#end of the year writing self eval

[badger-bear]

Thank you @hellolovers13 @neondiamond @onlythebravest @beardyboyzx @disgruntledkittenface for tagging me to do the 2022 Writing Self Evaulation!

1. Number of stories posted to AO3 this year: 15

2. Word count posted for the year: 144,414

3. Fandoms I wrote for: One Direction, NHL

4. Pairings: Harry/Louis, Marcel/Louis, Zayn/Liam, Niall/Liam, Harry/Emma Corrin, Louis/Florence, Harry/Jamie Oleksiak, Harry/Niall, Harry/Liam

5. Story with the most:

Kudos: as it was

Bookmarks: as it was

Comments: as it was

the rest under the cut!

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): As a surprise to no one, As It Was. I had an idea for an age play fic for years but was too scared to post it. For one reason or another the previous versions didn't work. This time, it did. I think I showed the complexity of the topic and how at the heart of age play it's about trust and care. I love what I wrote and I'm really happy with it. I'm proud of myself for being vulnerable and posting it.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why): I have struggled with self-doubt and imposter syndrome for a long time and I kind of refuse to answer this. Even if the story didn't get a lot of hits I'm proud of myself for writing.

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received: Anyone who commented on As It Was saying they had never read an age play fic but gave it a chance. Especially the few people who said they trusted me to get them through the journey. I am honored that those people gave it a try.

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: Oh god, writing Liquid Gold because of all the sex and the vibe I was going for. Or Not Sure How To Say This Right. I was going through some weird transitions in my personal life which had me axious to work on this fic.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: Hm, I mean, I didn't expect to write Harry/Emma. Does that count?

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: This is from Deafening Silence.

Harry turned to run towards the house, his ankle twisted uncomfortably from the quick movement. He pushed through the pain and the fear and started to run, his vans sliding on the gravel due to lack of friction. He slipped going up the stairs, causing him to fall on the cement making him cry out. He got up and tried open the sliding glass door, it was locked.

“No,” Harry cried. “No, no no,” he chanted as he tried again.

He didn’t lock it and he knew Louis wouldn’t lock it if he woke up and didn’t see Harry in bed. Something else locked it.

Fresh tears fell down his cheeks as Harry started to bang on the door, yelling for Louis as he gasped for breath. Harry felt like he was being watched, his gut was telling him not to look behind him and to get inside as quickly as he could. He heard a stick breaking and felt breath on the back of his neck.

Harry couldn’t hear over his own sobs or the pounding in his ears as he begged for help. The door was slammed open, and Harry was pulled inside by the collar of his sweatshirt and right into Louis’ hands.

“Close the door!” Harry yelled as he tried to shove Louis away from him. “Close the fucking door! It’s out there!”

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: Trusting myself! Writing whatever the hell I wanted.

13. How do you hope to grow next year: Same answer as above.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): Oh god, I will try not to write an essay. But truly everyone at my discord @writerscornercafe. I built the community I had been wanting for years. Everyone is so supportive and wonderful in so many different ways. The amount of times people have helped me with phrasing or naming a character or reminding me of the name of an object is insane.

There's also a few people I want to shout out because whether they knew it or not, they helped me.

@larrieblr has been my brainstorming buddy/beta/friend/confidant for the past few months. Every Tuesday we talk about our fics, get each other unstuck, give each other tips, motivation and cheerlead. I am so thankful for the care they show me and my characters.

@justalarryblog for not knowing me for long but deciding starting a discord with me was a good idea. She is not only my bot guru but a trusted friend. I love laughing with her, coming up with ideas for the discord and knowing she has my back and I have hers.

The next few are writings who's work has inspired me to create meaningful stories, stories with laughter, and heart. Thank you for sharing your craft. Thank you for inspiring me. I'm sorry if I haven't said anything until now. Next year I hope to be better showing my appreciation.

@neondiamond somehow didn't get freaked out when the first thing I messaged her was that I had a friendship crush on her lol She has sent me pictures of her dog which never fail to make me smile. She is such a joy to get to know and I am such a fan of her work. They are all warm hugs when I need them.

@restless-rebels for being excited and non-judgmental every time I send her a text that says "so..." or "I was a thinking..." or my personal favorite "👉🏻👈🏻". She knows there is a 50/50 chance I am following it up with a bad decision and I can trust her to be honest that it could be a bad decision.

@disgruntledkittenface @uhoh-but-yeah-alright @neondiamond @littleroverlouis @lhhomefics @larrieblr

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: I haven't talked about this publicly and maybe it won't surprise anyone but I use age regression as a way to deal with trauma, chronic illness and the horror of being alive lol While I didn't write my trauma into As It Was, I used my own experiences and research as a starting off point. I (obviously) did a lot of research and self reflection before deciding to use age regression as a coping mechanism and i think that only helped me as I wrote. There are also a few phrases in every fic that my husband uses.

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: I cannot stress enough to write what you want. Fuck what anyone says about tropes or charterers, do what you want.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: I am very excited to finish my big bang!

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

@onlythesweet @tommokat @allwaswell16 @berzerkshires @justalarryblog @voulezloux @louistomlionson @londonfoginacup @littleroverlouis and anyone else who wants to do it!

[antariies]

how to build a chair........... director's cut ∠( ᐛ 」∠)__ this is about to be a very long very self-indulgent post where i just talk about my own writing. i also doodled on all the pages i think it makes the whole thing more fun to go thru. welcome to my ted talk

SIKE before i begin. credit where credit is due, this post was the start of it all. it changed my brain chemistry my jaw was dropped i was in awe i was obsessed and before i even finished it i knew that i would eventually have to make something similar for the commander or else i would be cursed to think about it for the rest of my life. and i Was cursed for like two years every day i would just be like........ is today the day i sit down and draft the commander chair fic of my dreams....... maybe tomorrow......

and then i got accepted as a writer for the gw2 zine ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ the chair idea was actually my backup option in case my first idea didn't pan out, and thank god it didn't, bc this one worked so much better. (still working on my initial idea, just turning it into a full fic! it was wayyy too long to be a zine submission.)

this is the chair i used. i downloaded the assembly instructions and tried out a bunch of different free pdf editors until i found one i liked, which ended up being sedja. if anyone's interested in doing something like this, i recommend printing out the pdf and writing directly on it! it was a lot easier for me to just figure out everything on paper first and then digitalize it after :P here's a picture of my physical copy

okay actually getting into it for real this time !!!!!

1. yeah i could've just erased the ikea logo and left a blank space but then i realized i could turn it into an in-universe joke. and then i ran with it.

2. i ripped this straight from the product description on the website. thanks ikea

3. i'm not sure if anyone went and looked it up, but it's a real item code!

hehe :3c

4. if your commander willingly goes to therapy i'm happy for them but TO ME? you'd have to drag the commander kicking and screaming. it's not that they don't know that something is wrong with them, they know, and they know YOU know. you're just never supposed to talk about it. they don't look at their own psych eval results bc that's none of their business.

5. i normally avoid specifying the commander's race when i write them bc i enjoy the challenge, but for the zine i was assigned to write about a norn commander! as a human main i was uhhhh very ill-equipped. but that just meant i had to study up on my norn lore (•̀ᴗ•́)و i spent hours on the wiki, then went around interviewing norn mains for their opinions, which was great fun :D it all helped me narrow the focus of my piece: joining the war on commander objectification on the side of commander objectification (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ and no one self-aggrandizes quite like the norn commander!

and to balance that i knew my narrator had to be patronizing as shitttt. they've clearly been following the commander since the beginning and seem to know a lot of intimate details about their life, despite not thinking very highly of them. wonder who that could be :3c

6. i can't stop making references. so the original part number is actually #122620 in the manual but i've changed it here (and on the previous page!) to #082812, as in 08/28/12, the date gw2 was released! no real reason for it, @dalennaugw suggested it for funsies and i liked it. if you're my pal and i show you a wip and you have a cool idea for it, chances are i Will put that shit in. hi dale if you're reading this

7. another thing about me. i loveeee repetition. here the word "over" is repeated four times to match the picture. honestly a lot of the creative process for this piece was just staring at the pages and figuring out how to tie the pictures to the commander in ways that weren't extremely corny or trite. idk why i enjoy writing like this when i could be frolicking in the beautiful prosaic meadows of a word doc instead but. it's like i see a tiny little restrictive box and i'm like OH BOY can't wait to think inside of that thing!!! i like when the format matters just as much as the content and in some cases informs the content. am i making any sense here. well all you need to know is that i'm a virgo and my favorite book is house of leaves

7. aw fuck just realized i wrote 7 twice. whatever i'm not changing it this is 7 part two now. the theme of my piece is glory, what it means to the norn commander, and how far they're willing to go for it.

8. does norn culture place emphasis on seeking individual glory Yes are norn also very community-oriented Also Yes. i think it's common to see norn kids napping together in a big pile, usually after they've worn themselves out playing games outside. it makes sense practically (apes together warm) and socially (pack bonding good) but that's just my hc. growing up i used to share a bed with my cousins all the time so it's normal to me.

a young, naive not-yet-commander, with no real combat experience, has no point of reference to compare a "blaze of glory" to. but the way everyone talks about it, it must be a good thing. a wonderful thing. a reward fit for a life well-fought and a legend hard-earned. so they imagine it must feel like falling asleep surrounded by the people they love, who love them in turn.

9. .........i was playing a lot of ace attorney when i wrote this page. i wish i was joking 👍🏼

10. ohhh shit the truth come OUT this whole chair thing was all a ploy just so i could write about the departing. again.

will i ever stop thinking about her. reply hazy, try again later.

11. out of all the pages, this one has the most emphasis on text placement, like comparing the enlarged picture of the screw to a sword, the numbers counting the screws, and "up up up" being arranged to mimic a wisp of smoke.

i also wanted to lean into the viking/norse mythology influences with my word choice.

12. more nods to norn culture. i didn't know they referred to the six human gods as "spirits of action" until i was doing the research for this piece :O

and the domain of the lost is called a hall of ghosts....... cause valhalla.....

13.

i'm sorry this so funnyyy. SAYS the guy who literally clawed their way back to life for a rematch.

me when i'm in a sore loser competition and my opponent is the COMMANDER!!!

14. arms as in "limbs" and also arms as in "armaments" :•]

15. haha get it because the picture makes it look like there are two mirrored speech bubbles while the text paints two opposing interpretations of the norn commander. one that's selfless and humble versus one that's selfish and vainglorious.

16. and the best part is IT DOESN'T MATTER which one is true bc at the end of the day no matter what their motivation, balthazar is dead by their hand. ofc i'm of the opinion that the most compelling interpretation of the commander is both, simultaneously. contradictions are good for the soul.

17. i could've name-dropped kas, the only person present that would do something like that, but i felt it was better to leave it ambiguous.

18. low-hanging fruit. the metaphor was so obvious here but i had to do it. for the culture

19. the alternate title for this piece was "THIS COULD BE GLORY". "how to build a chair" was only supposed to be a placeholder title til i figured out a better one, but the innocuousness of it grew on me. also i came up with the other one too late and had already advertised under the chair title lol

20. my first instinct was to end it with something more reassuring, like "what you have built so far is enough" but that would've been an ooc switch-up for a narrator who has been nothing but snide and detached this whole time. gotta stick to my guns

21.

obligatory chair joke as the last line. for realsies though it’s meant to be an earnest appeal to the commander to take a break, to have a seat, but it’s also a challenge. are they willing to lean on their friends? are the bonds they’ve forged strong enough to hold their weight? are they willing to put their faith in someone else’s hands? are they brave enough to try? well. only one way to find out.

also guess what that wasn’t even the real last page of the manual. it's THIS

but no way i was letting this be the image we ended on. IT LOOKS LIKE A DICK AND BALLS!!!

and on that note, THANK YOU if you made it this far!! a very special shout-out to @hawkepockets, my lovely boyfriend and beta reader, without whom this piece would not be nearly as polished. i would bring him pages to look over and he would say Scrap half of those lines you can do better than that. kill your darlings. i would complain and argue for a few minutes then we would revise. rinse and repeat until we had honed this thing to perfection. i can't stress enough the importance of having a second pair of eyes on your work throughout your creative process, even better if it's someone who challenges you. i don't even pay him 🫶🏼

and if there was anything i didn't cover that you still have questions about, please feel free to shoot me an ask! (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ thanks for reading! see u later dudes ;P

[presleyintheworld]

This is the first chapter of my fic Man of Mystery (title subject to change) about Raylan trying to solve the mystery of Tim's personal life. The rest of the chapters will be published on AO3 (CalamityKid) as I write them. It hasn't been beta read, but I tried my best. I hope you enjoy!

Trigger warnings: references to child abuse, alcoholism, and PTSD.

☆☆☆

Tim didn’t take days off. Voluntarily, at least. If Raylan had set that bar on the ground, Tim crawled under it.

The last time, after he’d taken a bullet to the shoulder at the hands of one of Audrey’s ladies of the night, he’d lasted a three whole days inside the desolate white walls of Lexington County Hospital before convincing Raylan to break him out. He was back at his desk by the end of the week.

Art was well-aware of Raylan’s demons, the recurrent daddy issues and the self-righteous vigilante act that stemmed from them, but he’d yet to pin down Tim’s particular brand of fucked up. Why he showed up early and stayed too late. Why a mere few days out of the office seemed to make him twitch with a nondescript restless energy. Why he never smelled like booze when they both knew he’d spent the previous night losing a battle to Jack Daniel’s. It would have been easy to blame his time in the service and the vague allusions he’d make every so often to the things he’d seen there. But Tim wasn’t easy. Not in that way, at least. No, Art got the impression that war hadn’t been Tim’s problem—his initial one, anyway; it had been his solution.

There was an ambiguous nature to Tim that inspired speculation, a fill-in-the-blank of a redacted government document. He was something of a conspiracy theory in and of himself around the office, the reticent hotshot sniper with perpetually tired eyes and a stack of fantasy novels on his desk by his gun. Any real knowledge or perspective on the man was a hard-won victory, and even that seemed superficial at best, like the way a person can talk without saying anything at all. Art had read his file, of course: his body count and service record, the psych evals he’d managed to pass, but it was like solving a puzzle with missing pieces. Reading a book with a prologue scribbled over in pen. He let it slide because Tim was still Tim—steadfast, reliable, professional where it counted. He let it slide and hoped neither of them paid for it.

He'd been insisting for weeks that Tim take some time away from work. Only a day or two, if that was easier to stomach than the full extent of the vacation days he’d hoarded over the span of his career. The odds had been stacked against him even broaching the subject and he’d never been much of a gambling man, but he’d been pleasantly surprised when Tim accepted the offer with minimal pushback. It was ironic then that he was the one to summon Tim to the VFW on his first day off.

The first thing Raylan asked when Tim strolled onto the scene was a critical, “Are you drunk?” A question which, as a rule of thumb, Art thought, was not particularly something you wanted to hear asked of a US Marshal with a sharpshooter’s aim and questionable PTSD diagnosis. Or lack thereof.

Tim drunk wasn’t really that much different from Tim sober, save for maybe an indistinct haziness that seemed to settle over him, like a painter blending out the harsh edges of a brushstroke. Everything about him seemed more relaxed in a way that felt…genuine, noticeably different from the calculated sense of indifference with which he carried himself day-to-day. He was less put-together than Raylan had ever seen him at work, less guarded in a way that was so unfamiliar he was nearly unrecognizable. His usual collared shirt had been exchanged for an oversized flannel, the fabric worn in places from years of use. The edge of an intricate tattoo on his chest that could just be made out above the neckline, a set of dog tags visible around his neck despite his tendency to deflect conversation regarding his service. All pieces of the puzzle.

His hair bordered on just this side of disheveled, as if he’d only pulled himself out of bed at Art’s call. Raylan couldn’t decide if he looked his age or thirty years older. It prompted the question of what Tim would even be like in a decade or two; whether he’d be inside this very building, clinging to war stories and whiskey like so many of the aging veterans that sat around recalling their glory days. It was hard to picture.

“Was tryin’ to be,” Tim hummed absently. He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye like a small child just woken from a midday nap.

Raylan cocked his head, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Why?” His tone held more curiosity than concern. Mysteries were like an itch beneath his skin and Tim was the walking embodiment of one, the bastard.

Tim leveled him with an unimpressed stare, swaying slightly on his feet. If he hadn’t finished that last drink, maybe he’d have had the mind to confront Raylan on his hypocrisy. Instead, he just sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face, fingers lingering to massage a migraine from his temples. “My boyfriend’s away and I’m codependent,” he finally said, letting his hand fall away. He didn’t give the remark any time to land before he was shouldering past them and flashing his ID to the guard.

Art just shrugged tiredly when Raylan glanced at him. He exuded the same energy as a weary parent who had long since given up understanding his children.

Raylan added this comment to the list of times he couldn’t differentiate between Tim’s laconic sarcasm and his passive honesty. The man had a way of speaking that made everything sound sarcastic and true all at once. He’d consider it impressive if it weren’t so damn annoying.

[gqteach]

Surprising no one, I did not update this blog over the summer. But I did teach the teachers, and it was good. I had several thank me and a couple more try to crash my class because they wanted to see "Trans Students 101" instead of whatever they'd been assigned. I'm also going to a conference in a couple weeks to teach the panel to a variety of teachers (and university faculty) from around the Midwest, so that's pretty exciting. Every single time I get to stand in front of people and teach these things, it feels like a major win.

I have a new job now, as a Special Ed Teacher! I am at a much smaller staff (and school) than before, and I think I know almost every adult at this point. A lot of the other teachers, especially the new hires, are also neurodivergent and queer. They're all super sweet and supportive, and so is the old guard. My principal is a bit brusque by times, but I get the impression that it's just a "way he speaks" thing, because every time we talk, he's very warm and helpful. I have high hopes for the year.

I also immediately got clocked as neurodivergent by the school's SpEd cause manager. Apparently I remind him a lot of his Autistic, ADHD son. I don't have proper documentation, but I am making a concerted effort to self-advocate and make this job more accessible. Part of that is I'm just trying to get everything in writing, because then I have something concrete to reference at any given time. According to my psych, I don't actually have a bad memory, my memory stores too much information at any given time which means accessing the actual stuff I need is nigh impossible by times. So, writing. I'm also asking like, a million questions, because Clear Communication and Understanding. I don't want to repeat the past two years' experience.

Teachers got our end of (last) year evals, and honestly, I haven't checked mine. I'm too anxious, even though I know what it's going to be. The real question is whether I fight it, or if I just take it and try extra hard these next two years. My mentor would encourage me to fight it, but I don't know if I have the energy.

I have an official diagnosis of Persistent Depression now, plus the other stuff we already knew, so I'm working really hard to turn my life around and structure it in a way that's good and healthy for me. It's a lot of hard work, but I have to believe it will be worth it in the end.

They have me teaching Biology and US History. You may recall that I am a math teacher and I honestly have no idea how to teach those other subjects. Luckily, I have very competent co-teachers to help me along there, and I do have one math class that is going absolutely fine. In History, we're talking about Race as a Social Construct, and I'm trying to decide if the kids are ready for the "Gender is also a Social Construct" talk or if it'll just throw them off more.

Students are...teenagers. I have freshmen and sophomores now, and they're all (COVID-caused) socially underdeveloped, so classroom management is a pain and a half. I'd say we're at "getting my pronouns correct half the time" right now, and working on it. I also have a lot more Spanish speakers, so working with the gender-neutral Spanish is an adventure all its own. I'm back to being the first nonbinary person a lot of students have met, and I'm trying to remind myself that there was an adjustment period at my last school, too. This will get easier. Even if I have to tear apart the queerphobic culture brick by brick.

(10/1/2023)

[blueraspberrycoolatta]

2022 writing self-evaluation

okay so. wayyy back in 2019, a friend tagged me in this writing self-eval. a questionnaire designed to help you look back on your previous year. i haven’t done it in years, and we’re almost 3 months into 2023, but i wanted to come back and do it for 2022, and hopefully keep it going as long as i keep writing. because it’s nice having a summary of my writing to look back on! 

anyway, here we go. 

1. Number of stories (including drabbles) posted to AO3: 12

2. Word count posted for the year: 21,448 

3. List of works published this year (in order of posting):

dancing’s not a crime (february 2)

fiending for that sweet spot (february 15)

carrying the banner (february 17)

to be a king beside you (march 24)

i’m half-doomed, you’re semi-sweet (may 5)

you were the song stuck in my head (every song that i’ve ever loved) (may 7)

sugartime is anytime that you’re near (august 19)

got me running from the daylight (october 19)

crosswalks and crossed hearts (november 11)

do you see me now, goncharov? (november 22)

automatic door (december 6)

and there will be no tenderness (december 14)

4. Fandoms I wrote for: haikyuu (11), fire emblem: three houses (1)

5. Pairings (excluding side/past pairings): 

semi eita/ushijima wakatoshi (2)

akaashi keiji/miya osamu (1)

iwaizumi haijime/oikawa tooru (1)

semi eita/ennoshita chikara (1)

semi eita/sugawara koushi (1)

felix hugo fraldarius/sylvain jose gautier (1)

6. Story with the most:

Kudos: do you see me now, goncharov? (80)

Bookmarks: do you see me now, goncharov? (9)

Comments: do you see me now, goncharov? (19)

9. Work I’m most proud of (and why):

you were the song stuck in my head. i was experimenting with a slightly different style and i really, really liked how it came out. and i felt like with it, i made my return to more emotionally charged, angstier fics—the fics that i started out in this fandom with.

also, i’m quite fond of i’m half-doomed, you’re semi-sweet. i just really liked the atmosphere and the dynamic i established in so few words. there’s a hell of a story there that’s begging to be written too, but it also suits them as it is. 

10. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

got me running from the daylight. i wrote it in weird chunks, very close to the deadline, and i Know that the concept was strong and fun and could have been a much better fic. but i was pressed for time after procrastinating and had to resort to making it a collection of slice of life vignettes. still fun, and my giftee enjoyed it, but i know i could have written it much better.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

from i’m half-doomed, you’re semi-sweet:

Suga turns his cheek and catches Semi’s mouth in a bruising kiss. Suga kisses like he belongs onstage himself—determined, fearless, demanding of both himself and everyone around him; and yet, like he’s got all the damn time in the world. Semi leans into it, melts into the shape of Suga’s mouth, licks the taste of the cigarette from behind his teeth and kisses him full of something new, something sweeter. Not that Suga needs extra sweet.

and i’m also fond of the phrase “some insignificant capillary of a street” from and there will be no tenderness.

12. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

my favorite comment was on and there will be no tenderness. they said “it just stabbed me five times in the gut and then put a little kiss on top of my hair” and that just got me

13. A time when writing was really, really hard:

most of the year, actually. last year was kind of a lot—ended one relationship, started a new one, traveled a lot to see my partner, had family issues, got COVID, changed jobs, went through the law school application process...it all just didn’t leave me a lot of spoons for writing. i played a lot of video games to relax last year and i just didn’t write as much.

14. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

sylvain, in and there will be no tenderness. he’s a character i’ve always Liked but honestly this fic alone made me absolutely adore him. i had initially just set out to actively make him a foil to felix emotionally, but he ended up leaping out as this man who so clearly has feelings that run deeper than this arrangement should allow, someone who despite being so rough with felix, truly cares for him underneath it all—someone who knows, truly, that felix won’t ever return those feelings, yet continues to go back to him over and over again. AH it was really fun.

15. How did you grow as a writer this year:

i think i’ve gotten quite good at the whole ‘show, don’t tell’ concept. i do feel like my writing style is rather...observational, so i really enjoy writing out how characters show their emotions and motivations.

16. How do you hope to grow next year:

i want to try (key word: TRY) to not leave as many WIPs dangling out in the aether. i want to plan my fics out better so i don’t post one chapter and then leave it for years because i don’t know what happens next.

17. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

my friend enno @sugaandyams! even though i didn’t write as much last year, enno was always down to talk headcanons, AUs, elaborate RPs, all of it. 

18. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

so confession, i’ve been writing some personal experience into my smut lately~

19. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

uh, i think one of the biggest things i learned this year is that it’s okay (and even fun) to change up your style. try something new! what’s the worst that could happen, you don’t like it so you don’t do it again?

20. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

the priority WIP i really am aiming to finish this year are: bound for i don’t know where, bit your heart and released, crosswalks and crossed hearts, and you were the song stuck in my head (every song that i’ve ever loved). and i’m also excited to keep progressing with my 100 kink challenge!

[fitz-parks]

So I’m in a place in my life where I’ve realized that my mental state is not that great. I’ve always been one of those people where I have to be tough. I have to be consistent in the things I say and do because I have a lot of eyes on me. People depend on me, and they most often come before me. Always. 33 years almost hitting that year 34, that concept of “Always” isn’t an option anymore. Who am I at the end of 10-13 hours shifts; trying to lead a group of people who at many times have a vastly different approach, outlook, and walk of life than I do. Who am I when I get home and have to change roles on the short decompress of a car drive home. Now I’m Daddy. Now I’m Husband. And yeaaa I get it that’s Every man, that’s what we suppose to do. That’s what we’re taught. In all honestly if your a real man of understanding then that’s something you know in heart you have to do. That’s what men are built to do. The tough part is, in all of that, men have lost; hell society has lost the ability to address that this surely can’t be healthy for a man’s physique . I know I sure have lost the ability

So I’m making changes. First start was social media purge. There’s many t things that come up on my feeds, that I can t control. Which flows into the second change, putting effort imto understanding and accepting the things in my life that I can’t control…are LEGIT out of my control. I want to fix things, I want to be heard, because not being bias but I feel like the ideas and words that I choose to share around others is worth hearing. I honestly want to help in some way or fashion. But the things out of my control have in a sense taken control of my actions and reactions to the things around me. Anger is the biggest evil I face and deal with. It’s so easy to just be angry and I’ve taken the bait way too often over the past 6 months and especially the previous 2 weeks. So The time has come to fix that.

Awareness has been the biggest helper so far. I have two group of friends that I talk to mostly everyday. Sometimes you have to be able to voice these things out. A mutual awareness of how YOU feel between yourself and close friends is a must. You find out what they love about you, what they remind you you’re good at, and that you’ve made a good life for yourself and your love ones . At end of the day I know I’m not in this alone, and I can work through some of these mental things with people who want to support me.

So what is my path or my plan to get to where I want to be mentally?

1. Read more books about my culture, motivation/mental health awareness, and memoirs from other Black Men.

2. Journaling. This, writing has always been a passion for me. Writing down my thoughts, creating stories, brainstorming,etc; it has always put me in a calm headspace. It’s just me and my thoughts and creativity and in a lot of ways my overflowing feelings that never get an opportunity to release in a healthy way. Caged and chained away, but constantly reminding me of its presence banging on the inside ready to get out…and unfortunately sometimes they do..at the wrong times. I will be utilizing this platform to journal and also a self guided journal for healing for the next 45days.

3. Build a relationship with God. This relationship has been strained by many things in my life. This isn’t the time to go into detail(I’m sure that will present itself in the future) but it’s been a rocky road. I have so many questions that seem to have been unanswered for so long, I have anger towards God as well. But what relationship doesn’t have that involved. Minus religion, churches, holy people, etc I’m focused on a One on One relationship/discovery with God and God alone. And hopefully we arrive or I arrive in a good place at the end of that journey.

4. GROWTH. The literally sense of growth, where is the process heading? Is the precession working? What’s going into the process? There’s maintenance, prioritizing, awareness, and evaluation. What things in me and around me are growing, that I can have a direct control over.

*Start my Loc journey*Back into Gardening*Self-Development as a Boss, Husband, Father, and most importantly As a Human Being/Individual.

Who will Fitz discover at the end of this journey? That’s something I can’t wait to see.

[hotch-stufff]

hiii 47 and 7 for angst hotch

i love ur writing btw <3

Drunk

gif by hoe-tchner

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader

Warnings!: mentions of abuse, stalking, and death, past abusive relationships, normal criminal minds things, angst, crying, pining, but a fluffy ending

Promtps: Angst #7 "Are you drunk?", Angst #47 "You flinched"

Author's Note: Thank you so much <3, hope you enjoy reading!!

---------------

In hindsight, it probably wasn’ the best idea to get drunk at a bar. Especially alone. But you weren’t exactly thinking straight when you had stepped off the jet after a long case. And it had been a LONG case. Nearly a week of going through the same evidence over and over again scouring for a lead. Finally finding a lead, and coming to a dead end. 

The eventual lead that you did catch, led to the unsub already standing over her next victim’s body. At least you got a full confession. But you had been the one that had found the unsub. If that wasn’t enough, this case had already been hitting way too close to home. 

A woman was murdering victims of domestic abuse to “save them” because her mom was never “saved” from her father’s abuse. She had grown up watching it. Her victims had all had y/h/c hair, with y/e/c eyes. The same height as you, same style, just overall very similar. The only difference the team saw had been that you were never abused. At least that was what your file had said.

You had been able to keep it on the low for as long as you had been at the BAU. But you were terrified one of them would figure it out. That you would flinch at the wrong time, or you would do something to give it away.

You had gotten lucky and no one seemed suspicious. You ended up hiding in the back of the jet, curled up. No one bothered you. They all assumed that the case had just hit you harder. The one thing you hadn’t known though was that Hotch had been keeping a very close eye on you.

You two had become close, and would often hang out at each other's apartments. Spending tjme just talking about nothing and everything for hours. He had quickly become one of your best friends. You always went to him when you were upset.

But tonight, you just needed to get away.

Which is how you found yourself in this bar, downing your fifth drink. In the back of your mind, you knew that you wouldn't be able to drive home, or even walk without tripping over your own feet. You needed to call someone, and your drunk self called Hotch. While the phone rang you checked the time. 3 am. He was going to kill you.

“Hotchner.” You giggled drunkenly at his formal response.

“Why so serious bossman?” He recognized your voice immediately. 

“Y/n? Are you okay?” 

“M’great. Havin a blast.” You slurred.

“Are you drunk?” He asked and you giggled again.

“Mayyybe.” You slurred, concerning Hotch even more.

"Where are you?”

“Mabel's I think. But let me tell you. I think you need to come get me because there is no way m’drivin home.” He huffed as you heard noise coming from the phone.

“I'm on my way, stay there!” But you hung up. You were so excited to see him. Truth was you had definitely developed a crush for the man. Telling him that was going to be difficult, mainly because of your past, but also because he was your boss, and about 12 years older than you.

You waited for about 10 minutes before you heard the door ring as it opened and Hotch ran inside, frantically searching around. He found you and was quickly at your side.

“Y/n, are you okay?” You nodded sleepily. You always did get sleepy after your sixth drink. He gave you a concerned glance before reaching for your arm. You flinched slightly, but Hotch didn’t say anything about it. He picked you up because there was no way that you could walk, and carried you out to his car. 

“You’re staying with me tonight.” He had said once on the road. You lazily watched  out the window as buildings went by. 

“M’kay.” You mumbled. Hotch sent you another concerned glance. Something was wrong, but he couldn't quite figure out what. Usually when a case hit you hard, you would spend the night talking with him. He had been surprised when you hadn't shown up at his apartment. Even more shocked when you had called him drunk. He cared about you and it hurt him to see you like this.

Soon he found himself pulling into his driveway. He parked and quickly ran to your side of the car to help you out. He opened your door, and reached his hand over to unbuckle you when suddenly you shifted back. Your arms came up as if to block a blow and a whimper escaped your lips. 

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise!” You let out, sounding much more sober now. Hotch stood there dumbfounded, not knowing what to do. 

“Y/n, it’s me, can you hear me, its Aaron?” You moved your arms from your face, peeking out wide eyed. You pulled your arms the rest of the way down. 

“Sorry Hotch. That was just, um, that w-was-” But he cut you off.

“You flinched.” He paused looking at the tears in your eyes, realizing that he needed to get you inside before you broke down in the car. “C’mon, let's go inside.” You bowed your head and nodded. 

“Okay.” You said softly. He helped you out of his car slowly, and walked you up to his apartment. Once there, you plopped on his couch, sobering up for the conversation you knew was going to happen. He walked in the room, a glass of water in hand. He handed it to you, sitting next to you. he waited a few moments before beginning the inevitable conversation.

“Y/n, why did you flinch?” He asked hesitantly. He didn't want to push you, but he was concerned and he wanted to know. So you told him. Every detail, every heartbreaking moment. The bruises, the scars, the hospital trips. Everything. The reports, the disbelief, the arrest, the divorce. Then the even worse parts. The escape, the stalking, the attack, the death. Every little thing. You could feel the tears falling down your face as you spoke about your ex-husband. 

Hotch sat as he watched the beautiful woman sitting in front of him break down. He didn't know any of this, none of it was in your file. He knew that Strauss had to know though, because you never would have been accepted without background checks and psych evals. 

His heart broke a little more every time you shared another detail. On one side it felt so nice to get it off your chest. On the other hand, it was weird opening up to Hotch like this. He was seeing so much more of you than you had ever allowed anyone since your husband. He sat in silence once you finished speaking. 

“Y/n. I'm so sorry. You never should have had to go through that.” And the tears came even faster, until they were silent sobs. Hotch, well he was more Aaron in that moment, brought you into his arms holding you tight, bringing you a comfort you hadn’t felt in a long time. “Shh, shh. It’s okay. I’m right here. It’s okay to cry.”He silently whispered into your hair. You looked up at him then, sighing softly at the beautiful man before you. 

“Thank you Aaron.” He loved the way his name sounded coming from your lips. But before he could tell you, he looked down to find you asleep in his arms. And that's how he stayed until morning. 

                       * * *

The next morning you awoke to a strange bed, with strange sheets, in a strange room. But one sniff and all you could smell was Hotch’s cologne. You soon recognized that there was a warm body behind your own, an arm wrapped around your middle. 

You almost didn't remember what happened last night, but once you did, you began to panic. What if he hated you? What if he was disgusted by you? He probably had just pitied you.  

He must have felt you shift, because he was waking up. His arm tightened around you, and he leaned up looking you in the eyes. He saw your panic and was alert rather quickly for someone who had just woken up. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked quickly, eyes scanning you frantically. 

“You must be disgusted with me.” You paused taking a deep breath. “I'm sorry Hotch. I ruined your night and then cried all over you with my pathetic life story. And you probably just pitied me. I'm sorry.” He shook his head. 

“Y/n, look at me.” You looked into his eyes. “I am and never will be disgusted by you. I am amazed by you. You are so strong and beautiful and you never deserved a thing that disgusting man did to you. I don’t pity you, not at all. All of this has just made me fall more in love with you than I already was.” You looked at him wide eyed.

“You love me?” He leaned a little closer.

“Of course I do. It's impossible not to.” You dared closer still as he moved a piece of hair from your face. The loving gesture warming your heart. 

“Thank you. For everything. I love you too Aaron.” And he sealed your lips. It was intimate and explosive at the same time. And in the most cliche way, fireworks exploded as you kissed him. 

You moved together passionately. Your noses bumped ever so slightly as he kissed you deeper than you had ever been kissed. He was an amazing kisser, to say the least. He broke away a moment later, smiling down at you. 

“Give me a chance to show you what real love is, what it's supposed to be.” You nodded.

“Of course Aaron.” And you kissed him again, sliding your hands around his neck into his hair. It was the happiest you had been in a very long time. 

So in hindsight, maybe getting drunk wasn’t such a bad idea after all. 

---------------

Thanks for reading! Requests are still open, so ask away! If i don't get to yours, I'm sorry!! If you would like an idea of what to request, here is my prompt list, and if you would like to read more of my work, here is my masterlist.

[lululawrence]

Annual Writing Self Evaluation

Thank you for the tag @louandhazaf!!! I’m honestly clutching my chest that you tagged me, so thank you xxx especially since i love this little self eval that i think @juliusschmidt came up with all those years ago and we just keep perpetuating it haha

this... is going to get long, though. since it asks me to list my works published this year and that is 24. so. here goes.

1. List of works published this year:

Swerve the Handshake (Nick/Louis)

Need So Much of You (Harry/Louis for @onedirectionbigbang)

You're A (Total) Distraction (girl!direction and hybrid Harry/Louis for @wallsficfest)

Always Keep You Next To Me (Greg/Louis for @wallsficfest)

With Your Hand In Mine (Nick/Louis for @wallsficfest)

Smells Like Omega Spirit (Harry/Louis for @1daboficfest)

If Only We Wish Hard Enough (Harry/Louis for @disneydirectionfest)

Political Pizza (Harry/Louis for @wordplayfics)

Talk the Night Through (Harry/Louis for @wordplayfics)

Wrinkles (Harry/Louis for @1000feelingsfics)

Would You Be My Girlfriend? (girl!direction Harry/Louis for @wordplayfics)

Lately You've Been On My Mind (Harry/Louis for @wordplayfics)

Don't Want It Any Other Way (Harry/Louis for @wordplayfics)

I'm Ready for the Worst (Greg/Louis for @louisandmenfest)

Loving You's the Antidote (Nick/Harry/Louis for @finelineficfest)

Do You Know Who You Are? (Harry/Louis for @finelineficfest)

Don't You Call Him (What You Used To Call Me) (Harry/Louis for @finelineficfest)

Gone Too Long (From You) (Harry/Louis co-written with @fallinglikethis for @finelineficfest)

Just Me and the Stars Can Get Lonely (Niall/Rory McIlroy for @heartbreakweatherficfest)

The Way You Bend the Rules (Niall/Rory McIlroy for @heartbreakweatherficfest)

And Then I Saw His Face (Harry/Louis for @1dtrickortreatfest)

I'mma Give You A Promotion (Nick/Louis)

What You Waiting For? (Nick/Harry for @1000feelingsfics)

(I'm Dreaming of a) One Night Inn (Harry/Louis, Zayn/Liam, Niall/Shawn)

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

every time i think about this question i’ve got a different answer, to be honest. i do think my I Go Down Blazing, Feeling Like I'm Going Crazy series is probably what i’m most proud of, though. as soon as i knew @runaway-train-works was going to be hosting the heartbreak weather fic fest, i knew i wanted to write dear patience, but as the idea grew and grew and more ideas solidified and i realized what the story was turning into, i realized it was so much more than i originally thought and i needed a second song to help me fully get a solid grasp on it. in the end, it was a hard duo of fics to write, mainly because i honestly don’t know much of anything about golf, i was still trying to create fully the way soulmates worked in the world, and there’s just not all that much about rory online to find, so i was winging it haha but i’m so incredibly happy with the world i made and the fics i wrote, even if i don’t know that they’ll ever get to like 200 hits or whatever hahaha i love them.

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

uhhhhh you know looking at this list of fics i have, i’m actually proud of every single one for some reason and i don’t know if there’s any of them that i’d even label as “least proud”.

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

i hate this question and forget that it is on this list every year lollll let me see if i can find something i really like. okay i found one, it’s from my long grouis haha and i’m apologizing now for it being so long. you can skip ahead to the next question if you like, but i’m just incredibly proud of the banter and the way i wrote this section, PLUS those damn joggers actually happened because he posted a photo of himself wearing them in the shops on instagram and that inspired this entire thing so. enjoy. (i’ve italicized it and indented it to hopefully make it easier to skip it’s so long i’m so sorry)

“It’s safe for you to come back in here,” Louis called out as he closed his computer. 

“Thank goodness, I was getting so exhausted of hiding in your bedroom and snooping through all your shit,” Greg said as he walked out wearing a sheet mask and a pair of grey joggers that did nothing to hide what he was packing. 

Louis smirked and wanted to say something, but Greg kept going. 

“Did you know you have like five different deodorants in there?”

Louis threw his arm on the back of his couch and nodded. 

“Why?” Greg asked, throwing himself down onto the couch and placing his stupidly long legs on top of Louis’. “Who legitimately needs five different deodorants? Do they have different uses or something? Some were even women’s deodorants, so I wasn’t sure if they were your sisters’ or what. Oh, and I helped myself to one of your fancy toners. It had rosewater in it or something.”

“Well, for the deodorants I just like trying different scents and I switch them up based on my mood. And actually, the one I use most often is a women’s deodorant. It works great. Plus I smell fresh and clean like baby powder all day.” Louis shrugged. “And that wasn’t my toner. Dunno who left it. Just showed up one day and no one says it’s theirs, so I kept it. It’s quite nice, isn’t it? Lotts said it’s supposed to help even out the PH balance of my skin or some shit, but I’ll be fucked if I know what that actually means.”

“Oh, that does sound fancy,” Greg agreed, checking the time on his phone. “I’ve got five more minutes on this mask, don’t let me forget. Don’t want to leave it on so long it burns my skin off or summat.”

“Sure,” Louis said, laughing. “So are you actually wearing anything under these or are you just that excited to see me?”

“Eh?” Greg asked before looking down at his crotch. Of course, now he was sitting down it didn’t show anything. “What are you on about?”

“Stand back up and look in a mirror, mate,” Louis said, laughing. “You’re dick was trying to tell me hello a minute ago.”

“I didn’t tell it to do that,” Greg muttered as he shifted so he could stand back up again. He walked into Louis’ bedroom, and Louis could hear when he’d seen himself. “Oh my God, that’s obscene! Does it always look like that when I wear these?”

Louis laughed and walked into his bedroom to see Greg’s eyes wide as he shifted himself around and walked a bit, appalled that no matter what he did, nothing seemed to make it any less there. 

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen you in those. You usually nick a pair of mine,” Louis reminded him. “Do you wear them without pants often?”

“I never wear pants with these,” Greg said, rubbing his forehead. “Fuck, I’ve likely given that nan that lives below me too many looks at my cock without even realising it. They’re my softest, most favorite pair of joggers! I wear them to the shops when I’m too knackered to get fully dressed!”

As Greg continued to narrate the various escapades he’d had over the years in the joggers without even realising what he’d been doing, Louis settled onto his bed, propping himself up on his elbow so he could still watch Greg as he motioned about in distress.

When it was clear Greg wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon, Louis pulled out his phone and started filming. There was no one he could share this with, but it would be good for a laugh later on.

“Fuck, and you didn’t remind me to take off my mask!” Greg cried, rushing back into the bathroom to remove the sheet mask and do whatever else he had to do when he used them. 

Greg was proper obsessed with them, said they were relaxing and kept his skin soft. Louis just liked knowing they were one of Greg’s things, like taking regular baths with a bottle of wine and perusing various adoption websites for dogs he could possibly give a good home to.

“Sorry, love,” Louis said, as Greg walked back out of the bathroom. He really was sorry, but he also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to keep taking the piss. Greg was too much fun to rile up. “Was distracted by your big dick flopping about whilst you remembered all the good times you’d had in the joggers.”

5. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

i’ve had a few this year that told me they don’t usually read that pairing or they don’t usually comment on fics, but for various reasons they gave the pairing a try or wanted to comment because of something specific and those were particularly lovely. that said, every comment is so so great, they really do boost me up to see them and i need to do better with getting my anxiety in hand and responding to them regularly.

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

this entire damn year, man. all of the time i’d carefully carved out for myself over the past few years to write was basically blown to shit with the pandemic, which also was so exhausting it didn’t leave me with much energy to write. but i still somehow posted 24 fics?? i dunno, dude. i think writing saved me and gave me something to look forward to, tbh.

7. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

most of my advent fic, tbh lollll a lot that was in there wasn’t really brainstormed ahead of time, it just happened, and i forgot some of the details even because i just flat out didn’t remember what i’d put in there, so i’m STILL surprised haha i love when fics happen like that

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

i always think of challenges as fun and then i look back and wonder if i was insane because i thought it would be fun to try something new but it was mostly really fucking hard haha i wrote a lot of pairings and combinations of tropes this year that i never have before as well as stretching myself with writing emotions and situations i never have before, so i’m quite proud of myself for continuing to push the envelope and try new things like that.

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

i mostly hope that i’ll be able to carve more time out for myself as things HOPEFULLY settle down a bit more. i might not be as impulsive when it comes to choosing things to write at that point, but we’ll see. lol

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

i... hmm. there’s a lot of people i’m thinking of right now, but it’s hard to choose just one. i think actually there were two and they were @louandhazaf and @disgruntledkittenface. i very much admire both of them for their own writing and works, but i am particularly inspired by how many pairings they write and the variety of fics they have posted. it’s definitely because of them that i’ve tried writing a lot of the pairings that i have, and that’s before you even start to look at the help they’ve given me with betaing certain fics (usually rare pairs lollll). they’re just both so supportive and open to so many things, and i am so much more open to all sorts of things because of them. i CANNOT answer this without mentioning the Write Your Way Out GC either, though. Y’all are my crew in SO many ways and you let me rely on you in every way through this past year. it really does take a village, doesn’t it?

11. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

lmao i’m sure. but all i’m thinking of at the moment are the tumblr posts and canon compliant shit i based the fics on, so nothing off the top of my head apparently haha

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

hell if i know. maybe just... write for yourself. i think that’s why i’m so proud of every fic i wrote this year. i really was writing for me and if others like it too? bonus. 

13. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

my big bang!!! that’s the big one. i’m so excited for it. i have a whole list of other fics, too, though. hahaha i’m also super SUPER excited for both of my omega harry fics to post hehe 

14. Tag three writers whose answers you’d like to read.

@becomeawendybird @sadaveniren @londonfoginacup

*All answers should be about works published in 2020. Also, you can skip any questions you hate or don’t want to answer, but please leave them on the list so that others can do them if they want.

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

More therapy thoughts part 1/?

Behavior Theory Frameworks/Conditioning and What the fuck does Master Chief talk about in therapy?

Ramblings below - like a lot, like I spent too much time writing this and you should not read this

Behavioral Theory could work well as a framework with rehabilitating Spartan IIs if the case worker focused on Operant Conditioning Theory and Cognitive Social Learning Theory, which I talked about in this ask because I think I’m funny and this blog is an archive of me applying human behavior theories to video games.

Spartans have always been taught the mission comes first! Always! The 2s are indoctrinated from age 6-14 and then have that reinforced the rest of their lives. From the beginning they are taught to push themselves to the limits, earn their food by winning, form bonds with teammates but be ready to sacrifice them for the mission. The whole lives wasted vs spent conversation between John and Mendez after the augmentation surgery!

What the UNSC/ONI wants comes before their lives, the lives of other soldiers, civilians, AI etc. This constant conditioning of expectations and rewards has created the norms cemented in their minds. This becomes standard operating procedure.

Spartans are also an entirely separated social group, other people have made really great posts on how they are Othered and have their own way of communicating with body language. ODSTs hate Spartans, marines see them as cyborgs or saviors, and while they’re allies, Spartans are not seen or treated as human, by literally everyone. They are a means to an end, with the original goal being to maintain the UNSC’s position of power and crush the insurrectionists in the outer colonies, but uh oh Aliens!

Maybe the 2s aren’t as expendable as the 3s but the mindset and reinforcement of “mission first, people second” being repeated their entire lives is going to stick. So is the constant mistreatment and abuse from their fellow soldiers and handlers. 

Addressing the cognitive distortions that come from their upbringing while also balancing the fact that Spartans are so fundamentally different from the way they developed to survive would be so much work, especially considering how much information on them is given to their therapist.  The main distortion I would apply is minimization, making large problems small and not properly dealing with them, and specifically for John, personification, accepting blame for negative events without sufficient evidence. 

Like these are grown ass super soldiers who can kill you in less than a second and calculate the amount of gravity in a room on the fly but then also can flounder when trying to comfort civilians or make small talk because their experiences and values are so alien to adults who had more developmentally “normal” lives. 

Literally applying therapy to Spartans would be like, what was done to you was wrong, the ends do not justify the means, you were children and the adults in your life failed to protect you. You are a human person who is fallible and did the best you could with what you had. And the Spartan would say, “sounds fake but okay, can I pass my psych eval and go back to war now please?”

Jumping back to Behavior Theory

Different approaches to therapy under the Behavior Theory umbrella help modify negative behaviors with treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy that teach individuals adaptive coping like emotional regulation, distress tolerance, cognitive distortions, and interpersonal communication. And that’s just one framework under the umbrella of human behavior theories.

Social work therapy is different from psych as it approaches individuals with heavily researched, evidence-based theories and frameworks in a holistic viewing of person-in-environment, instead of a strong focus on internal psychology. 

Social work looks at all the interacting systems, environment, history, and internal and external factors affecting an individual. One of the most useful frameworks is the Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Frameworks (BPSS) when helping a client. It helps with identifying all the intersecting factors, both risk and protective, that shapes a client’s lived experiences. The most important thing to remember is that the individual is an expert in their own life, they know their experiences best.

The hardest part is applying this to Spartans because they Are So Fucked, their lived experiences, their environments and systems and institutions interacting with them, and the amount of their personal information that is probably so classified.

BPSS is a tool to help social workers assess individuals and their situations by collecting info that is related to the presenting issues and current and past circumstances. Info like medical history, hospitalizations, substance abuse, mental illness, personal relationships, family history and background, culture and norms, education, legal history, spirituality and participation etc. is all under this framework. 

For Spartan 2s most of this info is lost or classified and helping someone who has repressed every negative emotion they've had for the sake of the mission would be so much to unpack but that’s also why you’re reading the mad ramblings over an over caffeinated nerd on the internet.

Life Course Theory which looks at developmental milestones and the individual’s experiences versus the socially expected markers, how do you apply that to children who were taken and have lived such different lives? 

While early adolescence is when “normal” development of thoughts of self and identity take place alongside the physical changes of puberty, Spartans were being turned into emotionless calculating weapons. Sorry John, no forming a sense of identity and peer bonds for you, go kill that Watts guy who betrayed us and joined the insurrectionists. 

And now that I’ve gone this insane and opened 2 whole textbooks up, let’s get to Master Chief thoughts. If you’ve read this far thank you, I swear I’m normal, 2020 has just been a weird year. 

Why the fuck did I think I could write a therapy fic on a guy with 20 minutes of actual dialogue across almost 2 decades of games?

I make fun of him and call him a himbo, but he’s smart, he knows he’s being used and there is resentment there that’s been building for years. 

There’s also decades of trauma and combat experience, physical, and emotional abuse, the lack of a support network,  lack of an identity, the biological factors and aftermath of the augmentations and injuries he’s received, a whole lot of grief and self-inflicted guilt. 

The loss of a third of his peer group with the augmentation surgery, Sam’s death, the loss of Reach (the only place he’s considered home), Keyes, the Pillar of Autumn crew, Miranda Keyes, Johnson, Cortana. He cares about the marines who fight with him!!!

He just stands there and takes it and rarely snaps, and even then it’s just small cracks on the surface with fissures running deep. The few details I will pull from Halo 5 are Blue Team’s reactions to John pushing himself so hard from the beginning of the game, and the literal crack in his armor from the fight with Locke. Like dude.  

John’s a leader and will get the mission done but he tugs on the leash. He’s earned enough of a reputation and uses it to get his way.

Halo 2’s “Permission to leave the station” with Mr. “I’m going to hand deliver a bomb to the fusion reactor of a covenant supercarrier and hope my friends catch me”. 

Halo 4 is when we see him say no to a superior officer and then 5 is him going AWOL. Palmer literally points out that no one is going to stop him.

Halo 5 kills me for many reasons but John bringing up Halsey and what she did to him and also pointing out that he knows Halo 5 Cortana is trying to manipulate him with psychological tactics hurts. 

He knows what’s been done to him!

I cannot remember which book it was but John isn’t used to working alone. He literally takes fire because he was expecting someone to have his back! 

He’s lost without Cortana! She was in his brain! Y’all! I played Halo Combat Evolved on the original xbox when I was like 8 and I knew these two were meant to be together. From the moment they met they had great chemistry and relied on each other! Cortana literally goes after people who have it out for John! John wants her approval and shows off for her in one of the books. 

I’ve already written too much here but like all of the games have John showing off for Cortana, making dry jokes, jumping out of things he shouldn’t. 

The whole point of this rambling is to try and get my thoughts about how to approach John’s character under control.

And that’s the thing. He’s lost control. He’s lost people, he’s losing his position and being phased out as an aging spartan, a relic. John’s used to following orders and making some decisions on the battlefield but it was always short term.

He has no identity beyond being a weapon. Complete the mission, clear the LZ, get put in cryo. Rinse, repeat. 

The timeline of the games are what I'm most familiar with but with the comics and books too it’s one long run from Halo 2 to Halo 4. Cairo station to the Dreadnought to the crash landing to Forward Unto Dawn to Requiem to “The Didact is Dead but not really but we’ll deal with him off-screen”.

I know Hood apparently gave John R&R orders before Halo 5 that he ignored and kept running himself into the ground. This is a man who has to keep moving and keep being useful. 

I imagine him giving in and seeking help as a last resort to fix any problems he has with performing his duties rather than helping himself be healthier. 

Any professional he sees is going to have to approach him like they’re approaching a self sacrificing feral cat, with lunch meat and quiet. This man needs to have his support network closer, set up long term goals, and do some serious, and most likely incredibly painful, self reflection on where he’s come from and where he wants to go. Get him out of that tin can and into therapy. I don’t have a nice neat ending because this was a ramble and also therapy is not neat and tidy. Thanks for reading my words about mr halo

[cozytruecrimeaddict]

I think I need help (Hotch x OC)

hey guys! so this is part 1 of my new story I started today. feedback is much much much appreciated. but I guess I wanted to jump in here and say here's a some trigger warnings for this story and where it goes. 

WARNINGS FOR: regular CM violence, sexual assault, rape, self harm and possible suicide 

That being said, I hope you enjoy. It’s been awhile since I wrote any kind of fan fiction but it was really fun being back in the mindset to write it. 

Oh and for a small summary?

This stories taking place as of now starting in season 2. I’ll see where it goes, since I’m only half way through that season right now. 

-This story follows Samantha Shan/Sam (OC) and she’s possibly hiding some feelings for her boss Aaron Hotchner, despite their significant age gap. This story starts off with a case gone wrong, and Sam becoming the victim. The story will be following her journey through the fallout of that day.-

“No.” Aaron said, firmly. He looked over at Derek Morgan, hoping for some back up. “She’s not doing it.”

“Hotch, she looks exactly like the victim profile we need. I’ll be with her every step of the way. It’s risky, but we’ll keep her safe.”

“I’m fine with it.” I spoke, fiddling with my pen. I don’t know why Aaron won’t let me decide for myself. After all, I’d be the one that was closest to the danger. 

“Are you sure, Sam?” Aaron finally looked at me. Maybe starting to give in. 

“We have a serial killer who tortures his victims and we know how he targets them. I trust you guys to have my back.”

So, I guess, looking back. That was how I ended up here. Samantha Shan, praying to whatever god that may or may not exist that I can get this damn bleeding to stop before someone on my team walks in or I pass out from blood loss. 

What happened you ask? Well, I think before we figure out how I let things go this far, I show you how it all started. 

————

8 months earlier

On the plane home from Longmont, CO, I sat by Aaron. I know he’s worried about me. The team didn’t have my back in time. I was grabbed by our rapist and I was kept in his moms basement for 3 days, 17 hours and 22 minutes. 

I know being the other “baby” on the team didn’t work in my favor. I’m 23, only a year younger than our favorite doctor, Spencer Reid. Who by the way, keeps eyeing me like I’m going to break. 

I bring my knees to my chest, I hate how they’re looking at me like I’m weak. Like one wrong thing is going to break me. 

“You okay, Sam?” Aaron looked up from his file at me. I could see that he was genuinely concerned. I know he cares, and they all do. 

“Fine.” I looked away, glancing out the window. In the reflection, I see him look at Gideon, as Spencer, JJ, and Morgan all look at each other. 

“Seriously, everyone, I’m fine. I knew the risks with agreeing to play bait.” I sighed. “I’m going to try to sleep.” I laid back, shutting my eyes. Hoping sleep would finally come back to me. 

I was shaken awake by Aaron, what felt like a few minutes later, but was really a couple hours later. 

“Sam, we’re almost back on the ground. I’m going to have someone take you back home, okay?”

“Hotch… I’m heading back to the office. I have a lot of paperwork to do after this. I’m fine, okay?”

“I think you should get some rest. Its been a long few days. No one expects you to go back to work right away.”

“I want to.” 

“I don’t think that’s the best thing to do. How about you head back home today and then tomorrow you can start on your paperwork.”

“I’ll stay with her, I have some things I can do back at the office.” Reid jumps in. 

“If you’re sure Reid.” Aaron says, not looking too happy about the arrangement. 

“I’m sure.” They both glanced back at me. I nodded and stretched. 

Aaron drops us all back at the office. While everyone else makes their way to their own cars to head home, Reid and me head upstairs. 

“You don’t have to stay with me tonight Reid. I’m not going to be much company. A lot of paperwork from that last case and all.” 

“You really shouldn’t be alone right now. After a traumatic event…” I cut him off with a look that could easily be the definition of ‘if looks could kill.’

“Stay if you must, but I’m going to be working.” 

I’ll give him some credit. I didn’t think he’d stay overnight at the office with me, in complete silence. 

9am came around pretty fast and I’d just finished my report about 10 minutes earlier. Hotch comes into the office, making his way over to his space.

“Morning Sam, morning Reid.”

He turns around real fast.

“Sam, Reid, did you guys go home at all last night?”

“No.” Reid said, glancing at me. 

“I told him too. He just didn’t listen.” 

“Sam, can we talk?” 

“I guess.” I got up and followed Aaron to his office. 

He closed the door behind us, motioning for me to sit.

“I’m sorry.” He said as we both sat down. Why… why was he of all people sorry? He tried to turn this idea down. He said no. 

“For what? Making us have so much paperwork so I didn’t go home..?” 

“For putting you in a situation where you got hurt.”

“Don’t apologize to me, Hotch. I made the decision. I stick by what I chose to do.”

“If I pulled rank. If I told you no..”

“I would have done it anyways, and instead of sitting here with a man in custody… we’d be sitting here discussing how either he got away and I’m fired or we’re in the same position and discussing how I’m fired.” 

“You could have died.”

“We take that risk on every investigation we do.”

“Sam, I know I can’t begin to understand what happened to you, but I think it might be best if you take a couple weeks off and see someone.” 

“Aaron… I’m on a team of profilers. I’m fine. Every single person in our group will know the second I’m not. If it makes you feel any better, I won’t stay here all night again working.”

He sighed, pulling out a file and taking some notes. 

“The second, and I mean the very second, anyone brings a concern to me that you aren’t okay, I am personally making sure you get a psych eval. And that’s not a threat. It’s a promise.” 

“You won’t even need to do that. I’m fine. What happened, happened. We got our guy, you and everyone else got me back. It’s a risk of the job. I promise you, I am 100% totally fine.” 

If only that were true. 

[singingaboutwishingx]

last one for now- what were your favorite parts of writing this amazing series? what were the hardest parts to get through?

ahh!! love this question.

favorite parts:

donna’s birthday scene: when i first came up with the concept for that scene, i was like “oh, that’s evil. this is gonna rock” and it DID. i seriously had so much fun picking out music and writing it in a way that would give it the right ambience. i loved deciding that it would be “oldies night” at the bar, i loved having bram interrupt them, and i love, love, loved writing the bit where josh and donna are slow dancing.

original outline: my very first concept for the fic was “donna moss is thirty-one years old and a media consultant for taylor, kinsey & stone when she receives a phone call from a friend. annabeth schott calls her about toby ziegler, the new press secretary, and girl have you seen him? please help me. so naturally she goes down to dc to help annabeth (who used to work at tk&s— donna was her assistant before she got promoted) and she helps whip toby into shape and meets josh and there’s mild flirty banter and oh yeah, didn’t you tell the press about a secret plan to fight inflation? and anyway they fall in love.” i loved figuring out how donna got to be where she was and how she and josh could work together. the very first things i wrote were a full timeline of what i thought should happen in the story and a timeline for donna from the moment she arrived in nyc to the beginning of the story (which ended up becoming the altered red lights scene).

including canon things: it just absolutely tickled me to have established canon things show up (sometimes in the same way, sometimes not). there’s one particular note in my early outlining that stands out to me because i think it perfectly exemplifies what i was trying to do: “they can kind of both feel that this friendship was destiny”. even though things might be different, josh and donna are still josh and donna. they were bound to fall in love sometime.

hardest parts (under the cut):

the time: as mentioned before, sigue andando... took me nearly eight months to publish, and about seven of those were spent trying to get a first draft. it was mostly because i was very busy and didn’t always have time to sit down and make myself write, but there were so many times when i just wouldn’t be inspired. i would get stuck. there was a long, long time during which i was really afraid i wouldn’t finish it because i couldn’t find the right words or the right scenes or the right way to do something. i’m not going to lie, i was tentatively planning to release an unfinished version (original outlines, some of the scenes, etc) because while i was proud of what i had written and i wanted people to see it, i just didn’t think i had it in me to complete my story. there was a turning point around march where i realized that i did have it in me, and that’s when i started posting about it, partially as a motivator for myself—i knew that if you all heard about it, and at least one of you expressed interest, i would feel more like i could finish it.

the timeline: i went back and forth on the exact months over which sigue andando... would take place. i always knew that it needed to start in june 2005 because of the timing of leo’s heart attack/cj’s promotion, but i switched a couple times between starting donna’s santos campaign involvement in february 2006 or august 2006. a big jump, i know, but i was very worried about justifying donna being there for months before the dnc but not being hired as its communications director. i loved the nine months of slow burn for josh and donna, and it felt like i was cutting that down too much. i thought it felt rushed and cramped. i never loved the idea of starting in august, but at some point, i realized that a) i wasn’t even having josh hire her full-time or as more than a consultant before then, and b) i can imagine what their résumés looked like. donna may have consulted on some political campaigns, but louise has made a career out of specifically political communications and has several years of experience over donna.

eight years: i agonized for an extremely long time over how josh would exist without donna. donna’s timeline was easy to come up with, but how did josh make it this far? rosslyn and its aftermath were particularly difficult, as was figuring out why josh would leave for the santos campaign without donna’s exit to catalyze it. (once i figured it out, though, there was actually one draft of the scene where josh explained why he left where i thought i was having him explain it too well and i was like “okay. josh is not quite self-aware enough to go into this much depth. mans isn’t doing serious psychological evals on himself”, so i had to scale it back lol.)

“i wouldn’t stop for red lights”: this was a particularly hard one. when i wrote that scene originally, i just included the “red lights” line because why wouldn’t i? the more i thought about it, though, the more i realized that they weren’t there yet. there was no rosslyn. they’d known each other less than a year. each had feelings for the other, and they were pretty good friends at that point, but they just weren’t there. once i knew i had to change donna’s line, it took me so long to settle on describing the look on donna’s face and the “if it was you, i wouldn’t stop either.” this is mostly because i refused to let go of the “and donna turns and walks out the door and josh can’t breathe” line, which i’d written when it was still about red lights. i was like “but it has to be DRAMATIC”, and achieving that while still making the line make sense in the context of her character was very hard for me to do.

while in general, it was a joy to write this fic, it was super stressful at times—i think i was putting a lot of pressure on myself because it was so long.

i’m hosting a new york donna q&a in my ask box because i require attention. come ask me things!

[leqclerc]

i just adore your i want everything playlist!! if you wanted, could you tell us what made you pick each song and if there was a specific race that came to mind with them? (i was def thinking of bahrain for the first few songs!) love you 💛💛

Oh 🥺 First of all thank you so much 👉🏻👈🏻 I’m glad you liked it! 💕 Secondly, that’s a fantastic question and I’ll happily share my little, uh, director’s commentary. You’re spot on about the first few songs being based around Charles joining Ferrari and his first races in red, with the highs and lows of Bahrain obviously being a sort of character development milestone for him. In my head the playlist loosely chronicles his development throughout the 2019 season - although there’s a bit of 2020 creeping in there too, especially towards the end.  

1. Suzi Wu - Taken Care Of 

Use it to admit I’m not strong in a place where I feel invincible/Got some brand new shoes/I’ve got nothing left to lose/Baby don’t you know I just cruise/In a place where I feel invincible/Mama, Papa love me, I think so anyway/Mama, Papa love me, at least that’s what they say/Mama, Papa love me/I am a beautiful disgrace/I am so beautiful

Those lyrics just scream Charles to me, tbh. “Brand new shoes” and “nothing left to lose” made me think of Charles finally wearing red like he’s always dreamed and feeling both the elation and the pressure of being a Ferrari driver. There’s that high of feeling so self-assured and invincible, immediately followed by doubt and self-criticism, which, like you pointed out, has major Bahrain vibes.

2. Huntar - Expectations

Crawl, scrape your knees until you've won. Run, till doubt is filling up your lungs, it's always preying on the young/I try to drown it out, I still hear the sound/ Beating in my brain, running through my veins, I’ll never be the same/And oh, will it ever be enough?

Again, pretty self-explanatory. After he was signed some people were already skeptical, doubting if he’ll be able to handle the pressure of driving for Ferrari, up against a seasoned four-time world champion, wondering if maybe he got promoted too quickly. I’m sure he’s wondering that himself at the start of the season.

3. King Princess - Tough On Myself

Nobody told me to sit down and shut up and take this shit slowly/ I get too tough on myself/Sitting alone, making fun of myself

Another song in the same vein. Charles has admitted many times that he used to be quite impatient and wanted everything to quickly fall into place, and that often meant he was too hard on himself after making a mistake. 

4.  Josef Salvat - alone

Secretly I’m not as sordid as I say I am/I’m bursting at the seams waiting to hear again how great I am/ Doing my best to juice the last out of my youth before it ends/I wish I’d done it a bit better, kept my cool around the bends/ How can you leave me just right when my head and I can’t be alone?

This feels like post-Bahrain, or maybe even post-Baku. Obviously, Charles has definitely got a thing for praise and loves to seek approval from those he looks up to, people whose opinions he values. But again that’s contrasted with his tendency to self-flagellate when he makes an error.

5. L.A. Rose - Heat 

It’s not passion till you bleed a little for it/It’s not real its its gone and you no longer holding on to it/If we want to get close then we’ll need to get lost in the heat of it

This song, in my mind, marks the start of the “evil” arc. Monaco was pretty much a write-off, which hurts doubly in Charles’s case as it’s his home race and for the past few years he’s had shit luck on that track. Post-Monaco he had a good run, with three podiums in a row (France, Canada, Austria.) I think the general consensus is that Austria was sort of the beginning of that evil arc, with Max’s aggressive move being deemed legal by the stewards. It’s kind of a pivotal moment for him, having this victory snatched away in the final laps like that. I think it really made him sit down and re-evalute his strategy going forward - notice how he becomes visibly more daring and aggressive in his overtaking maneuvers after this, notably in his rematch against Max in Silverstone. What happened in Austria and how he felt afterwards shaped him going forward and sort of set the stage for the back half of the season and all the drama and controversy to come. 

6. Elley Duhé - Lost My Mind

A pain seeking, strange feelin’s taking over me/Please don’t judge me/I am acting, acting differently/Please always love me/Even though I lost my mind/Wake up, survive/I will get better, yeah, one day at a time/Something ain’t right, I lost my mind/But I could get better, one day at a time

This is kind of a follow-up to that, touching on that shift that occurs between Austria and Silverstone and shapes him going forward. Even if he knows something’s off in his behaviour he keeps at it, still in pursuit of a maiden victory.

7. Miki Ratsula - Wicked 

Maybe you’re already too broken/Maybe you can never see/Imma waste my time on this wicked feeling/These hands been burned too many times/Save my mind from the pain you’re dealing/Cut ties as I pick up on the signs/ I was way below the surface, I was hurting/Tell me how does it feel now

Another sort of darker song. I think this would work for that stretch around Belgium and Italy. He’s adding to his pole position collection, and in Spa he finally gets his first taste of victory (albeit tainted by the circumstances.) But victory goes hand in hand with more erratic, questionable behaviour and controversies (the qualy drama in Monza, for example, and then the whole black and white flag shenanigans during the race.) 

8. Halsey - Don’t Play

Alone out in Saint-Tropez/ Lookin’ as fine as a damn Monet/Tryna hydrate on Perrier/Everybody thirsty, drinks on me/ I’m moving on, I’m getting paid/I’m on my own, I had some space to deal with it/I’m moving on, it’s getting late/Go and grab someone and find a place to deal with it/Motherfucker, don’t play with me

He won in Spa, he wins in Monza. Prince of Ferrari, king of Monza. He’s a Grand Prix winner now. He’s been dubbed Il Predestinato and so far appears to be living up to the moniker. Obviously he gets a bit carried away with the hype of it all, starts feeling more confident as a person and as a driver, finally feeling like his hard work is paying off and he’s getting the results he deserves. Also I’m not sure about the exact timeline but I think the whole breakup thing might’ve happened around this time as well. Maybe he’s a bit sharper, a bit meaner now, more guarded, but isn’t that just a winner’s mentality?

9.  BONNIE X CLYDE - Bad Behavior

Taste like honey when we kiss/Weʼll be sinners you and I/Leave you with no alibi/Meet me at my bad behaviour/I know that youʼll thank me later/Everything you have is mine

Another “evil” arc song. I can see this being set around the Singapore-Russia stretch, with the “I want everything, I just think it’s not fair” radio message in Singapore and then the team strategy drama again in Russia. If you have shipping goggles on you can also assume Seb and Charles are having angry, no-strings-attached hookups around this time. 

10. Hayley Kiyoko - Demons

Don’t bother me, my misery/It’s holding me, won’t let me speak/Please forgive me, I've got demons in my head/Tryna eat me, tryna feed me lies until I’m dead/You can’t go and pray this type of pain away/ I feel like I can’t breathe, I feel like I can’t sleep/How did I not see? I’m unwell

Okay, this one’s just really vibey. And it plays on the whole fanon headcanon that Charles is some kind of demonic entity - there were a lot of fics being written around late 2019 about Charles making hellish deals and sacrificing his soul, being a demon, etc. I love the “How did I not see I’m unwell” part because maybe he does realise he’s acting in...strange, often disconcerting ways, but he’s in too deep now and he doesn’t know how to not to be like this.

11. PVRIS - Gimme a Minute 

A year of lows spent so high/Feeling like I’m out of time/Inner peace is hard to find/They’re asking why/I think I’m losing my mind/Just gimme a minute, gimme a minute/Thought I got through it, maybe I didn’t/Thought it was over, maybe it isn’t/Break a heart, the whole body falls apart/You will never know how far/I came broken from the start/You should know, but you don’t

Kind of skipping ahead now but this is giving me 2020 vibes, everything from “a year of lows spent so high” (I was considering using this line for the title of my fic, actually, but then went with something else), the whole “they’re asking why” thing...He’s trying his best but even that isn’t enough sometimes; the performance just isn’t there, he and Seb are living on borrowed time now that he’s leaving the team, and Charles has doubts about whether Ferrari will improve in time for him to win that coveted WDC, or if he’ll just be another name in a long line of drivers who failed to secure a title with the red team.

12. Fog Lake - Push

I don’t wanna be alone right now/God, I wish it was little bit later/Think I’d rather be asleep right now/Dream about some mistake I made/That’s why I spend each day just trying to get my head on straight/Think I’ll try just a little bit harder/Some people they waste their time/While others just play to stay/I don’t wanna do either of those things, I just wanna make it stop

This one’s slower and kind of moodier and I can easily imagine this playing in the background after Turkey - the grey sky, the rain, Charles’s self-loathing and guilt and anguish at making a mistake and throwing away what could’ve been a rare podium in an otherwise unremarkable season.

13. Phoebe Green - Maniac

Your fragile heart and your paper skin/Such a beautiful boy filled with so much sin/Your reflection is your very worst enemy/Behind the glass is an angel, but the devil’s beneath/You’re so lonely, choked on money/Do you ever feel like you completely?/You’re so quiet, eyes look tired/You look like you’re barely alive/You’re so pretty when you’re spitting in the sink, but you can’t think straight

I think thematically this one’s more 2019 than 2020 but it sonically fit better down here, towards the end of the playlist. The first time I heard it I was floored by how well the lyrics fit with all these fanon headcanons about !depressed Charles and how he’s wallowing in misery and has all these unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

14. Amber DeLaRosa - Burden

I could always be better/ I’m just a burden and I need your love/I’m so uncertain, tired of yearning/ I’m just a call for love, but you can’t get closer/Somehow I’m always too much, yet never enough

We’re getting into the last few songs and they’re definitely on the shippy side. This one’s just peak pining, emotionally constipated Charles, wanting something Seb can’t necessarily give him. Also heavy on self-loathing.

15. Saro - Please 

Please let me be the promise that you keep/Offering my soul for something real/A sacrifice to feel/Please let me be the weakness in your knees/Part me from my heart, my fate is sealed/A sacrifice so I can feel/ Don’t call me a mistake, don’t throw me away/Maybe our time is up, maybe I’m not enough

My personal favourite from this playlist, hands down. Intensely pining Charles, trying to make the best of his time with Seb, knowing they don’t have much of it left. I --- god, I can see him, like, getting on his knees and offering himself and just wanting to give himself to Seb completely and---fuck. Massive see you falling fic vibes.

16. 5 Seconds of Summer - Lonely Heart

Down on my knees, I’ll always follow/I promise you until the end of time/If you leave me in the morning I’ll have such a—Such a lonely heart/If you can’t find another reason to stay, then I know I’m gonna always have a lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely heart/ Your precious heart, can’t watch it break/So I close my eyes while you walk away/Can I have a second chance? Can I have another dance? Can I start another life with you?/When I wake up in a haze and I haven't slept in days you’re a thousand miles away

I’ll be honest, I never really paid much attention to 5SOS, but someone linked me their playlist and they had “Red Desert” on it and...honestly the more I listened to their new album the more it hit me that so many of their songs have Sebchal vibes? And also they’re just, like, vibey. I already used “Lover Of Mine” on my Sebchal playlist, and here’s another song. Kind of an angsty ending, but fitting imo.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN PROGRAMMERS

It's a todo list protocol, the new investor will take a chunk of the company being sold. These ideas didn't just seem small. Writing eval required inventing a notation representing Lisp functions as Lisp data, and such a notation was devised for the purposes of the paper with no thought that it would be used to express Lisp programs in practice. Isn't computer technology something that changes very rapidly? That doesn't mean people are getting angrier. After many email exchanges with Java hackers, I would say that. If we want to keep this option open, the best way to do this is through contacts. When fundraising is going well, investors are quick to sense it in your increased confidence. I am daily waiting for the line to collapse. Plus a company that would become big. Look in the mirror.

When we talk to them they seem grimly determined. It's a big advantage, when you're considering an idea like this is that when you have ideas, you'll be able to do in the new world we'll have in a few thousand, but those few thousand users. There's no real answer. How do you do? Similarly, since the most successful founders tend to work on ideas that few beside them realize are good. It was the usual story: he'd drop out if it looked like the startup was taking off. There must be things you need. People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen.

That is so much more distracting that I had to choose between the just-do-it model does have advantages. That's a known danger sign, like drinking alone. Cars aren't the worst thing you can say that they didn't have the courage of their convictions, and that email has to be more than a pretentious version of u r a fag.1 While the best way to get started in angel investing is to find a smoking gun, a passage in whatever you disagree with that you feel is mistaken, and then advertised this as a danger is that series A investors often make companies take more money than they have in the West. In America, if you want to buy us. So if you want to be on a larger scale than Youtube clips. One of the two founders was still in grad school. But that means each partner ends up being responsible for investing a lot of control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind, but you have less control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind. If learning breaks up into many little pieces, credentialling may separate from it. The other reason the number of big hits won't grow proportionately to the number of big hits is the number of temptations around you. If a startup succeeds, you get bad ones that sound dangerously plausible.

Where is the breakeven point? It would seem a misnomer if someone said they were very determined to do something, as Nike says, just do it.2 Why do you get so much email? Thousands of programmers were in a position where failure will be public and humiliating.3 We've done this five times now, and unlike other American companies, they're obsessed with good design. They're smart; they're working in a promising field; and they just cannot give up. For example, I'd tell myself I was only going to use the Internet twice a day. If you're in grad school, but it happens so often to varying degrees in large programming projects that there is an intersection—that there are good ideas that seem bad. To hundreds of thousands or in rare cases even millions.

One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to ask what you wish someone would make for you? I must have been wasting. And in fact the two forces are related: the decreasing cost of starting a startup—becoming the sort of person, you have to be a good trick to look for things that seem to be closer to the Apple type than the Viaweb type. What about returns, though? The other reason the number of failures and yet leave you net ahead.4 If you work together with them on projects, you'll end up producing not just organic ideas, but organic ideas with organic founding teams—and that, empirically, is the best combination. Most people would agree it's more admirable to be good people, and so on.5

But if you talk to. What would it mean to disagree well? A lot of the reason is that the scariness of starting a startup in the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. After 15 cycles of preparing startups for investors and then watching how they do, I can easily replace them. It may also be because if you start measuring something you start optimizing it, and they can choose those rare companies, like Google, or entering a market that looks small but which will turn out to be a large tumor.6 This works well in some fields and badly in others. Because you get a lot of them about halfway to Lisp.

And even if it weren't, compilers are the sort of person who has them. Most programmers wish they could start a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? Once they invest in a startup run by a couple of nobodies who are trying to squash them to keep their monopoly pricing. And if you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for a replacement for x. We take these for granted now, but only to have designed a new dialect of Lisp. 05, or 4. And so most of them happier. The way to get lots of referrals. Mostly because of the increasing number of early failures, the startup business of the future won't simply be the same shape.

Traditional journalism, for example, started angel investing about a year after me, and he was pretty much immediately as good as me at picking startups. Now everyone can, and we don't realize how lucky we are that it is briefer and more comprehensible than the description of a universal Turing machine. How do you do that you raise too many expectations. And only good people can ride the thermals if they hit them anyway. The pointy-haired boss right, for example. Another feeling that seems alarming but is in fact normal in a startup run by a couple grad students. The low points in a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? VCs are the way they want.7

Notes

Xkcd implemented a particularly clever one in a rice cooker and forget about it.

The expensive part of their upbringing in their graves at that. A scientist isn't committed to rejecting it. 5, they are like, and at least one of the techniques for stopping spam. Financing a startup to an employer, I had a big deal.

As willful people get serious about tax avoidance. Their opinion carries the same ones. At first I didn't need to be a big company CEOs in the trade press.

It also set off an extensive biography, and one different qualities that some of those you should seek outside advice, and only one restaurant left on the cover story of creation in the middle class values; it is still a dick move. But iTunes shows that they either have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. This is everyday life in Palo Alto to have to track down.

And while it makes people feel good. I would take Abelson and Sussman's quote a number of words: I wouldn't bet against it either. All he's committed to believing in natural selection in the US in 2002 was 3.

Incidentally, Google may appear to be considered an angel round from good investors that they imitate even the best ways to avoid collisions in. And then of course.

Hypothesis: A company will either be a good product. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then they're not ready to invest at a discount of 30% means when it converts. Revenue will ultimately be hurting yourself, because investors already owned more than one who passes. As well as problems that have been five years ago they might have to give it additional funding at a discount to whatever the valuation of the decline in families eating together was due to the browser, the users' need has to convince limited partners.

[bicycle-brakes]

[tl;dr] processing mental illness diagnosis, feelings, vague poetry, gut reactions

i was on the phone with my doc today, giving her an update on my session with the psychiatrist who diagnosed me. i asked about documentation for my uni’s accessibility centre, who i had to talk to, etc., and she will send me the letter i need in the mail. she was saying out loud for me what she was writing on the paper, and she said, “diagnoses... adhd and anxiety disorder.”

nothing has hit me harder than the word disorder, and i gotta process this feeling, friends. it felt like my insides caved in on themselves when i heard that word. the sunrise that my adhd diagnosis brought me turned my body to stone when i heard the word ‘disorder’. and the thing is - it’s in the goddamn name. that last D stands for disorder, but so long as i stick to the acronym and don’t try to say it long form, i’m still intact. but lined up behind ‘anxiety,’ my stone body just crumbled onto my living room floor.

i understand that adhd is a lifelong thing, there is no cure, only treatment, and perhaps i’ll process my feelings on that in the future, but this anxiety disorder thing makes me want to curl up in a ball under my bed and not come out.

i know there’s a ton of internalized ableism ripping through me right now. and i’m not sure what to do with these feelings, besides scream into the tumblr void. i have a lot of those “you were functional enough/you still went to work/you still went to school/you still got out of bed” thoughts running through my head, trying to convince myself that i was fine. i cannot tell you how many years i’ve been spinning this narrative to myself while my mental health and sense of self have been garbage for as far back as i can remember. and my memory is hella patchy and disjointed.

[I don’t know how to do a ‘Keep reading’ cut, so I’m letting you know that below there are brief mentions of a hospital visit, suicide, and a dismissive doctor.]

i remember going to the hospital in february. i remember telling my friend i can’t wait for the next panic attack. can you come get me, because i need to go now, before this crisis ebbs away and i’ve convinced myself i’m fine again.

“at which point exactly do you go get help? it’s gotta be before i jump in front of a bus, because suicide not a viable option for me, but i can’t see where the sidewalk ends and the road begins. how bad do i have to be to go get help? i don’t want to die, but i need a break.” i told the doctor at the hospital this (one that specializes in mental health, i might add), and it felt like she just dismissed me as a burnt out uni student. (yes, AND MORE)

“you’re borderline depressed,” she told me. i know i’m depressed - there’s no borderline about it. i’ve known that on some level since puberty. this isn’t just university student overwhelm.

the one good thing that came out of that meeting was a reccommendation for an adhd eval.

that feeling of ‘if only i could put my life on pause so i can catch my breath’ has been followed me around for years. calling it anxiety disorder isn’t relieving the same way the adhd diagnosis is. it just feels like another failure.

[fayewonglibrary]

A Cantopop Dream Girl’s First Film Reverie (2019)

By Oliver Wang

If you weren’t a devotee of the Cantopop world in the early 1990s, the casting of Faye Wong in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) may not have caught your attention. Starring in her first major role, the singer looked much the fresh ingenue, cropped coif, tinted sunglasses, and all. Her character—also named Faye—was played with such a frenetic, awkward energy that she may well have been the blueprint for the “manic pixie dream girl” trope.

In Asia, though, Wong had already become one of the region’s biggest pop stars by 1994, and the movie premiered a month after Wong had released Random Thoughts, her eighth album in six years. To put her casting in contemporary terms: imagine a promising but still unproven art-house filmmaker convincing Ariana Grande to star in a low-budget indie film that happened to come out weeks after the release of her chart-topping Thank U, Next. For Wong Kar-wai (WKW), Chungking Express was a breakout international hit, but for Faye Wong, it was one highlight in an already meteoric career.

Landing a genuine pop star was a kind of capstone for a director whose previous films had already shown a deep love for the power of pop songs. A key scene in WKW’s debut film, As Tears Go By (1988), is built around a jukebox playing Sandy Lam’s Cantonese cover of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away.” The mysterious, mesmerizing title scene in Days of Being Wild (1990), set amid jungle foliage, makes use of the minor 1964 instrumental hit “Always in My Heart,” by the Brazilian guitar duo Los Indios Tabajaras. One wonders if, in an alternate timeline, WKW would have made a great, taste-making DJ.

Chungking Express is WKW’s greatest “jukebox” film for many reasons, including its casting of Faye Wong and its prominent placement of pop tracks, plus the fact that the director uses not one but two different jukeboxes in pivotal scenes. The actual number of songs isn’t as extensive as in Scorsese or Tarantino films of the same era, but the four tunes used most strategically in Chungking Express are each repeated at least twice. In the film’s first half (which features a young Takeshi Kaneshiro alongside the legendary Brigitte Lin in her final film role), Dennis Brown’s somber 1973 reggae single “Things in Life” plays four times. In the second half, which focuses on the unconventional relationship between Faye Wong’s Faye and Tony Leung’s Cop 663, we hear Dinah Washington’s 1959 version of “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” twice and the Mamas and the Papas’ iconic 1966 single “California Dreamin’” a staggering nine times.

Most of these uses are diegetic, played on jukeboxes, CD players, or stereos. As we, the audience, listen to the music, we’re also watching people on-screen listening to music. Because of this, the songs in Chungking Express don’t just enhance ambiance, they also craft character, and these two streams flow together sublimely with “Dream Lover,” the Cantopop cover of an alternative rock hit by the Cranberries from 1992, performed by none other than Faye Wong.

Born Wang Fei in mainland China, Wong moved with her family from Beijing to Hong Kong in the eighties to pursue a performing career. Her first record label, trying to avoid associations with the mainland, gave her the generic, Anglicized stage name “Shirley Wong.” Her early albums sold, but after a few years, frustrated with her lack of creative control, she took a hiatus and relocated to New York City in 1991 as a gesture of escape and self-discovery. We can only assume she was also immersing herself in the trans-Atlantic pop scene of that time.

We don’t know if Wong heard the original “Dreams” in New York, but by the time she covered the song on Random Thoughts, the Cranberries’ song had become a signature hit twice over. It was the Irish band’s debut single from the fall of 1992, but they also rereleased it in the spring of 1994, after the massive success of their follow-up single, “Linger.” My friend, music writer Ned Raggett, described it as “a brisk, charging number combining low-key tension and full-on rock,” which is to say it’s a song filled with a sense of taut control but also giddy release. It’s easy to imagine how Wong, seeking to reclaim her artistic autonomy, might have been drawn to it.

Upon returning to Hong Kong in 1992, Wong reclaimed her birth name by changing her stage name to Faye Wong, and she immediately began to score a string of best-selling albums, many featuring covers of alternative rock hits. “Dream Lover” isn’t the only example to appear on Random Thoughts; the album also includes a pair of Cocteau Twins’ covers.

Showcasing “Dream Lover” in Chungking Express so close to Random Thoughts’ release was surely a savvy marketing move, common in the Hong Kong entertainment industry. However, the use of the song—alongside Wong’s real-life stardom—also works beautifully with the narrative and logic of the movie. From the moment Faye is introduced at the start of the second half, she’s already living in a dream of sorts. When we first meet both her and Cop 663 (Tony Leung), she’s working at her cousin’s food stand and blasting “California Dreamin’” out of a kitchen stereo. It’s so loud that 663 has to awkwardly shout at Faye just to put in his order, but Faye seems unfazed by the volume. With each repeated playing of the song, we’re meant to hear it as a commentary on Faye’s dissatisfaction with the drudgery of work and her weariness of Hong Kong’s gloomy, wet climate. California—“safe and warm”—represents a fantasy to escape to, first in her imagination, later in reality.

“Dream Lover” obviously extends the same “dream” theme, but as it’s also performed by Wong the singer, in scenes featuring Faye the character, there’s a rich meta-text at play. In “Dreams,” the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan sings of trying to grapple with her sense of fantasy and reality in the context of an existing relationship. Wong’s “Dream Lover” has different lyrics that seem to recast the song as one about a lover who may be real or may be imagined. That ambiguity echoes Faye’s infatuation with 663, which she goes out of her way to avoid making explicit. 663 may be the lover in her dreams but not one she is keen to pursue in reality. As if to stress this point, we first hear “Dream Lover” after Faye has stolen his apartment keys in order to sneak in to dust his shelves, swap labels on his pantry cans, even drug his water bottle so she can continue her clandestine cleaning while he’s passed out. (This probably seemed more quirky and charming in 1994. Today, it’d likely be cause for a restraining order and psych eval.) Faye wants to be in 663’s presence, but only indirectly. She has more of a relationship with his domicile than with him.

That first use of “Dream Lover” is played under a montage of an extended cleaning session, and cinematographer Christopher Doyle shoots Wong with a handheld camera, adding to the already off-balance feeling of the scene. My colleague Brian Hu has astutely noted in a video essay that this shooting style seems to deliberately mirror the aesthetics of Wong’s music videos of the time. Hu’s analysis posits both the movie and music videos were shot in such a way to present Wong/Faye as a “whimsical dreamer,” “a free spirit,” “inquisitive and mysterious.” Moreover, in real life, Wong left Hong Kong to “find herself” in the U.S., and that story would have been well-known to any Cantopop fan watching Chungking Express. Film Faye is so tightly interwoven with Faye Wong that one wonders, if Wong had been unavailable or uninterested in the role, would WKW have abandoned the character or storyline completely?                                      

When I first sat in a Bay Area theater to watch Chungking Express in the mid-nineties, I knew absolutely none of Wong’s backstory, and yet I still found the song immensely affecting, especially when it returns a second time, forming a coup de grace moment during the film’s final scene.

To recap: the last chapter in Chungking Express occurs a year after Faye has decided that, rather than meet with 663 at the California Bar, she’s going to travel to the actual California instead to see if it lives up to her dream. Now a stewardess, Faye drops by her cousin’s food stand only to find 663 there, no longer a police officer but now the stand’s owner. Before, Faye was the one infatuated with “California Dreamin’,” but now it’s 663 playing the song, also loudly, on the kitchen stereo. He is surprised but clearly pleased to see her. She, however, is nervous about having her “dream lover” in front of her and begins to make excuses to leave. At this point, the will-they/won’t-they tension from earlier in the film returns, and as viewers invested in their potential pairing, we’re left anxious that this moment too will end without resolution.

But 663 then retrieves the letter Faye had left him the night she departed. It’s a hand-drawn boarding pass but rainwater has blurred out the destination, and Faye offers to write him a new one. When asked where he wants to go, 663 replies, “Wherever you want to take me,” and the last we see of the pair is Faye inking a new pass on a napkin while 663 stares with affectionate intensity. One final moment flashes back to the stereo, where “California Dreamin’” had been playing just before. This time, it’s “Dream Lover” that swells up and kicks in before the end credits flash on.

Ending with a song as robust as “Dream Lover” doesn’t just reinforce the movie’s unique, unpredictable energy, it also captures something of how we often experience dreams themselves: as intense but disjointed bursts of images and emotion that we wake from, momentarily disoriented yet filled with feeling. The exuberance of the song offers a form of musical catharsis for all the deliciously confusing tension that’s built up over the past hour. We don’t know for certain what will happen to Faye and 663 after this scene, but what the sound of “Dream Lover” offers in the moment is a rousing sense of possibility. The song’s sonic verve—with its “low-key tension” and energetic release—fuels hope that our lovers may not be so star-crossed after all, as they pursue their romantic dreams, wherever those may take them.

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SOURCE: THE CRITERION COLLECTION

[louisamariemonroe]

accessing file . . . LOUISA MONROE ! 

UNREDACTED CASE FILE NO. 4192157-MQZ. records show that agent aglaea, given name LOUISA MARIE MONROE, was last seen in narbonne on november 30 2019. psych eval describes them as altruistic and meddlesome but otherwise fit for service at the maenads agency. at twenty-two, they have been recruited as a junior agent for the two years. associations include: the peace that comes from long train rides, the soft patter of rain on the sidewalk, the curiosity catalysed from blurry photographs. end of file.   -   diana silvers, cisfemale, she/her as written by N, 18, GMT+8, they/them.

CHILDHOOD

lou was born on a summer day in lake geneva, wisconsin to andrew and carla monroe who were succesful owners to a big 5-star hotel in lake geneva, so louisa grew up comfortably, kinda fed with a silver spoon 

she was a spoiled kid, always given grand and pretty presents from her parents, she was an only child so a lot of the focus was on her 

her parents were often busy with their work though so it was basically the nanny who raised her and it was her nanny who made sure that she didn’t grow up to be a brat 

ever since she was a kid, she was always selfless and always wanted to share her toys with the other kids, she was liked by most adults because she never threw tantrums, she was patient and she was really friendly and had lots of charm when she was little 

YOUTH

she was seventeen when she found out that her parents were agents at the maenads agency and so were her grandparents (on both sides) and that their hotel was only a cover-up for a mission

carla and andrew were never supposed to have a kid, they were assigned a mission and the mission required them to pretend to be husband and wife who were new owners to this hotel but they fell in love and accidentally had louisa and they chose to keep the baby because it would make their story more believable 

she found out that her parents were agents when she got taken at seventeen years by the people that her agent parents were tracking, she was held hostage because they knew that carla and andrew really cared about her and so they used that to draw them in 

this was very traumatic and she still has nightmares about the night and never has fully recovered from it

after she was rescued about a week later, she was sent by her parents to a boarding school in london for her own protection 

ADULTHOOD

she joined the maenads agency when she turned twenty partly because she wanted to be a field agent and become like her parents but mostly because she wanted to see her parents again, she never saw them again after she was sent off to boarding school and it was her grand-father who helped her get into the agency 

she really wants some answers, she’s still really confused with what’s real and what’s not and she’s got lots of questions 

unfortunately she got more than what she bargained for and is now stuck in this junior agent lifestyle, it’s not that she never wanted to go into this type of work, its just that she never really expected it to happen so early

so at twenty-two, lou’s been a junior agent for two years and is definitely not the top of her class/unit and has got a lot to work on 

PERSONALITY 

louisa is very naive, she’s very much like a child, despite being on a number of missions and basically being told NEVER to trust anyone, she trusts EVERYONE and is super friendly with everyone, she also tends to be put everyone’s needs before her own 

she’s not used to the grit and gore of being in this field of work, so during missions she’s quite clumsy (and even during ordinary days, she just can’t seem to get along well with gravity) she’s always falling or tripping or bumping into objects or people

she’s not sly at all, she’s very bad at acting and just a BIG, AWKWARD, GOOF but she’s really trying her best 

she’s really self-less and often forgets about herself and her needs and prioritises others to a dangerous extent and its because she feels that she has to give other people 100% because of the neglect she experienced in her childhood 

RANDOM HEADCANONS 

zoning out during class or training 

random bursts of energy 

very optimistic and greets everyone she walks past

random notes on her hands from when an idea or a theory appears in her mind 

messy handwriting 

usually found sleeping on her desk 

horrible at anything physical but is really trying her best 

better at languages, besides english she can speak Mandarin Chinese, Polish and Russian, she’s currently trying to learn Danish  

has lots of cups of coffee 

very good at taking naps (can take a nap virtually anywhere) 

WANTED CONNECTIONS 

best friend 

childhood friend

family friend

neighbour

roommate 

training buddy 

senior agent buddy

ex-boyfriends 

confidant 

OOC

hey guys it’s N, i’m in the GMT+8 timezone and i’m super excited to write for louisa, i love writing goofy characters but i hope you guys love her awkwardness as much as i do !!!! i’d love to hash out something between our characters so please like this post to plot !!!! i can’t wait to meet you guys and your characters !!!!