anyways, sometimes it would feel weird to even be offended by Z's "jokes" because not only I had one but two mean girls entrapping me. I feel like I had no other choice BUT to feel okay with it. There would be times where confrontation was needed, but the attention was very intimidating to me.

The private school was such a small school so anything that goes would flow smoothly from one period to the next. The drama did spread like wildfire at that forsaken palace of gossip.

Overall with there not being a confronting witness, it really felt hard to get the motivation to stand up for myself. If anything, it helped fasten the depreciation of my self-worth. All because there was nobody to give me a smack of reality to tell me that I should not let that slide.

Also because of the naiveness that came with not realizing the meanness of those comments and the reason why they hurt.

It's even frustrating to also think back about how it would have been best for myself to be the doormat I was, no matter how weird and uncomfortable it got. I say this because Z was SO liked back in that high school. Every girl thought she was funny and cool; she was definitely on the popular scale.

So if I had brought the issue up to the school, then perhaps most definitely they would have looked into it as it did intrigue some feelings of "unsafeness" in me. Now that I think about it, I mean this with seriousness.

I say this because one time, Z called me a bitch because I would not let her copy my homework for the 5th time. And that's just one of many examples.

But as for the students? That would of most likely been the messiest. Especially since Z literally had the popular benefit of being listened to and influencing others.

From that, I should ask, who would have the most sympathy:

the preyed underdog or the praised show dog?

Fast forward to March 2020 where I was questioning the genuinity of everything to the point where I felt like it was best to not associate myself with those two girls again. For the sake of saving myself some pressure and self-depreciation.

I must admit, I mostly wanted to back up because of X's current behavior at the time instead. So this post is most likely going to be considered as a first-half as it does display a "blast from the past" theme. While the second post would be presenting more so recent events. Nevertheless, both posts are still relevantly intertwined as they are important in strengthening my points.

Also, I can not keep typing forever.

Overall, I wanted to bring some of my traumatic past up because not only it presents an aspect of internalized misogyny (again) but also portrays something bigger.

You see, I started to feel at ease at the private school because I felt like I had all the supportive relations I could have with my femme peers. In retrospect, that was lacking to a very large degree.

I did not realize it until I was in college as I gained more maturity and knowledge when dealing with other (girl) friends that were so much different than the ones I numbed myself to.

I had been exposed to a kind of respect that I never thought I would have experienced. It felt so fucking surreal. And because of that, it leads me to compare for the better and for the worse.

It helped paved the way for me to grow.

But the fact I even thought that I would have not had the same respect as Z, no matter how much I cried out of injustice, is what concerns me. How could I think that private school was so beloved with femme love when there was a huge possibility of numerous girls going against me, all because I was not on the popular spectrum?

Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe there is an alternative timeline out there involving myself getting justice served and respect granted. Despite the judgment that is forced upon me.

But this is why concepts such as internalized misogyny and girl-girl bullying need to be brought up more. All because it can plague ourselves in which can rapidly plague entire environments within spaces that are meant to bring support from one girl to another.

Also, yes, we can forgive them because most likely these bullies are going through something too in which can cause them to act aggressively to us - based off of jealousy or attention, whatever can be interpreted the best.

I actually forgive Z because I had learned that she was going through a rough time during freshman year which at times does make me speculate if her actions were based on jealousy..but let's not be bitchy narcs here.

Even with that, it still does not allow for me to succumb to being seen as some fucking fool to her. It does not favor her to make me feel like a doormat. And it definitely should not be permitted for me to feel like shit because I had no choice but to do so.

Where is the self-worth in all this? Because I need it just as much as she does.

We need to prevent further harm so we won't hurt others and most importantly, ourselves.

#mean girl #mean girls #bullying #womenhood #looninees #femme #private school #all girls #internalized misogny #doormat #undergod #underdog #popularity #private high school #high school #burbank IL #IL

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biglittlesshop · 4 years

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Yesterday was a busy day of meetings and airplane travel for peter and connor but last night peter took some time to share his thoughts on the passing of the great christopher lee christopher lee was the tallest actor I ever knew he was also by far the most literate when we first met in a los angeles studio where he was recording his lines as king haggard in the last unicorn he had just recorded haggard’s speech about his first sight of unicorns and I mentioned that it was probably my favorite speech in the book he immediately wanted to know well did I do it properly we can always redo it right here of course he’d handled the lines perfectly but writers and writers’ opinions about their work mattered intensely to christopher that same afternoon we discovered that between the two of us we we could call to mind just about all the lines of g k chesterton’s poem the rolling english road we also discovered a mutual need to hit the men’s room and my son dan in his mid teens at the time still has a very clear memory of christopher simultaneously peeing while declaiming in that voice which no one could ever keep from imitating after fifteen minutes with him before the roman came to rye or out to severn strode the rolling english drunkard made the rolling english road a reeling road a rolling road that rambled round the shire and after him the parson ran the sexton and the squire I leave it to the reader to imagine that voice in the tiled acoustics of a hollywood bathroom we met a second time in munich where the last unicorn was being dubbed into german most of my memories of that time and of chris lee have to do with books and authors he had known both j r r tolkien and a writer who mattered more to me t h white we had a long ongoing argument in munich about a chapter of the sword in the stone that appears in the english edition of the book but not in the american one he turned out to be right he usually was he never failed to mention the last unicorn as one of his very favorite books and as one of the movies he was most proud of having made indeed he left my whopperjawed as mark twain would have put it when we were being interviewed together on austrian television and he announced oh yes I simply couldn’t resist a chance to play king haggard one more time even in another language after all and he looked straight into the camera it’s the closest they’ll ever let me get to playing king lear the camera swung toward me to catch my stunned reaction and chris looked across the studio at me and winked but my most vivid memory chilling as it remains to this day has to do with the day that I and michael chase walker associate producer of the last unicorn and the one who really got the film made in the first place somehow found our way out to dachau I can’t now recall how we managed it considering that neither one of us spoke german and that you had to take both a subway and a bus to get there from the hotel where the crew were staying but we got there somehow and spent a good half of the day roaming with other tourists around a legendary concentration camp peering blindly into the huge crematoriums but staring with equal horror and fascination at the endless rows of filing cabinets containing every record of every human being who was ever imprisoned starved gassed or simply worked to death in this place michael and I grew quieter and quieter that afternoon until by the time we started back to munich we weren’t speaking at all I think we both felt that we might say anything in words again the first person we met in the hotel lobby was christopher he took one look at us and announced you’ve been to dachau we nodded without answering chris strode toward us looked all the way down from his six foot five inch altitude lowered his voice and inquired still smells doesn’t it with the end of world war ii christopher as a member of the special forces and whose five or six languages included fluent german had been assigned to hunt down and interrogate nazi war crminals and had been present at the liberation of dachau and yes the smell of death had undoubtedly faded somewhat since 1945 but it was still as real as michael and me wandering dazedly between the ovens and the filing system we just didn’t know what it was but christopher did and i’d know it again I never saw him again after munich though we spoke on the telephone a few times on the last occasion when I had called to wish him a happy 90th birthday I remember him assuring me that if by the time you come to make your live action version of your movie I have passed on do not let it concern you I have risen from the dead several times I know how it’s done he worked almost to the last as the real artists of every kind do they work to be working because that’s what they do and they die when they stop I always regarded him as the last of the great 19th century actors that bravura larger than life style went with him no modern rada trained performer would ever attempt it today nor should they it would inevitably come out parody however earnestly meant yet there was always more to christopher lee as an actor than dracula or the mummy or saruman or sherlock holmes for that matter though he was very proud of having played not only both holmes and watson but sherlock’s brother mycroft as well lord summerisle of the original the wicker man probably his favorite of his own movies is most likely closer to chris’s dark benignity than any other role he ever inhabited I believe this because lord summerisle sings a surprising amount in that movie and chris passionately loved singing if there is any such thing as an afterlife or reincarnation I truly hope no believe that christopher lee will return as a wagnerian opera singer if he hadn’t been considered too old in his 30s to be accepted for formal vocal training he might have been in his own eyes at least a happier more fulfilled man but we would have been deeply poorer for it and never have known See Other related 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#Great #Dane #5 #Things #You #Should #Know #About #This #Woman

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dirtydobrik · 5 years

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last kiss - d.d.

plot: you and david are dating and you get a job in australia and have to leave for six months. you and david both don’t want to break up but the distance eventually becomes too much and you have to end things

requested: yes! omggg can u pls do an imagine based on the song last kiss by taylor swift and it’s just really angsty? i always imagine if David was to ever break up with someone again it would really destroy him bc of how hard his break up with Liza was, and he would be like crying holding you begging you to stay and work things out even though you both know it can’t work out for the time being, idk maybe y/n is moving countries and living really far like in Australia for work for six months or something

author’s note: hi! this piece is all over the place, im sorry. i didn’t have time to edit this, so sorry in advance if there are typos. this was requested anonymously so hopefully it was something similar to what you wanted.

if you want to send in a request for an imagine, send me a message! i am super behind on requests right now but i have a few pieces in progress that i am working on. i am hopefully back to posting daily as i am trying to get caught up.

word count: 1415

masterlist

"You're unbelievable. Absolutely fucking unbelievable!" David shouted, slamming the white ceramic plate he was holding against the counter top. But you didn't even flinch.

"I'm allowed to make my own decisions!" You shouted back. You could tell David was on the verge of tears.

"You can't just accept a job in Australia without even talking to me about it! We live together for God's sake. I should have had a say in this decision!" David was angry. He was angry that you kept it a secret for so long and he was angry that you were leaving.

"It's not your decision to make! My life doesn’t revolve around you!" You yelled, instantly regretting the harsh words you just said to your boyfriend. David felt his heart shatter with those words. "David, I didn't mean that," you spoke softly, but there was an emptiness in David's eyes and you knew he didn't want to hear your apologies.

“Your life shouldn't have to revolve around me for you to talk to me about a new job before agreeing to it."

"David, I'll only be gone for six months," you argued.

"I can't leave the fucking country!" David shouted, tears spilling out of his eyes now. The moonlight crept in through the kitchen window, illuminating his glossy red eyes.

"Dave," you sighed, your heart aching. "I'm sorry. I know I should've talked to you about this before I took the job. But I thought you'd be happy for me. I thought everything would be okay between us," you rambled, but David didn't want to fight anymore, so he just stopped talking. And he stopped listening to whatever bullshit you were saying to try to save yourself. But it was too late. David was done.

He grabbed a duffle bag from his closet and started throwing random items of clothes into it. He didn’t care what he had, he just needed to get out of the house. Grabbing his keys, David ignored the begging and pleading from you to stay and talk it out. He sprinted out to the garage, tossed his bag in the backseat, and broke down in tears in the driver's seat. David didn’t know where to go, knowing that anywhere he went, he would be easily found by you. You two had spent the last two years together, there was practically nothing you didn't know about him. David threw his cellphone onto the passenger seat, and started the car. He didn’t know where he was going, he just needed to get away.

David drove around aimlessly, just trying to clear his mind. He didn't know where to go or who to talk to. Everyone knew the two of you as this perfect couple and he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that you made a life changing decision without even considering him or their relationship.

And it wasn't like you had taken a job in Chicago or New York or Boston or any other US city. Of course, he'd be mad if you had done that, but at least he'd be able to visit you. He couldn’t just book a flight to Australia and that's what hurt the most.

The sun was rising when David drove home. You were waiting up for him, desperately needing to talk. Sitting on the couch in one of his clickbait hoodie, you heard the front door swing open and immediately stood up to see David. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was a mess. He looked tired and emotionless.

"Can we talk? Please?" you begged when he walked through the door. David sighed, but agreed, walking over to the couch and sitting next to you. "David, I'm so sorry. But it's only temporary. I'll be home before you know it and everything will be okay."

"We can't just put our relationship on hold for six months! And God, you know better than anyone that long distance relationships don't work out!" You froze. You couldn’t believe he was bringing up your past. "I mean, didn’t you say your move out to LA only temporary? You've been here for three fucking years. What's stopping you from moving to Australia forever?"

"You are!" you shouted.

"Oh, really? Is that the same thing your told your ex-boyfriend in New York before you moved out here? Look how that turned out," David scoffed and you felt sick to your stomach.

"Dave, what you and I have is nothing like what my ex and I had. I promise that I'll be coming back to you." You looked at David, your eyes soft. "Six months, tops," you promised, and David sighed.

"I don't want you to leave."

"I know, bub. But I need to take this, it's huge for career." David understood that, he just didn't think you'd ever have to leave him for work. As much as it hurt him, he wasn't ready to let go of you.

A few weeks later, all of your bags were packed and loaded into the trunk of David's Tesla. You had said your goodbyes to your friends last night, all of them promising to come out and visit you at some point, which only made David's heart ache more. He was trying to keep it together, but he knew that you two wouldn’t last, not with you being so far away and with him not being able to ever visit you.

The drive to the airport was filled with awkward silence and tension, both of you knowing what was coming but neither of you wanting to be the first to say it.

"Do you really have to go?" David asked, as you stood on the sidewalk outside the terminal. His eyes were watering and you quickly turned your head so he wouldn’t see your red eyes.

You swallowed and gave him a nod, knowing you wouldn’t be able to talk without breaking down.

"Please stay," he begged, his voice cracking as tears streamed down his face. Watching him cry made you cry. "I don't want to lose you."

"You aren’t losing me, Dave," you tried to reassure him, although neither of you were believing it. "Six months, tops. Remember?"

David choked out a sob and you instinctively wrapped your arms around his and rested your head on his chest. He begged you to stay and repeatedly said that things between you two would be okay. You weren't sure if he was trying to convince you or him, it was probably the both of you.

You gave him one last kiss before taking your bags and walking away.

Trying to do long distance lasted about three weeks before it was too hard. You two were putting too much pressure on your relationship and trying to maintain it that it was unhealthy for the both of you. It was your idea to officially end things. You called him up in the middle of the night, although it was the middle of the day for David, and said you should break up. You told him that you still loved him and that you always would, but that it was too hard. You told him that you'd thought about it a lot and that it was too hard and too draining.

David's heart shattered with that phone call. He should have been expecting it, but he didn’t think it would come so quickly.

Breakups were hard, and David wasn't handling it well. He had now lost another person he loved and absolutely destroyed him. He couldn’t believe you had really left and he was questioning every part of your relationship. He couldn’t understand why you'd leave if you loved him. He had pictured himself marrying you and now you were gone.

It crushed him to see the pictures you posted from Australia and to see your friends visiting and raving to him when they came back. He couldn’t even bring himself to talk to you himself, he'd have mutual friends tell him about you, just to let him know that you were okay.

He wondered if you missed him as much as he missed you. It hurt David like hell to know that you were able to leave him with a broken heart, especially after everything he had told you about his breakup with Liza. He wanted you to change your mind and come back to him, but that didn't happen.

He never thought you two would have a last kiss, and it left him heartbroken when he realized you did.

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saltine-kakyoin · 4 years

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OH SHIT!!!! my clown ass never saw that u rb'd those ask posts, i was Looking at my notifs to see if u would so i could send u some but SOMEHOW I MISSED IT??? clown hours.... ANyways for the emoji one have 🤗💙💘🍀😇 and 👍 (tried to not do repeats from your ask 2 me cause they all apply anyways but, Regardless) and for the questions post, maybe 5, 11, 12, 17, 20, 23 and 25? ;__;/ ily so much and i hope u have a rlly lovely night!!! and that this coming week is kinder 2 u!!!! 💖💖💖💖

ahhh, it’s no worries!!! idk about you but for me, tumblr has been having the Time of Its LIFE lately wrt notifications and most disconcertingly, unfollowing people! D: so i completely get it, it’s no worries!!! ;w;/ i already know for a Fact i’m going to write so so much, so i’m gonna put this under a readmore >w< ruth 🤝 sarah respectful lesbian moments

edit: so I finished writing it and it’s Insanely Long- just in case you don’t make it to the bottom, thank you mein broth-er!!!! ; O; i hope you have a wonderful night too!! writing all of this out made me reminisce on some really nice times, and I’m having an a1 night! ^^ ilysm! it’ll probably be daytime when you read this, so i hope you have a great day! <3

🤗 given the chance I would gladly hug you

on god!!!! ;___; i think i would frfr dissolve if a got a Ruth-Certified hug, things have been so overwhelming lately

💙 you are my closest friend

the feeling is mutual!! <3 we don’t always get to talk often, but fhdhshg when we do we talk about like All of the Madness in Sarah’s Mind^tm, and you are so patient + tolerant of my incoherent ramblings which is something i don’t think i’ve ever fully experienced? anyhow, after a year (more than a year?) of having these kinds of convos and going through the general madness of life together, I totally agree ;w;

💘 I love you so much

i love you too!!! so so much!!! 💃🕺 i don’t think words will ever be able to express how much i love and appreciate you! 💜💛

🍀 i’m lucky to have met you

i know we talk about this often, but seriously i feel the same way! it’s a little crazy that we met, technically, because Joseph Joestar tm deserved more than to be a cheater... there is something hilarious about this wild friendship rooting from him!! of all jojos!! 🤢 but i’m so grateful that we met, it’s been such a wonderful ride ;w; <3

😇 you’re a sweet cinnamon bun

🥺🥺🥺🥺 bro i- fhdhghdhgh thank you!!! ;o;

👍 you are fun to be around

ahhh, thank you!!! i am glad you feel this way bc whoo boy, i think some other people would look at the madness i tell you about and go 👁️👁️ that’s a no for me, luvs. remember last year when i was losing it tryna prepare for ren faire + i cut my palm on that one glass bottle? bc a- i barely do and b- i feel like that moment encapsulates the nicki minaj roman holiday-ness of my life XD i’m really grateful you’ve stuck around through it all 🤗💕💖

now buckle in bro!!!! the essays are incoming!!!

5. Name a movie that makes you genuinely laugh.

i swear on my life the Mortal Kombat movie from 1995 is a national treasure, it is SUCH a solid movie and has so many funny moments. Robin Shou makes such a 🥺🥺 Liu Kang, and jesus fuck he can be so savage when the script calls for it!! there’s one part where he takes Johnny Cage’s luggage and straight up fucking chucks it into the ocean + then bullies him about it later! honestly the Ballad of Johnny Cage and His Luggage is one of my favorite parts from the movie <3 if you haven’t seen it + you like cheesy, old school movies, i really recommend it!!!

11. Describe the memory of the last time you felt true happiness.

So I can’t remember the last time I did, bc my memory is horrifically terrible + probably getting worse as time goes on?? but i will tell you about one of the more recent times I remember! :D There is one crucial expository note for this memory- my brother-in-law makes THE best chili in the entire world. my brother and I were trying to recreate it because it’s such a simple but delicious + filling meal- I think this was our first time trying to create it? and it was SO chaotic, the tomato sauce and stuff kept popping and burning me and we weren’t 100% certain that we’d gathered the right ratios for the ingredients and it was just. madness lmao. Chance’s chili is one that you leave alone for multiple hours at a time (I think this is the case for all chili but i don’t cook often enough to know ;__;), and we were kinda 👀👀👀 because we weren’t sure it’d turn out right? But it did!!!! I vividly remember when it was finished and we taste-tested it + went oOOH FUCK! it wasn’t quite the same as chance’s but ohhh my god it was so good 🥰🥰🥰 but yeah!! we ate it all up and I think this was around the time I started my playthrough of Esteban for Dragon Age 2? which was one of my favorite playthroughs for the entire franchise... he’s just a simple ig beard model mage ;w; i wanted to show you what he looked like in this post but the formatting went wonky so ig i’ll just post him separately?? it’s 1000% in-character for him to infiltrate my jojo blog 😔

12. Name a song that makes you feel ethereal.

hm...I’d say it’s between Forget About or Feet of Clay! They’re both such light and tenderhearted songs, and when I listen to them I feel like I’m in an apartment kitchen slow-dancing with a love, and it’s so dark except for the slowly rising sun. I don’t know if that feeling could be described as ethereal? but it’s close enough for me

17. What is something you own that is important to you? What makes it so important?

I have a small collection of scripts from the shows I’ve been in, and two of the most important ones are from the plays my high school put on during my sophomore and junior years, The Nit-Wits and The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, respectively! The Nit-Wits has a ton of sentimental value to me because it was the last show I genuinely acted in, and it was a show we had to pull together in 2 or 3 weeks!! We were originally going to do a murder mystery play for the fall, but none of the cast was feeling it and it just wasn’t going to come to life in time (honestly this speaks volumes for how much we weren’t vibing with it, because all of our shows came together at like.. the final dress rehearsals if not opening night lmao). I vividly remember we took a vote during rehearsals about whether or not to switch the show, and then we did and it was SO fun + chaotic!! My character was one of the only regular characters in the show, but I think everyone else had a lot of fun acting as actors who were hired to be maniacal, and that made acting off of them so fun! I remember there was also a night my friend Adonis almost tore the entire set down because he ran through a door and tripped over a set brace in his haste!! The Nit-Wits is hugely important because it was a really fresh acting experience for me, and again, my last time genuinely on the stage and not behind the scenes!

MCM is important to me because it was the first play I ever stage managed! I’d stage managed our musical the spring prior, but that was a huge undertaking and involved many different people and moving parts. Stage managing a play, at least at my high school, was a calmer and more intimate experience, and one I really enjoyed! Another huge reason I treasure MCM’s script is because it is one of the last shows I had with my friend I told you about- he was a senior. I have little notes and doodles from the cast and crew scattered throughout my book for this show, and I remember being so irritated by this because it meant I was losing space for stage directions, cues, and notes. Now, I’m super grateful to have these scribbles- it’s one of the only things I have left of him.

On that note, relating to him, MCM is also the show which birthed my most horrific theater horror story!! During one of the performances, I guess he forgot his line?? idk. But he ended up jumping six pages ahead of where the current scene was (I knew this bc I was following along in my book backstage + was frantically trying to figure out where he’d gone), which threw the entire cast, who were all tragically onstage, way off-track. This resulted in the most frightening game of script ping-pong I’ve ever seen: he’d skipped six pages ahead, so Adonis ended up saying a line from two pages after the six-page skip, and somehow someone else went!! oh I have a response to that line! And then said something like 9 pages back! I think the lead actress tried to ground everyone back to the lines they were supposed to be saying, but she ended up just saying a lot of their lines? And one of those lines that was supposed to be said by someone else was supposed to cue a black-out that someone got murdered in, but my lighting techie was SO fucking lost (we were both huddled over the script next to the breaker trying to figure out WHERE the hell we were! i think i had a flashlight in my mouth so I could flip through the book with both hands and thus faster??), so ofc the lights stayed up! I remember getting through this scene being the most painstaking endeavor of my entire life, but thankfully intermission was right after it! We actually extended intermission because the cast needed a hot second to fuckign RESET for Act 2 bc sweet jesus that was so bizarre...Needless to say, after that show we never messed that scene up again + everyone who acted in the show became super anal about knowing their lines as the years went on. The Six Page Skip became a legendary part of our hs theater Canon (like biblical canon ;w; although I don’t think anyone’s talked about it since my class graduated) alongside the times one of our ensemble dudes had to break through the roof of the girl’s dressing room to retrieve the keys to the theater + i got stuck on stage!

20. What’s the sweetest thing someone has done for you?

I really had to wrack my brain to answer this one, as I’m generally not the person people do things for, you know? This answer goes wayyy back, to 8th grade :O but so! there is mild exposition for this- when I started middle school, I lived in North Carolina, but we moved to Florida right before 7th grade bc my grandma is ill. We lived with my uncle while we were looking for a house, so I went to the local middle school bc why wouldn’t I? but in November, we finally found a house + my mom was like....So... are you going to switch schools or...I’d struck up some really solid friendships in this time, so i was like Mom I’d Rather Die OAO. So, we struck up a deal that I’d get to stay at that school on a zone waiver + that she’d drive me to school everyday. Sometime closer to the end of eighth grade she was like, yeah so.. I can’t do this for high school, it’s too much gas- which was valid! I was really sad about it, but I sucked it up.

Anyhow, fast forward to the last day of eighth grade, which was perhaps the saddest day I’d lived up until that point, mostly bc I knew I was probably never going to see all my friends again. My best friend, who I was like hardcore v close to + the person I shared all my wacky AUs and OC’s and headcanons with, was waiting with me for my mom to come pick me up, and then!!! When my mom pulled into the school she suddenly whipped out this lengthy letter she’d written to me about how much she enjoyed my friendship and how grateful she was that we were able to have lunch together (lunch was.. tragically ;__; the only time we really saw each other that year), and that she would never forget me! And she’d drawn me a ton of fanart from all the things I was obsessed with back then!! it was so much so fast, but then my mom was yelling at me to get in the car and I had to go :(

We kept in touch through email freshman year + fake-dated bc a senior was stalking me? ;J; and then we went to Megacon together! but I became really heavily involved in choir and theater after that, and we just kind of drifted apart :( we do follow each other on ig tho! It’s insane to think about her and that letter because on GOD ruth, that was a thinly veiled love letter and I never like... wrote her anything back that was as worthy as what she wrote me. But, she’s doing really well in uni now, so I guess it’s all okay? idk! ; o ;

23. What’s your zodiac sign? Do you think you fit the general characteristics of that sign?

I’m a Cancer!! and also a metal dragon by the Chinese Zodiac, which I’ve always thought was pretty sick! :3 I am 10000% your stereotypical Cancer, super emotional and introspective + often prone to tears ;u; My mom always said that dragons are steadfast and loyal people, and I think this also applies to me, to a fault. I checked around some websites to see what characteristics were often applied to metal dragons specifically, and it seems they are pretty strong-willed, ambitious, and generous? I don’t know if you could call me strong-willed or ambitious, but it’s all good ig.

25. What’s a song that gives off good vibes anytime you listen to it?

Ohh man, I went in on this question for Shannon, but bc I was digging around my library for Jules, I actually found an old fave! This song is from one of my all-time favorite musicals, Once on This Island- it’s The Human Heart! This song is so sweet, and god between the writing for the orchestra + the writing for the ensemble, this song is a straight masterpiece <3 I love love love the line, “Through your love you’ll live forever”, and although I am Hardcore Terrified of getting a tattoo, I really want that line tattooed on my body. if you have time, I recommend giving Once on This Island a listen!! I’ve never heard a show that uses its instruments and singers the way OoTI does (and holy FUCK it is so breathtaking live!!! I got to see it on Broadway and bro.... 🥺🥺 it was transcendental..)

#me when i talk to jules- floods her w a wall of songs #me when i talk to ruth- floods her with a wall of incomprehensible thoughts #the lov is stored in the walls of text! ; O ;#thank you again ruth!!!! this was really fun to write out and i may have cried while writing a few bits but it's fiiiine #i loved writing this 🥰#long post #like INCREDIBLY long post!!!!#sriracha ask game #fullmetal-the-last-alchemist

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sheliesshattered · 4 years

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Fic meme

I was tagged by @primarybufferpanel -- thank you darling, this was a ton of fun to do!

This got a bit long, so I’ll put the people I’m tagging here at the top: @claraaoswald, @ambitious-witch, @someillplanetreigns, and @junoinferno, if you feel like playing!

My AO3, my old non-updating fanfiction.net

Fandoms I’ve made fanworks for: Oh lord. I’m only going to count fanfiction that has actually been posted, but if I tried to count up every fandom that I’d started writing for and left unfinished fragments languishing on various harddrives and googledocs over the years, it’d be at least double this list. I have two pseuds on AO3, with the fics roughly organized by fandoms that I post about on this Tumblr account (sheliesshattered) and fandoms that pre-date my time on Tumblr that I don’t post about very much (glasscannon). Putting all the fandoms together in one alphabetized list:

Black Sails - 5 Doctor Who - 8 Firefly/Serenity - 1 Game of Thrones - 1 The Hobbit - 1 The Hunger Games - 1 Iron Man - 2 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 1 Mad Max - 2 Once Upon A Time - 1 Poldark - 3 Star Wars - 3 Twilight - 7 The West Wing - 1

Number of fics: 38, including a big unfinished epic that I never moved over from ff.n, and don’t plan to unless I finish it someday.

Fics I spent more time on: I’m not even quite sure how to measure this. I’m a slow writer, and a single story can easily hold my attention for years at a time, or be something I return to when there isn’t a newer fandom temporarily consuming me. I don’t tend to keep track of how many hours I put into a fanfic, though. The unfinished epic I mentioned is probably near the top of that list, and was a huge part of my life from 2009 to 2013. Other contenders would be the All Hands series (written with PBP!), and Truth Universally Acknowledged, particularly if you include all the massive world-building that went into that one.

But really probably the one I’ve poured the most hours into, between research and writing, is a Doctor Who epic that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, called Home The Long Way ‘Round. Because I have such a habit of starting long stories and then not finishing them, I’m making myself get that one completely done before I post any of it to AO3, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but I’ve put a ton of time into it over the last five years or so. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get to share it. :)

Fics I spent less time on: Like I said, I’m a very slow writer, so any time I can turn out a story in a matter of days I’m just absolutely shocked. I wrote The Message over the course of about 24 hours, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever finished anything in my life ever, lol.

Longest fic: The All Hands series is sitting at 126,800 words, and PBP and I have more finished for it that we’re hoping to post soon-ish. The unfinished epic made it to almost 119,000 words before I ran out of steam. Truth Universally Acknowledged racked up about 54,000 words before my co-writer and I took a break from it, and probably triple that in world-building bibles and timelines, etc. On the works-in-progress side of things, Home The Long Way ‘Round is sitting at about 40,000 words currently and only about a third of the way done, and the For As Long As We Get series is at 21,000 words between what I’ve posted and what I’m still working on, and will definitely continue to grow.

Shortest story: 10 Seconds, at 208 words. Also one of the very first fanfics I ever finished and posted online.

Most hits: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by like a factor of 20 vs anything else I have on AO3. It’s the only time I’ve written for the main pairing in an active fandom (tho my purview in the co-writing was more on the secondary pairing), and that translated to a stupidly large number of hits. Fanfiction.net doesn’t count hits the same way, but the unfinished epic is sitting at about 3500 favs.

Most kudos: Setting The Stuns’ls, the first in the All Hands series -- which is SHOCKING considering that’s a tiny rowboat of a fandom, for a non-canon background pairing that has literally about 30 seconds of shared screentime, and the two romantic leads don’t so much as kiss over the course of 94,000 words (longing looks, significant hand-touches, mutual pining, definitely, but kissing, not so much).

Most bookmarks: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by a long shot.

Fic you want to rewrite or expand: I don’t tend to edit a story once it’s been posted, beyond correcting a typo or adding a missed word. Once it’s published, it’s finished and I don’t change it significantly. I do have quite a few (so, so many) unfinished stories that I would love to finish up at some point.

Total words combined: Counting only published fics, including the unfinished epic (and a companion piece for it) that lives only on ff.n, I’m currently at 376,542 words total.

Fav fic you wrote: How can you make me choose between my children like this, honestly?? Siiiigh. I’m with PBP, whatever I’m working on currently is usually my favorite. I’m having a ton of fun with For As Long As We Get, and can’t wait to publish the next part of that, hopefully sometime this month. I’m incredibly proud of All Hands, and that occupied such a specific time in my life that I’ll always think of it fondly. I’m exceptionally happy with the character voices and use of language in both Breathe Again and Upon This Rock Will I Break Myself, Until It Shows Me Your Beloved Face, and tend to feel like they don’t get enough love vs how much I love them. But my one true favorite is and will always be Home The Long Way ‘Round, and hopefully I’ll actually be able to finish it and post it someday.

Share a bit of your WIP or idea if you have anything planned: Again, how can I possibly choose just one?? Even just within the Doctor Who fandom, I currently have more than half a dozen stories actively in progress. But since I’ve talked it up so much without being able to link to it at all, and just declared it my all-time fav, I’m going to break one of my own rules and post the whole first chapter (eek!) of Home The Long Way ‘Round behind a read more:

Chapter 1: Orange Dreams

The sound of the wind is whispering in your head Can you feel it coming back? Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running ‘til we’re there. We're coming home now, we’re coming home now. —Home, Dotan

The winds shrieked and howled around her. Clara had never been in a tornado, but she imagined it would feel like this to stand in the eye of one. She could see gusts lifting the tops off the sand dunes in shimmering ribbons, gold against the orange sky. The waves of airborne sand dissipated a few feet from her, leaving only a jagged grittiness in the air.

A woman with long blonde hair was yelling at her, her words ripped away by the wind.

“Tell me again!” Clara called back to her. “Tell me how to find home!”

“It’s just physics!” the other woman shouted, taking a step closer; they were nearly the same height. “No information can ever be lost! Start from zero, and run the math! We’ll be waiting on the other end of that equation!”

There was something Clara desperately wanted to tell this woman who looked at her with kindness behind the steel of her eyes, but in that moment, the words wouldn’t come.

“Look!” someone yelled behind Clara, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off her, she instinctively looked up, following the line of the other person’s arm up into the gathering storm-whipped dusk. There, silhouetted against the last of the light, was the unmistakable blue boxy shape of the Doctor’s TARDIS, spinning quickly as it flew away—

Clara jerked awake, her heart hammering against her ribs, already sitting up and pulling off her sleep mask before she realised what had woken her was the sound of the TARDIS materialising in the sitting room of her flat. She took a moment to catch her breath, trying to hold onto the details of the dream. In the other room, the TARDIS’s familiar wheezing and groaning came to a stop with a soft thud, followed by the squeak of the door.

“Doctor?” Clara called, not bothering to hide the sleep nor the annoyance in her voice.

He poked his head around her bedroom doorframe, grey hair awry and his most innocent expression plastered on — which meant he knew he was waking her and felt at least marginally bad about it. “Hello, Clara. It’s Wednesday,” he said pleasantly, by way of explanation.

“Is it?” she asked, deadpan.

“Technically.”

“You do know that I have to work today, don’t you?”

“Not for another six hours. So come on, up-and-at-‘em, plenty of time to go out and save the universe and still be back in time for your morning coffee. I’ve an adventure that simply won’t keep, so come on!”

His excitement was infectious, as he must have known it would be, but Clara clung to her annoyance a little longer, mostly for show. “You have a time machine: everything can keep,” she replied, but waved him off before he could launch into a lecture on all the ways that statement was false, at least from a temporal physics standpoint. He lectured anyway, hovering outside her bedroom door as she dressed, though Clara expected it was mostly to keep himself from pacing in anticipation. She followed more than half of it, and worried a bit over how often she let him babble on about the minutiae of time travel these days.

By the time the universe had been set to rights — or at least one small blue world, home to a race of sentient seahorses, that had been facing imminent extinction in the form of a rogue exoplanet — she had nearly forgotten her unsettling, vivid dream.

Given the recent events on Skaro, Clara was unsurprised when bits of her experiences there began to filter into her dreams. Truthfully, she had expected to dream of it more often than she did, but in the weeks that followed, more nights than not her sleeping mind instead conjured up the strange orange landscape. She revisited that screaming sandstorm so often it became almost comforting, and before long, other dreams joined it.

Clara was leaned against a railing on a high balcony, overlooking a large city coming alight as dusk crept on, a rusty sunset that stretched the width of the horizon bathing the world in amber. The woman with the serious eyes and long, straight blonde hair stood beside her, in the middle of a conversation, as happened so frequently in dreams.

“Alright, but what about the last stage?” Clara asked, elbows resting next to hers on the railing. “That bit depends on us actively doing something, and you know we can’t rely on my knowledge. I can’t take any of the engineering or navigation with me, so it’ll be down to him.”

“And he loves a good puzzle,” the other woman said confidently, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a twitch of her head. “He’ll want to find us. He’ll figure it out.”

“Before I die of old age? Are you sure? My mother was one of his professors at the Academy, I’ve seen his test scores. I think we need a fail-safe.”

“He did graduate,” she pointed out reasonably.

“He passed his exams with a fifty-one percent on his second attempt! No, we can’t assume he’ll have all the baseline information to even consider such a solution, much less actually accomplish the maths. We have to find some way to hide it with me,” Clara said. “Or in his TARDIS.”

The woman was silent for a long moment, her mouth set in a thoughtful line. On the distant horizon, the sun had finished its slow descent, but below them the city was coming to life, the light not so much fading as changing sources, becoming ever so slightly more golden.

“By that point in the timeline,” the blonde woman said, speaking slowly, still thinking it through, “you’ll have been exposed to his timestream and to the crack in the universe, so some of your memories will probably start leaking through. If we structure the extraction the right way, we might be able to embed a particular thought or moment into your consciousness before you go into the Schism.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at her.

“This conversation?” she suggested, laughing, her broad smile transforming her face. “No, a phrase would be cleaner, I think.”

“‘Run the math, you idiot boy’?” Clara suggested, also giggling.

“Oh yes, that’d go over well! No, if you want him to do something, call him clever. Works every time!” she laughed, leaning her shoulder into Clara’s.

“The horrid thing is that I know the temporal physics for this is part of my mother’s coursework,” Clara groaned. “If he hadn’t slept through so many of her classes, this would be a non-issue!”

“Ah, but a Doctor who was always responsible? What a boring universe that would be!”

Above them, the stars were beginning to come out, though the glare of the city obscured them. Through the haze of the dream, Clara couldn’t find any constellations she recognised. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I was the one who helped him steal that box in the first place.”

“And if he could take half a moment to remember that,” the blonde woman said seriously, “he might realise the role of his TARDIS in all of this, and start to think of the solution that way.”

“‘Run the math, you—”

“Clever.”

“—boy, and remember when you met me’?”

The other woman nodded, considering. “That could do it. Your chronodeterminate conjugation won’t work until you come into contact with at least a little regeneration energy. Assuming you choose regeneration on Trenzalore, it might start kicking in then, in plenty of time for the last stage.”

“Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me,” Clara whispered up to the distant stars, cradling her chin on her arms against the railing.

The woman mimicked her position, the golden light of the city and the silver light of the stars catching in her long pale hair. “It’s just physics,” she murmured back. “Start from zero and run the math. I’ll be waiting at the other end of that equation. We’ll all be waiting.”

As unsettling as they were, at least the orange-tinged dreams were better than nightmares of Daleks, of being locked in the Dalek casing, unable to convince the Doctor that it was her, it was her, she wasn’t a Dalek, she wasn’t a Dalek! Dreams of the Doctor peering at her down an eyestock, this face or the last, or any of the others buried deep in her subconscious, hearing her but not knowing her, seeing her but not saving her.

Clara grasped for that orange sky, let it carry her away in bronze sandstorms, golden cities slowly coming to life, and starlight caught in tawny hair.

Monday morning third period found her Year 10 students taking an essay exam while Clara doodled on a scrap piece of paper, trying to pull images and phrases out of the orange haze that had taken up residence in her slumbering hours since Skaro. There were bits that tugged at her memory, like a song she couldn’t quite place but whose tune was intensely familiar.

She’d written Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me across the top of the page, and her eyes strayed to it every few seconds. The phrase had stayed with her after she woke, and had been on the tip of her tongue ever since, as though it was a message she was meant to deliver. Below it she’d rewritten the phrase, but crossed out six words: Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me.

It was too close for comfort to the phrase that had, in retrospect, changed her life, sent her on her current course. The Maitlands’ mnemonic for their wifi password, which she’d said out loud during that first phone conversation with the Doctor, had caught his attention somehow, and it wasn’t until she jumped into his timestream that she understood. It was the last thing she’d said to him before sacrificing herself to save him. Every fragment of her scattered through his timestream had said it to him at some point as well, the words reverberating endlessly up and down his timeline.

Why her dreams would dredge it up now, and in such a strange context, Clara had no idea. They didn’t feel like random images, but more like memory-dreams, like the bits of echo lives that filtered through to her sleeping mind from time to time. It had to mean something.

Half way down the scrap paper she’d written: It’s just physics. Start from zero and run the math. Below this was the very helpful ??? and Clara idly traced over the question marks again. Physics was still a foreign language to her, despite how much the Doctor prattled on about it at times. She could bring this to him, she mused, but what was it, really? Her subconscious doing backflips in the wake of Skaro, that was all. No grand mystery to solve, no universe-altering secret code, just her. She wouldn’t bother the Doctor with this quite yet.

Besides, she was certain she could tease this apart on her own, follow the clues to their logical conclusion without his assistance. The dreams were insistent, and felt familiar, but Clara was sure she’d never dreamed of the blonde woman and the orange sky prior to Skaro. That was the next clue, then, and she jotted it down on her scrap paper. Something had changed after Skaro, something that caused her subconscious mind to dredge up these particular buried memories.

She needed more information. Dreams about her echo lives were always stronger when she was aboard the TARDIS travelling in the Vortex, sharper and easier to remember. Maybe these orange dreams would be, too. And maybe the TARDIS itself would have some answers for her.

Of course, she didn’t sleep aboard the TARDIS very often, with her insistence on returning home for a week of Real Life in between their Wednesday trips. But the Doctor was never adverse to her sticking around longer than she’d planned, and in the end it didn’t take much to convince him:

“I’ve a staff meeting at work that I’m dreading,” Clara told him on that next Wednesday, when they returned to the TARDIS after their latest outing. “So what do you say I have a little kip and then we squeeze in another adventure before you take me back to face my workday?”

She thought for a moment that the Doctor might question the change in their routine, but he seemed thrilled about the idea. When he announced that he had some tinkering with the engines he’d been putting off that should keep him occupied while she slept, Clara made an excuse to linger in the console room — “just going to finish reading this chapter, then off to bed” — until after he’d gone. Once he’d disappeared down the corridor and around a corner, she quietly set aside her book, then slipped out of her armchair and down the stairs towards the console. The rotors hummed overhead, and somehow Clara knew the TARDIS was aware of her, and was curious to see what she would do.

Carefully clearing her thoughts, she made her way over to the telepathic circuits, pushed up her sleeves, and slid her hands into the strange interface. Focus was the key, she knew, and she was nothing if not focused. She closed her eyes and held two very specific thoughts in her mind: the sand-whipped orange sky in her dreams, and the clear question, Where, please?

She hoped the please would help.

It was a long quiet moment with the circuits warmly cradling Clara’s fingers, and then something on the console beeped. Her eyes flew open and she carefully extracted her hands from the telepathic interface before pulling the monitor down to eye level.

Gallifrey the screen read in English, below an image of a startlingly red-orange planet. Immediately prior to the Time Lock.

Clara felt her heart thud painfully against her ribs as she read the brief text again. She’d been dreaming of Gallifrey? She knew she’d had an echo life on Gallifrey, but she remembered that interaction with the Doctor, and it happened indoors. She had never before dreamt of the Gallifreyan sky. Had it been buried somewhere in her subconscious with the rest of her memories of that life? Why surface now?

More confused than ever, she clicked the screen back to the desktop, unreadable Circular Gallifreyan floating idly across the display. Perhaps she should bring this up with the Doctor — it was his home world, after all. But the whole point of this had been to dream while they were in the Vortex, and if she didn’t get a move on, he’d be ready for their next adventure before she’d even managed to fall asleep. She could talk with him about it later.

And if things worked tonight as she hoped they would, maybe she would even have a bit more information to bring to him when she did.

“Fire suppressant in Pod Four!”

The frantic call was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of the requested suppressant dispensing from the ceiling. When it ended, the speaker, dressed in the dark red uniform of a technician, brushed soot and foam off his shirt.

“It hates me, that one,” he said, nodding at the unassuming gray cylinder in the open pod in front of him. It was devoid of features, even its doors invisible now in the wake of the fire, two meters tall and one meter in diameter, just like all the other patients in the workshop. But somehow it did seem to be glowering at him.

“And it always will, stop wasting your time,” his coworker said flippantly. He was perched in front of a console on the other side of the room, deep in his own repairs. “Just get the Impossible Girl to do it, she’ll have it eating out of her hand by lunchtime.”

Their conversation occurred in the time it took Clara to enter the large oblong workshop and make her way to the far end where the two were working. “I heard that,” she said seriously, earning a guilty-looking jump from the man who had spoken most recently. She continued over to Pod Four and leaned against the outer casing, arms folded over her uniformed chest, one booted ankle crossed over the other. “What did you do now?” she demanded of the first technician.

He looked at her with wide eyes, more out of genuine fear than mock innocence, in her estimation. “I just told it—”

“You what?” she snapped, in a tone she usually reserved for misbehaving students.

He wilted a little but started again “…I told it to—”

“Told it?”

“…to give me access to the logs,” he mumbled, dropping her gaze.

“Told it to give you access to the logs?” she asked, voice harsh. “Well first off, Number Four here prefers male pronouns, respecting that might put you on better footing. And secondly, as with all TARDISes, you’ll get a lot further if you ask rather than tell.”

Behind her, the other tech scoffed. “They’re machines, we shouldn’t have to baby them like that. An access request is an access request.”

Clara turned her head to pin him with an icy glare. “Some days I cannot believe I let you work here,” she told him bluntly. “They aren’t just machines, as you very well know. Yes, there’s hardware we need to be able to work with, but that’s nothing more than a radio, at some level — only instead of radio waves, we’re using oswin waves to talk to pan-dimensional beings so large, they can’t have a physical form in this dimension. Who, with a little extra energy, can take us and an infinite amount of folded space to nearly any point in spacetime. Just think about the massive intelligences that speak to us through each of those machines!

“But more to the point,” she said, turning back to the tech still covered in soot, “you have to understand their viewpoint of the universe, and their understanding of time. A Time Lord telling a TARDIS what to do is akin to creating a fixed point in spacetime. It’s in their nature to want to avoid fixed points. Ask instead, let him find his own way ‘round to it.”

Before the beleaguered technician could reply, there came a polite knocking from the far end of the room, and Clara turned to see a soldier standing in the doorway of the workshop, looking a little out of his depth. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for—” he paused to glance down at the datapad in his hand, “for the Oswin. From the Lady President. Top priority.”

Clara was moving towards him before he’d finished speaking, curious and concerned, her attention focused on the message in his hands. But the dream faded out before she reached him, her mind moving on to something more abstract, more difficult to hold on to.

When she woke in her bed aboard the TARDIS, she stared at the ceiling with fond frustration. “If that was your attempt at help,” she whispered to the ship, “then I do not understand the message.”

It still wasn’t enough to bring to the Doctor, she decided later that day, watching him spin around the console room in the afterglow of a successful adventure, people saved, the universe bettered. So she was dreaming of Gallifrey, what of it? Many of the details in that last dream matched up with what she remembered of her interaction with the Doctor in that life. And while he occasionally enjoyed comparing memories of all the times her echoes had met him, she’d found he wasn’t especially keen on discussing the one in which she’d helped him steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey. Susan continued to be a point of pain for the Doctor, all these centuries later, and Clara understood him well enough to know better than to pick at that particular scab.

Still. That phrase was on a loop in her head: run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me. The emphasis on their meeting hadn’t been part of the original phrase, and now she was dreaming of the life in which they’d met face to face for the first time, from the Doctor’s perspective. Clearly they would have to discuss it at some point.

Eventually, but not yet.

#long post #about me #my writing #like seriously all of it #fanfiction #fandom life #AO3 #Home The Long Way 'Round #For As Long As We Get #All Hands #Truth Universally Acknowledged #et al #if you read that chapter let me know what you think!#❤️

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cassafra5 · 6 years

Text

Where Have I Been?

I’ve been a bit nervous to post this.

Two month or so ago, I teased at a possible announcement and something I was very excited to share with you all. I had been given the opportunity to work on a temp-to-perm basis for a comic start-up headed by Marvel alumni. I applied on a whim to be a freelance Storyboard Artist, but I was instead offered the chance of working in a full-time Editorial and Admin position with a few hours dedicated to storyboarding and participating in creative meetings each week. As someone who's always wanted to get into creative work, this was a really huge deal for me and I was excited to learn and be able to have projects to add to my portfolio.

Now, part of the reason I held off was because I wanted to make sure it was solid before I made the announcement. It was a dream come true and it seemed too good to be true ... and it was.

Read below if you'd like to hear about how I unwittingly signed up to take care of a herd of entitled neckbeards and had to work on preventing them from literally walking into glass instead of actually storyboarding as advertised.

TL;DR of my experience:

2018 unfortunately was a pretty rough year. The good news is that I managed to push for a mutual termination of contract and should be a lot more active very soon now that I’m not as emotionally drained by an incredibly toxic environment.

Credit to @kirain for looking through this and helping to edit it when I just rage-typed all of this together lol;

I walked away from my interviews in tears after being told that my work really had potential. I told them I had been a comic fan since I was a kid and this was something I was excited about. I grew up with family trying to dissuade me from doing art and I had friends/partners who really weren't interested in my work. I am by no means a professional, so I threw up whatever I could be proud of and applied to the role on a whim. So as you can imagine, having real professionals say I had potential was something amazing to me.

My first day, they sat me at a desk with a tablet and computer and I was super excited to start learning and was immediately approached with a Sexual Harassment plaque and told to mount it. Weird but alright. It was a start-up and I already assumed we’d all be helping out with small jobs around the office. I helped them fix their scanner and they suggested I move it to my desk. I was a bit confused but did so. I asked if they wanted me to set their computers up for it but they waved their hands at me and said we could do it later.

This would eventually result in me scanning every single document for every person in the office, and also measuring the office for furniture that they would randomly decide not to get. When I had a day off, I came back to piles of documents they refused to scan themselves since "that was my job". I got chastised since they wanted them in a hurry and it should have been done sooner ... i.e., the day I was off.

Alright.

I also ended up doing the following duties:

Calling the IRS every single day because the Controller was too uppity about something that was in the mail and somehow thought they could track it...DURING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

Calling Instacart at the behest of their Legal Counsel, a man who bitched on the phone for 2 hours because he didnt want to go downstairs to drop off a faulty computer part, and having to tell them that their avocados were too soft and their almond milk had too many ingredients. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

I had to ask for multiple vendors to provide quotes and COI and do site visits to our office for things that they, on a whim, would decide they wouldn’t want....resulting in multiple vendors getting angry at me.

I had to get what “everyone wanted for Christmas” for their luncheon...they expected me to get cakes same day from a fancy bakery, as well as LOBSTER (one of them said this was apparently a Christmas tradition of theirs?) Mind you, they repeatedly spoke about budgeting since they were working on investment money and the owner repeatedly would mention how “every day we weren’t producing was a day we died a little more.” I guess that death would have been from gout.

I had to take on dealing with all building requests. Fine ...until they started to tell me I should be reaching out to building management about the "radiation coming out of the cable box". They said it was shooting at a person given their angle and, because I'm *that person*, I mentioned it'd probably be more of a radius vs a direct shot. They started talking about it causing a mushroom cloud over the office. I laughed. Apparently it wasn’t a joke :/ They also complained about the fan making noises and being able to hear people partying and singing songs ... during the holidays ... when people normally do that sort of thing.

I also had to deal with things such as their electrical work and assistance with general interior work in the office...for some reason

They put me in charge of the Party Committee for a Housewarming Party where I was the only one actually making arrangements. This would be fine but the office was sublet and, due to their clumsiness in handling their electrical work before I got there, part of the office has no electricity and there was also a fallen over power beam in the middle of the office...but I guess that can be an accent piece.

I literally had to rename their files. Rather than renaming documents themselves, they would email me to rename them and reupload them because they couldn’t be bothered to change them themselves.

I made the mistake of telling them I had worked with DocuSign in a previous job. What resulted was them forcing me to teach it to them...but then they would argue with me about why it couldn’t mail merge or allow them to revise their documents. A Docusign rep mentioned they could just do their work outside of Docusign and import it since the whole point is to maintain the integrity of the document but they just kind of blamed me for not knowing enough about something I had only briefly used in another completely different setting.

I was literally approached by the person who should have been leading me in storyboarding and told that I needed to look into “distraction graphics” for the office because he was concerned that the two head people (WHO WORKED AT MARVEL) kept bashing their heads on the glass and he was afraid they’d go through the glass eventually. My literal reaction:

Yeah...he didn’t laugh. It was apparently serious and I had to have some very awkward talks with some window vendors. Do you know it apparently costs more than $3.5k to cover glass that you could probably avoid if you just looked up from your phones when you walked?

Frustrating, but whatever ... it wasn't a big deal and so long as I got to do some creative work, I was willing to tolerate it.

I asked the person in charge of art and asked when we'd be able to work on creative and was told that my role was mainly in admin and to "leave the storyboarding to the storyboarders".

I guess I just imagined every single mention of that during the interview process.

I was taken aback but he assured me it was fine since I could work in production and work on other items, like cutting comics up for Webtoons. This wasn't what I wanted, but fine ... maybe I could get something out of this regardless and learn, even if I was just cutting up and processing other peoples' work. By the way, they ended up not even letting me do that.

And here’s where I get to the owner of this establishment...

I got called in to meet with him and told I would be given a special project. He wanted me to suggest a few themes that would be used for a promo project the company was working on. Okay ... this could be good. I started thinking of all my favorite genres and comics and wrote out a decent list. I asked him if it there was a limit and he said there was no limit, so I made a comprehensive list.

He brought me back in a week later and ripped my report apart.

First, he didn't want Marvel and DC included, but then he got upset when they weren't.

Star Wars and Serenity weren't Scifi, according to him; they were "Space Opera". So that had to be done. They were set in space but apparently that wasn't scientific. Alright.

Spongebob and Ducktales were irrelevant, but apparently The Simpsons was super relevant.

He smiled at me and told me I needed to redo it because I obviously didn't know what I was doing. Okay ... sure. Then he kept changing his mind. We started this before the holidays and I worked on making a very sortable report in case there were anymore last minute changes.

Me and another co-worker who were avid comic book readers spent a lot of time looking at sales numbers and articles to compile what we should focus on; however, for one reason or another, the owner would dismiss everything we brought up since he "hadn't heard of it". Deathstroke apparently never existed. Teen Titans also ... totally not relevant. Although he said he was open to ideas, he'd bash every single suggestion, answer every question by asking us why we'd ask such "stupid questions", and he literally asked us to bring in articles and statistics just so he could completely dismiss them. He was completely un-open to hearing anyone else's opinions and already had a dead-set idea of what his audience wanted ... despite having told us he hated comics and that "normal people [like him] don't read comic books". He knew what these idiots wanted, and it was just a matter of making us redoing the report over and over until we happened on the right combo HE wanted. I.e., pretty much the top comics he last saw at the dawn of the early 2000's.

I literally had taken pics of a few bestseller displays I’d seen in stores (Newsbury Comics, Barnes and Nobles etc) but he literally said that that didn’t mean they would sell. What does Best Selling even mean then?

But it's cool to just completely dismiss your customer base and act like you know better, right?

I ended up having to work until 10:00pm one night in order to make all necessary changes and print covers for him to review. What started as a simple list of themes became a report that had over 600 rows in Excel. Even then, 80-90% of it ended up not being used. I was so exhausted at this point and burnt out. I loved comics ... but having to rip them apart by category, put them back together, eliminate whole categories because he didn't want them, and then having to remake them after he changed his mind was agonizing.

I had another meeting with him and he smiled at me and simply said, "Aww I thought this would be a fun project for you, since you're a fangirl after all"

He was taunting me. This was a game to him. Of course, I should have expected this from someone who literally made a cheat sheet so "idiot comic book fans" would get his jokes. I'm not joking. It actually exists and I'm sure it's something Marvel would rather not even remember.

A couple more weeks passed and, at this point, a majority of the office depended on me to get people's food choices for their snacks, following up with building maintenance, and I barely had any creative projects whatsoever. I did get to create the party invitation the main art guy refused to make but he pushed me to make in Canva, because he thought Canva was the end all and be all to graphic design and that it should be used for all presentations for our LinkedIn. Pretty much everything Canva (something used mostly by Instagram and Twitter users) probably wasn't meant to be used on.

Keep in mind that this person was in charge of creative and was also in charge of gate-keeping me from doing the one thing I was tolerating everything for. I had literally repeatedly asked about the storyboarding during the interview process and even though they had changed the duties, they always confirmed that storyboarding would be a part of it.

Last week, I asked the main art guy again about my job description and about how he had mentioned storyboarding being off the table entirely. He immediately got defensive and reminded me that I was an admin. I mentioned I still had the job descriptions and emails mentioning me having a hand in creative, and he accused me of talking back and said that he could tell from how I looked that I thought he was an idiot.

He also accused me of not being enthusiastic about his projects. I was confused since I was actively asking for projects and had literally been trying to find some way to take on creative assignments. He got even angrier and said I wasn't telling him how much fun I was having and how excited his work was making me.

What?

It suddenly dawned on me that every talk I'd had with this guy about how excited I was to learn from him/to work on the team gave him some sort of weird satisfaction. I mentioned that I didn't think I should have been sending him emails about that, and he asked, "Why not? You shouldn't assume I don't want them. I want you to tell me my stuff is fun and how excited you are about them!" I was ... very uncomfortable. This grown man. This grown ass man wanted me to fawn over his work and send him emails about how excited I was about his work. About HIM. What a narcissist.

He made enough commotion that the owner brought us in. He sat us down and said something about him being a bit familiar with this sort of thing, having gone to marriage counselling himself. I was already uncomfortable and that really didn’t help.

What ended up happening was they berated me in his office and told me I was "too honest", and I was told that I didn't know my place. I was told that at the very top were the two Marvel alumni, then underneath there was everyone else and I was right at the very bottom of everything and I should know my place.

These were the two people who had told me I had potential and who had made me so happy just a couple months prior. I was frozen in place as they grinned at me and told me that obviously there was some misunderstanding on my part. They then told to run along while they thought about what they could throw at me to make me happy. The guy who yelled at me was not chastised or told his behavior was wrong in any way, shape or form. I got dragged into a staff meeting afterwards, where the owner proudly told all of us, "This is the best company you can work for, where you can work with people you like." And in the same breath, he told everyone not to fuck up or otherwise it would be "resume time".

I felt broken the rest of the day, where I heard them blatantly laughing and insulting the creators they were going to work with. One creator was commented on as being able to "...work as a writer but you shouldn't look at her stuff unless you want your eyes to bleed.” They said worse stuff too and laughed like a bunch of entitled douchebags on DeviantArt trying to get kicks off of stuff they thought were cringey. It was insane. These were supposed to be professionals in the field. It made me uncomfortable to think what they said about my own work when they told me I had "potential". Some of these were small time Tumblr creators like me who probably thought this would be their big break too...

I thought about putting in my two days, the amount that was specified in my contract, and worried about what they'd try to do in the time I had left. I was miserable and scared and nervous.

On Friday, the owner approached me and asked me for my portfolio while smiling to himself. I was skeptical and asked why, and he firmly said, "Because I want to see it." I sent it and prepared for the worst.

He brought me in for a two minute "friendly" chat in the conference room, and once we sat down, he mused over his computer and said it was "coming back to him” I did art.

He remembered now. It had been so forgettable, after all. Aww, maybe there was something there.

With a smile, he told me I "shouldn't take it personally", and that only one artist so far had been able to get along with him and work with what they wanted. They'd thrown out 8 artists after they just simply "didn't work". They admitted that they had promised me storyboarding, but no one was working to their intended vision. That they hadn't really figured out a place for me in the company, but maybe going out on a business trip would help him clear his head and he could find something I could do. "I guess we've been letting you down a bit, haven’t we?"

I felt like at this point he wanted me to act desperate and happy for the possibility of a chance and buy into it and take his offering with gratitude...

...but I was done with his shit.

I told him that I had started at his company a few months ago and that if they hadn't figured out where I was supposed to be in all that time, then maybe it wasn't a good fit. He was quiet and didn't seem prepared for it. "Well ... what do you think we should do about it then?"

"If it's alright with you, I would like to terminate this contract immediately." I said it through gritted teeth. I'm not a confrontational person, but after everything that had happened, I was worried I'd lose it. I could feel myself shaking, but I just couldn't deal with it anymore. "I didn't appreciate being told I was at the bottom of the food chain and I really didn't appreciate you allowing me to be treated this way. Frankly, after that, it's taken every bit of motivation out of me and I'd like to end this. Now." I was trying to be professional and control myself, but I was quietly seething with every word. I told him I had saved all my job descriptions and had the contract if he wanted to review it, and I knew that what they had been telling me was bullshit.

He was really quiet and his eyes were wide open. I really think he expected me to be grateful and happy and willing to do more and more for the company just for that little chance. He mumbled something about not prolonging my suffering and told me to just assist in transitioning over my duties and typing things up.

Once I did, I asked if I was free to go and he said I was and I left. It was so much of a relief not to have to come back to that office.

So this is what happened with something I thought would have been a great in to an industry I was excited about. I got used up (and not even for the skills I actually have under my belt) and kept around as an emotional punching bag, and for the dumbest things imaginable and essentially just assisted them with setting up their office after they'd sublet it.

On the plus side, I feel like it was a big deal that I could actually stand up for myself, even if it happened to be to someone like that. Even though I'm not a professional and even though some people would consider me insignificant, I feel like there's never a reason to make any person feel insignificant and like they're the lowest of the low. I hated how they spoke about other creators and I hated how they spoke to me, and there isn't any reason anyone should have to deal with people who are just bent on being condescending.

Ironically, around this time, Steven Universe released an amazing episode and the ending theme kind of hit home with me. I loved its message and I think that ep. kind of helped me in a way.

2019's off to an interesting start, I guess ... but I guess I can be proud that I'm stronger despite it. I am passionate about my art and do want to be able to work professionally but there’s no reason to ever tolerate disrespect and dishonesty in a company.

In the words of Raul Julia/Gomez Addams:

Hopefully, one day, I’ll get my break but this definitely wasn’t it.

If any of you guys are in NYC and happen to come across a mildly shady startup toted to be headed by Marvel alumni, maybe just be a bit careful. I normally don’t post about stuff like this and honestly tend to get quiet when things happen because I have trouble opening up about personal issues but maybe it can help someone or at the very least be an interesting read.

#personal #job stories #comics

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315-no-stage · 5 years

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[20190827] TFG 「My dear Summer」Release Event Photo Session fan report

(Yeah, I know it’s been over two weeks since the event. LOL I’m not much of a timely blogger but if you want the blow-by-blow as it happens, my Twitter is the best bet. I tend to word vomit especially when I’m going through an anxiety episode... as you would see later on. I’m mostly doing this for memory keeping, for myself lmao. And for information too, if you’re interested, especially if you’re a fan living outside of Japan. Please keep in mind that my listening skills are stronger than my speaking skills. However, when put on the spot, under pressure, that goes all away ahaha. I can’t read Japanese apart from name kanji.)

I guess I should begin when I first heard about this event. It was around May 2019 when the TFG twitter announced that they are holding a two-shot cheki chance event to celebrate the release of their first single My dear Summer. At that time, I simply wanted to get my hands on the CD lol. We had dreams of going to Anisamano plans of going to Japan any time soon (since I only just came back from my Tokyo no Jin trip earlier that month).

I had my brother help me out with buying the CDs (Google Translate can only do so much) when he actually encouraged me to try for the cheki. He said it’s a lottery system, as usual, and it won’t hurt to try since I’m buying stuff anyway. So I did. I bought both the First Press Limited Edition sets A and B using my boy Haruto Sakuraba’s link and didn’t really think much of it. They said they were going to announce winners on July 24. The event was the following month, August 27.

The ball started rolling after that. July was the 2.5D Actor Appreciation Month. #25DAAM on twitter.I featured Haruto and Mayu Yoshioka on mine. Then we somehow secured tickets to Anisama 2019. A small part of me was hoping... what if I hit for that cheki chance with Haruto. Anisama was happening the weekend of the cheki event after all. My brother was willing to either go to Japan early or stay late. Our schedule all depended on the cheki event results.

The day before results were to be released, I was a mess. It’s been a long time since I got a panic episode but something was in the water that day. Add to that, the results. The time difference threw me off and I was obsessively checking my email. My brother told me to give it a full 24 hours to account for the time difference. So what did I do? I distracted myself with Kenji Arita lmao. My brother and I had been fairly lucky with chuusen whether it be for tickets or fan events. The last time I attempted a lottery was for the Nelke Planning panel with Shiratorizawa at JF19. I didn’t hit for that because they only recognized actual JP addresses and my proxy wasn’t allowed. (But it was all good because the standby crowd got so large they allowed us to watch behind the ticket winners anyway haha.) I was praying that that won’t be the case here too.

When I woke up the next morning for work, I checked my email... and it was there. I had my brother actually open the email and translate for me. We were looking for a "できません" but instead, it was a long email full of instructions and congratulations. I actually got picked! I read and re-read the email many times just to convince myself that I actually won. The email said that exact time and place of the event was to be announced only to winners in a separate email nearer the date. Cool cool. I felt so special LMAO.

I actually got the specifics about a week after the first email. The directions were weirdly specific... and helpful for someone like me who doesn’t know what to do with North-South-East-West directions; I work better with “Turn right when you see a Mini Stop across the street from a pachinko parlor” types AHAHAHA. Time frame was 5pm to 8-ish, then they specified that Haruto would have less than an hour to get through all the chekis with fans. They also said something about which forms of identification were required, which gifts/letters are accepted, even how the poses were chosen.

But even with all that... I had no idea what to do. I tried lowkey Googling and stalking butai/idol social media for fan reports and... I couldn’t find anything that answers my questions (and quelled my anxiety over the matter haha). So I hope if you find yourself in the same situation later, AND IF YOU’RE AN OVERSEAS FAN, I hope this long ass post is going to be helpful to you. I’ve been to one other cheki event - with Hiroki Ino in Cosplay Mania 2018 in Manila - but that’s more straightforward than this one.

(My slogan should be “Will travel for cheki” ahahaha.)

Now that you’ve read through all that, let’s fast forward to August 27. After a hearty lunch at DiveryCity Tokyo, I made my way to the venue using the EXACT directions they provided in the email. I got there at exactly 5PM. I get by okay by myself in Tokyo but my brother usually acts as translator for me, like a crutch. But like on my May trip, I was by my lonesome on this adventure.

I see a couple of girls in skirts (I was in a skirt too and it was a good call because it was pretty much dress code lol) waiting by the lobby. The sign said B2F so I go down and see more dressed up girls, some even in a yukata. They started lining up so I do the same. I was trying to make myself look small because I was playing everything by ear. They started calling out everyone who hit for Kento so the line thinned a little bit. I got to the registration desk and the staffer who looked so much like Maki Kawase took my paper confirmation and ID. After looking through her sheet, Nobu’s, she politely corrected me that “Sakuraba-san isn’t until...” she said a time but in my flustered and frankly, embarrassed state, it took me a while to figure it out. She even referred to another staffer behind her for the correct time. I apologized and made my way out but then she pointed to a nearby bench, gesturing for me to stay there instead of going back up.

That was when I started panic tweeting HAHAHAHA. If you don’t want to read further, then please just click on this Twitter Thread instead. Thanks! But if you want Stephen King-level of detail, keep reading. XD

Watching those little kids do scales and random dances calmed me down. Miss Staff-san (let’s just call her that) kept tabs on me, glancing at me from time to time and whenever we’d meet eyes, she’d smile. That kept me grounded. Also, talking to my mutuals who were humoring me was a huge help. I managed to laugh and distract myself. When I started seeing a new batch of girls lining up with Haruto pin badges and an excess of purple on their person, I followed. When Miss Staff-san saw me up next, she gave me a huge smile and a thumbs up. I went up to register and.. my name was easiest to find since it was the only one in the Roman alphabet. I was number 50 in a list that I think went up to 75.

We were herded into an honest to goodness dance practice studio. You know, with all the mirrors and low ceilings. Picture samples of the poses were on the wall, as done by Reo and Haruto. Pose A was your generic “double peace” sign. Pose B was doing an “Asian squat” and the photo was taken from above. Pose C would have you back-to-back with the member. Then there’s the special pose. Haruto teased that he was inspired by Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Hello, Pose C. Haruto Sakuraba is 6′2″ and I am a hobbit. Nope. Plus I’m very basic when it comes to poses. Ask Ino hahaha.

As the room filled, it drove home that I was the only foreigner there. Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered to me but at that moment, I was under a lot of pressure, my earlier faux pas still had me embarrassed, plus my severe lack of Japanese speaking skill was getting to me. I know, it’s all in my head; obviously I overcame it but if you have anxiety, you know how stressful that can be. I tried keeping myself small, trying to blend in. All the while, I kept seeing Miss Staff-san in my periphery and that calmed me down somewhat.

Then they lined us up according to the number on the ticket. I know what 50 is in Japanese so I just kept my ears open for that. I dropped off my fan letters before I could forget (Nobu got one too, handwritten in English but with a typed up translation sheet) then we were led to another, larger dance studio area. At the opposite end of the room were room dividers. They had My dear Summer on loop but I was so in my head that I didn’t even suffer from earworm. I just kept updating Twitter. More for personal sanity than anything ahahhaa.

Haruto took his time with fans. I noticed Reo’s line went by much faster. By the time he was almost done (his started a bit later than ours), I think Haruto’s only on his 20th fan. I calmed down enough to get my bearings back and I was glad to know that I wasn’t the only one losing her mind. The other girls were talking amongst themselves about the back-to-back pose and what they want to say to him. He seemed so friendly, if the laughter and chatting we were hearing from behind the dividers were any indication, and all of us wanted to make a good impression. Giiirl, I wasn’t even sure if the boy spoke a lick of English! XD

Then. It was my turn.

The staffer asked me which pose I want to do and being the boring person that I am, I chose A pose. Another staffer took my purse but all I saw was Haruto up close in his TFG get up.

Haruto: ありがとうございます Me: OMG Hi! 海外 fan です! *Haruto’s eyebrows disappear into his fringe. Staff takes pic* Haruto: Ah double peace. Er so... Me: I'm from California. Los Angeles. Haruto: Ah, California. So you don't speak Japanese? Me: A little bit. Your English is good. Haruto: Aaah, not so much. I try. So when did you get to Japan? Me: Sunday? I'm here for Anisama and to see you! Haruto: Ah thank you so much. Staff: Next! ありがとうございました *Haruto hands me the cheki. we bow at each other* Haruto: ありがとうございました. Bye-bye! Me: ありがとうございました.

I mean, the whole thing couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds but it felt so much longer. His final ありがとうございました has a bit of emphasis as if trying to teach me. Oh you! I knew at least that much.

Then was I was leaving the booth, I heard the staffers go, "Whoa... I didn't know you can do that!" And he was all "Ay-yah... hehe." GUYS. GUYSSSS!!!! I couldn’t stop smiling... from the moment I just had to the moment he just had to... ALL OF IT! And as I left the venue, Miss Staff-san was right there waiting for me at the door. When she was my delicately holding the cheki in my hand, she patted me on the shoulder and said “ よくやった!” I never thanked anyone that profusely in my life. (Honestly, her kindness made me tear up.)

I have no flippin’ idea how I kept it together in there. It was a total Yuri On Ice moment where Yuuri just let everything go at that moment and let it all out on the ice when it mattered. I said pretty much everything I wanted to say which wasn’t much. All I wanted to do is to let him know that he has overseas fans. And to test how good his English skills are.

And let me tell you, it was more than okay. There was absolutely no hesitation in his words. He kept eye contact and oh lawd, his SMILE up close? I don’t know how I’m still here telling you all this. Now every time I hear his voice, I hear it in English ahahaha. (I know he spoke Chinese at a radio show but I wasn’t able to catch that and they haven’t put up the archive at all. Pfft.)

What made me so happy was he ended up impressing not only me but the staff too!!! He even took control of the conversation. The staffers were like "What's going on?" smiling at him as we talked. I'm sofkng proud.

(I should mention that this is technically my 8th time seeing Haruto in person. I saw Tokyo no Jin seven times in May. I figured that would help me a bit with the stress but nope. Although, I cannot wait for everyone to see the TnJ BD and experience his take on Bokuto. You’ll understand this admiration all the more lmao.)

So there it is. If you’re still with me, thank you. I hope I didn’t come across as annoying. I was - am - just so excited that I was able to do this and I wanted to share my experience. Haruto is such a precious sweetheart. I wish him the best of everything.

#sakuraba haruto #haruto sakuraba #TFG #桜庭大翔 #this is my 200th post!

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norcumii · 6 years

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Reblogged from the prior tumbl, originally posted 02/04/2016. Question submitted by @makiruz. Slightly reformatted to avoid a readmore cut and whatnot.

In Full of Sith, they always ask new guests how they got into Star Wars. And you know? That's a good question, how did you got into Star Wars?

HEH. Oooh, that’s a bit of a loaded question. So I’ll give you the short answer, which I suspect would fit the thing you mentioned what I haven’t heard of; and then because I’m a wordy bastard what overshares, the long answer which is more accurate and has content warnings for self harm and suicide.

SHORT ANSWER

It was the 80’s. I was young, in single digits, though I couldn’t tell you exactly what age. I was already dealing with an irregular sleep cycle, though all I knew was I had a flashlight, a pile of books near/on my bed, and a thick pound puppies duvet to read under.

I don’t know if I was in my room or on my way to/from the bathroom, but I could hear my parents watching something downstairs. Swooshy noises, a shrill screee, and some thwoom bzzts.

Of course I went downstairs.

I don’t know if it was episode 5 or 6. I’ve a fondness for 6, but carbonite left a HUGE fucking impression on me, and my parents have always approved of muppets, so Yoda.

I knew I loved it. I didn’t have any toys, though I think somewhere there was a print edition of A New Hope running around. I do recall multiple sleepovers at my grandmother’s place – a tiny house on acres and acres of woods – and she’d sometimes pull out Return of the Jedi and we’d watch it together on her tiny TV. Later on I’d be in bed, staring out at woods and trees that I knew, but seemed huge to a little kid, and I’d dream of Ewoks.

RotJ was Gram’s favorite, and for many years mine, too.

I like Ewoks.

VERY LONG ANSWER

TW: mental illness, depression, self harm, suicide, abuse

In late elementary, early middle school, my brother and I were basically reading ANYTHING we could get our hands on. He sometimes dove into books that didn’t interest me, so I’d read the first of something and then be bored and he’d keep going.

Star Wars EU was one of those. It was too grim for me. I think I didn’t run into any of the really good writers. It was all Han and Luke and Leia on the covers, so take that for what you will. There also was no Wookiepeia, so I was depending heavily on the writers’ abilities to convey things to someone very visual, yet pretty impatient with descriptions, so it never took.

I was in high school when The Phantom Menace came out. Mine honorable brother was off at college, so it was with great excitement on my part, and bemused tolerance on my parents’, that they and I went off to the theater.

On the one hand, I was dazzled.

On the other, there was Jar Jar. There was the fact that I hadn’t been impressed with the re-release of the OT – Han shot first. FITE ME. There was the fact that TPM didn’t feel like Star Wars, which was darker and grittier and…simpler to me.

So I wrote it off. Packed Star Wars away as “one of those things” that I’d been into, but felt like I was moving past. I was obsessed with Gargoyles, I was looking at going to college, and I would keep m’damn ewoks without needing to try to extend that vision with gungans.

College sucked. I went in, not sure if I wanted to go into English, for writing, or Psych, because I had always been what I’d now call The Mom Friend. I met a nice guy who tried, but things never really clicked between us, and there was an interesting bit that he was mad about Star Wars and insisted that I read the Rogue Squadron books.

That was a Good Decision. Dating him, not so much.

I had a huge assortment of Life Issues. Got into an abusive relationship that would end up lasting 14 years. Transferred schools. Got the fucking Psych degree, though literally only by the grace of a professor who didn’t want to see the kid not graduate just ‘cause she couldn’t numbers and I did go in and try. Talked to him and still couldn’t with the maths but the effort was there to bump me a few points above failing.

I was burnt out. I was depressed. I tried killing myself a few times – not very good at it, as you can see. Took up self-harm as a coping mechanism. Failed in the still never successful search for a decent therapist in Pittsburgh. Got a job slinging food, because needed some kind of income, and people without pressure was nice. The keeping on a schedule thing failed, leading to an average of 4 hours sleep a night. Losing contact with family and friends because I couldn’t stand the pressure of “how are you?” and “what’s going on in your life?” Clinging to Warcraft because repetitively farming was better than clawing open my back or neck again, and the people there were ok with some rando dropping out of sight on a dime, and only a persistent few had the grace and spirit to make it past some serious defensive issues of mine.

I stopped writing. Stopped caring about Gargoyles, stopped being able to see into that AU I’d made for myself of a crazy clan and the weird human who survived cancer with them.

Stopped going on IM, for the same reasons I stopped talking to people.

I still kept track of some folks via LiveJournal. A handful of the Gargoyles folks who were determined, gods know why and thank you, since I know several are here on the tumbles and I genuinely love you to bits.

I quit my job after five years, because enough was enough between the fact that it had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship and I was fucking tired of being a manager without any actual authority, and the endless hamster wheel of hiring and people quitting because it was a nice, but highly dysfunctional place.

I missed the customers, though. Several of them are here too, and it’s kinda funny ‘cause I know in at least one case I talked to them about Star Wars. I still hope they’re not too shellshocked that I kinda went down the rabbit hole pretty deep.

Started getting more sleep. Not less anxiety, not less depressed. Tried out a few depression medications, with very mixed results.

Then one day @dogmatix came into the LJ area I still hung out in. Enthusiastically recommending to all and sundry that if there is even a shred of interest in Star Wars, THERE IS THIS THING YOU SHOULD READ.

She drew a Wookiee. That was a character?

I’d always liked Wookiees.

And I needed something to read.

Star Wars was one of those things, from back in the day before things went to shit. Low investment, since if I didn’t like it or didn’t care, then eh. Whatevs. Dogmatix was one of the Gargs holdouts still in my circle (or whatever it is that I was hovering at the edges of), and in the past I’d liked her recommendations more often than I disliked them.

I’m also endlessly weak to her art.

Wookiee.

So I did that thing. That so many of us here have done. It took me about 2 weeks to get through Re-Entry. It had trouble taking root in the depression, but Obi-Wan going crackers was something I could empathize with and appreciate.

There was the hope that had been missing from the EU novels I’d tried reading back in the day.

There was Wookieepedia, which meant I could stop and see what a Nautolan was. I had tabs open for DAYS so when someone named Adi or Gallia who were apparently the same person? I could see who that was. I got stupidly distressed that Abella didn’t have an entry, until I twigged and checked for a Chitanook, and holy shit I could never tell what character was going to crop up as canon, obscure EU character, or home brewed.

I honestly expected to set it aside, get updates as they happened, and gradually step away because that’s how things were going at the time.

But I still needed something to read, to stave off empty hours when my brain was too full of screaming.

On Ebon Wings. I’d loved The Crow when I’d seen it back in high school, and that story tapped into the powerful visuals and the lovely message I’d adored and in ways I still don’t quite understand it somehow validated that I could be mad and still be ok. Maybe. Maybe not now, but someday.

Maybe.

So I gave in and got a Tumbl. I’d been a stubborn holdout, regularly checking the same half dozen feeds daily because dammit, I don’t wanna go through the trouble and I was close to giving up on LJ and another journaly thing? That was stupid. But I wanted to follow Flamethrower and Dogmatix, and it made it infinitely easier to follow several blogs (and oh GODS one of those is a mutual and holy fuck I swear I screamed the day that happened and it’s still a high to realize).

Dogmatix wrote Möbius and Accidental Timeshare, wherein Venge goes universe hopping. That’s also a weakness of mine.

I’d been kvetching IRL about the treadmill and wanting something to watch, and someone mentioned in Dogmatix’s feed The Clone Wars – which conveniently was on Netflix. So I figured what the hell. I was disinclined to like clones – ‘cause yeesh, they’re the reason the Jedi all died, and yeah, ok, the Order was SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP, but.

I still had never seen Episodes 2 or 3.

I turned on the Clone Wars movie, and within ten minutes I nearly fell off the back of the treadmill due to crying.

THIS was the Star Wars of my youth. THIS was what I remembered. A little grim. Lots of quips.

That sound. Lightsabers igniting. A-wings rumbling overhead. Blasterfire, and that music.

I had to stop and calm down and for the first time in ages WRITE [, because I just had to ramble about how it all hit me in the feels]. I had no idea I’d missed this.

By the end of the movie I’d decided ok, I wanted more. Wasn’t sold on these clone fellas, and damned if I could tell one set of armor from another (this is ALSO due to the treadmill screen being calibrated to be a compromise of a very short person – me – and a very tall person, which means neither person gets a decent view but that’s not what the treadmill tv is for).

I’d been told there was an order to the episodes, but I didn’t care. Continuity is for those who think about the future, and I was still regularly suicidal.

So the first episode I watched was Yoda romping around a planet, playing with droids while three clone troopers tried to babysit his mad little ass.

They had me, all in one episode. I loved these guys. They had individuality, I could tell them apart by the voices (which is sometimes just as important to me as visuals) even if I couldn’t name them, and the personalities –

They were loyal. Their primary concern was old batty Yoda which I had adored as a child because MUPPETS. They were willing to die to keep him safe and there was this lovely reciprocity in taking care of each other and all of them, clones and Jedi alike were doomed to extinction and I don’t think I knew yet HOW the clones were except they weren’t in the OT so there was shit going down.

Tragic figures, loyal found family, incredible voice acting, Batty Old Yoda who OH YEAH FUCKING KICKED SO MUCH ASS I COULD NEVER GET ENOUGH.

I wanted to keep those three clones. I was willing to keep them all.

Final blow, that knocked me into the fandom so hard I’ll be surprised if I ever leave?

THIS.

The origins of Balance. This is the post that started a simple notion, to try to write something when I’d gone….anywhere from 7 to 10 years of not writing A SINGLE. DAMNED. THING of substance – and that was after thinking I might try to get a degree related to it.

Darth Wraith was a tentative idea. I was scared @deadcatwithaflamethrower would be irked I wanted to play in her sandbox (oh my gods I was inserting myself into a conversation with her this amazing person who wrote blindingly well and so damn much and how the FUCK was I daring to speak up about a silly half DREAM I’d had because once again I couldn’t sleep).

Then, because I was trying to break out of the depression, the cycles of mental ill health, and if I was on this tumbls thing, fuck it, I’d try the IM thing again.

I’d been gone long enough that pretty much no one on my contact list was still there. That…was ok. There wasn’t the pressure.

And Dogmatix popped on, asking if I wanted to share details about this Sith Qui-Gon thing.

I had A SCENE. ONE. SCENE. And she was spinning it off into this EPIC, which at first I was gleeful because she had neat ideas and I couldn’t wait to see what she would do with it and then wait, she’s not talking about writing it herself, this is more about something WE could work on.

Thank gods it was IM, because I had a little panic about commitment to a project when I regularly was sure I wasn’t going to see tomorrow and if I didn’t wake up one morning that’d be MORE than ok.

Still. There was that itch. The visuals in my brain. The characters I’d started to like in Flamethrower’s universe, which had formed my mental voices for them.

The only sound in my head for so long was just screaming.

Writing down that scene in Knock On Effect, where Venge meets Wraith – that felt good. It never changed much from the first draft to what was posted. The rest grew, and quickly. It was clear if we were doing this, then there were multiple stories, spanning in universe years.

And then there were spinoffs. Wonderful ideas and plots spiraling away from this one notion, and gods I wanted to write about those glorious clones.

How’d I get into Star Wars?

Chance. One strange little step at a time, and a bunch of miracles and horrors that kept me bleeding but not dying. Damn good fic. The kindness of friends. The generosity of strangers.

The tragedy of a once great order of space monks, and their allies-forced-to-be-betrayers clones.

One little picture, of Qui-Gon Jinn with Sith eyes.

#tumblageddon #reviving from the purge #star wars #tw #self harm #suicide #depression #mental illness #abuse #emotional #Norcumi has Opinions again #deadcatwithaflamethrower #dogmatix #i did not expect to cry when writing this #star wars saved my life #literally

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grimelords · 6 years

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Two days after I said I’d upload it tonight, here it is! My October playlist is finished and it’s chock a block full of good music and also bad music that I love. From John Mellencamp to drone metal, from Katy B to Cassius, it’s all here and more. Deadmau5 also is here and for that I apologise.

Small Town (Acoustic) - John Mellencamp: Guess who had a legit emotional reaction to a John Mellencamp song this month, thinking deeply about what it means to be from a small town and how much this song gets right and wrong about identity and freedom in a small town versus living in a big town? This guy. I think this song works a lot better stripped down acoustically than it does in the album version. It gives the lyrics a lot more space, and really lays out just how simple the sentiment of the song is. It sets the tone of this month's playlist pretty well now that I think about it. I've been feeling like a real pea-brain hayseed this month and big chunks of this playlist really reflect that.

Katy On A Mission - Katy B: It feels like this and Hold It Against Me by Britney Spears (which was also 2011) is the moment that big american style dubstep completely crossed over into the mainstream, Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites was about six months ago and from there it was a tidal wave until oversaturation and complete death. But Katy On A Mission is different because it's at least got the credentials of dubstep pioneer Benga producing it and it doesn't go all-out on the super dirty bass, or even particularly have a big drop at all - it just uses it textually all the way through and it's better off for it.

I Only Have Eyes For You - The Flamingos: The way this song is recorded is insane. It literally sounds like they're at the bottom of a well. And it's mixed in that good early stereo hard-panned style so the lead is in the right channel and the whole harmony is in the left channel and absolutely soaked in reverb in a way that just sounds incongruous with the rest of the song. It sounds like a dream. My favourite moment is at about 2:30 when the harmony vocals get so large on the high note that they clip out and distort in a way that just sounds very, very cool.

Horses In The Sky (Live Version) - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: The Sound Of Animals Fighting was a post-hardcore prog supergroup where they were all anonymous (it was just the entirety of RX Bandits plus Anthony Green from Circa Survive) and I really wish they'd done more like this after their first album - because they still wrote very very good songs but they got lost in the mire of studio ambient interludes and being avant-garde for the sake of it which sometimes worked and most times just bored you which thankfully they only succumb in the end section of this version. Compare this to the studio version if you want to know what I mean, halfway through the guitar solo it just starts playing in reverse.

Split Wide Open - Cannibal Corpse: Here's what I mean about feeling like a pea-brain this month. Cannibal Corpse is proper troglodyte moron man music. It makes me feel dumb as fuck like a real stupid guy. There's something interesting about Cannibal Corpse's enduring ability to shock people, and that a band making such extreme music are at least a name that people know. They were in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for god's sake. Before Marilyn Manson and that wave of cabaret shock-rock really got into the popular consciousness Cannibal Corpse were making shocking, violent music without any of the glamour and I think it's served them well in the long run. Songs like 'Hammer Smashed Face' or 'I Cum Blood', are shocking in title, artwork and content to this day are still musically shocking to the vast majority, far more than Marilyn Manson's spooky androgyny and wearing like a top hat and having fangs or whatever that's aged like milk and become just another boring cliche. The idea of the devil being charming and sly, disguised in charisma is so much more boring than the devil just tearing you apart like mince meat and eating you. Anyway I'm here to say Cannibal Corpse is good music for dum-dums like me.

Funeraloplis - Electric Wizard: Someone's edited it now but it's still in the footnote links, but the best ever piece of writing on wikipedia was the quote on Electric Wizard's page where they were explaining the origin of their name because it said "Is the name Electric Wizard made out of two Black Sabbath song titles? [smokes a big bud of weed through a can] Hahahaha, yeah it is!" which is so good and sort of all you need to know about them.

I <3 U So - Cassius: Looking back through this list it seems I'm having a real 2011 moment for some reason. I don't think I *get* Cassius. From everything I read about them they seem to be french dance royalty but they literally have two good songs and they're both in this playlist. These two songs are very good though so maybe it's just that. Anyway it's a shame what Kanye did this to song on Watch The Throne but I don't blame him, it feels like this song is just impossible to work with. It's at a weird tempo, it's incredible loose, it basically has one section. I imagine this song would have frustrated a lot of DJs when it was popular cause I really don't know how you would mix in or out of it, but fuck it while it's on it's a great song!

Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes - Cassius: This is the other good Cassius song. I'm pitching it as the theme song for when they eventually reboot Skins. I really appreciate that this song has 1 idea and basically just does every variation it can with it before bringing it to a climax. When your idea is this simple and this good that's all you need. Also the big toms that kick in after the 'just one more' but are heaven sent.

It Took The Night To Believe - Sun 0))): Sun 0))) are such morons and it's so funny that you can be so dumb and so serious about this sort of music at the same time. On this song Greg Anderson is credited as Mystik Fogg Invokator and Stephen O'Malely is credited as Taoiseach, which is the name for the Irish prime minister. Whenever I listen to Sun 0))) for the first two minutes I'm like 'lol this sucks' but then suddenly the guy is like 'cry yourself to ash' and I'm feeling the pull of the void quite heavily. Basically it's just like that meme.

Seven Angels - Earth: I remember ages ago some guy posted Earth 2: Special High Frequency edition and it was just this whole album with a high pass filter on it which is a funny joke. Anyway it interesting to think of this album in the context of when it came out. Two years after Nevermind, six months before In Utero - grunge at the absolute height of its power, stoner metal like Kyuss and Sleep huge when suddenly this guy comes out of nowhere and distills guitar music down to its essence: slower, louder, heavier than anything else by an order of magnitude.

Mutual Slump - DJ Shadow: I finally saw Xanadu this month and now I can finally relate to the weird smiling breathing out your nose noise that she makes after she says 'I'd never hailed a cab before' in this song.

Walkin' On The Sidewalks - Queens Of The Stone Age: Queens Of The Stone Age's first album is 20 years old this year and I've been thinking a lot about how it was a two person operation. Josh Homme played and sang everything on this album except the drums and it's funny to think about writing this sort of music all by yourself outside of a jam structure. He really sat down with a pad and paper and wrote down 'outro: bass riff x400' and then recorded it just like that.

Witch - Maps & Atlases: I wake up with this song in my head so often it's insane. I think a triplet groove in 4/4 like this is such a good and underused feeling and this song really deploys is perfectly. I want more of this, the good kind of math rock where it's not just guys doing midwest emo tappy riffs that all sound the same.

Down 2 Hang - Kirin J Callinan: This is what meeting up with people from the internet feels like. It's kind of a shame that this album got completely overshadowed by the Jimmy Barnes screaming meme, and that it's the first and last a lot of americans will ever hear of Jimmy Barnes but in reality it's exactly what Kirin J Callinan wanted to good for him I suppose.

Fast In My Car - Paramore: If you can't tell already I'm having an extremely basic bitch moron man month and that included listening to this Paramore album a lot and telling my girlfriend about how isn't it so interesting that the guitarist Taylor York just took over drum duties for this album after their longtime drummer quit and did such a good job playing drums AND guitar and her rightly not caring at all. I'm always impressed by songs that keep the same chords through the verse and chorus, it seems impossible but it works great here.

Don't Stop The Dance (feat. Delafleur) - Breakbot: I'm clapping my hands to stress each syllable when I tell you that Disco Will Never Die.

Oqiton - Jeremy Dutcher: I'm so glad this album won the Polaris Prize because I feel like I would never have heard of it otherwise. I absolutely love it, and I think what I love so much about it is that it doesn't fall into the trap of similar projects like this in the past of smoothing out all the jagged edges and turning it into plastic pretty music from the untouched ancient peoples - it's a real and alive reinterpretation of old music that looks toward the future and past in equal measure. Including the actual original recordings in each track is such a smart move, it gives you the context you need so this album isn't about liner notes and extra sources and it lets those old recordings seamlessly fold into these new reorchestrations.

I Remember - Deadmau5 & Kaskade: Anyway moron month continues here with the only worthwhile contribution to the planet earth that Deadmau5 ever made, I suspect by letting Kaskade do most of the work. It sounds sadistic but I really appreciate how this song is nearly ten minutes long, I'm a big fan of any song with that much confidence that actually pulls it off.

Overtime - Jessie Ware: Fucking Jessie Ware is back and she’s got Bicep producing! I think I added this song to my playlist before it was even a minute in, I just heard the bassline and my brain stem said yes.

Body - Julie Jacklin: I really think Julia Jacklin might be the best songwriter around right now and I cannot wait for her new album. I guess this keeps with the moron man theme by telling it from the other side. I keep listening to this song and then getting into a real mood for about an hour afterwards so I can't imagine the damage the album is going to do to me.

Can't Tell Me Nothing - Kanye West: Throughout the whole ongoing Kanye drama I've been thinking of this song. " I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny, and what I do? Act more stupidly" "I'm on TV talking like it's just you and me". Anyway he's had is money right for a long time but it's becoming increasingly apparent that you really really can't tell him nothing. I think it's interesting that the thing that seems to have spurred him into clarifying his beliefs and finally backtracking on anything is that Candace Owens tried to credit him for the shitty Blexit thing and it turns out the one thing you can't do to Kanye West is manipulate him into putting his name on something he doesn't believe in or didn't create. It's insane that John Legend and Mos Def and Talib Kweli reaching out didn't change anything but Candace Owens taking one too many liberties absolutely did.

Like Wolves On The Fold - Colin Stetson: I've said it one million times but I love Colin Stetson. I love how straightforward this is for a Colin Stetson song. You can sing along to it! So much writing about him focuses on the intricasies of his technique rather than his resulting very human, very primal music. I feel like his music is not very far from beating on your chest and yelling a lot of the time (especially toward the second half of this song) and the saxophone element just makes it a lot more socially acceptable.

Sack 'Em Up, Pt. I / Sack 'Em Up, Pt. II - Gwenifer Raymond: Bandcamp had a really good article about American Primitive the other day https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/10/10/american-primitive-list/ and I found this album in it and fell completely in love instantly. I listened to it five times in a row. It's just incredible and I'm so glad that the music I love is finally being rescued from the mire of New Acoustic youtube men with their slapping and tapping and harp guitars and moving forward in new ways with artists like Sarah Louise, Marisa Anderson and Gwenifer Raymond. Women are finally allowed to play guitar now and thank fuck. One of the things I really appreciate about this album is just how written it feels. Every part, even the very swirly Part One of this song feels very purposeful, and if not totally written at least improvised in a tight framework before moving into the completely written second half. There's nothing wrong with improv but in a genre like this that's almost overrun with guys putting out hour long improv records it's refreshing to hear someone with such a clear vision execute it so expertly.

Bleeding Finger Blues - Gwenifer Raymond: Also, get a fucking load of this. An absolute powerhouse performance from a master. There's not enough solo banjo music around and it's a shame because I don't know if there's a better argument for banjo as a solo instrument than this song. The other thing I like about this album is there’s three banjo songs on it, which works well for breaking up the sequencing and making each song really distinct in a genre where albums can really blend together.

4:30 - Danger: It's a shame that Danger never really fulfilled his potential. With songs as good as this as 19:11 he seemed set. But then he took about a decade off before his debut album and I guess he lost something along the way. Anyway, doesn't matter because when you've got a song as good as this it's all you need. Also here's a good video where someone just put this song over the bar scene from Terminator which really accentuates the vibe in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z37R39-mff8

Crybaby - Abra: I love love love the production on this. A friend sent it to me because he said it reminded him of the Call Me Mr Telephone song I was raving about and he’s absolutely right. I love how formless it is, it goes through about three different verse ideas before finally getting to the chorus at about a minute and a half in and it’s only stronger for it. I’m so glad a new generation of darkwave adjacent people are discovering freestyle because this is great.

OMG!!! - Yelle: This song is probably best experienced with the music video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoWK4rV3INY It’s fantastic on its own, especially the “oh my god!” sample and the whole chorus section, but the video - titties out, covered in glitter, very very good dance move for the rising 'ooo' part, a hamster is there. Really accentuates it.

Copacabana (At The Copa) - Barry Manilow: Was thinking about this song the other day. Woke up with it in my head actually which was strange. I feel like this song and the Pina Colada song definitely take place in the same cinematic universe.

King Of The Dead - Cirith Ungol: I've been rereading Lord Of The Rings and also a very dodgy 70s sci-fi series called Dray Prescot and so divine fate has drawn me to discover Cirith Ungol. The good kind of metal where all the album covers could also be fantasy novel covers and all the songs are about how cool it would be to slay an ancient demon with a sword. I love this song because it feels impossible to sing it without doing some very dramatic face acting and also his voice is completely insane. I feel like this is maybe just how he talks.

Sugaree 10/21/1978 - Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead are good and ever since I came to terms with that I've felt like I'm always on the precipice of buying a box of tapes, covering my car in confusing stickers and dropping completely out of society. The problem with a big chunk of live Dead recordings that I've heard is that while the playing is always on point, the vocals can vary wildly - especially when they try any kind of harmony, but this recording is just great. Fantastic vocals with a lot of feeling, ample crowd noise so it doesn't feel like just a sterile soundboard recording, and of course an incredible extended jam.

Ring De Bell - Brother Resistance: I don't fully understand what rapso music is yet, I don't have enough understanding of the culture or surrounding genres. I basically just found this Best Of compilation and have been listening to it a LOT. As I understand it it's 70s Trinidadian calypso music that got very political, which is very cool. I'm a big fan of this sort of lyric where it feels like you could just go on and on for days about all the places you should ring the bell.

Kojack - David Rudder: The crown jewel of this compilation is of course this song I've posted about before and absolutely love to death. A protest song about them taking Kojack off the TV because it's too violent when shows like Dallas and Dynasty, which are far worse, remain on the air. Miami Vice! Before youtube comments and online petitions you had to make extremely good songs about this kind of thing, and its a huge shame that we've allowed this to die.

The Power Of Love - Celine Dion: I love Celine Dion because all her songs sound like they were recorded across 5 countries and 8 different studios and cost two million dollars. They always sound too expensive for casual listening to me, like I should have an emergency mink coat on me at all times just in case The Power Of Love starts playing in a supermarket.

Airworks - J Dilla: I've been listening to Donuts a bunch this month and really thinking about what makes him so good and the vast legion of Dilla imitators on soundcloud bad and I think this song is a good example. The main sample sounds straight up ugly, it's backwards and twisted to hell, the main strings part keeps folding over itself, it's just chaos but completely controlled chaos. Every imitator is so afraid to make a total mess like he does and is too focused on the underpinning laid-backness of the beat, where Dila somehow makes the relaxed feeling easily as a result of a million clashing elements.

Anti-American Graffiti - J Dilla: I also found a playlist on Spotify where someone had put together Donuts with all of the the original tracks it sampled (or at least the ones that are available on Spotify) and it's such an illuminating new way to listen to this album. https://open.spotify.com/user/keatonkreps/playlist/1TPeWt38uceWXD1Vhyf7wx?si=NJ_jHrYqQpCt18q-W9nrag

Marvel - Solillaquists Of Sound: Every genre has good music in it. Even rappity rap conscious hip hop has good songs like this one. There’s another song on this album called Popcorn that’s basically the It’s Media picture converted to a .wav but this song is good. Especially her vocals when they come in halfway through sounding like an astrology zine except good.

Rock Island Line - Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash has around one million songs about trains, including ‘Blue Train’, ‘Train Of Love’ and a song called ‘I’ve Got A Thing About Trains’ but this is the best one because it’s about train-related fraud and doing perhaps the most outlaw country manoeuvre ever and telling the toll man that you’re carrying livestock when you are in fact carrying pig iron.

I <3 U So (Skream's Made Zdar Feel Like He Was 20 Again Remix) - Cassius: Also as a kind of coda, here's Skream's version of I <3 U So, where he's completely ironed it out and turned it into a pulsing dnb thing which is always impressive to me when people completely reverse the feel of a song in a remix.

Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull - Refused: Stereogum had a really good article about The Shape Of Punk To Come on its 20th anniversary and whether it really did turn out to be the shape of punk to come. They asked a bunch of people whether the title seemed arrogant and the vocalist from La Dispute had a really good answer where he said "But it’s like calling your shot and then fuckin’ hitting a home run. If it was arrogant, it was justifiably so." which is so great. https://www.stereogum.com/2020358/refused-shape-of-punk-to-come-turns-20/franchises/sounding-board/

listen here

#playlists

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autumn-kitten · 6 years

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Tag Post

I was tagged by @springbearhime, thank you so much!!!!! ♡ ♡ I don’t think I’ve ever been tagged in one of these things so it made me unreasonably happy :’)

Posting this under a cut because it ended up being super long!

Nickname: Nic, Rose, Shy

Pronouns: She/Her

Age: 20 as of this March!

Time: 10:31 am

Fave Artist: Radiohead right now. PS friendly reminder to blacklist the tag radiohead if you don’t wanna see me spamming, I just queued like 50 radiohead posts bc I have a problem lol

Song stuck in my head: This excellent, underappreciated one hit wonder, She Blinded Me With Science. Also, this live version of Radiohead’s Videotape, because it includes a cool part in the middle that isn’t on the recorded/studio version and I love it.

Last movie I saw: The Incredibles 2

Last thing I googled: Trying to figure out how to properly use the Amazon Alexa my mom bought, lol.

Other blogs: I have a Tera Online blog, which is dead rn because I’m not playing Tera very much anymore and the blog is on another email address so it takes too much effort to access it lol. I also partially abandoned it because I got the feeling people didn’t really like me on there.. got a whole lot of mean anons and all my mutuals stopped talking to me and uhHhh idk what I did but sorry y’all... I think I just complained way too much there honestly. I also have a private rant/journaling blog, because I need to write things down to help me deal with it/get it out of my system.

Do I get asks: I wish!! Sometimes people do message me though but I always get shy ahah. Send me anons! I will answer anything! Hit me tf up!

Why I chose my url: Oh boy, I made this blog when I was probably 16. Autumn was my favorite season and I adore cats. I didn’t use this blog at first because I already had one I was active on and had a lot of friends/mutuals. When I was like 18, this guy I was dating at the would go on that blog and have a huge freakout over nearly everything on it (you posted a selfie and responded to someone that complimented you with a heart??? ARE YOU CHEATING????, etc), so I moved here. I feel kinda bad, I had like 10 messages from different people saying “this blog has zero posts and I want this url can i pls have :(”

Following: 631 LOL. Most people aren’t even active anymore so I should probably go through and clear that out...

What I am wearing: I don’t have work today so I’m still what I slept in - soft Mickey Mouse print boxer shorts and the shirt I wore yesterday lol

Dream job: I don’t really know what I want to do!! Something that makes me happy and doesn’t suck the life out of me, which idk is possible. The idea of working for the rest of my life really depresses me. I am very interested in a ton of things but am not talented at any of them (music, art, film directing or editing, computer programming/coding, writing/editing) so I’m hoping to take some classes at my community college and see if there’s something I’m able to pick up. As a kid I wanted to be an actress (I had no anxiety until I was like 12, it was wild - I was a theater kid haha), then all through middle and high school I wanted to be in a band or be an author/editor, and when I was like 18 I wanted to be an English teacher for quite a while but I’ve realized I’m too shy and definitely not assertive enough.

Dream trip: Japan and all over Europe. Also Australia/New Zealand!!

Fave food: Oof this is hard... I honestly just love food in general. Sometimes it’s burgers and fries, sometimes Chinese food, sometimes Pad Thai, sometimes sushi, sometimes pizza, sometimes pasta... Food is delicious, lol. Right now I’d say probably burgers and fries?

Play any instrument: I took piano lessons for a few years as a kid but hated practicing bc there was pressure from my parents and eventually quit. I wanted to learn how to play the drums but my parents said it was “too loud” so I played trumpet for 4 years in the middle school band and jazz band (because trumpet is SUCH a quiet instrument, lol). I self taught myself guitar in 8th grade and was in a band that never got off the ground, but I haven’t touched guitar since I was probably 16 and really wanna get back into it. I’d love to learn play bass guitar and drums!! Also, fun fact... I was SUPER obsessed with harps as a kid and really wanted to learn how to play one until I was like, 11.

Play(ed) any sport: Aside from being a theater/band kid, I was also v sporty since my dad really wanted boys, hahaha. I played soccer, volleyball, and basketball! I played soccer the longest but I ended up being better at basketball than anything else... but I loved volleyball the most, lmfao. I made some “tryout only” teams for all three sports, which was cool, but any and all sportiness died when I was like 13 or so because Depression Says No and honestly my heart wasn’t in it anymore, it started out as a fun activity but after I was about 10 or 11 I was just doing it because my parents wanted me to and I was really miserable. It was a blessing when they let me quit.

Hair color: Blondeish?? I think?? It’s kinda strawberry blonde in some light.

Languages spoken: English, and three years of classes worth of Japanese. I love languages but it’s super, SUPER hard for my brain to learn them. I want to get back into Japanese, though, because it came pretty easily and was a lot of fun! I tried to learn Spanish for a while since I was living in Argentina, but I was horrible at it and kept adding in Japanese on accident because apparently my brain could only handle two languages and not three, lol.

Random fact: Hmm... I was incapable of rolling my R’s until new years eve this year.. I was v drunk and apparently was just sitting at the table going rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... after months of trying to learn how to do it and not even knowing the proper technique I was just rolling my R without even trying/knowing I was doing it. I’ve been able to since that day, lmfao.

Describe yourself with an aesthetic: Oh boy I don’t even know how to do this??And it depends on my mood??? My brain can’t decide who I am or what my aesthetic is, sometimes it’s crazy cat lady with a huge library in her house, sometimes it’s girl at the county fair with a flowy dress and sunflowers in her hair, sometimes (often) it’s “hi I no longer have black hair anymore but I still feel emo/goth in my soul™, sometimes it’s some bullshit 90s vaporwave stuff, sometimes it’s just “haha i’m here for the memes”, sometimes it’s telescopes and observatories and stars and astronomy, sometimes it’s cutesy pastel... idk what my aesthetic is.

Also here’s a relatable picture of me, ty for reading. I tag... anyone that wants to do this bc I really don’t know who to tag ahhhHhhHHHhhh

#shy rambles #about

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nerdywrites · 7 years

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Zombie Boy

Pairing: Will Byers x reader

Request: Heyyyyy :) I really, really like your writing and I was just wondering if you could pretty please do something with my favorite little cutie pie Will Byers??? I don't have anything too specific, just something at the end of season 2 I guess like at the snow ball. And since I'm a little shy maybe have the reader be shy also lol (Will and I could be two adorkably shy beans lol). Thanks, hun. :)

Warnings: Some bullying (don’t worry hun you kick his ass)

A/N: OMG I am so sorry for taking this long to write this, writers block is a curse. But I hope you still enjoy this :) I didn’t spent as much time as I could have editing, I wanted to post it as soon as I finished, so sorry for any typos, just tell me if you spot one :)

Zombie boy.

Those were the two words Will Byers heard the most during the day. And he hated it. Some others did too. His friends, for example. Whenever they heard the phrase, each one of them blew up on the person who had the guts to mutter it around them. (Y/n) (L/n) was another example. She was a very shy person, didn’t talk unless spoken two, yet was an overall extremely nice person. But if she heard someone call Will that awful nickname, you could hear her screams from the Upside Down.

Will Byers had a huge crush on (Y/n), and his friends caught on quickly. It was obvious, the way he would stare at her during lunch, or try to find her eyes when the teacher said they could pick partners.

He didn’t know that the feeling was completely mutual. (Y/n) didn’t show her feelings as much as Will did. In fact, she almost felt selfish for liking him, as she knew he was going through so much and would never have time to worry about her. And that is why, every time she got the chance, without fail, she would stand up for him.

Will had absolutely no idea that his crush stood up for him on a daily basis. That changed the night of the Snow Ball.

Will could recall the moment in complete detail. The way her hair blew in the wind, or the fact that her cheeks were slightly pink from the cold. As she walked through the door, she hugged her (f/c) dress in attempt to stay warm.

Her friends approached her, and they laughed as they danced around, but that didn’t stop his staring. Mike did. “You should ask her to dance.”

Will blushed a bit “W-who?”

“Don’t pull that shit on us” Dustin laughed “We all know you like (Y/n)”

Before Will could respond, he heard it. “Can’t get the girl, can you zombie boy? Guess she doesn’t want to dance with a dead guy.” the boy’s friends laughed and started whispering to each other, the nickname could be heard many times.

Will looked down, not wanting to see how many people were staring at him. But he missed (Y/n) excusing herself from her friends and making her way over. She stood in front of the bully, glaring at him “Why don’t you go dance with your imaginary girlfriend and leave people alone for once.”

“Look guys, it’s miss ‘I can’t talk to people’” A few laughed, some just rolled their eyes. But most were shocked that she was up in front of this many people, a situation she typically tried to avoid.

“Oh ouch, that was a really good burn, who came up with that? Your mom? No it can’t be her, she is great at creating jokes. Hints what’s standing in front of me.”

He was slightly shocked at her comeback “Come here to stand up for your boyfriend zombie boy?”

That was the last straw for her. She clinched her fist and punched him straight in the face, as hard as she could. The crack of his nose echoed across the gym as he fell to the floor. “I don’t ever want to hear that again, got it jackass?”

Everyone was shocked, they all stared at her in disbelief. She wouldn't say it out loud, but she surprised herself. “Alright, shows over”

People began to disburse back to their original groups instead of the massive one that was formed a few moments ago. (Y/n) turned to Will, who had looked up to watch the whole thing go down. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, t-t-thanks. For e-everything” he mentally cursed himself for not being able to talk without stuttering, or look her in the eye.

Her next question shocked him “Would you like to dance?”

“I don’t know how”

She smiled and took his hand, dragging him out to the floor “I don’t either, but we can figure it out”

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newsgurus24 · 3 years

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World Test Championship Final: Cricket needs India, win in Australia made Tests come alive, says Richard Hadlee | Cricket News - Times of India

Sir Richard Hadlee, Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara MUMBAI: Sir Richard Hadlee, one of cricket's classical all-rounders - and part of a very elite quartet alongside Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Ian Botham through the 70s and 80s - is looking forward to the ICC World Test Championship final next month. A keen follower of New Zealand cricket and in awe of India's growing bench-strength, the 69-year-old expects a good game starting June 18. He spoke with TOI about the sentiment swirling around this inaugural edition. Excerpts... Q. How's your health been lately? For scores of Richard Hadlee fans, this needs an answer before we move to anything else... Health is very good at the moment. In 2015 I had a routine colonoscopy and was all clear of any potential health issues. I was booked in for another routine colonoscopy in 2018 and a cancer tumour was found. I was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer (bowel and liver). Two separate surgeries followed removing a third of the bowel and 15% of the liver - the gall-bladder was also removed. Then I had to deal with five months of chemotherapy which was an ugly experience. I also lost 10 kilos during that period. Today, I have regular check-ups every 3 months. Fingers crossed for the future. Q. From Glenn Turner's team in 1975 to the missed opportunity in 2015 to the outright heartbreak in 2019, New Zealand have come agonizingly close to an ICC world cup before letting it go… We have a proud record in 50 over world cups, Yes, those near misses were frustrating and disappointing but we were so close to winning in 2019 at Lord's. I would go as far to say there were no winners and losers on that day - it was just by a technicality that England won! Both teams scored the same amount of runs in 50 overs and in the super over. The match was tied. In the old days, New Zealand would have won because they lost less wickets in their 50 overs. A fair result would have been both teams sharing the world cup honours or at the very least another super over until a true winner was determined. Q. Do you see the World Test Championship final in the same bracket as winning a World Cup, or probably a notch higher given the format? A chance for New Zealand to make up for past disappointments... The Test Championship is a one-off game. Yes, it is a final, but I don't think either team will be too fazed about it. It is a neutral ground with no home advantage. It is something to look forward to. Both teams deserve to be contesting the final because of their consistency over a set period. It all comes down as to who is better prepared and who adapts better to the English conditions the quickest. The weather may also play a part and if it is cold, that will favour New Zealand. The Duke ball will suit both team's fast bowlers, especially the genuine swing bowlers, and the Kiwis are well-served in that department with Southee, Boult and Jamieson. If the ball seams around off the pitch, batsmen in both teams will be challenged. Both teams have high class batsmen, so it will be an interesting game to watch. Too difficult to call a winner at this stage. Q. India has time and again been bracketed as a country that turned cricket a wee bit garish, thanks to the advent of IPL. Yet, India has upheld its priorities towards Test cricket... There is no doubt India produces a lot of revenue for cricket. Without India, the face of world cricket would be very different, therefore cricket needs India. But India has also made an outstanding contribution to Test cricket - like in all formats. Their Test performances in Australia were outstanding despite that 36 all out blip. They bounced back superbly, and Test cricket came alive again. Their performances in Australia were a remarkable achievement especially with so many youngsters having to come into the team and perform. It showed the great depth of talented players India have in all formats of the game. Q. Martin Crowe can rest in peace, knowing New Zealand's batting legacy is in great hands, thanks to someone like Kane Williamson. Martin had foretold that by the time Kane's done, he'll be New Zealand's greatest ever. Kane, though, doesn't look content at just being NZ's best... Martin Crowe was a great player and thinker of the game. He was the best New Zealand batsman in my time - a touch of class. Greatness is a word that is often misused or overused. Martin earned that badge and wore it well. His assessment of Kane is absolutely right. Kane has earned his stripes to be recognized as a great player now and in all formats of the game. By the time he ends his career he will have all the New Zealand batting records for most runs scored, most hundreds and a world class batting average. Kane has worked on his game and handles pressure extremely well - his temperament is outstanding - he knows his limitations and thrives on his strengths. He keeps his batting game simple, and he has a proven method that is effective. He collects his runs and then he can use his power game by playing proper and at times innovative cricket shots. Through one-day cricket he has expanded his shot selection capabilities - there does not appear to be any obvious weaknesses in his game. His leadership has also grown, and his personality appears to be unflappable and consistent. He is doing a fine job in leading New Zealand. Q. Do you endorse Virat Kohli's brand of cricket - the aggression, that in-your-face thing he brings to the field of play? He is such an antithesis to Williamson. And yet, they are competing neck and neck to be the world's best… All sports at the highest level are about competing. It is finding a way to win a game and gain an advantage over one's opponent. There will always be a fine line as to whether gamesmanship from a player or a team goes too far. I quite like seeing any player expressing himself towards the opposition by having a real presence - it is a form of intimidation that can be unsettling. I see Virat as being a very passionate and competitive cricketer with a strong desire for himself and the team to succeed. He is a proud man and a world class player - a delight to watch. The pressure and expectations on him to 'win' is enormous. Millions idolize him, which puts great pressure on him. Q. Is the very idea of a quintessential all-rounder still existent? We have not seen the likes of Imran, Kapil, Botham, Hadlee happening to world cricket in close to 25 years now - barring Jacques Kallis or to more recent, and to an extent, Ben Stokes... The battle of the all-rounders in the 70's and 80's was a special time. We all competed against each other and there was a strong desire and determination to succeed. My role in the team was to out-perform Imy, Beefy or Kaps. Whilst there was tremendous rivalry between the four of us, there was also mutual respect. I was bowling all-rounder with my bowling being my strength and my batting the weaker part of my game. In one-day cricket, there are all-rounders often called 'bits and pieces' players who do a bit of bowling and a bit of batting. It would be a good debate to say whether they are genuine all-rounders or not, but they still have a role to play. But an all-rounder in Test cricket is the pinnacle in that space. Q. Jacques Kallis ended up becoming legendary. Other than Kallis, can you point out all-rounders post the turn of the century who have impressed you? Jacques Kallis was an outstanding player - an all-rounder of high quality and hugely motivated. He was a wonderful batsman which was his great strength, and his bowling complimented the South African pace attack. Statistically, he is the best all-rounder in history and there will be some strong debate as to who is the best of all time. Sir Garfield Sobers may still have that title though. Over the years players like Keith Miller, Tony Greig, Andrew Flintoff and Shaun Pollock have dominated this space. Today, when I look at all-rounders, Ben Stokes stands out as number one - he is a competitor, a quality batsman and handy bowler who has single-handedly won games for England. Ravindra Jadeja, Shakib Al Hasan, Colin de Grandhomme, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Jason Holder are all worthy in their own right. Q. What do you make of Jasprit Bumrah? With that kind of an action, does he have a long career ahead of him? Biomechanics have had a lot to say about him and whether he manages to prolong his career to the fullest with that action… Being a fast bowler is a highly unnatural thing to do. Running in from 20 paces, gathering pace, taking off at delivery, bowling a ball at 140-150 kilometres, cartwheeling, twisting and turning, following through and then stopping, takes its toll on the body. Then the process is repeated time and time again. Fast bowling is an explosive sequence of highly coordinated movements - it is about rhythm, timing, and co-ordination and not necessarily about brute strength. All fast bowlers will have their own way of developing and fine tuning their actions to get the best result. Some have simple classical and effective actions, others will have unorthodox and unusual actions, and some will have short or long run ups. Jasprit fits into the unorthodox bowling category with virtually no run up to the crease. His technique in some ways defies belief but has proved to be highly effective. He is what I call a shoulder or strength bowler with all his power and pace coming from the final part of his action as he releases the ball. It would be very difficult to coach his technique to an aspiring fast bowler and I think a coach would refrain from doing from that because biomechanically it could cause problems with injury. Jasprit's longevity in the game is yet to be determined. I suspect he could be more vulnerable to injury problems than those fast bowlers with more classical and 'pure' actions or techniques. Some of his potential injuries could be severe because of the stresses and strains he places on his body. I hope any injuries he may incur will not be potentially career-ending because he is a delight to watch, and he causes batsmen all sorts of problems with his unsuspecting pace, bounce, and ball movement in the air and off the pitch. Q. There is a reserve day in the WTC final. Just like the good old days. A more guaranteed way to derive a result. Yes, we had rest days in the 1970s. Sometimes I looked forward to a day off! Rest days were only good because it allowed especially bowlers an extra day to recover from a heavy workload. The disadvantage of rest days is that the momentum of the game can be lost. Players also had to switch-on again and be mentally prepared to perform and this did not always happen in my time. Not so sure if rest days guarantee extra results. These days we still get a lot of good results in four or five days of play anyway. Q. In the longer run, do you see Test cricket surviving the onslaught of white-ball cricket? Or you reckon, there'll be enough space for every format to co-exist? Personally, I am a great supporter of Test cricket. That's all I knew when I grew up in the 60's and 70's. Yes, one-day cricket gained momentum in the mid 70's but there were not many games back then. In the 80's one-day cricket really took-off. For me, Test cricket still remains the format to play. It is the foundation on which the game is based, and it must be protected and preserved at all costs. If we lose sight of or neglect Test cricket, we will not get it back. Test cricket is a real test of mental and physical fitness; technical, tactical, and skill-set ability and attributes over five days in changing pitch and weather conditions and in different match situations that players need to adapt to. There is no other game like it. One-day cricket is and has been the other option. T20 cricket for me is not real cricket, but a high-risk game with many limitations and few opportunities for most players to excel in. But the financial rewards are great to off-set any disappointments. At least television and fans love T20 cricket and it is an exciting game to watch and enjoy. Q. New Zealand is a small country, with a population of 5.06m - around one-fourth of Mumbai alone. In that, not cricket but rugby has been the country's top sport. To remain competitive year after year in cricket at the global level, with a potentially lesser pool of manpower to choose from - what has been the key to New Zealand's cricketing resolve? As a small country, there are people who say we don't have the numbers of people to choose from to be competitive on the international scene. I see our small population base as an advantage because the best sportspeople are spotted early and will come through the system and be given the resources they need. In bigger countries many talented sports people may not be seen or be overlooked and miss out on an opportunity, simply because there are too many people to choose from. Sportspeople in New Zealand are recognized and picked up very quickly. There is a saying in New Zealand that 'we punch above our weight' in international sport. The fact is, we have produced world record holders, world champions, Olympic gold medallists and we compete in many sports including rugby, cricket, hockey, sailing and yachting, motor racing, netball to name a few. Rugby is our national game and cricket is our summer game. In rugby we are highly regarded, respected and generally top ranked - we win a high percentage of games, more than any other country and secure many victories especially in the final 20 minutes of play with a power game where players impose themselves on the opposition. The aura of the 'silver fern' and black jersey is often intimidating and feared by the opposition which gives the All Blacks a mental advantage. The tradition and history of the game is part of our national culture. Expectations are high from our team. Cricket has always held its own during the summer, especially today. We compete in all formats. Players are full time professional players, and they gain added experience by playing in overseas tournaments such as IPL, BBL and on scheduled New Zealand tours to other countries. There are career paths available for young players to pursue through academies and High-Performance coaching support. There is support staff in specialized areas and with access to technology, it allows our cricketers to gain more knowledge and be better prepared than ever before to achieve at the highest level. Players get well looked after today. They sit in the front of planes whereas we sat in the back of planes - they are accommodated in 5-Star hotels or apartments whereas we were put in motel units. How times have changed! FacebookTwitterLinkedinEMail Source link Read the full article

#IanBotham #ImranKhan #JacquesKallis #JaspritBumrah #KaneWilliamson #KapilDev #MartinCrowe #SirRichardHadlee #viratkohli

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