lollyglass

[universitypenguin]

Hey, can I get some writing advice?

So, after you come up with a story idea what do you do next?

Do you brainstorm for that story? Or make a character profile?

Because I have a story idea and idk what to do next. I read about it and they say to brainstorm but then I'm like "how am I going to right if I don't know who I'm writing? " But then I feel like I'm not doing it correctly.

I know it sounds silly but I would really appreciate some help. 🙏

So, I had to think about this one for a while, because the way I write has changed so much over the years. What I've put together is more geared towards how I used to write when I was developing my skills.

Without further ado, here's my official advice.

The most important thing you can do is realize that not everything you write is gold, and that's fine. Never compare your unedited draft to someone else's published work.

As C.J. Cherryh once said:

"It's perfectly okay to write garbage - as long as you edit it brilliantly."

Be consistent about writing and keep going, even on the days when you're not getting very far. Even on days when you know your writing sucks, write anyways. (They made the delete button for a reason. Go make your mistakes, and cover up the evidence as you see fit.) Forming the habit of writing regularly is what turns you into a writer more than anything.

Step #1: Pre-Writing

When I first get a story idea, I take time to daydream about it. Letting my mind wander is usually the best thing to do in these moments. At first, I don’t take any notes. I just like to see what sticks. If the idea drifts away, I assume it wasn’t meant to be and move on. If it sticks around and keeps circling back, then I know it’s a thread I probably should start spinning. 

Next, I like to do concept maps. The quick diagram with bubbles and arrows that show relationships helps me organize things in a simple manner. This step usually helps me enlarge the plot and figure out what I need and what’s extraneous. 

The most important thing about prewriting is to make sure your story has a solid conflict and at least four parts. These four parts are: 

Introduction

Inciting Incident

Immediate Reaction

Reaction

If these conditions seem to be fulfilled I begin writing.

Step #2: Writing

Step two is writing. Here, I’ve found the best thing to do is write while the idea is hot. This is when I do my best writing, when the emotion is fresh and my mood is just right. However… I usually have an amazing writing day about once every two years. So, I have to do what most mere mortals do. I sit down at my desk, put my hands on the keyboard, and demand of myself that I at least produce 200 words. Once I’ve hit that mark there’s usually some momentum going, which makes the next 200 words much easier.

This is where I write the first four chapters, which are what I listed out above. The introduction, the inciting incident, the character’s immediate reaction, their considered reaction after they’ve had their “off the cuff” reaction, and then I stop. 

Here, it’s good to take a step back and look at what you’ve written. Does the story have enough conflict? How does your character sound and feel? Are you enjoying yourself? I think writing four chapters should be enough to identify if you’ve got a story or if you need to develop the idea a bit more.

Step #3: Developmental Editing

Whatever the answers to those questions are, I usually do some developmental editing at this point. I might not finish the story, but it’s always good to flex your creative muscles and see if you can fix something that’s flawed. 

To develop an idea, I rely on story structure. There are a lot of good resources out there for structure. My first experience with structure was from the 27 scene outline. 

In my opinion, this is a great way to learn how to form a coherent plot. It’s very exact in laying out the story beats a writer needs to hit. That said, it’s also very constraining. I used this to learn how to form a narrative, but since then I’ve become more flexible with my story structures. 

Other plot structures I’ve enjoyed using are the beat sheet from “Save the Cat,” as well as four act structure, and six act structure. Each of these presentations of a story structure has its strengths and weaknesses, so figuring out what methods appeal to your style and what doesn’t work, is very useful. For short fiction there’s a thing called the “seven point” structure which I often refer to even now. Short fiction is not among my strengths… so I have to work harder at it than I would a novel. 

Another great resource for developmental editing is the YouTube channel run by Ellen Brock. She’s an editor and posts really informative videos about things like what type of writer are you, which is a very useful thing to understand when you're trying to write. She also has a phenomenal story structure series that’s one of the best I’ve come across. 

If you’re struggling, turn to other sources of inspiration. For myself, I like to read about the craft of writing. It's always good to remember that inspiration comes and goes, but skills can earn you an income. My book recommendations would be: 

Save the Cat - Blake Snyder 

Plot and Structure - James Scott Bell 

How to Write Dazzling Dialogue - James Scott Bell 

On Writing - Stephen King

Lastly, always remember this quote from Ray Bradburry:

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

I hope this has been helpful. Also, I love to talk about the craft of writing, so feel free to message me if you have any follow up questions!

[thestarsarecool]

Ok I don’t know why and maybe it’s just me, but I honest to god do not care that much about the editing choices in Get Back that cobble conversations together and show alternate footage. I just don’t think any of the editing decisions deeply misconstrue what is happening. The alternate footage thing I just kind of accepted from the get go and never really bugged me. The cobbled together conversations are slightly more annoying. The worst example is probably the lunchroom tape, and even that I don’t think fundamentally changes THAT much?* The doc is trying to give an accurate portrayal of what happened at large and I believe it succeeds in that mission. I don’t expect it to be more than the cliff notes of what actually happened, and it’s a damn good cliff notes in my opinion. The nagras (and multiple other resources) are still there for historians to use. My only wish is for Peter Jackson to release cleaned up audio (and video footage?) as a sort of official bootleg? What a boon for historians that would be. I doubt Apple would allow that though.

*I guess this must bug me more than I admit to myself though because I have already written multiple drafts of a letter asking PJ to release the full lunchroom tape with audio all cleaned up as a special exclusive bonus episode. You know, “pay $5 to see the full unedited private conversation on the day George left the Beatles!” A thirty minute or so bonus episode is the perfect length and it has such a strong draw. It may be longer though cause sometimes two conversations are happening at once so maybe you would need to put those separately if the audio could be extracted? And PJ already essentially admitted to the full convo not just being John and Paul in the official Get Back book, so that may not be that big of a problem. I need to hand write it all out and find the correct address. Maybe we should all join in a letter writing campaign together lmao.

[farfromtommy]

All I Need Is You

not my gif

PLEASE READ WARNINGS AND AUTHORS NOTE

THIS PIECE CONTAINS POSSIBLE TRIGGERING CONTENT FOR READERS

word count: approx. 6800

warnings: TW: talk of miscarriage there is talk of blood if is an uncomfortable topic for you please please do not read. it is not graphic and not in extreme detail but it is there, angst, language, talk of sex and unprotected sex (no smut but it gets a lil spicy), childbirth and breastfeeding, fluffly fluff throughout 

summary: tom wants kids, y/n doesn’t, but that’s okay. but after the birth of their godson and after meeting y/n’s best friend’s new baby, something changed.

a/n: this story does contain mild descriptions of blood and miscarriage, but is not the main plot to the story. i have never gone through one personally, but i did research and used some prior knowledge while writing this. please know that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone who has had a miscarriage or been affected in any way. if this story offends anyone in anyway, please let me know and i will take it down. this is all a work of fiction. this does contain possible triggering content and i will be putting a warning during the part and after. i will be linking some resources available for anyone who has had a miscarriage or is being affected by one in anyway. you are not alone. 

The topic of kids and when you were going to have them was not unfamiliar to you and Tom. You had been together since you were both 18 and now engaged at 23. You and Tom have been giving people the same answers whenever they asked when you were having kids for years. “We’re not ready to have kids yet” or “It’s not a priority for us at the moment”

You knew Tom had had an itch of baby fever for a while and he had expressed his desire to become a father in the future, but only when you’re ready to become a mother, but you weren’t sure if you were ever going to be.

About 6 months after your engagement, his parents had managed to get everyone under the same roof at the same time for dinner and had bombarded you with comments and questions about when they were to expect a grandbaby. They had been hearing your reasons for not having had kids yet for years and weren’t accepting those answers anymore. Tom told them that you were both focusing on planning the wedding and would visit the topic after if the timing was right.

The timing would never be right, Tom felt. He had asked you a few times about the possibility of having a baby in the future and he only ever managed to get short answers out of you and then the topic was dismissed. Harry and Sam asked him about it privately and Tom expressed his concerns to them about your seeming lack of interest in even having a conversation about it. They encouraged him to sit you down and talk it out like adults. With the wedding planning starting to pick up, he knew this conversation had to happen to make sure you were both on the same page.

~~~

After his conversation with his brothers, Tom had finally worked up the courage to approach you about the baby talk and was going to put his foot down and not let you dismiss it.

“Darling, can we talk about something?” Tom asked one night as you were pulling back the sheets to get into bed. You had crawled onto your side of the bed and set your phone on the nightstand to give him your undivided attention.

“Yeah, baby, of course. What’s on your mind?” You said softly, leaning back against the headboard. Tom sat across from you on the foot of the bed with his legs crossed, leaning back on his hands. He took a deep breath and collected his thoughts before speaking.

“We have talked briefly about this a few times before, but we’ve never sat down and talked about it, and I think it's past time we did. Do you want kids?” He asked bluntly and looked you in the eyes. He saw your demeanor change just slightly when your eyes widened a bit. You looked down at your hands and wrung them nervously trying to find your words.

“I know I keep avoiding the topic, and I’m sorry. But if I’m being honest, I don’t think so. I’ve never been able to see myself as a mother and having a big family and all that. I thought that maybe when we got engaged and bought this house that I would change my mind and feel different, but I don’t.” You whispered the last part and kept your eyes on your hands.

“I’m so so sorry, Tom. I know that you want a family and kids but I don’t know if I can do it. Everything about pregnancy and becoming a mother scares the ever-loving shit out of me and I send myself into a panic attack at the thought. That’s why I’m so dismissive about it. I’m sorry. If you want to leave, I understand.” You let the tears fall down your face, trying to keep your voice even.

You felt the bed shift a little and you shut your eyes to keep the tears back, assuming Tom was getting up to leave. You flinched when you felt his hand on your face and his lips on the top of your head. You felt him press his body against your side and you leaned against him and let a few tears fall.

“Y/N, darling, listen to me. It’s okay, my love. I’m not mad or upset with you at all, and I’m not going to leave you. You don’t have to change your mind or feel differently about kids if that’s how you feel. I didn’t propose to you just so we could have babies, I’m marrying you to spend the rest of my life with you. I'm okay with it just being us. I just want to spend every day of my life loving you, that’s enough for me. I don’t need anything or anyone else to make me happy. All I need is you.” Tom said to you. He rubbed your back soothingly trying to calm the quiet sobs that were escaping your mouth.

“I don’t want you to hate me in 50 years and look back at all the things I couldn’t give you, or regret not marrying someone who would’ve given you kids.” You whispered into his chest.

“I’m never going to regret marrying you, I promise you that. In 50 years we’ll look back at the most amazing life we had together and cherish all the memories we made, not look back and think of what could’ve been.” He cupped your cheeks in his hand and wiped the thick tears falling down your face.

He was able to get you to calm down after a few minutes and crawled under the sheets with you. He laid down on his back and pulled you close to him with your head on his chest and one arm wrapped around your shoulders and the other rubbing your arm.

“I love you so much, Tommy. I don’t know what I did in this life to deserve you.” You mumbled against the skin of his bare chest. He kissed the top of your head again and let his cheek rest against it as he whispered ‘I love you so much more’ and pulled you closer.

~~~

Tom managed to get everyone to cool it with the baby talk. You didn’t know what he said to his parents to get them to chill out a bit, but whatever he said worked. With the weight lifted off of both your shoulders, the wedding was the only thing on your mind.

It couldn’t have gone more perfectly. The day you and Tom had been planning for almost a year and the day you had been waiting for, honestly, since the day you met him. He looked incredible in his crisp black tux with his brothers and best friend standing right next to him.

The ceremony had everyone, including you and Tom, in tears. From the words the officiant spoke to the vows that were exchanged and then the moment you were pronounced man and wife, there was not one dry eye. After all the emotions you felt after the ceremony, you were beyond excited to celebrate with friends and family at the reception.

You sat at the table reserved for you and Tom and all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen just watching the joy bubble out of everyone in front of you. Tom was standing on the edge of the dance floor with a beer in his hand talking to a few of the people he had worked with over the years and that he hadn’t had a chance to catch up with. You were nursing a glass of champagne while you talked to one of your bridesmaids about the honeymoon you were leaving for in a few days.

One of Tom’s cousins had approached you and sat in a chair next to you to share her excitement with you over the whole day. Her husband had approached her with their 7-month-old son, Lucas, saying that he was getting a bit fussy. She gladly took her son and rested him in her lap, letting him play with the jewelry on her wrists and fingers.

Lucas had started to get a bit antsy again and Tom’s cousin had started to get up in search of her husband to try and get a bottle for the little boy. You had offered to hold him while she looked for him and try to keep him happy and occupied in the meantime. She graciously passed him over to you and you assured her that it was no problem.

He was a little distressed at the sight of his mother walking away, so you stood up and held him close to you as you walked around and talked to him a bit. He distracted himself with the necklace resting on your neck and wrapped his tiny fingers around it and stuck it in his mouth. You laughed to yourself at the boy and kept whispering things to him. One of your friends had approached you and pointed out how content Lucas seemed in your arms. She stood there with you making noises and faces at the boy to make him laugh and he responded to it with a gummy smile and buried his face in your chest.

Tom had been wrapped up in a conversation with his friends and hadn’t noticed you standing with the baby in your arms. Nikki walked up behind him and rested her hand on Tom’s shoulder, grabbing his attention. Tom quickly excused himself from his friends and let his mom pull him away. She turned him so he was facing you and got close and pointed to you standing with his cousin, with the laughing baby in your arms.

“She’s really good with him. I don’t think that little boy has ever been that happy in the arms of anyone besides his mother. Look at the smiles on both of their faces.” Nikki said fondly, watching you interact with the baby. Tom mumbled a quiet ‘Yeah, she is’ and kept his eyes glued on you. Your smile and laugh were infectious and he found himself mirroring the joy you had plastered on your face.

“I didn’t want kids when your dad and I first met. It wasn’t until right before we got married that I had told him that I wanted to have a family with him. Let her bring it up to you and if she decides it's something she wants, she’ll let you know.” She looked over at Tom to see him looking at you like you hung the moon and stars.

Tom quickly set his beer down and made his way over to you. He greeted his cousin and hugged her before taking his spot next to you. His hand went to your lower back while he gave the other to Lucas. Tom wiggled his fingers which elicited a laugh from the baby, making you smile and laugh. He stood there for a few minutes chatting with his cousin and her husband about the baby and how he was taken with you.

Lucas ended up falling asleep in your arms with his head resting in the crook of your neck and his fingers wrapped around your necklace. You were sad to let go of Lucas but admired the way the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile when you passed him over to his father. You bid your goodbyes to the baby and his parents and grabbed Tom’s hand to pull him into a kiss.

~~~

After a year or so of being married, Tom had started to notice something different about you. He had picked up on the way you walked a little slower past the baby section whenever you went to the store together and always pointed out what you thought was exceptionally adorable. He noticed the way you looked longingly at the toddlers running around the park when you would take Tessa on walks together. When your best friend from university had brought her newborn daughter around to your place was when everything had finally started to click, for both of you.

The words Nikki had said to him at the wedding echoed in his mind. He needed to let you come to him about it. The last thing he wanted was to pressure you into talking about something you weren’t ready for.

“I’m so happy for Megan. She’s been dreaming about having a daughter, I swear since I met her. She was always talking about how badly she wanted to be a mom and couldn’t wait to have kids.” You said to Tom once you had both crawled into bed. He rested against the headboard with his laptop resting on his thighs. He looked over at you when you pulled back the comforter and got into bed next to him.

“She seems happy. Even when she was talking about not having gotten a wink of sleep in the past 3 weeks, she said it with a smile and love.” Tom chuckled to himself, turning his attention back to what he was working on. You hummed in agreement and grabbed the book off your nightstand. You found yourself unable to focus on the words in front of you and kept rereading the same few words over and over again.

Your mind kept going back to the afternoon you spent with Megan and her daughter and how happy you were to see your friend so happy. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t been imagining you and Tom with that sort of happiness. The past year has been the best in your life. Tom had been traveling so much for work and you went with him wherever he went. Traveling the world and seeing your husband live his dream made you happy beyond belief. But you still felt like there was something more that you longed for.

“Oh, I don’t think I told you. My cousin sent me a message earlier today, she’s pregnant again! I think she said she’s about 20 weeks and having a gender reveal next week, and wants us to be there. I told her I’d talk to you about it.” Tom said while he opened up his messages and let you read the texts for yourself.

“Wow! That’s so amazing. Lucas is gonna be a great big brother. I don’t think we have anything going on, we should definitely go.” You handed Tom’s phone back to him and pulled yours out to send her a message.

A twinge of jealousy panged in your gut. Why did you feel like this? You had never felt jealous of your friends and family when they had gotten pregnant before. It was only good news whenever you found out. Did you wish it was you? Maybe this was your heart telling you that this was something you wanted. Maybe-

“Darling? You okay?” Tom’s voice pulled you out of your thoughts and your eyes focused on your phone in your hand. You looked over at Tom and saw the concern in his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. I got lost in thought for a second, I guess.” You brushed it off and kept typing the message. 

~~~

You stared at the positive pregnancy tests with a mix of emotions. One part of you was freaking out at the thought of being pregnant. All the fears you had about pregnancy and motherhood rearing their ugly heads right at the front of your mind. It wasn’t just an ‘IF I got pregnant’ fear, it was an ‘oh my god I’m pregnant and it’s going to happen’ fear. It wasn’t just imagining what would happen anymore, it was actually happening.

The other part of you felt an indescribable amount of joy and excitement. Your mind immediately went to Tom and how over the moon he would be at the news. Imagining what a perfect father he would be to your baby had your heart bursting and your whole body buzzing. He’s the most perfect person to raise a child with.

The fears of parenthood and of becoming a mother tried to cloud your mind again, but you were too excited about telling Tom to care. A few minutes later you walked into the living room with the tests in your hand, looking for Tom. You heard him in the kitchen fixing up some lunch and singing along to the music coming out of his phone.

“Darling what do you want on your sandwich? I’ve got the things you usually take, you just want everything?” Tom said when he heard your footsteps from down the hall get closer to where he was.

“Yeah, everything is good. Um, I need to tell you something though, before we eat.” Tom’s head looked up at you, his eyes filled with worry and a bit of curiosity. He set down the knife he had in his hand and leaned against the counter, waiting for you to talk.

“Uh so. The past couple of weeks or so I’ve been feeling super off and just really not like myself. I think I mentioned to you that I was feeling weird and we chalked it off as maybe I was getting sick or my period was just gonna hit like a bitch this month.” You looked down at the stick in your hand and looked back up at Tom, his eyes not having left your face. “I- I, uh, I went to log my symptoms into my period tracking app and when I did, it said that my period was almost a week late and that even though there were a bunch of possible causes… the one that stood out was pregnancy.” You looked back up at Tom and his eyebrows were furrowed and you could see the worry lines across his forehead.

“Y/N?” He whispered as he stepped closer to you and placed a hand on your hip, quietly urging you to continue. You took a deep breath and opened up your hand to show him the white and blue stick resting in your palm.

“I’m pregnant, Tommy. I got a couple of tests this morning while you were at the gym and I just took them. They’re all positive.” He carefully picked up the plastic stick like it was made of glass and looked at the little screen with the words ‘pregnant’ across it. You felt the emotion well up in your chest when he brought his hand up to his mouth and heard him choke back a breath.

“Oh my god. You’re not messing with me, right? This is for real?” He looked up at you with tears pooling in his lower lash line. All you could do was muster up a nod before the tears fell from both of your eyes.

Tom wrapped his arms around you and lifted you slightly off the ground, twirling you around the kitchen while he laughed and cried in joy. You giggled at his actions and kept your arms wrapped around his neck, the tears still falling from your eyes. He set you down after a few moments passed and cupped your face in his hands. He saw the emotions written all across your face, all he could see was happiness and excitement.

“This is a good thing, right?” he wiped a few stray tears off of your cheeks with his thumbs and tilted his head a little bit.

“Yeah, this is a really good thing. I know my feelings were different before but I don’t know, I guess something changed.” You smiled a bit thinking back on the last couple of months of feeling like this.

It had started with your friend from college introducing you to her daughter and asking you and Tom to babysit when she needed one. When Tom’s cousin had their 2nd son, they had asked you and Tom to be the godparents to baby James. You and Tom were over the moon excited to accept and to be there for the christening of your godson.

Tom couldn’t find the words to say and just pulled you in for another bone-breaking hug. You stood in the kitchen with him, your lunch long forgotten, just hugging each other. You could feel the love pour out from your bodies and to each other, everything was as perfect as it could be.

You set up an appointment with your gynecologist as soon as you could, anxious to confirm your pregnancy with them and maybe be able to see the beginning stages of your little one growing in your tummy. Tom had insisted he take a day off of work to go with you. He had declared that he was not going to let work or anything get in the way of him supporting you through this.

He had heard so many stories from people he’s worked with about them missing the birth of their children because of work and strict filming schedules. Or that their spouse has been left at home the entire pregnancy, sometimes with other children too, and they were only able to get a week off for the birth and then head back to work.

Tom swore to you before you got married that he would never prioritize work over his life with you. He had never missed spending a birthday, an anniversary, or a holiday with you. He sure as hell wasn’t about to miss witnessing the miracle of your pregnancy.

The appointment went as perfectly and smoothly as it could’ve gone. You were still in the very early stages of your first trimester, only about 7 weeks pregnant. Your doctor had said that it was possible to hear the heartbeat already and spent a little time searching for it. 

After a few seconds had passed a whooshing sound had filled the room and the doctor smiled at you when your eyes shot over to Tom. He had wrapped one of your hands in both of his and kissed your knuckles, letting tears slip out at the sound of his baby’s heartbeat. 

There wasn’t much to see on the sonogram. Your doctor had pointed out the grainy blob on the picture that was indeed your baby. You couldn’t stop staring at the little grey blob that was changing your life.

“So I think we should hold off on telling everyone until I’m a little farther along, you know, just in case. The nurse said miscarriages are common during the first trimester and we gotta be really careful. I’m okay with telling your mom, I think it’ll be good to have her support and be able to ask her things. But we should hold off on a big announcement until I’m at least 16 weeks.” You said in the car on your way back home after the appointment.

“Yeah of course. Dad is taking me and the boys golfing next week, so mum will probably ask you to lunch or something. You can tell her then or we can do it together another day, whatever you prefer. You’re the boss, mummy. Whatever you say, goes.” He quickly glanced over at you with a big smile on his face before putting his eyes back on the road. 

Your face split into a huge grin at the name before placing your hands on your stomach. Tom rested one of his hands on top of yours and kept it there the whole way home.

~~~

*SENSITIVE CONTENT AHEAD*

No one could have warned you about the overwhelming heartache you could feel during pregnancy. You thought it would be smooth sailing into your second trimester and you’d finally be able to share with everyone the joy of a new baby coming into the world.

Your doctor had made you aware of the possibility of having a miscarriage at the beginning of your pregnancy, not to scare you, but just so you were aware. 10-15% of all pregnancies resulted in miscarriages, 80% of them happening in the first trimester due to a multitude of reasons. She said to take care of yourself and to do everything in your power to keep yourself and your baby as healthy as could be.

You had done everything by the books.

You ate a well-balanced diet, cutting out everything your doctor had advised you to avoid. You had started joining Tom at the gym more regularly and did a bit of yoga at home, just to keep yourself in shape, but never overexerting yourself. Cutting out alcohol had been a no brainer, even Tom said he wouldn’t drink if you couldn’t. You, unfortunately, had to cut down majorly on your caffeine intake, which left you irritable and cranky most mornings. But it was all for the wellbeing of your baby, which made it all oh so worth it.

Nikki found out about your pregnancy when she had asked you to lunch while the Holland boys were golfing for the day. You had shown her the sonogram and she gasped in shock at the picture in front of her. Your name was printed across the top of it, so she knew it was yours. She had been sworn to secrecy when you told her that only you, her, and Tom knew and that you were keeping it a secret until about 16 weeks.

She was the first person you called when you were sitting at home by yourself when you had started to feel a cramping sort of pain along your abdomen and stretching into your back. Your doctor had said that cramping was normal but if it was accompanied by period-like bleeding, to call immediately. You stretched out a bit on the couch to try and get the pain to pass but when it didn’t, you picked up the phone and called Nikki.

Her tone of voice stayed calm as you explained what you were feeling and where you were feeling it. She had dropped everything and said she’d be there as soon as she could be and to relax, everything was going to be okay. You had advised against her wish of calling Tom, for the time being, he was in the city for meetings and some press events all day and you didn’t want to bother him if it was nothing.

In no more than 20 minutes you were sitting next to her on the couch as you told her in more detail about the discomfort along your abdomen. She had suggested you get up and go to the bathroom just to be sure there wasn’t any bleeding. You gave her a nervous glance and she assured you it was going to be okay, she just wanted to be sure.

Standing up from the couch the pain had started to shift into your pelvis and deepen in your abdomen. You had asked for her to help you to the bathroom and to stay with you, just in case. She said ‘of course’ and led you to the nearest toilet to the living room. You could feel your heartbeat in your ears as you neared the bathroom, praying that this was nothing and just one of those pregnancy things.

Nikki had respectfully turned around after you unbuttoned your jeans and started to sit. You pulled your underwear down with your pants and took a deep breath before glancing down and seeing the mess on the inside of your underwear. Your heart dropped down to your gut seeing the bright red blood staining the fabric and sticking to the inside of your thighs. A quiet ‘oh no’ left your mouth as you just stared down. Nikki turned around hearing you talk and saw what was happening. She mumbled something you couldn’t hear before she opened the door and headed towards your room.

You could hear the opening and shutting of drawers in the distance and the shuffling of her feet back into the bathroom. She set a pair of fresh underwear and a pair of sweatpants on the counter next to you before opening the cabinets under the sink in search of a pad. She placed everything next to you and asked you to change so she could drive you to the hospital. You nodded slowly and she left the bathroom quietly.

~~~

The next couple of months were difficult, but having the support of Tom made it just a little bit easier. He held you when all you could do was cry and told you that it was going to be okay. He was going to be there every step of the way. He rubbed your back and held you close anytime you needed it and gave you your space when you asked for it.

He made sure to listen to you deeply when you talked about it. He assured you, along with your doctor, that it wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could’ve done differently to stop this. It was just a freak thing and is unfortunately a common occurrence. He let you air out your frustrations and fears openly and told you that you weren’t alone. He shared some of the same fears that you did and helped you feel not crazy about having these big feelings.

You helped each other begin the process of healing and coming to terms with what had happened. It took time for you both to talk about it without being overwhelmed with grief and sadness, but it happened. You were able to share what had happened with close friends and family and feel okay about sharing your story. The amount of support and love you got from everyone made it that much easier to take another step forward in healing.

You learned that some of the people closest to you had gone through the same pain in the past, but had never shared it. You felt comfort in knowing that you weren’t alone and that your doctor wasn’t saying that miscarriages were common just to make you feel better. People you knew and had deep relationships with had gone through the same thing, it wasn’t just you and Tom. You weren’t alone in your suffering and pain. It was okay to feel sad about the loss of someone you hadn’t met or that wasn’t really a someone yet. It’s okay to grieve and feel the feelings you have about the loss.

Tom and Nikki had had another conversation about you approaching him about having a baby, much like they did on the night of your wedding. It had been almost a year since the miscarriage, and he wanted to know where you stood on having a baby again. He didn’t want to rush or push you at all. Nikki assured him that when you were ready, you would let him know.

You had started to do the slow walk past the baby section in the store again. After the miscarriage, you had avoided it as much as possible. You pointed out cute onesies and toys any time you saw them. The sadness in the longing looks you had at the sight of toddlers in the parks had changed to happiness and joy.

You told him you didn’t want to have sex after you miscarried, and he completely understood. There was no resentment towards you when you would stop a makeout session when it got too heated and he would get up and take care of himself in the bathroom or take a cold shower. About 6 months after, you insisted that he wear a condom and pulled out before he came, even with the condom on. Just to be safe.

Your sex life with Tom had started to spark again and was getting back to how it was before the miscarriage. You were okay if he came inside you, but still with the condom on. That's how it had been until one night you and Tom were enjoying a date night at home together, and both had a little too much wine. You were about a bottle and a half into your favorite red wine, both of you way well on your way to being wine drunk.

Date night had moved from the dining room to the couch after the 2nd bottle of wine was finished. Tom was sitting with his back against the armrest, one leg stretched out in front of him with the other planted on the floor. Your knees were digging into the cushion beneath them on either side of Tom’s leg. His fingers dug into the flesh of your hips, pulling you impossibly close to his body. His lips attacked yours with pure lust and passion. He pulled back hesitantly before attacking your neck with his mouth, nipping and biting before soothing the abused skin with his tongue.

“Tom, wait.” You breathed out, placing your hands against his chest to push him back. He looked up at you with concern and kiss swollen lips.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” He asked quickly, his eyes scanning your face to make sure you were okay. You pulled back a little to put a little space between you and Tom. You shut your eyes and took a deep breath before talking. 

“No, you didn’t. I just- hold on. I’ve uh, I’ve been thinking a lot the past few week about maybe us trying for another baby.” You managed to get out. The alcohol was making everything a bit fuzzy but gave you the ability to speak your mind.

“Yeah? You’re ready for that?” Tom’s eyes softened as he pushed some of your hair out of your face and rested one of his hands against the side of your neck

“It’s been almost a year, you know? I talked to my gyno at my appointment last week and she said that there’s no reason we can’t try again. It was a freak thing, and there was nothing we could’ve done differently to change what happened. I’m ready if you’re ready. I want to start a family with you, so bad.” Tom couldn’t find the words to respond to your declaration. All he did was smile so hard his cheeks hurt and pull you close to him again.

~~~

“Push Y/N! Just a few more big pushes and your baby will be here.” Your doctor said from the end of the hospital bed you were in. All you could feel was the pain ripping through your whole body because of the human trying to make their way into the world.

You could feel the cold towel pressed against the back of your neck and the tickle of air flowing into your nose. There was a nurse on one side of you pulling one of your legs back and Tom on the other side pulling the other. He had his other hand on top of your head pushing back the strands of hair getting stuck on the sweat of your forehead.

“You’re so close, lovey. I’m so fucking proud of you baby. You’ve got this. You’re so close.” Tom chanted into your ear while pressing small kisses to your temple. All you did was grit your teeth and push as hard as you could.

There was a sudden release of relief from your body, and you felt like the wind was knocked out of your whole body. You collapsed on the pillow behind you and managed to pry your eyes open. In front of you was a baby covered in bodily fluids and screaming their absolute heart out. Your hospital gown was slipped open as the nurses helped situate the baby onto your bare chest. The hands you had gripping the sheets below you flew to the baby’s back and you choked out a sob of relief.

“You did it Y/N, you fucking did it. Oh my god, she’s so perfect, you’re so perfect.” Tom managed to get out before breaking down into tears. He placed a hand on top of the baby’s head, not caring about the mess. You looked over at him and he pressed a kiss right on your lips and rested his forehead against yours before you both looked at the baby on your chest.

The doctor had asked Tom if he wanted to cut the cord and he stumbled over himself to do it. Some of the nurses had cleaned up the baby while she was still resting on your bare skin so you could get a better look at her.

“It’s a girl, Tommy. We have a daughter.” You looked over at Tom. He had pulled his phone out and took the first picture of his wife and daughter together.

“The most perfect girl in the world. Just like her perfect mummy.” Tom said with tears still falling down his face. Your doctor congratulated you and Tom before leaving the room after you were stitched up and okay to get back into a normal position on the bed.

A nurse had taken the baby to the other side of the room to get her cleaned up completely and take her weight and measurements. Tom stood close to make sure his little girl was okay. You watched from your bed with heavy eyes, your whole body begging you to rest after almost 24 hours of labor. After the baby was cleaned up, she had a diaper put on her and wrapped in the regular hospital baby blanket. She was carefully handed to Tom before he made his way back to your bed.

You had gotten as comfortable in the bed as you could and were so grateful for whoever had invented epidurals and pain medication. Tom sat on the edge of the bed and sat shoulder to shoulder with you with a leg resting on the bed and the other keeping him steady on the floor. All he could do was stare at the baby in his arms and think about how surreal this all was.

“Did you send that picture to your parents and the boys?” You whispered so you didn’t disturb her.

“Yeah right after I took it, I haven’t checked to see what they’ve said though. I’m sure they’re going crazy right now.” He chuckled and pressed a kiss to your temple. You leaned into him and shut your eyes for a second to just take in everything that was happening. Your eyes shot open when you heard a knock on the door and Tom said ‘come in’.

“Hi, Mrs. Holland. I’m Olivia, a lactation consultant. One of the delivery nurses said that you were wanting to breastfeed and sent me in here just to help you out since this is going to be the first time you’re breastfeeding. Mind if I interrupt for just a little bit?” A woman not much older than you came in and moved closer to your bed. Olivia washed her hands before pulling a rolling chair next to your bed. Tom stood up to give you and Olivia the space to do what was necessary.

“Yep, just like that Y/N. That’s perfect. Baby girl Holland seems to be a pro at this, too!” Olivia watched as you positioned the baby at the perfect spot and started to nurse. It took a while to get used to the feeling, but once you did it was the most amazing thing. Tom couldn’t take his eyes off of the magic happening in front of him.

~~~

“She needs a name, Tom. We haven’t named her yet.” You whispered to Tom in the middle of the night after feeding the baby again. The nurses had come in a few times to check up on you but for the most part, were leaving you and Tom to your own devices.

“I like the name Emma.” He whispered back from the cot that was a few feet away from you, the baby in between you. You sat up as best as you could to get a look at the sleeping baby.

“She’d make a good Emma. What about Nicole for her middle name? Pay homage to your mom. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her through all of this.” You said quietly. You didn’t hear a response and looked over to see him with a toothy grin spread across his face.

“You would do that?” Tom sat up and looked at you.

“Of course. You know how much I love her, she’s so important to both of us. Plus I think Emma Nicole Holland has a pretty good ring to it.”

-- 

a few resources available 

about miscarriage and more information available

grief resources

list of articles, books, and web-based resources

postpartum support

support organizations

--

[carewyncromwell]

Hi guys! I thought I’d start this HPHM AU Ships Challenge, just for funsies! Feel free to steal and pass it along, if thou dost wish!

Tagging @dat-silvers-girl, @annabelle-tanaka-official, @angellazull, @lifeofkaze, @samshogwarts, @drinkyoursoupbitch, @kc-needs-coffee, @cursed-ice-spirits​, @thatravenpuffwitch​, @cursebreaker-lilith​, @cursebreakerfarrier​, and @cursebreakerelmswood​! 💖💛💙💚

What HPHM characters (or MCs) could you see your MC dating, in an AU? What would their relationship be like? Why did you ultimately decide not to go with that ship, or do you still hold a torch for it?

My answers for my girl Carewyn are under the cut!!

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist starting with a recycled doodle of my canon ship, the HMS Carion. 🥰)

Andre Egwu

Alright, right off the bat, we should discuss Carewyn’s canon ex, Andre. Carewyn and Andre attended the Celestial Ball and dated until their fifth year, breaking up right after the All-Wizard tournament. Fortunately despite their break-up, they’ve stayed on good terms and still greatly respect each other -- but truthfully, I never intended for them to be a long-term match in any universe. If you’d like to read more about why Carewyn/Andre didn’t work out, you can consult this analysis, but to put it very simply, Andre was someone Carewyn admired deeply, but couldn’t ever be completely herself around. And from a personal perspective, my parents are one of those rare couples who remained friends even after divorcing, and I’ve always found their relationship really fascinating, as no one can deny they do still sincerely love and admire each other, even if it’s no longer romantically. Carewyn and Andre know each other in a way no one else does, so it gives their friendship a depth that it didn’t have before -- so unlike with a lot of relationships, their bond actually strengthened after they broke up, rather than falling apart. 

Bill Weasley 

In Carewyn’s canon, Bill ends up becoming Carewyn’s best friend. Although at the start, their relationship had much more of a surrogate big brother/little sister dynamic, over time the two ended up on much more equal terms, both as Cursebreaker partners and as unofficial “parents” for the rest of their friend group. Bill is Carewyn’s right-hand man both while dealing with the Cursed Vaults and while leading the Circle of Khanna, and even though Carewyn wants nothing to do with Cursebreaking after dealing with the Vaults, she’ll still drop everything to help Bill with his work, should he need her. Bill is the one who came up with the nickname “Carey” for Carewyn, and he’s also arguably the friend who understands Carewyn best after the death of Rowan, given the similarities in their personalities and how long they’ve known each other. I actually did write out a post guessing what a romantic relationship between these two might’ve been like if they’d become a thing, but honestly, I’ve never really shipped these two. Carewyn may not be entirely based on me (she’s got elements of my mum too), but one aspect of the wish fulfilment for me early on was that my girl could have a ride-or-die best friend like Ron was for Harry in the original Potter books. In the end, that friend ended up being Bill, Ron’s eldest brother and a character I loved when I first read the books and only became fonder of through the game. And honestly, we could really use more sincerely loving, but completely platonic male-female friendships that never bump up against romance!!

Talbott Winger

Talbott and Carewyn are truly “birds of a feather,” though one would never know it based on their respective masks. Talbott is the sort to put a gruff facade on to hide his more sensitive feelings, while Carewyn is the sort to put on a pretty face to hide her angrier and sadder feelings. Underneath, though, they both are stubborn, intelligent, and distrustful people with a strong desire to fight evil and a creative spirit. After becoming an Animagus, Carewyn would frequently fly around the school grounds with Talbott in robin form, singing songs for both herself and Talbott, and even though Talbott teased her about it, he did sincerely enjoy it. Carewyn loves reading Talbott’s poetry, and Talbott is also one of the few people who can get Carewyn to laugh a lot, since their senses of humor line up really well. Last but not least, they become a lawyer and an Auror post-Hogwarts, so they end up working together A LOT, especially post-War. I did write a prompt once about what a Talbott/Carewyn romance would be like, and I admit, I could see them being a relatively good couple, particularly since I headcanon both of them as being on the ace spectrum. That being said, though, I ultimately didn’t go with Talbott for Carewyn for two reasons. One, I thought they’d be too similar in a lot of ways (most notably, they’re way too friggin’ serious -- give each of these two some sunshine, will you??) -- and two, on a much more superficial note, Talbott was so popular that I kind of hesitated before having Carewyn ask him out. (Plus come on, for that date, how much of a b*tch would you have to be to break Andre’s heart and then snatch up an outfit he made for you to wear on a date with his dormmate?! Just -- COME ON.)

Chiara Lobosca

When I first started playing HPHM, I strongly considered shipping my girl with Chiara, once she broke up with Andre. From the moment Chiara and Carewyn met, Carewyn just knew she had to know Chiara better, and that ended up being because -- thanks to her latent Legilimency potential -- she could subconsciously sense that Chiara and she were similar in a lot of ways. Most importantly, Chiara was very lonely and desperately longed for a friend, which reminded Carewyn of how lonely her pre-Hogwarts life was, especially after Jacob disappeared. Once Carewyn earned Chiara’s trust, Carewyn proved herself to be a very loyal friend, even learning how to become a robin Animagus so she could keep Chiara company and cheer her up with twittered songs during full moons. Both Carewyn and Chiara are sensitive “Healer” type personalities (though Chiara is a bit more literal of one) who fight against their own crippling self-loathing to try to nurture others. This, in the end, though, is why I hesitated on making them official and why I’m ultimately glad I didn’t. Like Talbott, Chiara in some ways is too similar to Carewyn, and I think in a romantic relationship, they wouldn’t grow as much as people through their interactions. I did come up with quite a few ideas about what their relationship might be like -- but ultimately I couldn’t help but feel that Carewyn’s happy ending couldn’t just be about peace, but about finding someone who could challenge and contrast her.

Diego Caplan

This  started off as a crack ship for me before actually gaining some legs and becoming Chiara/Carewyn’s main opponent, when it came to my debate with myself regarding Carewyn’s romantic future. In contrast to Chiara, Diego is pretty much Carewyn’s complete opposite. Carewyn is a planner. Diego is spontaneous. Carewyn is meticulous. Diego is flirtatious. Carewyn is serious. Diego is anything but. Carewyn is ace. Diego I headcanon as pan. And yet they both have their romantic and creative sides and are both seasoned fighters and loyal friends. Diego would definitely be able to bring some levity to Carewyn’s life, while Carewyn could bring some grounding to Diego’s. Diego even has a cute little nickname for Carewyn from their time in the Circle of Khanna: “general!” In short, these two would be perfect leads in a rom-com chick flick. But this, ultimately, ended up being why I hesitated on making them official and why I’m ultimately glad I didn’t. Diego/Carewyn is a ship that could really only bloom and blossom under fair conditions, and I had trouble seeing Diego being equipped to deal with Carewyn’s darker emotions or even her more intellectual bent. Just like with Chiara, I came up with plenty of ideas about how these two could be as a couple -- but I really felt as though Carewyn needed more than just “fun” as a happy ending. And ultimately, this conflict between peace VS fun ended up coming to an end when I discovered Carewyn/Orion, as Orion could provide Carewyn with both.

Jae Kim

Okay, honestly? When I first encountered Jae as a character, I didn’t think he and Carewyn would have anything in common, but in a weird way, they sort of subvert their respective house’s stereotype by exhibiting values from the other’s house! Gryffindors are seen as these rash, reckless, show-off hero types, but Jae showcases a lot of Slytherin-worthy cleverness, resourcefulness, and disregard for rules and what others think of him. Slytherins are seen as these cold, cruel, ambitious villain types, but Carewyn showcases a lot of Gryffindor-worthy courage, nobility, and selflessness. And so even though Jae is generally a rulebreaker and Carewyn is generally a rule-follower, when circumstances made it ideal for them to be on good business terms (namely, working in detention together and Carewyn needing an ally who knows Knockturn Alley and Jae needed an ally who was a Prefect), they soon found a lot of common ground. Add to that how much Carewyn encourages Jae’s cooking talent while respecting his privacy, and it’s little wonder that post-Hogwarts, when Jae opens up his own pub on the border of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley, the two still meet up very frequently to swap news from their respective corners of the world. I admittedly don’t know how well Carewyn’s job as a magical lawyer would be conducive to her being anything other than friends with Jae, and I don’t think they’d ultimately have many interests in common, so I do much prefer them as friends, but their dynamic is full of fun contrasts! 

Ben Copper

Hahaha, oh god. So. Obviously Ben in-game is still very polarizing, but in my canon, Ben and Carewyn’s relationship is really complex and honestly one of my absolute favorite friendships for my girl. Ben was one of Carewyn’s very first friends, so he -- like Rowan, Bill, and Penny -- knows Carewyn in a way few others do. He befriended her before she became known as the poised, perfect Slytherin “Mama Bear,” but unlike her other friends, he was a bit disappointed by her abrupt transformation between her third and fourth years. While those like Bill, Penny, and Andre saw it as Carewyn coming into her own, Ben noticed how much Carewyn put herself “over” the rest of her friends, becoming their protector more than their equal, and Ben lamented it, disliking how he felt like a responsibility to Carewyn more than her friend. But Ben kept those feelings inside, not knowing how to properly express them when he did still cherish Carewyn’s friendship. After the events in the Portrait Vault, Ben went through his own dramatic change, and Carewyn sure enough didn’t end up liking it any better than Ben had liked hers. But ultimately the two had a heart-to-heart and realized that they both had become very different people than the kids who’d befriended each other in first year. After Rowan’s death and the formation of the Circle of Khanna, the two reforged their friendship on more equal terms. I did actually write out an AU roleplay where Ben and Carewyn’s confrontation in Jacob’s room ended up hinting Ben/Carewyn, but I ultimately think that the people they ultimately become are way too different to be a great romantic match. It makes their friendship fascinating, as it makes you wonder how such a tall, suspicious, reckless Gryffindor ever befriended such a poised, methodical, lady-like Slytherin...but even if they do feel a lot of deep platonic love for each other and I personally headcanon Ben being on the ace spectrum like Carewyn, I ultimately think they’d have very different dreams in mind for their future and would each need something different in a romantic partner. 

Barnaby Lee

Barnababy!! 💚 Yeah, Barnaby Lee is my personal favorite HPHM character, and yet I have never really shipped him seriously with Carewyn, even though I love their relationship and could see potential chemistry. Barnaby and Carewyn are both amazingly sensitive, loyal, and modest Slytherins with a love of magical creatures and a strong sense of honor, but they also contrast each other in some fun ways too. Carewyn may put on a happy face a lot, but she’s actually rather pessimistic. Barnaby’s unblinkingly optimistic and he wouldn’t even dream of putting on a mask to hide his feelings. Then of course there’s the fact that Carey-Bear is this tiny and rather physically weak thing, while Barnaby is a perfectly dashing tank. 😂 Barnaby and Carewyn are both protective of each other, as seen by Barnaby throwing himself in front of Carewyn to shield her from an Imperiused Rowan’s spell and Carewyn verbally tearing into Ismelda when she learned she planned to use a Love Potion on him. Barnaby was the one who really taught Carewyn about how deceiving appearances can be, and Carewyn was the one who really taught Barnaby about how generous and selfless friendship could be, so they both respect each other a lot. For all that respect, though, there’s a significant slant to their relationship. Carewyn supports Barnaby emotionally infinitely more than she would ever let him support her, so their dynamic comes across as very “mother/son”-like rather than complete equals. Plus, honestly, I think Barnaby and Carewyn’s dreams for their respective futures -- namely, to be a magizoologist traveling the world and to be a magical lawyer for the Ministry of Magic -- don’t match up in the least bit. I could also see Barnaby wanting a large family, and Carewyn has no interest in bearing children herself and would prefer a quieter home life. 

[apothecarinomicon]

Spring week 1 part 1

I’m not quite sure how to begin.

I’m not typically one for journaling but it would appear to be part of the gig, as it were. I found this book—the one I’m writing in, heavy and musty and leather-bound—sitting on the table when I arrived, open to a blank page. There are at least a thousand pages filled before it, and no matter how many blank pages I flip past this one I can’t reach the back cover without closing the book entirely.

Mòrag told me things that present themselves for investigation here tend to be worth exploring, and if my gut tells me what’s right not to stray from its guidance. But I’m getting ahead of myself—you don’t even know who I am.

My name is Fionn Gill, and I’m a witch. I know, I know, but I don’t get into all that “warlock” “wizard” shit. It’s just a way to separate and belittle the same practice based solely on the gender of the practitioner, in my opinion. My specialty lies in potion-making, though I’m not very experienced. I’ve really only just finished my training—I’m from Huntsmanland and they’re not nearly as magically-inclined there as they are in High Rannoc. This is the first part of the country I’ve visited other than my tutor’s homestead and I must say, it hasn’t made the most stellar impression.

My tutor Edith received a letter stating that services would be required in the town of Greenmoor, and since the letter didn’t specify her services, she sent me to take care of it. I don’t know if she expected it to be an indefinite position, but here we are.

I didn’t bring a lot with me—just enough for the journey. It was about all I could carry walking. I arrived in Greenmoor with just about the clothes on my back, hoping they had an apothecary of their own so I could get this over with.

I’ve never really been one for small towns, and nor do they have much love for me. I’ve always thought I was meant for adventure—movement, action, peril, all of it. Small town life just feels so… stagnant. Nothing changes, no one grows or changes or has anything interesting to talk about. It’s enough to drive you mad.

Not to mention the natural suspicion of outsiders. I could see it on Mòrag McKinney’s face, even as she greeted me at the edge of town in her official capacity as mayor. Her hair was done up in a huge bun of thick braids on top of her head—a hairstyle with a formality at odds with her armored clothing.

She seemed surprised when I told her I was the witch. That’s not uncommon—like most intellectual and healing work, witchcraft is traditionally the domain of women. Even in the relatively forward-thinking country of High Rannoc, I tend to get some variation on ‘oh, how progressive!’ when I tell people my vocation. Often if you get a man doing witchcraft, his neighbors will whisper certain things about him. My neighbors back home were whispering those things about me anyway, so that wasn’t much of a hurdle to me.

Mòrag (she insisted I call her by her first name once we’d been properly introduced) gave me a brief tour of Greenmoor. It is, to put it lightly, tiny. I’d estimate a population around fifty. Near everyone has a job that serves an internal function to the community, with maybe the exception of the innkeeper. There are blacksmiths, miners, a carpenter, a tanner… she didn’t indicate any artists or poets or anything of that sort to me, which was disheartening. Even when I thought I would only be here briefly, I was hoping to enjoy the finer things the locals had to offer. The closest this town comes is a library, but I sorely doubt they have any kind of collection of works by local authors.

Mòrag pointed out all the magical resources in town, and some of them impressed me—the lunar tower and ritual circle in particular looked useful. She did not show me any apothecary, and following her aforementioned advice, I took that to mean there wasn’t one. Can’t wait to go out and experience the joys of foraging in the wilderness myself.

Once we’d gone through the entire village, she showed me to the cottage where I’ll be staying. It’s a little ways away from the town proper, down a walking path through some trees. It’s little more than a one-room thing, with only the washroom closed off from the rest of the space. The walls and door are made of dark wood, and the outside still has bark attached in many places. The roof is sloped and overgrown with moss and ivy. Inside the main room there is a bed, a large set of shelves which ought to have reagents and potion-making materials on them but are mostly bare, and a table on which this book sits. The washroom has a tub and a latrine—no plumbing to be found. Out back sits the remains of a garden, only one plot of which looks salvageable. A ways back into the trees there’s a creek. Most of the rest of the clearing is in the early stages of becoming overgrown, with trees and bushes and flowers starting to stretch themselves out and remembering how to be wild.

Mòrag told me the witch who was here before me was a bit of a recluse. No one in town knew very much about her, and she seemed to prefer it that way. They came to her for her healing potions and never made it past small talk and kept inviting her to parties and festivals even though she never attended. And then one day nearly everyone in town woke up with a gift from her—the farmers received her animals, the barkeep her ferments, the innkeeper and bakers her crops. As the townspeople tallied their gifts they realized it amounted to nearly everything she owned. They went together to her cottage to ask her why she’d given it all away, and found her cottage—this cottage—empty. The ensuing search turned up no body, no note, not a shred of evidence to speak of. It was as if she’d disappeared into thin air. As the townsfolk talked and wondered what had happened, they quickly realized no one knew her well enough to provide any real insight. They couldn’t even come to a consensus on what her name was.

They had quickly moved on to discussing the more pressing issue: the town was lacking a healer. The general store owner had worked with my tutor Edith in years prior (Edith loved to tell stories of the time she spent pursuing the culinary arts). Thus, the letter and thus, my presence.

Mòrag told me she hoped I might be more engaged in the community than my predecessor. I decided to refrain from telling her not to get her hopes up, and instead expressed my confusion: I’d thought this was a single gig, that I was to heal someone of their illness and then leave.

She disabused me of that notion with rather more intensity than I think was warranted.

She told me that unless my predecessor reappeared, I was all they had. She said Edith had spoken highly of my abilities in her return letter (I doubted that—Edith never spoke highly of anyone). She told me I would receive a base pay of 20 silver per cure to start, and that if I did the townsfolk well and they grew to like me, they’d most certainly be willing to pay more. She told me that the folks of Greenmoor were good people, even if they were a bit disaster-prone and some of them could make good use of a little more common sense.

And, well, how do you say no to that?

When I asked where I would be getting my materials, she told me the areas surrounding Greenmoor were rich in natural resources. So it will be as I feared. I’m glad I brought my off-road boots.

Mòrag left me to get settled in and I immediately took stock. There are no reagents on the shelves (of course not! Why would there be?), but I did find a cauldron, mortar and pestle, and a copper alembic (which is used for distilling)—so at least once I have the reagents I’ll be able to do some basic cooking with them. I also found a small leather-bound book with vague descriptions of some of the areas surrounding the village. I should be able to cross-reference it with my notes on the environments where useful reagents can be found to make searching for materials a bit less painful.

I pulled a matted tangle of weeds out of the garden plot, but it looks like whatever was planted underneath already shriveled away to nothing. Well, at least the land’s clear now.

One thing that I knew I’d need if I was going to be able to handle this was a familiar. I’ve never been one for conjuration but in this case it’s an unfortunate necessity. I was supposed to be getting one within the next few weeks at Edith’s anyway, and I already knew the process. You’re supposed to have a more experienced witch observe your first time, but that’s just academic formality—there’s nothing actually dangerous about the process.

I found what looks to be a quarter cran basket (was my predecessor into fishing…?) under the bed, and set out around the property collecting small rocks and flowers and toadstools that had the right kinds of vibration. They were for use in the ritual, but also collecting them was a good start to cleaning the property up. Because if I’m going to be living here, it cannot stay looking like this.

I took the basket into the woods near the creek and laid its contents out in a circle as wide as I was tall. Before I placed each one down, I held it for a moment and asked it to help me with my task. Then, I sat in the center of my circle and closed my eyes and tried to meditate. Clearing my head has never been my strong suit, but I’m usually able to fudge the process enough to do what needs doing. This time took a bit longer than usual but eventually I managed. I felt my energy (spirit, consciousness, whatever) radiating out from me, pink and orange and bright and loud, first to the edges of the circle and then beyond. All of it asked a single question and listened for the answer.

The response came from much closer than anticipated, when I felt something small hop onto my knee.

I opened my eyes and looked down to see a frog staring back at me, blinking lazily and making small, guttural noises. Her back was green and rough and slimy. One of her eyes was milky, pointing vaguely off to the left, while the other gazed straight at me. The tips of her toes (three on each foot) edged closer to brown than the rest of her body.

Having clearly presented herself, she now asked if my gut said we would be good partners.

I’ve named her Ailean.

And now here I am, writing all of this down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage this every day. Whoever reads this may have to settle for a few times a week. With that said, I do think I’d like to go back and read what my predecessor wrote. Maybe it’ll give a clue as to where she’s gone, and help me escape this position sooner. She seems to have been quite the prolific writer—getting through her logs could take months, especially if the townsfolk keep me particularly busy with their various woes. I’ll have to start reading sooner rather than later.

Speak of the devil, there’s a knock on my door. It hasn’t even been a full day and I might already have my first customer. I’ll finish this later.

⇦●〇●⇨

[specterchasing-a]

People Like Us || Morgan & Eddie

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Morgan’s House

PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems​ & @specterchasing​

SUMMARY: Eddie needs help accepting the truth about who he is, and who better to lend a hand than Morgan Beck? 

CONTAINS: Internalized homophobia tw, domestic abuse mention tw (section is tagged)

Eddie learned Morgan didn’t pull punches the day he came across her picnicking among the headstones of Jericho Hill. She took one look at him and effortlessly seemed to understand what made him tick. At the time, he didn’t realize she went easy on him. He knew better now. After their last conversation, he doubted she wanted anything to do with him, or that she ever would again. Unfortunately, that didn’t change how badly he needed her help.

He pulled his car into her driveway and put it in park. Unsteady breaths staggered the rise and fall of his chest. “In through the nose, out through the mouth,” Eddie quietly instructed himself as he exited the car, flinching when the car door slammed shut upon its release from his hand. Moonlight assisted the mansion’s porchlight in illuminating the path to her front door. If it weren’t for the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, he might have appreciated the sleepy suburban ambience.

Eddie reached the door and raised his fist, hesitating at the last second. If he turned around now, he could probably still make it to his car before Morgan noticed it in her driveway. He swallowed hard, past the lump in his throat, and felt his eyes begin to sting with budding tears. Leaving now would only prove her right for calling him a coward. “Shit,” he sighed before finally knocking.

Morgan couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard someone knock on the front door. When Bex and Mina stayed, they had keys. Urk rang the bell or called out, blubbering, through the window. An unexpected knock on the door was the wrong kind of normal. Even the cats complained with tense ears and whiny meows. Make it go away.

“Yeah, I’m working on it,” Morgan mumbled. She hesitated before approaching the door, bracing herself for the worst, then decided that maybe there was no such thing in White Crest and flung it open only to find… “Eddie?” She was too surprised to keep the incredulity out of her voice. As far as she was aware they had nothing left to say to each other. She frowned, struggling to process. “Uh….can I help you?”

The sight of Morgan instantly inflamed Eddie’s precarious emotional state. He blinked as the budding tears started to blossom. More people had seen him cry in the past few weeks than he cared to admit, and Eddie wasn’t eager to add another name to the list. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like he had a say in the matter once a stray tear fled down his cheek. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “God, Morgan, I’m so sorry.” Eddie bled as much sincerity into his apology as he could muster, she needed to believe him. “I can’t do this.” He shrugged helplessly before his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “You were right about everything, and I want to set things right. With Bex, with you, with myself.” His teeth dug into the inside of his cheek momentarily. “But I’m scared and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t have anyone else I can go to about this. Only one other person knows about me, and he doesn’t know Bex the way you do.” 

Whatever hostility Morgan had been holding onto against Eddie melted as soon as she saw his tears. And then his arms over his chest, the way he seemed desperate to hold himself together when the truth was he couldn’t, his guilt, his hurt. Morgan had seen it dozens of times, almost half of them in the mirror when she was even younger than Eddie. She didn’t know what else to do but come out and wrap him up as best she could. 

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. You’re gonna be okay, Eddie. It doesn’t feel like it, but you will be.” She pulled away, searching his face to find his comfort levels, and gave him a little tug. “Come inside, tell me what you’re worried about, and we’ll come up with something, okay?” She gave him the softest smile she could; nothing was so bad if you could smile a little about it.

Morgan didn’t yell at him, or slam the door in his face like Eddie thought she would. Instead, she hugged him, and that wasn’t something he prepared himself for on the drive over. His throat tightened as he returned the gesture, arms wrapping around her as he grounded himself within the moment. Eddie didn’t receive much physical affection. Usually, he was the one dishing it out, but he appreciated the role reversal more than he could say.

She spoke to him in words of affirmation so kind he almost believed them. As far as he could tell, ‘okay’ was officially out of his reach and would be for the foreseeable future, but he decided not to argue. He caught her eye when she pulled back and he made an effort to smile, but the best he could do was purse his lips together. Eddie followed her inside, nodding along with everything she said. 

“Thank you,” he said softly now that they were surrounded by the mansion’s walls. “Sorry, I didn’t get this far in my head,” Eddie admitted after a beat of silence. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “What I’m worried about is essentially everything.” He didn’t intend to sound so dramatic, but his entire world was changing around him, and he didn’t know how to talk about that nonchalantly. “But, uhm, we can start with Bex. I have to tell her. I don’t want to, but I have to, and she’s going to hate me. I don’t have a lot of friends, Morgan, so losing her is gonna suck for me.” 

Morgan led Eddie into the kitchen and started on some tea. The last thing he needed was to dehydrate while he was this tense. She smirked to herself, remembering that everything went wrong between them around a teapot last time. Maybe this could be a good do-over for both of them. While the water boiled, she put her hands on his shoulders and guided him to sit. 

“Eddie,” she began, warm and gentle. “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself. Why, exactly, do you think Bex is going to hate you? For that matter, why do you think anyone who really cares about you will?” She brushed back his messy hair, sighing. After all these years, not much had changed, not for the kids she knew, at least. “Eddie Carridine, there is nothing wrong with being the person you are. There is nothing bad or ugly or inferior about the person you were made to be. Who told you that there was?”

Eddie didn’t take in much of his surroundings. Morgan’s interior design choices passed by in a blur on their way to the kitchen. He watched as she prepared a pot of tea, the parallel between tonight and their last meeting not being lost on him either. He hoped to actually stick around long enough to try it this time. 

Morgan encouraged him to sit down, and Eddie obliged. His eyes, a little wider than usual, locked onto hers as she kept him from continuing on his downward spiral. The tone she used, the way she pushed his hair out of his face, it all felt so foreign. After Eddie learned to walk and talk, his parents never soothed him with gentle voices or gestures of affection. They preferred to let Eddie work through emotional distress on his own. They told him it would build character, but all it ever did was make him feel desperately alone. Having Morgan, someone he barely knew, do what they refused to without prompting left him feeling conflicted, but mostly grateful.

“Bex is going to hate me because I don’t think we can work through these kinds of differences,” Eddie announced, wishing he could keep the tone light. If he could, maybe the weight pressing down on his chest would start to let up. “Our relationships will be over and, I dunno, I feel like that might upset her.” Bex genuinely seemed to like him, which remained an overwhelming source of guilt.

As far as who told Eddie that being himself was a punishable offense, the list went on and on. “Do you have all day?” he asked dryly. Deflecting didn’t make him feel any better. A sigh slipped past his lips and he decided to take the question more seriously. “My parents, for starters,” he said as the lump in his throat returned. “They, uh, had expectations for me, still do, actually. And I really think this would be the final straw for them. Right now, the only reason I’m still on their insurance and why they pay my car-note is that they’re holding onto hope that I might still grow up to be a normal boy, with a normal wife, and normal kids.”

“Oh, Eddie…” Morgan sighed, brushing through the rest of his hair. “Normal isn’t a real thing. It’s an aspirational lie. No one’s normal. And, sure, you spend your time on YouTube and you can see dead people, but isn’t that also kind of what makes you amazing? Why shouldn’t this also be something that makes you amazing?” She focused on his eyes, willing him to unclench just a little more, to make this easier for both of them. “Also, not every breakup has to end in anyone hating anyone. There’s even a proud tradition in certain circles of staying friends with exes.” Also, Bex had the same secret as Eddie. But that wasn’t hers to tell. 

The kettle raddled on the stove and Morgan went to attend to it. She reached for a jar of something ready-made and dipped a heaping spoonful into the infuser and started preparing their cups. “I want to get to the heart of this with you, I do, but I need to know what level of ‘last straw’ you’re talking about here. I mean, are your parents going to hurt you, if you tell them this? Do you need to secure some resources for yourself or have someone pseudo-indestructible around? Also--” She brought the tea to the kitchen island and slid it toward Eddie before climbing onto the stool next to him. “You still haven’t told me yet. What we’re talking around, what you’re trying to accept about yourself. It might help, if you can name it.”

Eddie wanted so badly to see normality the way Morgan did, but the idea of it seemed incontestably desirable to him in this case. All his life, his parents barely acknowledged his existence and he knew he should resent them for it, but he still craved their approval in spite of everything; in spite of himself. Just once, he wanted them to recognize him as something to be proud of instead of branding him a failure with every step he took. 

“Amazing?” Eddie echoed quietly. The sudden commendation shooed away all thoughts of his parents. He looked up at Morgan like he expected her to take it back. “Most people just think the ghost thing is kind of weird.” His shoulders raised in a soft shrug. Ghosts gave his life meaning, but his dedication to them also made it more difficult to navigate. “Or fake.” Amazing. The word hung stubbornly in his mind as if daring him to believe what Morgan said could be true. “How can something that keeps me up at night be amazing?” he asked genuinely. Before he could take a leap of faith and try to celebrate instead of hide, he needed more answers.

“I’d like that,” Eddie said about staying friends with Bex. “I really do care about her, that part wasn’t a lie.” The calming way Morgan familiarized herself with his hair and seemed to know exactly what to say slowly encouraged him to take refuge in the safety of his time with her. He sniffled, but the tears in his eyes were drying. Breathing came a little easier now, which felt like a miraculous turn of events.

[DOMESTIC ABUSE MENTION]

“Not physically, I don’t think,” he answered honestly, his eyes following her as she tended to the tea. “Dad’s only ever lost his temper with me like that once.” Not a fond memory, but enough time spanned between now and then that Eddie could discuss it without unravelling. “I think they’d disown me though,” he added softly. He caught the cup of tea she slid his way and focused on the steam rising to meet his face instead of his parents. “I make good enough money, but I won’t turn down the other offer, if only for moral support.” He turned his head to face her as she sat down and made another attempt at a smile, this time with marginally more success.

[END OF DOMESTIC ABUSE MENTION]

The hint of a smile diminished when she probed for a label. Saying it out loud to Alfie hadn’t been easy, and maybe he’d been naïve for thinking it wouldn’t be hard the second time around. “I’m—” His eyes closed tightly as his head tilted to the side. He hated this, the way a three letter word felt like Mt. fucking Everest. “This is such bullshit,” Eddie announced with suddenly reopening eyes. He straightened up and took a breath. Try again. “I—I like guys, I guess.” The words shot out of his mouth faster than his usual speech, but he said it. And he didn’t feel sick. In fact, he felt kind of relieved. “One guy in particular, but yeah. I’m gay, probably. I dunno, something like that.” He winced at his convoluted confession, but he guessed it could have been worse. It could have been like the last time she tried to goad him into honesty. 

Morgan ached to see how much Eddie craved comfort,  like he’d been starved for it his whole life. He had the kind of hurt that didn’t show up on the body, the kind that she carried, that was so easy to delude yourself about. And how many times had her throat closed up when she’d tried to tell her mother, Sorry, everything’s my fault because I can only like girls! I’m a lesbian! It had been years before the words came easy to her. Eddie was only just getting started. 

“Hey,” she said softly, reaching for a clean towel and leaning over to wipe his cheeks with all the care she wished for him. “It’s not bullshit. It’s hard, I know it’s hard. But you are one of the dreamiest gay boys that ever popped out of the rainbow, and we are all so lucky that you exist. Maybe even especially the boy you like. I want to hear all about him, but first, new plan: we’re moving somewhere comfy. You’re not a part of the family until you’ve had an emotional moment in the great room, so let’s get moving.” 

She hopped off her stool and took Eddie’s mug and led him further into the house, toward the large plushy couch she and everyone she loved spent so much time on. “Also, I hope this goes without saying, but I will be there for support if that’s what you want. Just tell me when and where to show up. But, back to the main point: you’re amazing, and whatever happens, there’s no good reason for anyone to think differently. Especially because you’re gay. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we make the world go round in the most fabulous ways. But, conditioning, parents, society--there’s a lot of bullshit that keeps people like us from understanding that. When I came out to my mother, I was crying and apologizing because I thought I was literally cursing our family with my gayness. So as much as I believe in you, as much as I’m making this sound like some obvious truth--because it is--I can imagine why you might have a hard time believing it. But I don’t want to guess or project too much of myself.” At last, she settled down in her usual spot among the cushions, floating around them for how little she felt their presence. “So, can I ask you? Other people aside, because we can’t control other people’s choices, what about being gay scares you, or worries you or makes you feel...weird?”

Being called ‘one of the dreamiest gay boys to ever pop out of the rainbow’ managed to inspire Eddie’s first genuine smile of the night. Traces of sadness still lingered on his face, but he appreciated the break in tension more than he knew how to say. He didn’t know how to grapple with her saying people were lucky to know him, especially within the current context, it felt surreal. He wanted to thank Morgan in a way that showcased how much everything she said meant to him, but everything he thought to say fell short.

In the great room, he made himself comfortable next to her on the couch. A family of people like Morgan sounded too good to be true like most of what she said. Thinking about it reminded him of what she told him about the importance of hope, and Eddie decided there must have been some truth to it. As scary as it was to picture a brighter future for himself, it began to seem less like a lost cause.

“You apologized?” He didn’t mean to sound so shocked. Even though he knew better, it often seemed like self-acceptance came easier to everyone else. Hearing that even Morgan struggled to come to terms with her sexuality made him feel  substantially less alone. Eddie considered her next question carefully by turning his attention inward, it wasn’t something he often did. Pleasing the people around him automatically took precedence over making himself happy.

“Thinking about it now, I guess most of what scares me has to do with other people,” he admitted. “Rejection, ridicule, judgment, harassment. Those are the big ones and, like you said, all of that’s out of my control.” Eddie took his first sip of tea now that enough time had passed for it to cool. His hands shook a little. “If all I had to worry about was myself, I…” he trailed off in contemplation. “When I’m alone with Alfie, he’s the guy I mentioned, everything else falls away. When I touch him or manage to make him laugh—that’s it. That’s all that matters; just us. And it feels… amazing until I ask myself how people might react if they saw us. Then I start to feel dirty or-or like I’m doing something wrong, kind of like I’m going to be punished for being happy because…. because that’s always how it’s been.” Eddie realized how true what he said was as he said it. “Being gay scares me because it makes me happy.”

Had Morgan apologized to her mother? “Oh, profusely. I actually thought, if I just kept apologizing, maybe I wouldn’t ever have to actually say it and potentially break what little good there was between my mother and me. But she gave me this impatient look, and I had to, so I did. And it was--” She paused, smiling sadly. “It was maybe the only time she was really sorry for anything she’d done. She uh...she took care of me for a little bit. And that was nice. But this was in 1999, and we had an implicit understanding to keep that part of me on a need-to-know basis. But, things are different, in some ways. Maybe not for your parents, maybe not everywhere, but here? So different. So much better.” She ruffled his hair again and tried to look ahead into something better, lighter than the world he was currently living in. What would he even look like if he was really happy?

“Eddie, I really, really mean what I’m about to say. And I am saying it as someone who was literally cursed with eternal suffering during her life. As a lesbian born in ‘81. As someone who knows all kinds of logic-mazes for explaining why happiness equals bad. Okay?” She took a deep breath and turned his face gently to make sure he was looking at her face. “Love itself is never wrong. And so any happiness that comes from love can never be wrong. And you, Eddie, are so worthy of love. The last thing you need to carry is shame for discovering love, which is one of the best parts of being alive. And the last thing you should do is starve your humanity from love because of other people. The people who are happy for you and your love are the ones you should build community with anyway.”

1999 sounded like a lifetime ago. For Eddie, it nearly was. With the current state of the world and the issues its inhabitants faced, he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like back then. A need-to-know basis, that’s how Morgan described the experience. Eddie shook his head sadly. Living like that must have been so draining. Even now, for all his fear and uncertainty, he knew how lucky he was to be alive now instead of then. If he’d been born alongside Morgan in the ‘80s, this conversation likely wouldn’t have been possible. Not with her, and not with anyone else, for that matter. 

Looking to the past and acknowledging the hard-won fights of those who came before him, especially while sitting next to one of the veterans, an unexpected feeling came over Eddie. His journey, although he would be the one most affected by it, wasn’t only about him. 

“It’s different because of people like you,” he said. “I—” Eddie felt a knot form in his throat. “Morgan, if it wasn’t for you, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to reach this point. Years, maybe? And that’s if it ever happened at all.” Harsh as she’d been, her words resonated with him and carried him through confessing to Alfie. “You saw me, really saw me, and refused to tolerate the bullshit. I think I understand why now.” He shifted to face her more fully. “I want to be more like you, Morgan. Someone who makes the world a better place by existing as is, not someone who hides for the comfort of people who don’t love them.”

Love, happiness, community. Morgan said the words and Eddie latched onto them for dear life. He knew better than to think this would be easy, or that his budding bravery would never again waver in the face of adversity, but he felt better equipped to face the future. “I think you’re right,” he ventured as a look of determination shone in his bleary eyes. “I mean, I want to, anyway, and that’s a start. It’s more than I had before.”

Morgan went still, completely bewildered. “I didn’t do much,” she admitted quietly. “I was too scared. I told myself I’d just make things worse all around. But, you know, everyone was kind of scared back then. It was never about some people magically not being scared. It was about not letting your fear trap you into a life so much smaller than what you should have. You--don’t need to be like me, Eddie. Especially not the me I was at your age. I--maybe it’s not fair of me, but I really just want to spare you some of the suffering I carried with me for so long, and the suffering of people I knew. I saw tiny maneuvers that I used to make when we were talking and I saw your hurt and I just wanted to make it stop for you.” She shrugged. “Don’t wait to find the love of your life until you’re at the ass-end of your thirties. I mean, if it takes that long, who cares, because it’s exactly as cheesy and gratifying as every song you’ve ever heard makes it sound and that is worth every star in the universe. But don’t wait that long to try! You are so young, and it is over so fast. What a waste to spend it hiding when you can be testing your capacity for joy?”

She beamed at Eddie and gave his arm a squeeze. “Deciding to is a really good start. All that’s next is doing it. Do you want to figure out what you want to say? To Bex? To your parents?”

Even with Morgan telling him he didn’t need to be like her, Eddie didn’t let her convince him. He wouldn’t argue and insist she accept his purview, that didn’t seem like it would do much good. Instead, he decided to show her his appreciation with his actions moving forward. She thought she didn’t do much, and he imagined it really did feel that way, but it got her to where she was now; teaching him how to love himself in a way no one had done before. Whether she knew it or not, he owed her immensely.

He grinned when she mentioned finding the love of her life. Eddie was grateful she did, and wondered if he might have too. He knew it was too soon to tell even if he and Alfie had known each other for years, but it didn’t hurt to play with the thought. 

Eddie took a deep breath when she asked where he’d like to begin. “Bex, definitely,” he said with a confident nod. “I don’t want whatever my mom and dad have to say about it to throw me off before I have a chance to enjoy myself, y’know? With Bex, at least she won’t hold it against me for just… being who I am.”

“No, she won’t,” Morgan agreed. “She won’t appreciate being lied to, but she’s not a closed minded girl. I think being honest about why you did what you did and why you’re doing this now is a good step alongside, you know, ‘guess what babe, I’m gay’. It’s kind of awful, but coming clean is usually the fastest way to fix something when you’ve made a mess. Even if it also feels like the hardest.” And maybe Bex would have some relief and tell Eddie about all those ‘I love you’s she’d exchanged with Mina by the pool. But as much as that would give Eddie some comfort, it wasn’t hers to tell. And maybe he’d feel braver, going in prepared for the worst and finding his world still intact. “Although, maybe don’t be that casual and literally say that. Unless it helps you say it easier! Once the words have come out, you sort of have to keep going with them, and that can actually be as great as it is scary.”

Eddie’s head bobbed in agreement as Morgan offered advice. He wouldn’t let doubt trickle in and throw him off course, not yet. If she said Bex would understand, he trusted her. They lived together once, made art together, they had to have been close. Eddie momentarily wondered why that all came to an end, but now wasn’t the time to ask questions like that. In any case, it wasn’t his business what went on between Bex and Morgan even if he cared about both of them a great deal.

He breathed a soft laugh through his nose when she advised him against being as casual as her example. “I have… no idea what the easiest way to say it will be,” he admitted. “I try to plan it out in my mind and a wall goes up.” He made a sharp gesture with his hand to mimic the wall being built. “Maybe…” Eddie trailed off as an idea began forming. “Okay, what if you pretend to be Bex and we play out what might happen? I think I’ll do better with a trial run.”

Morgan snorted with laughter. “We, uh--” Could, but there’s no way I can prepare you for her not-girlfriend in the pool. “Yeah! Why not. Bex is not the most predictable girl, but I will do my best.” She took a deep breath and adjusted herself on the couch. “Hey, Eddie,” she said, doing her best imitation of Bex’s speech cadence. “You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

Eddie straightened up and mentally prepared himself, but the second Morgan imitated Bex, he burst out in unexpected laughter. “Is that really what you think Mainers sound like?” he asked in a bubbly tone. “Maybe, just use your normal accent and I’ll rely on my imagination. I cannot take you seriously when you sound like that.”

“What? That was totally spot-on!” Morgan said, laughing in spite of herself. She shook out her hair and tossed it into Bex’s usual middle part. “Is this not the spitting image? I don’t have the height, but I’ve got the nervous puppy eyes.” Morgan demonstrated, and not too badly, but only because she already had that face in her arsenal long before she met Bex. “But, okay, okay. I am me and you are imagining me as Bex: Hey, Eddie. What did you want to talk to me about?”

When Morgan insisted her Bex impersonation had been spot-on, Eddie immediately shook his head defiantly. “You have natural puppy dog eyes, doing that doesn’t count towards your score. Let me show you a real Bex impersonation.” He took a moment to get into character. His hands clasped in his lap, his shoulders jutted forward slightly to give the impression of timidity, and his eyes widened with brightness.

“Oh, um, hi, Morgan,” he said, altering his voice to convey Bex’s signature nervous excitement. “You said—You said you wanted to talk to me, right? I was busy studying, y’know, about anthropology—” Eddie nearly made himself break character by laughing, but quickly centered himself. “But I… I want to hear what you have to say.”

Eddie raised both hands palm-side up and leaned back with a satisfied expression on his face. “And that’s how it’s done.”

When Morgan was herself as Bex and Eddie returned to being Eddie, the seriousness of the situation crept back up on him. “What I want to talk to you about is… well, us,” he started slowly. His heart picked up speed within his chest even though he wasn’t actually talking to Bex. “I haven’t been completely honest with you about… about who I am. I haven’t been honest with myself, either, but I want to change that, starting now. Bex, I care about you very much and losing you as a friend would wreck me, but I can’t be your boyfriend anymore.” The words flowed from him with surprising ease. When he talked instead of obsessively thinking about what he wanted to say, it came naturally to him.

“I’m gay, and I need to stop hurting both of us by pretending that I’m not.”

Morgan thought carefully, trying to think of Bex’s worst case scenario and some response that wouldn’t crush Eddie’s spirit. Empathy wasn’t always her strong suit, and this had been going on for a little while… “Oh. When you say that, do you mean, did you know that you were when you asked me out? And when we kissed?”

“Yes,” Eddie responded hesitantly. He needed to be as honest as possible and not allow himself to hide behind excuses. Even if he did, he knew Morgan would call him out. “At the time, I thought it might be something I could change or, at least, conceal by being in a relationship with you. I understand if you’re upset with me, but I… I really do care about you. I never should’ve wrapped you up in my self-loathing. You deserve better than that.”

“I...can’t believe you used me like that. I think...I’m going to need a little bit of time with this. All this time, I was sort of hoping you’d be one of the few people who wasn’t lying to me,” Morgan said, choosing her words carefully. “But I don’t hate you Eddie. I could never hate you. And I don’t want to stop being your friend. Are you--gonna be okay and all?”

Eddie appreciated Morgan’s commitment to letting things play out honestly even though it stung. “I’m sorry for being so selfish. I will try my best to make it up to you in the future, if you’ll let me. Once… once you’ve had time, of course.” At the very least, Morgan elected to have her version of Bex not cut him out of her life completely. It gave him a little hope. “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna be okay,” he said softly, slipping out of the scene as he struggled a little under the weight of it. He knew he could do this, or hoped he could anyway, but it was hard. And it would be even harder when it really happened. “How was that?” he asked Morgan, not Bex, hoping she would accept that he’d reached his limit. After the past 24 hours and all they entailed, he was starting to feel the gravity of emotional exhaustion take its toll.

fadaMorgan beamed and drew Eddie tight into her arms. “That was good. That was so, so good. And you were so brave. And I need to tell you now, I don’t think it’ll be that bad. But I did think that you might feel better if you’ve practiced the worst-case scenario with her I could think of, and know it’ll be okay. And it will be. One way or another, I know it will be okay with you and Bex. Alright?”

Eddie melted into the embrace immediately. He appreciated how well Morgan already knew to take care of him. After years spent being touch-starved, moments like this were life-savers. “I’m glad you played it that way,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her. “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.” Everything felt heavy, but he only needed to carry it a little further. “I trust you,” he said, meaning it with his entire heart. “I think I’m gonna be okay.”

[strangertheory]

Will Byers! :)

I meant to answer this Ask an eternity ago, and you have been so incredibly patient with me! (Thank you!!!) 

I think because Will is my favorite character, I started to fuss over my answer too much, and before I knew it we were here: a few months later, and a long while after I offered to answer these specific questions for character Asks. Today, I want to finally answer your Ask for my favorite character: Will Byers.

Will Byers

Favorite thing about them:

Will loves and appreciates his friends so much, and you can tell that he would do absolutely anything for Joyce or Jonathan too. My favorite thing about Will is his love and devotion to others. I think that since Castle Byers symbolically represents a safe place for Will, it also reveals what Will deeply cares about and chooses to protect within that safe place, and one of those things is his friendships. “Castle Byers: All Friends Welcome.” Castle Byers represents Will’s desire to welcome all friends with open arms and unconditional acceptance. While I think that Will would be kindhearted regardless, I think that because Will knows how painful rejection is from facing the bullies at school and his father’s insults, Will puts forth an extra effort to make sure that everyone in his life feels appreciated and loved. Will shares his secret safe-place in the woods with anyone willing to be his friend. Castle Byers is like a secret shrine dedicated to everything Will is passionate about (comics, D&D, art) and is also dedicated to those he loves and to those who love and accept him in return. He has photographs of his friends, drawings on the walls that he made about their D&D campaigns together, and comics that they’ve probably all shared. In spite of his limited means, Will is very generous with what he offers to others: he gave the little girl that was crying in the sandbox his Tonka Truck (even though Joyce cautioned him that they couldn’t afford to get a new one), he’s given Mike dozens of drawings (if Mike’s decorated walls and his binder full of Will’s artworks are any small evidence of this) and Will has given his mom a good number of drawings too that she cherishes. Will wants everyone to feel loved and to be happy, and is grateful to those that are there for him. Undoubtedly some of this stems from his deep insecurities and his lack of self-worth and his desire to be loved and appreciated back, but I think most of it is still rooted in Will’s genuine desire to make sure that other people are happy because their happiness makes him happy too.

Least favorite thing about them:

I appreciate all of the characters for their strengths as well as their flaws because it’s what makes them so very human and relatable. But Will definitely has some traits that I hope, for his own sake, he’ll learn to manage in a healthier way. Will’s weakness is that he often places the wants and needs of others before his own, and he seeks to avoid conflict at all costs. These are arguably admirable traits that are directly related to Will’s love and affection for other people (which I said was my favorite thing about him!), but they can also be self-destructive and unhealthy habits and I think they are, at least in part, the result of Will growing up in a combative and abusive home environment. I admire Will for his selflessness and for his desire to avoid conflict, but I list his excessive selflessness and his excessive desire to keep the peace as two things that make me worry about him. I hope he will learn to balance these two impulses in a healthier way over the next few seasons. I think that learning to deal with these two bad habits in a healthier way will be part of Will’s personal growth over the next two seasons.

Favorite line(s):

“Yea. Crazy together.”

brOTP:

Jonathan and Will, of course! I was sad that we didn’t get more scenes with them together in season 3, but I appreciate every moment in the series that we’ve gotten so far. Jonathan’s effort to reassure Will that it’s ok to be “a freak,” and that being different is preferable to being just like everybody else, was really heartwarming and is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire series.

OTP:

As you have probably figured out if you have been following my blog for even a few days: I’m convinced that Will and Mike are meant to be together by the end of the series, and I am eager to talk about it some other time in another post.

nOTP:

I cannot bring myself to imagine Will and El ever dating. But I look forward to them hopefully becoming very close, and teaming up platonically!

random headcanon:

Hmmm. So this is actually the part of this post that had me delaying responding to your Ask for so long, because my head-canon for Will is incredibly specific, unconventional, frequently controversial (from what I've noticed when this topic is discussed), and a bit complicated to explain. But I do want to talk about it! And I want to clarify that I actually don’t think of this as a head-canon: I solidly consider it a theory that might account for what is happening to Will, and what also is happening to other characters based on specific evidence within the series so far.

I won’t get into all of the evidence and layers in this post (because there is a lot), but I strongly suspect that Will Byers is being written as a character with dissociative identity disorder and that much of Stranger Things is about alters learning to work together as a System while confronting and resolving trauma that is manifesting itself in internal worlds and dreams various symbolic and fantastical ways (as well as in some very humanly monstrous ways too, unfortunately.) Whether the entire story is taking place within an internal world or whether everything has sprung out of the mind and into the external world is definitely a question I think about a lot, but my current interpretation is that a good amount of the story takes place in a liminal space between our external world / reality and a mental space that the characters are sometimes exploring.

Stranger Things follows characters that are canonically dealing with PTSD, significant levels of memory loss (Will couldn’t remember who Hopper was in season 2 while at the Lab), suddenly shifting from being mentally present in the world to being in a different perceived place (is the Upside Down an internal world?), perceived changes in personality and identity, traumatic visions and experiences (flashbacks? memories?) that often parallel one another in an eerie way, and many other specific details. Add to that Doctor Owens’ preoccupation with Will’s brain scans and Mr. Clarke’s lesson in season 2 in which he discusses Phineas Gage’s changed personality following Gage’s brain injury (which is not an example of DID but is still thematically relevant, and an oddly specific topic to feature in the series) and the clues just continue to add up. Even if this theory isn’t correct I look forward to continuing to discover more about the established rules of the Stranger Things universe and what is going on with Will, El, Hopper, the Numbers, all of these horrible father-figures (notably Dr. Brenner, Lonnie, and Neil) and the mysterious Lab.

(One last important note regarding this theory: please do not base your knowledge of DID on any fictional representation of it in popular media. A lot of misrepresentations of DID exist in Hollywood and pop culture. If you'd like to learn more on this topic, please read about it in medical publications and resources with verifiable authority on the topic.)

unpopular opinion:

I think that the theory I mentioned above is probably my most unpopular opinion/thought regarding what I think Will is dealing with.

songs I associate with them:

The songs that they chose to feature on Will’s official Spotify Playlist are all songs that I associate with Will at this point. I’m so impressed by the attention the creators of Stranger Things devote to the music not only in the show but to the characters’ official playlists. One track that definitely jumps out at me from Will’s official playlist is Afraid by The Neighborhood. The lyrics of the chorus are eerily specific: “When I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will take my place / when I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will end up being me.”

favorite picture(s) of them:

[firstlovesuggestions]

Disclaimers, Rules, FAQ, and Resources

Hi everyone! Here’s the official one-stop post for this blog and how it runs. I’m excited to get things moving again after my long hiatus!

Disclaimers and rules are subject to change at any time~

The resources list is always expanding; if you have resources for help in the UK, Canada, Australia, or any other country, please message me so I can include them in the list. As of right now, I only have US resources.

Note: as of April 20, 2021 I am putting a temporary hold on answering advice asks. The inbox is still open for advice, but I’m just going through some personal things and need a little break, so I might not respond as soon as you like. Submissions will still be posted and my own suggestions will still be coming! Thank you~

Disclaimers

All suggestions are my own thoughts and feelings about my own partner and relationship. I have not, do not, and will not ever take another suggestion blog’s work as my own. Submissions from followers are tagged “submission” and I will never take credit for someone’s submission. If you think I am stealing another blog’s posts or there are any other sourcing issues, please message me directly.

I am a 22 year old cisgender bisexual woman in a relationship with a 25 year old cisgender straight man. As such, I may not always give the best or most fitting advice to others of different genders, sexualities, and ages, but I really do try my best.

Any advice I give is purely based on my own thoughts, opinions, and experiences. I try to be objective at the same time, but at the end of the day, I’m going to go with what I feel is the best answer for you. If you disagree with or are upset by my advice, please ignore it and move on. I can’t tell you what you want to hear just to make you feel better; that doesn’t help anyone.

I’m not responsible for the outcome of your situation if you choose to apply the advice I give. I’m a stranger on the internet you asked for help, not a fairy godmother. I can’t fix things for you, just give you my input. Please don’t blame me for things not working. I don’t like being harsh about this, but I just want to make this known and understood.

Rules

Homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny/misandry, and any other sort of discrimination is prohibited in your reblogs, replies, and tags. If I find anyone breaking this rule to any degree, you will be blocked on the spot, no questions asked. It’s 2021. You’re better than this.

If you find my advice or my suggestions to be problematic in any way, please message me directly and tell me why, so I know to correct myself and to delete the problematic post in question.

DD/LG blogs will be blocked immediately if I find any interaction with my posts whatsoever. This is not kinkshaming. This is me wanting no part of a community that sexualizes children.

No asks about family situations and relationships. These will be deleted, as I am not in any position to help with matters like these.

Asks about sex and sexual relationships are allowed, but please do not be overly graphic in your descriptions. Sex asks are reserved for those 18 or older**. I will tag all sex-related posts with “tw sex” for those who wish to avoid them.

I won’t post submissions about breakups, rejections, or any other sorrowful situations. I want this blog to be a happier place for people. I’m really sorry for this one, and I can still be here to support you if you want to direct message me.

If you have any questions about the rules, please send a message! I don’t want to discourage anyone from interacting with this blog.

** If you are a minor looking for resources relating to things like sexual assault or birth control, please see the resources below. If you have any other questions or situations you need resources for, please message me directly.

FAQ

This is a list of the topics asked very, very frequently and a quick answer to them. If I find your ask to be redundant and think it can be answered on this list, it will be deleted. This is not meant to ignore you; this is to keep ask traffic lower so that I can answer more people instead of repeating the same answer for one general topic.

“Would it be wrong of me to get revenge on [person] for [reason]?” - Yes. I don’t ever condone revenge for any reason when it comes to relationships. Don’t stoop to their level. Don’t give them the satisfaction of knowing you’re angry/upset with them. The best way to say “fuck you” to someone is to cut them off and move on, because you’re taking away the power they held over you.

“I’m in an LDR and my partner isn’t reaponding to my texts like they used to.” - Communicate. LDRs have no room for not responding to texts and calls because that’s the only way you get to connect. If they still aren’t willing to talk after multiple attempts to discuss the issue(s) at hand, you can give them an ultimatum or just leave.

“How do I get my crush to notice me?” - Talk to them. If you’re wanting to get their attention, reach out to them.

“How can I start a conversation with my crush?” - Casually compliment them, find something in the environment to comment on or send them a meme “accidentally”. It’s not creepy to start a conversation, and it could lead to a new friendship or something more! Just don’t rush things.

“How do I impress my crush?” - Be yourself. Seriously. If you try to be anything other than you, or if you do things you usually never do or don’t like to do, it won’t end well. If you did manage to reel in your crush and start dating, it would be under false pretenses and likely wouldn’t last long.

“I confessed to my crush, but they rejected me.” - Accept their answer. No means no, no exceptions. The worst thing you could possibly do is keep trying to get them to say yes. If they offer to stay friends after they reject you, it’s your choice to keep them in your life or to move on.

“I have a crush on someone who is already in a monogamous relationship.” - There’s nothing wrong with having a crush. What matters is that you do not, under any circumstances, interfere with their relationship. It will hurt to see them with someone else, but if you love them, you should respect their choices and who/what brings them happiness.

“I have/my partner has a crush on someone else.” - If you’re dating casually, this isn’t super uncommon, but if it bothers you, say something. If you’re in a committed relationship, this could be an issue because one of you doesn’t have your heart fully in it. If you feel like you two have become distant or that the trust is broken, communicate and determine where to go from there.

“I have a crush on someone, but they’re [sexuality, gender].” - In the same way they respect your gender and sexuality, you need to respect theirs, too. If they express interest outside of their sexual orientation, you can be there to support them, but do not force things unless you want to push them away or break your bond with them.

If you feel your question isn’t answered here depite being related to something on the list, or you need more specific advice, please don’t hesitate to reach out after you have read this list thoroughly and completely!

Resources (USA)

Crisis text line: Text HELLO to 741741

Domestic abuse hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE)

Sexual assault hotline: 1-800-656-4673 (HOPE)

Suicide prevention hotline: 1-800-273-8255 (TALK)

Substance abuse services (SAMHSA): 1-800-662-4357 (HELP)

Trevor Lifeline (LGBTQ mental health crisis hotline): 1-866-488-7386

Eating disorder helpline: (Call or Text) 1-800-931-2237, via NEDA

Dating issues/abuse: via loveisrespect.org

Birth control information: via Planned Parenthood

If anyone has resources for the UK, Canada, Australia, or any other country, please let me know. I want to only have the best and most reliable ones here, and it’s difficult to know which ones to include. Thank you in advance!

…………………

About Me

My main is @serenityfive! If reply to you in a post, that’s where I’ll be talking from. Same with if I follow you or I’m scrolling through and liking stuff on your blog. I like to pick a blog at random in the notes and look around since I’m trying to find people to follow despite tumblr being dead!

I started this blog in 2018 to express my feelings for a guy I had a massive crush on who eventually became my boyfriend. We have been together for 2 and a half years now and are living happily in Colorado! My side of our story can be found here 💕

So, a little bit more about me... I’m 22, I like cooking, gaming, cats, nature, and I have a strong interest in health and nutrition. I’m currently finishing my associate’s degree and want to obtain a certification in surgical technology!

I’m happy to make people smile with this blog; you guys are very fulfilling and kind, and I thank you! If anyone wants to chat, just hit me up~

With love,

Lily

[yumeka36]

Frozen 2 story/lore complete analysis

Foreword: Even after writing my review a few days ago, there was still so much more I wanted to say about Frozen 2. Since the movie had its worldwide release, I've seen many posts by fans debating and interpreting the events of the plot and posing the same questions and concerns over and over. But so far I haven't seen anyone attempt to tackle everything in one comprehensive "guide." Since I'm the type of person who doesn't like posting bits of my thoughts here and there and would rather just say everything all at once in one big post and get it over with, that's what I'll be doing here: examining every major plot point of the movie in somewhat chronological order and giving my detailed interpretation. I'll be using evidence from the movie itself and the limited official sources we have such as the recent Into the Unknown podcast with Jennifer Lee, The Art of Frozen 2 book, and a few others. I'm writing this not only as a means of getting out all the thoughts and feelings I still need to express, but also to help others understand and appreciate this imperfect but still beautiful movie. I've written heavy lore analysis posts about other fandoms before (Five Nights at Freddy's lore was way harder!) so it's something I'm familiar with and enjoy doing. I think I'm pretty good at dissecting answers using even the most minute story details

-Note- there's a high probability that as the months and even years go by, we'll get more official evidence through books, interviews, merchandise, and maybe even new animated shorts and sequels that may invalidate some of the things I describe below. I'm considering coming back to this post at a future date to correct myself if enough of what I say is proven wrong. Let's see how long my interpretations can last!

King Runeard and the dam: Because King Runeard feared the magic of the Northuldra, he came up with a plan to construct a dam that would weaken their resources, under the guise of it being a gift, a bridge between the two villages. The dam disrupted their water sources, causing negative environmental effects on the forest. Since he feared the power of the spirits, it made sense he'd try to destroy the Northuldra in a subtle way rather than wage a war. The dam probably took many months to construct, so we can make the assumption that the group of Arendelle soldiers he brought to the forest as seen in Agnarr's flashbacks stayed with the Northuldra for a while. Further evidence is scenes of the Arendelle soldiers and Northuldra doing reindeer riding together, plus the memory in Ahtohallan of Iduna talking to Agnarr when he's reading a book. Obviously the two of them forged a good relationship during the months Agnarr stayed there. As this time went on, the Northuldra leader began to realize that the dam was doing more harm than good, so King Runeard had to make his final move. Once the war broke out, Iduna made her decision to save Agnarr and "stowaway" on an Arendelle wagon that managed to escape before the mist covered the land. One of the memories seen in "Show Yourself" is young Iduna calling to the spirits for help. We saw in another memory Elsa encounters, as well as Agnarr's flashback in the beginning, that Gale answered her call for help and carried Agnarr into the wagon, and Iduna followed. Since the Northuldra and Arendellian soldiers left behind in the forest were still at odds with each other, and the symbol of the atrocity, the dam, still stood, the spirits remained angry and kept their magic dormant, no longer letting the Northuldra use it. The elements still existed and behaved normally, but no longer in the magical ways the Northuldra were using them for.

The four spirits: The movie tells us that the four spirits are air (Gale), fire (Bruni), water (Nokk), and earth (earth giants). But we also are given the impression that they do a whole lot more than just use their elements. First off, it's discovered that they gave Elsa her powers as a gift because Iduna did the right thing by saving Agnarr even though he was the Northuldra's enemy (Anna put the pieces together and told Elsa during the shipwreck scene). It was a sign that the two sides could learn to get along again so they wanted to give Elsa the ability to find out this truth (use her ice to freeze the water's memories) should she choose to. This is also supported by the fact that the spirits evacuated the people of Arendelle in anticipation of Anna and Elsa discovering the truth and choosing to destroy the dam: the spirits wouldn't want to kill the people of Arendelle as not only would that be pretty evil, but the idea is for the Aredellians to realize the wrong their people committed and correct it, not to die for the sins of their ancestors. But again, this means the spirits – as in Bruni and the rest – did all this, and yet they don’t seem like creatures that make rationale, moral decisions (seriously, Bruni is a baby~). Like, I'm imagining the four of them having a "spirit meeting" (they probably communicate telepathically) and Nokk is like "yo, that Iduna girl did a good thing, let's give her daughter ice powers so she can come back and freeze all the water memories and discover the truth" and Bruni's like "sounds good" and Gale's like "let's do it!" Joking aside, I know even though they're represented as being non-human-like, there's more to them than that. It's similar to Japanese Shintoism in which gods and spirits can exist everywhere and take many forms, often animals, but that doesn't mean they don't have wisdom and power beyond that form. Bruni and the others must be like that too, a certain omnipotence beyond their physical form. Obviously they can control the elements in areas where they're not present (when they stopped all the elements in Arendelle at the beginning of the movie) as well as other godlike phenomena like granting powers to humans. Again, the exact nature of the four spirits and how they can carry out these extraordinary actions/decisions is one of the plot elements I mentioned in my review that's glossed over because there's simply not enough time to delve into it as it's the kind of thing that would take Harry Potter-sized books to fully flesh out. Like any other magical element in fairy tales, it doesn't pay to try and understand the exact "whys" and "hows" of the four spirits in Frozen 2 – I think what we're given in the movie and a little creative interpretation is enough.

Iduna and Agnarr: What did Iduna do immediately after she and Agnarr escaped the forest? The only evidence we have is a scene in Ahtohallan where she tells Agnarr (when they're both adults) that she needs to tell him who she really is and where she's from. This makes it clear that she separated from him after she saved him and stayed away until she had grown up enough that he wouldn't recognize her as the girl who had saved him. Interestingly, the Frozen 2 Junior Novelization book includes an extra memory Elsa passes by in Ahtohallan where she sees young Iduna in an orphanage in the woods outside Arendelle and a voice that says "No one knew who you were, you didn't have any family with you" (the book doesn't say who the voice is). The book also says that Iduna had put on some Arendelle clothing in the wagon she stowed away on with Agnarr. This further solidifies the fact that she was able to hide her identity as a Northuldra and somehow met up with Agnarr many years later after they had both grown up (exactly how she went from an orphan to meeting and then marrying the king of Arendelle is a story for another time). At some point the memory we saw played out where she finally confessed to him about who she was. Exactly when this happens though I'm not sure but the timing doesn't have a big impact on the plot. Obviously it'd have to be some time before they set off to find Ahtohallan. I'd like to think she confessed some time after Elsa accidentally struck Anna with her magic. They then spent many years secretly researching magic in a hidden room, as is described in The Forest of Shadows book (it's likely Agnarr was the only person who knew she was Northuldra). Eventually they made the decision to try and reach Ahtohallan themselves under the guise of going to the Southern Seas.

The voice: I've seen two interpretations of who the voice is – either the voice is within Elsa herself or it's Iduna's ghost/spirit calling to her from Ahtohallan. In the Into The Unknown podcast, Jen says that the voice Elsa hears is her mother's but doesn't go into detail. I don't think Iduna's ghost is literally calling to her but rather the magic side of Elsa, her mother's side, is what's calling her to Ahtohallan. When Elsa reaches the final chamber in "Show Yourself" after embracing her role as the fifth spirit, she's able to reveal the memories there…and the first memories she sees are Iduna's memories. The Iduna we see singing with her doesn't seem to be a memory since it's addressing her directly, so I think that Iduna's spirit/ghost lives on in the depths of Ahtohallan, waiting for Elsa to discover who she really is. Since we see young Iduna in the memory doing the voice (from when she's calling Gale to help her save Agnarr) the melody of the voice must be a universal call for the spirits that Iduna knew, being a Northuldra. As for why it took so long for Elsa to start hearing the voice, she was too consumed by fear and notions of isolation in the first movie to even think of her powers as a gift and what purpose they could serve. It took three years of being accepted by Anna and the people of Arendelle for her to reach a level of comfort that she could start thinking of grander things, like wanting to learn the origin of her powers and if there's some greater purpose she was meant to use them for. These feelings triggered the "magic side" of her, her mother's side, to starting crying out as a voice in her head. When she finally decided that she wanted to follow it, the spirits sensed that desire and awoke, then proceeded to evacuate Arendelle, in anticipation that she'd discover the truth and choose to do the right thing.

Why ice powers? As I described earlier in the post, although it's stated in the movie that Elsa's powers were a gift from the spirits, it was not stated specifically why they chose ice powers. I kinda like that we weren't spoon-fed that answer but once you think about what Elsa does with her powers throughout the movie it becomes clear: since water has memory, ice magic can freeze those memories and give them physical form, creating visual "moments in time" that can be used to discover the truth. No one but Elsa could have used her magic to freeze the memories in Ahtohallan and elsewhere in the enchanted lands to show the past events.

The shipwreck: It was revealed that Iduna and Agnarr were headed for Ahtohallan because they believed they could find out the secrets of Elsa's powers, evidenced by what Iduna wrote on the map and their final words during the shipwreck: "Ahtohallan must be the source of her magic" and "We keep going for Elsa." Olaf questions how they were able to get through the mist, suggesting that maybe they perished before the boat actually got to the enchanted forest, but the map reveals that they knew where the mist was and took a detour through the Dark Sea (this is better described in the Frozen 2 Junior Novelization).

Ahtohallan: Although the lullaby states that Ahtohallan is a river, we find out that the water is actually frozen, forming a huge glacier that still retains all memories. The main clues we have for exactly what Ahtohallan is lies in the notes Iduna wrote on the map that Anna and Elsa find in the shipwreck: "The end of the ice age, the river found but lost, magic's source, Elsa's source." The "ice age" could be referring to the fact that Ahtohallan, once a river, somehow froze during an ice age (when this ice age took place is unknown) becoming a glacier that drifted out into the Dark Sea. "The river found but lost" means the river still exists but is "lost" in the sense that all the memories are now hidden in the glacier instead of a free-flowing river. This could also refer to the fact that even if one finds the river, unless they have powers bestowed by the spirits, the memories will still be "lost" if they don't have the required magic to decipher the memories. The part that refers to Ahtohallan as "magic's source" is the most interesting. Ahtohallan isn't only the source of memories but of magic, evidenced by the fact that we see each of the four spirits connect with Elsa in Ahtohallan, with each of their elemental symbols becoming part of her as she takes her place in the center. Her transformation into the fifth spirit couldn't have taken place anywhere but Ahtohallan – it's a "hub" for the spirits' magic, since magic is required to reveal the memories there. The last part of the note, "Elsa's source," reinforces this: as I described in the section above, the power to manipulate ice and freeze water is essential for finding the secrets of Ahtohallan, and this power is what the spirits gave Elsa. How this actually works isn't too complicated: all the memories we see are either of Elsa's own memories or of people close to her, like Anna and her parents. I think it's logical to conclude that all memories exist in Ahtohallan, but the further away those memories are from you – i.e, memories of someone you don't know, memories from a long time ago, or memories that very few people know about – can be considered "deep" memories that require going further and further into the depths to uncover, running the risk of going "too far." (Ahtohallan memories are different from memories she revealed in the forest: there she froze the memories that existed in that spot specifically whereas Ahtohallan contains memories unbounded by time and space, but with the risk of going too deep). This is why she had to go to such lengths to find out what really happened with King Runeard: not only was this a memory from someone she never actually met from decades ago, but it was a secretive memory only a couple people knew about. But even though Elsa has ice magic, there's no reason to assume she's invulnerable to other ice magic, especially the "ultimate" ice magic straight from the original source, Ahtohallan. This is why even she succumbed to the consequences of going too far into deep memories – the lullaby states "not too far or you'll be drowned," but since Ahtohallan is a glacier now, you get frozen instead. @spicylove4ever​ wrote a post interpreting Ahtohallan too, I recommend it.

The fifth spirit: Elsa's role as the fifth spirit is probably the most debated topic in Frozen 2 – out of all the plot points I describe here, it's the one that has the least information to go by. All we know of the fifth spirit is that it’s a bridge between humans and the magic of nature. By the end of the movie, Elsa is shown to have a closer bond with the four other spirits and her magic has gotten stronger, but that's about it. She was shown to tame the spirits during her journey, but she never tamed the earth giants, which makes me believe that taming them was not a prerequisite for becoming the fifth spirit: the spirits became active and sought her out, being drawn by her magic, and she tamed the ones she encountered. She probably would have tamed the earth giants too if Anna hadn’t stopped her. But we see that even the earth giants are friendly to her after her transformation, so I feel their connection to her is the result rather than the requirement. But now that the wrong of the past has been revealed and corrected, as far as what she does everyday in the forest and how much of it is "duty" vs "self-fulfillment" remains unclear. But one thing that is clear to me that people are concerned about is whether she's still human or is now a literal goddess/spirit. I think the term "spirit" is purely figurative. She never actually transforms into another type of being or appears to ascend to some astral plane beyond the human world – she literally just gets a new dress and hairstyle, just like the first movie, and besides being more powerful and more confident in herself, everything else about her is the same. She wasn't immune to dying to Ahtohallan's magic either, showing that she's not immortal and didn't gain ultimate powers over all. Jen even states in the podcast that she considers both Anna and Elsa the fifth spirit/bridge, further showing that the term is used loosely and not meant to be taken literally. Another point is how different Elsa is compared to the other spirits: they have a sense of being ancient, ethereal creatures that have existed unchanged for who knows how long. Unless something outrageously different about Elsa is revealed now that she has this new role, all evidence still points to her being a normal human that happens to have magical powers. Another interesting point is that there doesn't seem to be a fifth spirit until Elsa came along, so one could make the assumption that fifth spirits are humans like her who are given special magical gifts when the need arises. So they don't exist all the time, and since they're human, they have the lifespan of one and don't live on forever like the other four spirits. If another human was the fifth spirit before Elsa, they probably lived long ago, before even King Runeard's time. Honeymaren said that people thought they heard the fifth spirit call out the day the forest fell, but we know that cry was actually young Iduna calling to the spirits to help her save Agnarr. I don't believe Iduna was the fifth spirit before Elsa since there's no evidence that she had powers, only that she used the spirits' powers the same way the other Northuldra did. And if she was the fifth spirit, why couldn't she have gone to Ahtohallan to reveal and correct the past instead of Elsa? No, the fifth spirit has to have magic in order to utilize Ahtohallan, it has to be a human born with magic to have both the human side and magic side. So whether there was a fifth spirit before Elsa and who it was, or if there wasn't, why is a fifth spirit needed now and what that role entails, are questions that have stumped even me. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for any events and panels with the Frozen 2 creators in the coming months/years, hoping for an opportunity to get these answers from them…assuming they don't get answered beforehand in future franchise installments (otherwise debates like this will continue forever with no resolution!) @vuelie-frost​ also wrote a good post about Elsa's transformation into the fifth spirit and what it means so give it read.

Destiny and choice: A common criticism of Elsa's story arc in Frozen 2 is that she was forced into her destiny as the fifth spirit and didn't really have a choice, since the only way to get the voice to shut up was to go to Ahtohallan. This is true, but the important part is what happens after that. She no longer hears the voice once she finally realizes that she's the fifth spirit, so once the forest was saved and everything was resolved, she definitely had a choice at that point to return to being queen of Arendelle or stay in the forest and cultivate her connection to the other spirits. If I were in her position and had that kind of incredible power, no matter how happy I am with my life, I'd always want to know why I had such a gift and if there's a higher purpose I could use it for. In the podcast, Jen said that Elsa was a good queen but had an even higher calling and one she eventually feels more comfortable with. She also mentions that she still considers Elsa an introvert, further confirming that she still retains her humanity and didn’t suddenly become “perfect” after her transformation. Elsa's obviously overcome with joy when she finds this out in "Show Yourself," so is it really that outlandish that after this emotional self-discovery she decides to continue exploring this newfound purpose? And again, it's not like she's completely giving up her family for this new role because she still sees them often. She can now satisfy both of her desires – learning more about her powers and connection to the spirits while still maintaining her bond with her family. I really wish the movie made this a bit more clear – even just one more short scene of Anna and Elsa together after Anna becomes queen and a few words on how they each feel about their new roles would have put minds at ease. But for what they gave us, it can still easily be interpreted this way.

The flood: Another criticism I've heard for Frozen 2's ending is that Arendelle should have been washed away in the flood, showing that they had to make a true sacrifice to right a past wrong. One of the pages of The Art of Frozen 2 describes an alternate ending where Arendelle castle (it just says "castle," not sure if the rest of the kingdom was spared) was destroyed in the flood and then rebuilt, incorporating some Northuldra elements. With the way the movie actually ended, nothing was sacrificed…but why do we need a sacrifice? I know the mythology book that leaked months before the movie's release said that Pabbie predicted that a sacrifice had to be made…but that same book never actually described the flood and said that Arendelle was saved in the end, so who knows? But whether the sacrificing of Arendelle was something early in the story's development that was eventually scrapped, I think the outcome we got now is just as valid. The final version of the movie had no hinting of any sacrificing that needed to be made, only about discovering the truth and doing the next right thing, which is just what Anna and Elsa did. But in a way, they did make sacrifices, or at least they intended to, with Elsa going too far into Ahtohallan so she could uncover the truth, knowing it could lead to her death, and Anna destroying the dam, knowing it means destruction for Arendelle. And because they were willing to go that far to set things right, the spirits rewarded them by saving Elsa who could then save Arendelle. While the message of the alternate ending was "a sacrifice must be made to right a past wrong even if the current generation had nothing to do with it," the message we actually got was "if you do what is right and true even if it means making a sacrifice, things may still turn out better in the end." I think both messages have merit but the creators eventually decided to go with the latter, which isn't any points against it in my opinion. Of course, the flood still could have hit Arendelle accidentally, for example, Elsa wasn’t able to reach it in time. But considering all the hardship and grief the girls had gone through and how the movie already went to a pretty dark place in “The Next Right Thing,” I can’t fault the creators for wanting to make the ending as happy as possible, with Elsa feeling triumphant that she was able to keep her promise to protect Arendelle and Anna not having to lose her homeland.

The bridge: When Honeymaren explains the fifth spirit to Elsa, she describes it as a bridge between humans and the magic of nature. This makes it seem like Elsa herself is the bridge (since she's a human with magic), but as she says to Anna at the end, a bridge has two sides and their mother had two daughters. After giving it some thought, I realized that yes, Elsa is the embodiment of the fifth spirit, but the bridge part of it comes from Anna…as in, Elsa could not have succeeded with her goal without Anna's help. Even Jen confesses in the podcast that Anna is definitely the bridge part but she considers both of them the fifth spirit in a way. Perhaps the spirits knew that magic alone wouldn't be enough, they knew that in order to discover such deeply hidden memories, one would have no choice but to "go too far" into Ahtohallan. More evidence for this is that the mist only parted for Elsa when she was holding Anna's hand (we don't see them each alone try to pass through but we do see Elsa shoot her magic into the mist only to have it bounce back). If Elsa were to do this alone, she still would have discovered the truth but she definitely would have had to sacrifice herself to do it…and in doing that, who would there be to act on the truth and destroy the dam. Even if she was able to relay the message back to the others via ice magic sculptures the way she did for Anna, would someone like Matthias who's still bitter towards the Northuldra and fiercely loyal to Arendelle go through with destroying the dam? That's why Anna had to be there: Elsa was the part of the bridge that used magic to discover the truth and Anna was the human side that had to carry it out. When Anna chose to do the right thing and destroy the symbol of the past wrong (the dam) even though it meant flooding her homeland, the spirits rewarded both sisters’ actions by saving Elsa who was then able to save Arendelle before the tidal wave hit. It's not clear whether the spirits influenced Anna's birth the way they did Elsa's just for the sake of all this, but it's possible. And this all goes back to the major emphasis the filmmakers have made about Elsa being a mythical character, Anna being a fairy tale character, and how, similar to the first movie, Elsa would have the typical tragic fate of many myths were it not for Anna's fairy tale influence saving the day. Of course, Elsa’s statement at the end that “they did this together” is true, but when she follows-up with “and we’ll continue to do this together” and, later, Anna says as the statue of Iduna and Agnarr is unveiled, that their “land and people are now connected by love” can only imply that the sisters will be working together to mend the relationship between Arendelle and the Northuldra. We don’t actually see this unfold in the epilogue due to how limited it is and, assuming it takes place not too much later (a month maybe?) it’ll take time for the two sides to truly start mingling. But this, along with how our beloved sisters adapt to their new roles, are stories begging to be told in Frozen 3. Keeping the faith that it will happen someday~

Sources:

Into the Unknown podcast with Jennifer Lee

The Art of Frozen 2

Frozen 2 Junior Novelization (thanks @99884321​ for the screenshots!)

[peanutparade]

Someone asked me what my process was, and I’m not sure I gave her a satisfying answer in the PM, so here I will attempt to explain how I make a game from start to finish.

*Please note the the drafts above are not for the same story, but for the purpose of illustration.

**Also please take this advice with a grain of salt. I’m not a published author (though I do know a bit about the publishing industry), and I’m definitely not a perfect writer. This is my process, and the things I try to keep in mind when I’m writing, and you may find this advice to be complete garbage.

Step one: Get an idea for a story. I can’t really give any tips on how to go about doing this. I tend to take inspiration from other works of media (classical literature is my favorite, though I have taken cues from more contemporary sources as well).

Step two: Consider who your characters are going to be. It’s okay if you only have one or two characters in mind at first. I’m pretty utilitarian about my characters, so most of them don’t get created until step three.

Step three: Open a word document and just start typing shit out. (I use Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere, and for another reason which I’ll get to later.) Don’t stop to think, don’t even breathe. Just type. Any idea that comes into your head goes in the document. Some of it won’t make sense with everything else, some of it will contradict other things, some of it will be vaguely defined. You will fix that later. This is the most important part (especially the way I write), because it’s where you’re going to get an idea of how your story starts and how it ends, as well as cement your cast of characters. If you need a scene where your main character goes to a lighthouse, then you know you’ll also need to come up with a lighthouse keeper (see my comment above about being utilitarian with characters. I’m no authority, so if you do things differently, that’s fine, but I don’t like making characters that don’t serve a purpose).

Step four: Annotation, annotation, annotation! (This is the other thing I use Google Drive for, as it has a comment feature that I heavily rely on.) Go through all your scribbling and make notes for yourself. Be a little hard on yourself here, because this is the part where you’re going to try to make everything you’ve written in Draft 1 cohesive. This will be a long process, as you need to think about how all of this is connected, as well as think about what sort of arcs your main characters are going to go through. I read somewhere once that ALL of your characters have to go through an arc, but that’s a bunch of wacky nonsense. Some characters are minor characters, and thus do not require depth. The only character arc that MUST be included is the main character’s arc. Remember: character arc ≠ character motivation. ALL major characters (protagonist(s), love interest(s), villain(s)) MUST have motivation for what they are doing. The motivation doesn’t have to be anything too complex, just so long as the audience understands why the characters are doing what they’re doing. (Minor characters with motivation can make the world feel more real and lived in, but they can also make the story feel bogged down. Brevity is key here, and sometimes less is more.)

Step five: Draft 2 All of that plotting you just did? Throw it away! Just kidding, don’t actually throw it away. BUT you’re going to rewrite your plot outline, tidier this time, and only refer back to Draft 1 when you get stuck. Feel free to come up with new ideas during this time; Draft 1 is not your story’s final form. If you think of scenes or quotes, feel free to include them in this draft, but you’re mostly just outlining right now. (As you may notice in the image above, Draft 2 is also subject to annotation.) Draft 2 is where you should be solidifying the themes of your story. Character arc(s) should tie into and support this theme. This is also the draft where you should be catching any plot holes (especially if you don’t have an editor/beta reader), as once you’ve begun actually writing the story, any problems here will only compound as you go.

Step six: Write the story It’s pretty straightforward. Follow Draft 2 (and any additional annotations you made on Draft 2), and go scene by scene and write. I never skip around, as it makes it hard to keep track of what characters know at what time, but I know of authors that do skip around, and they seem to do okay. You’ll have to figure out what works best for you.

Step seven: Edit, edit, edit! Aside from the obvious (typos and spelling errors), look out for:

Scenes that are too long or too short. Counterintuitively, these may be the result of the same problem: a lack of purpose. Ask yourself, “Does this need to be here?”

Long-winded info dumps. Consider the old adage, “show, don’t tell.” Whenever information can be conveyed through action or reaction, write it that way. If you can convey two things at the same time (i.e. something about a character and also something about the world--bonus if these two things are actually unrelated to each other), do it.

Information that your audience wouldn’t logically have being the key to resolving the plot. Especially in sci-fi and fantasy stories, if the conclusion of the story relies on knowing something--even if it’s something that the characters all know--you need to make sure your audience also knows this, or else they will be frustrated. Keep in mind the Rule of Threes.

And that’s the story portion done. If you’re making a visual novel/dating sim, there are other steps you need to do. (I usually do this stuff while writing the story so it doesn’t get tedious, but if you’re hiring people to do this other stuff, you should probably have the writing done ahead of time. If you’re hiring writers to help you, you should have Draft 1 done, at the least. Your writers can probably take it from there.)

NOTE: Any job you don’t do yourself is something that will cost you money. If you can find other aspiring creators to volunteer their time to your project, good for you, but please do not approach anyone directly unless you plan to offer to pay them (”for exposure” is not payment).

Step eight: Character sprites Major characters are going to need to be represented visually in your visual novel (go figure!), so... draw some people? I know some people make character design sheets, but I just jump right in, and then later, make microedits to the sprites as the mood strikes me. The design sheet thing is probably a smarter way to do it. I use photoshop, and I would strongly encourage keeping hair, clothing, and facial features on separate layers until you know exactly how you plan to code them into your game.

Step nine: Backgrounds Same as the sprites, except places instead of people. I’m bad at this, so I have no right to give anyone advice. I use a 3D interior design app to create a guide for what I want rooms to look like, and then I use that to get my vanishing points and furniture sizing right. This method is 50% tracing, 50% wishing I was dead. I do not recommend it.

Step ten: Audio If your game will have voice acting, get that together now. If you’re composing your own music, you’re more talented than I am. For my first game, I utilized royalty free options (incompetech and bensound), but now I hire a composer (I do still supplement my soundtrack with royalty free options if it’s for something inconsequential). I don’t use many sound effects, but when I do, I just look for free options online.

Step eleven: Coding I use Ren’py because it’s free and easy to learn (provided you don’t want to do anything too complicated). There are tons of resources online to teach you how to use Ren’py, both from official sources and unofficial sources. I’ve never posted in the forums myself, but the people there seem very kind and helpful if you get stuck. (If anyone wants to see how I code, specifically, I’ll do a Part Two for it, but I have to warn you that my games are the coding equivalent car repairs done with bubblegum and duct tape.)

Step twelve: Playtesting Make sure your game works. It’s pretty straightforward. You can even recruit some guinea pigs--I mean, friends to help you. (I don’t have any friends, so I do this part on my own.)

By this point, a year or so will have passed (give or take, depending how long your game is, how much time you have to work on it, and how much of the work you plan to do by yourself), and with any luck, you’ll have a game! Posting your game on itch.io is free, but putting your game on steam will cost you $100.

Like I said to the person on patreon who originally asked me about my process, making a visual novel is a lot of work, but I encourage everyone to at least try it and see if you like it.

I look forward to hearing your stories!  ♥

[aethuviel]

Real life Na’vi tribe, the Blue Moon Tribe, and realistic goals of going off-grid

In late 2009, James Cameron’s “Avatar” film came, and with it, the Avatar-related forums. There were Avatar forums, Tree of Souls, and Learn Na’vi.

While the film made an impression on me in terms of its world-building and aesthetic beauty, it did not challenge my view on lifestyle or give me ideas on how to live in the future.

But for some, it did. It was in August of 2010 that I (then nineteen years old) was reading around on the aforementioned Avatar boards, where there was a very(!) lengthy (I believe 50+ pages by the time I found it?) thread regarding the idea of making your own “Na’vi-style” tribe, as a lifestyle.

I read the first few pages and thought “Ha! Fun idea, but I could NEVER-” I kept reading. It took me two whole days to read the entire thing. I went from “maybe I could do it during the summers during the seasonal idea they are discussing, but I couldn’t live forever without my books-” to “I WANT TO DO THIS”.

At nineteen, I was at a standstill in life and had no idea where to go from there. All I knew before this was that I wanted to live in the countryside, but I had no idea and no help on how to make this a reality.

This was something completely new to me, that seemed extremely appealing. I had actually watched Into the Wild just a few months prior, but had no inspiration from it (maybe because it was Alaska, then completely unappealing to me, and the poor guy did starve to death).

By the time I found them, the thread had been broken off into its completely separate, non-Avatar-related forum. They were very clear that while Avatar forums is where they met and were inspired, the project was a serious thing and had nothing to do with “larping” or trying to live literally like Na’vi. The forum was called “the Revolutionists”, better name pending.

The oldest member, who also had the server to the new forum and was one of the most active members, was 37 at the time. The youngest was only 15, and I’d say the average age was around 21. We numbered around 15-20 committed members.

The knowledge was great among some of the members, talking about permaculture, water and waste systems, et cetera. A chat room was set up, and while we had some structured meet-ups in there, there was almost always someone there.

I was extremely inspired, but knew nothing, so I mostly stayed silent, read and listened. Over the next year, I consumed everything I could find regarding “tribal living” or “going back to the wild”. Even then, in 2011, the internet was a much smaller place than today, and it was very hard to find decent resources.

Eventually, in a live chat, the name “Blue Moon Tribe” was decided on for the group. “BMT” had a lot of ideas, some of which I’ll list to give an easy overview...

Permaculture, not pure hunter-gatherer, as it is not feasible today

Hunting for meat, as raising meat animals was never considered

Animals like dogs and horses would be allowed

Funding/permission for the project by allowing researchers to study us as a “social experiment”, as surely this has not been attempted before?

Firearms vs just archery were lightly debated, but as far as I remember, never settled on

Hanggliders and other means of flying were discussed quite a bit, inspired by the Na’vi “Ikran”, but put into reality by perhaps being used to survey forest for the government (essentially as another means of being permitted “stewardship” of a piece of land rather than buying it)

Permanent life, including children and birth control were discussed at some length

We would live in a firm spot, with some sort of permanent structures

An enormous piece of land would be required, due to having to live largely off of hunting - we actually never calculated this very well (how much meat/person/year, how many animals per acre, etc.), but estimated it at 1000+ acres for a reasonable size tribe of ~20 people. This was one of the two ultimate death blows of the project.

Where in the world would it be? Members lived everywhere from the US and UK to Sweden, Germany, Chile, the Philippines, and more countries. Visa requirements for anyone moving would be daunting. I really tried researching this, but it never went anywhere, and it was the second death blow to the project. Never a set location. (In hindsight, it would be best to just aim on the US and be done with it. Or two locations, one American and one European.)

I went from being a very quiet student in the beginning, to becoming one of the leaders in “keeping it going”, when things seemed difficult, by keeping writing new threads, and trying to solve our most pressing problems - money (for buying land) and where to move.

I researched almost every country imaginable, made in-depth charts of my research, and felt most like some of the more well-off Latin American countries would fit us best, like Panama, Argentina or Mexico. A problem with tropical countries is that they often ban hunting. Spain could also be a good fit.

Note that while I researched most of the world (including southern Africa and all of southeast Asia), I excluded most of Europe, as after growing up in northern Sweden with winters easily going below -20C, I thought I loved the heat. :D (Oh I learned after visiting Tbilisi in July...)

My focus wasn’t all selfish, of course, and growing seasons were much better in warmer climates. Mostly, we(!) focused on the subtropics.

But the years passed, and nothing happened. Not even the real life meeting we had discussed.

There was another group, meanwhile, that had been inspired from the same Avatar source, but had remained on its forum, Learn Na’vi - we called this the “real life Na’vi tribe”, with no official name. I was active on this forum as well, mostly to help, as I saw myself joining this project in real life unlikely, but if they succeeded first, maybe I would.

Overall, this other project was far less organized, with more “casuals” coming for a week and then leaving (both projects had this problem early on, in 2010), less structure and dare I say, less maturity. Some mature voices pitched in, but they mostly had no personal interest at all, they simply wanted help people keep their feet on the ground.

In the beginning, some really outlandish ideas were suggested, and it had a far greater focus on NA’VI RE-ENACTMENT, even though this faded in favor of... reality. Obviously no one is going to spend their entire life living like fictional aliens from a movie.

Reducing the project to a simple summer camp was discussed, as well as the idea of separating it - not in locations, but having two parallel projects in the same location. One would be the “true” tribal life, and then an ecovillage nearby for a “softer” approach. I urged them to go for the ecovillage, period,  but it was ditched altogether instead.

This group seemed less happy with having animals, even horses (though I joked to myself, “Hey, even the Na’vi have horses?”), but the focus was still on a huge plot of land for hunting.

After a few years of doing even more poorly than BMT, the entire forum category on the Learn Na’vi forum was locked, due to inactivity. The project had officially failed.

For BMT meanwhile, members kept falling away. Someone realized he didn’t want to leave his country and have to speak English for the rest of his life. Someone else found a career they wanted to focus on. Someone else joined the army. Life happened, we were mostly 18-24 year olds, and did not have as much foundation in our idea as we thought.

When I “left” in early 2015, there were maybe 3-4 of us left in a different chatroom, as our entire forum had been taken down by hackers, and it was never reinstated. (Oh how I grieve this, as while the project is dead, there were droves of great information on it. The original thread on Avatar forums that birthed the project is also gone, as the entire forum is down.)

I was clear that I didn’t leave the plans to have an off-grid lifestyle, only Blue Moon Tribe, as it was obviously dead, despite my best efforts to keep it going. (Not to give myself too much credit, I was never a “leader” of the project or by any means the most knowledgeable, but I did take upon myself the role of inspiration and keeping people’s spirits focused.)

I met some of the other members on Tree of Souls later, where there was a thread with people asking what happened with these projects. It all basically ran off in the sand, as we say in my language.

It’s been almost six years since I left, why talk about it now? Because I keep thinking about it. What happened, why it died, and what we could have done instead.

First off, I would not join this project today.

This project taught me that off-grid life was a thing, and not just a dream, but a feasible lifestyle. I had never heard of it before finding the then still unnamed Blue Moon Tribe.

I am still very actively working on my off-grid future, but it is a very different lifestyle from the one these groups planned.

During 2015, when I went complete lone wolf and planned it only for myself, I downsized and downsized until I (reluctantly) realized a few acres is all you need. Most hunters (and I still do plan on hunting) don’t own their own acreage. You can hunt for food without owning the hunting land.

While I was completely fine with hunting, I felt extremely squeamish with killing animals I raised myself. After watching enough YouTube videos, I got rid of this fear and decided to have chickens and rabbits as well. I was focusing on Spain, or perhaps Ireland or Croatia, as my off-grid destination.

Later that same year, I met my husband, a man who had dreamed of living in Alaska or the Russian far east since early childhood, and we made our plans for the future together. Our first few weeks meeting in real life were spent staying up late at night, talking for hours and hours, mainly about off-grid life.

During the years before it failed, in 2013 specifically, I found the then phenomenal (it has really gone downhill in recent seasons) TV series “Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild”. So many different people who have found their “wild life”, in so many different locations and ways, from so many different backgrounds and outlooks. It is a gold mine, and I would have drooled over it even more if it existed back in 2011. It would have helped our project tremendously.

During 2011-2012, I also looked up ecovillages. Mostly just for research, to see what they were doing, but also, possibly, to join. (The existence of hundreds upon hundreds of ecovillages made our project members realize BMT’s idea was not that unique and that the “let researchers study us”-idea may not be so feasible...)

I found that, out of ~200 ecovillages I looked up around the Americas and southern Europe, at least half were vegetarian or vegan in their rules, and while the other half permitted meat-eating, not one hunted or raised meat. I found one project in Hawaii (only a single family, no one else yet) that had chickens for eggs and cows for milk, but that’s it. Lots of woo-ey spiritual retreats and that kind of thing, not a lot of long-term living.

Something I learned from New Lives in the Wild, is that while many do this alone or with their family, only a handful of these projects were “communes”, and they were mainly made up of hippie-like, transient young people coming and going. Same with my ecovillage research, I did not find a single true village with families creating a permanent existence.

So, on to my criticism of projects like these, and why they are doomed to fail without much better foundations and goals:

Unstructured/unrealistic goals, as it was the death blow of both projects. We had no real calculations on how much land we would need, for what, and how much money would be needed.

No set location from the get-go. Again, we should have just said “US”, picked a state (as there are tons of resources on this), and let that be that. At least half of the members were American.

Creating a community meant to last is hard. One kind piece of advice I saw on the Real-life Na’vi tribe was that “you won’t be able to make it work without a common spirituality”, and I, as the then diehard atheist, dismissed it straight away, but she was right. Without common cultural/racial/spiritual roots, or a spiritual common goal (”converts”, not as easy as people who have been raised in it, but better than nothing), communities like this will break up. It is just human nature. Without strong foundations in culture and spirituality, there is no “social glue” to keep you together through the decades.

As a side to the same point, most people simply can’t live in these artificial communities long-term. I know now I couldn’t, and I realized that in 2015. I am much too introverted and non-conformist to live in a “group”. We could be neighbors, but anything more than that would feel too “suffocating” for me, and conflicts would be inevitable. I’m also sure some of these members would today be on polar opposites of the political conflict, and so would be unlikely to even get along.

I believe the Blue Moon Tribe could have survived with better resources and better planning, but the major pitfall for its long-term survival (people living together for decades to come) would be its lack of “social glue”.

One of the unofficial “leaders” and the oldest member of the project, left because, as she said, she felt more attached to her homeland the older she got, and could not imagine leaving. She was ten years older then than I am today, and I feel the same way, now in my late twenties.

In my early twenties, I longed for “exotic” and “far away”. I wanted tropics or subtropics in a far away land. Cob houses.

In my late twenties, I long for rustic log cabins in the boreal habitat, as close to home as possible. I have seriously considered Chile, but aside from immigration problems, being so far away on the southern hemisphere with no boreal fauna bothered me as well. I think this is a natural progression through early adulthood.

Years ago, I thought rural Scandinavia was so boring.

Now, I watch videos of those who live this lifestyle in their ancestral village in Sweden, and weep with envy. I can never do that, not just because of the harsh winters, but because I can’t stay in Sweden for legal reasons. (A very important law that has no chance of change in the coming decades, and which makes it impossible for me to stay.)

I now live in Norway, and will probably stay here. My husband and I are currently gathering money - about halfway to our goal so far (we have only been able to actively save money for a year, so this will only take another year or two) - to buy a plot of land, perhaps inland, near the Swedish border - and live our lives there, in the woods, the way we want.

All our dreams won’t be realized, as some dreams are simply meant to stay that way, and the world is no longer free - but it will be as close to paradise as we can make it.

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Dead Man Walking (3/?)

Summary: Prime Ministers don’t normally wake up in morgues after they’ve been murdered, but that’s exactly what Robert Sutherland has just done. Right in front of Lacey’s nose. With limited resources and not knowing who to trust, Sutherland and Lacey must work together to get to the bottom of the attempted assassination.

Based loosely on this dream I had.

Rated: T, eventually E.

Note: This is meant to be ‘darkly humorous and amusing mystery’ rather than ‘gripping political thriller’…

[One] [Two] [AO3]

—

Dead Man Walking

Three

Something was wrong. Carrie had known that something was wrong from the moment that the Head of the Civil Service had told her to go home. He had told her in forceful and no uncertain terms to go home, and not to come back until he called her. 

Now that Robert was… gone, Sir Albert Spencer, Head of the Civil Service, was her de facto boss, so she couldn’t really contradict him.

She hadn’t really focussed on the fact that something was wrong at the time, because at the time, she had just found the Prime Minister dead in his private office in Chequers and had been through all the necessary trauma of calling the police and the ambulance and making statements and officially identifying the body and watching her boss being taken away covered in a sheet.

She had settled in for a long night of enforcing a complete press blackout until cause of death could be determined, and of enacting several antiquated procedures related to ‘what happens when a Prime Minister dies in office’ that no one had needed to enact since 1812. 

Ironically, the last Prime Minister to die in office was also the first and only to be assassinated. 

Carrie seriously suspected that he was not in fact the only one. 

She seriously suspected that Sir Albert knew something, and that was the reason why she, ostensibly the closest person to the Prime Minister, had been pretty much forcibly removed from Chequers and told to go home, that there was nothing she could do, that she’d had a traumatic evening and everyone else would take care of things. 

Carrie sighed, continuing to stare at the chintzy floral wallpaper of her mother’s living room and wondering if the decision to start drinking as soon as she’d got home was a good one. Having been told to go home, Carrie had pointed out that, whilst the Prime Minister was away from London and she was with him, Chequers was her home, Sir Albert had politely reminded her that her mother lived not ten miles away from Chequers, and gave her a pointed look that told her, without the need for words, where he expected her to go.

Her mother, owner of a house in a small village in the middle of nowhere, had found her outside the house, crying her eyes out with angry tears of loss and frustration as she kicked the garden wall to within an inch of the stonework’s life.

She’d steered her inside, given her some elderflower wine to calm her down, and, Official Secrets Act be damned, had listened to Carrie pour out all her woes. To her credit, Mrs de Ville had not batted an eyelid at the fact that the Prime Minister had died of a suspected heart attack, and she had just kept topping up her daughter’s glass. Carrie raised an eyebrow as the drink kept flowing. At least she knew where she got it from.  

They’d moved on from elderflower wine onto gin now, and it was now getting on for one in the morning. Mrs de Ville was snoring gently in her chair, and Carrie’s thoughts were coming full circle. Something was wrong. There was no way Robert had had a heart attack.

Yes, he was a smoker, and yes, he was under a lot of stress, but he’d been in good health lately, and there had been nothing wrong with him all day. Surely he’d show some kind of symptoms of impending doom.

This wasn’t supposed to have happened. This was supposed to her holiday, for fuck’s sake. Parliament wasn’t in session; everything was winding down for the summer. There had just been a couple of meetings about more sensitive policy matters for the next session that Robert had said couldn’t wait - so they’d arranged for a few private meetings at Chequers to go over it. Carrie had come down to be on hand if he needed her. Which, all things considered when it came to Robert losing his temper and threatening to do something stupid, was rather likely.

“Someone killed him,” she muttered darkly to the wallpaper.

The chilling thought was that the pool of suspects was incredibly small, given how few people were around. It was someone in the Cabinet, or the Civil Service, or the Chequers staff. 

Carrie shook her head. She was getting paranoid. It was the wine. And the gin probably hadn’t helped either. He’d had a heart attack, it was terribly tragic, and half the public would mourn, and the other half would rejoice when they found out, and that was the way of it. 

Except for the Head of the Civil Service locking her out of the proceedings. She couldn’t get those suspicions out of her head. 

“Who killed who, darling?” Mrs de Ville jerked awake. “I do love a good murder. I always fancied myself as a Miss Marple, but our village is nowhere near as prone to death as St Mary Mead.”

“Someone killed the Prime Minister.”

“Oh yes, that.” Mrs de Ville held up the wine bottle - nowhere near the first they’d got through - and found it empty. “Well, why don’t you do a little investigation? With your connections, you should be in a perfect position to find things out.”

She wasn’t, though. She was sitting in her mother’s living room whilst the Head of the Civil Service tried very hard to keep her from finding anything out. 

For the first time in her life, Carrie was actually beginning to wish that she hadn’t drunk so much. 

Her phone began to ring, pulling her out of her morbid contemplation. She grabbed it excitedly, convinced that it would be Sir Albert calling her to bring her back into the fold (although how much use she’d be after a bottle and a half of wine was debatable), and she was brought up short when the number showed as unknown; a comparatively local landline number.

Maybe the press had already got wind of what had happened and were calling her for a statement. Admittedly, one in the morning was an odd time for it, but Carrie had long since learned after a lifetime in politics that journalism never slept.

The phone continued to ring, and finally, she answered.

“Hello?”

“Carrie, it’s me.”

“What?” Carrie was very glad that she was already sitting down because she would most certainly have fallen over had she not been.

“It’s me, Carrie! For fuck’s sake!” Robert certainly sounded like himself, and certainly sounded alive, and Carrie was really beginning to wish that she hadn’t drunk so much because her brain was operating at a speed slower than a snail wading through treacle.

“But you’re dead!” she hissed. “I saw you. You were dead. Very dead.”

“Well, evidently not quite as dead as everyone thought.”

“What, how… Where are you?”

“I’m still in the morgue.”

“You’re calling me from the morgue?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“With a phone! Carrie… Have you been drinking?”

“Of course I’ve been drinking, you walnut! My boss just died, I just got put on indefinite garden leave, and I’ve been drowning my sorrows in elderflower wine for the last four hours!”

“Bloody hell, you must be desperate. Elderflower wine? Never mind. Look, I need your help; you’re the only person I trust.”

“I…” Carrie remembered her own conviction that Robert had been murdered and took his point. “Yes. All right. What do you need?”

“To find out who tried to kill me, that would be a good start. And getting out of this place would be good. And some aspirin. So far my only partner in crime is a trainee forensic scientist who isn’t even supposed to be here and who seems worryingly interested in my arse.”

Carrie could just about make out a young, female voice in the background of the call. “Your arse is very interesting.”

“You know, I have to agree with the trainee forensic scientist who isn’t even supposed to be there.”

“You’re drunk, Carrie. Look…” There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. “I really, really need you right now.”

Carrie nodded despite the fact he couldn’t see her. “Yes. Ok. I’ll be there. Where are you? I mean, apart from the morgue.”

“Stoke Mandeville hospital,” said the almost-forensic scientist.

“Ok. Just…” Carrie had no idea what kind of advice to offer a man who’d just risen from the dead and was hiding in a morgue. “Just… hang in there.”

“I’ll try.”

“I’ll see you as soon as I can. Oh, and Robert?”

“Yes?”

“I’m so glad that you’re alive.”

The call ended. Carrie was suddenly painfully and horribly sober, and she jumped up out of the squashy armchair she’d been ensconced in ever since her mother had levered her away from the garden wall before she could kick it down. The suddenness of the action alarmed Mrs de Ville.

“Where are you going, darling?”

“Stoke Mandeville. Robert’s alive and stuck in a morgue and I have to go and get him out and work out who tried to kill him and…”

She fumbled for her car keys, and Mrs de Ville came over, closing her wrinkled hands over Carrie’s shaking ones.

“Darling, I’m not going to be responsible for you ending up in the hospital you’re trying to get to. We’ll get a taxi.”

“We?”

“Well, naturally I’m coming with you. You can’t exactly trust anyone else in this game, and you’re going to need all the help you can get on this one. I just finished the latest Kathy Reichs; we’ll make the perfect team.”

Carrie was not altogether convinced, but her mother was right. She was going to need some help, and none of her usual channels would be available to her, especially if Sir Albert was running interference. It wasn’t like anyone would suspect a seemingly harmless septuagenarian; maybe she could help out with bluffing Carrie’s way into the hospital.

Ten minutes later found Carrie and her mother sitting in the back of a taxi on their way to Stoke Mandeville. The driver, an incredibly cynical woman named Ursula, had raised an eyebrow at their destination and suggested calling an ambulance instead, until Carrie had reassured her that neither she nor her mother were in need of medical attention.

Ursula had not seemed entirely convinced by this, especially since Mrs de Ville was swaying slightly, but had nonetheless begun the drive to the hospital. At this time of the night the roads were empty, and they made good time. It was only once they were nearing the carpark that Carrie realised they’d hit a major snag. Namely, she had no idea where the morgue was in relation to anywhere else in the hospital.

Also, if she was going to be sneaking the supposedly dead Prime Minister out of the hospital, taking him out through the main entrance probably wouldn’t be a good idea. If the press didn’t know that something odd had happened in the upper echelons of government before, then they certainly would after that.

“Can you just go round the block a bit and park up in a side street?” she asked.

Ursula raised her eyebrows in the rear-view mirror.

“Are you mad? There’s nowhere to park within about a mile of the place.”

“You can leave the meter running,” Carrie said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“Listen, madam, I don’t know what you’re doing, calling taxis in the middle of the night to take you to hospitals that you evidently want to get into furtively, but I am not partaking in any criminal activity. Once I drop you off, I’m out of here.”

“No! Please, we’ll need to go back again. And I promise that there is nothing illegal going on.”

Carrie knew that she probably didn’t sound all that convincing, but at the same time, she was desperate to get Robert out of the morgue and into somewhere safe, and right now this taxi was the only safe harbour she had.

Ursula heaved a sigh. “All right. There’s a little alley parallel to the ambulance station; there’s usually space in there and you can try and sneak in via Resus. But you pay for this journey now; I’m not going to hang around indefinitely.”

“You are a lifesaver. Quite possibly literally.” Carrie blew her a kiss from the back seat and Ursula rolled her eyes, but Carrie caught the slightest hint of a smile in the mirror.

The taxi pulled up and Carrie counted out change plus a generous tip, praying that Ursula would still be there when they got back. She considered leaving her mother in the car as insurance, but Mrs de Ville was already out of the taxi and scuttling towards the Resus entrance.

Carrie had never seen her mother scuttle before. Maddie de Ville had always been poised and dignified, and for a few moments all Carrie could do was stare in bewilderment, finally putting it down to the drink and following her as furtively as she could manage with that much elderflower wine inside her.

Quite how they managed to get inside without anyone noticing that anything was amiss would be a source of amazement to Carrie for the rest of her days, but they managed to make it out of A&E by refuge of sheer audacity and acting like they were definitely supposed to be there.

Now all they had to do was make it to the morgue.

“I think it’s this way.” Mrs de Ville was studying the hospital map on the wall intently. The morgue was not marked, but she tapped one long, red fingernail at the stairwell. “They’re usually in the basement.”

It was as good a place to start looking as any, and Carrie followed her mother towards the stairs, striding along the basement corridors with a confidence that neither of them felt but that would hopefully stop anyone from questioning them.

They had stopped to look at another map when they heard it.

“Pst!”

Carrie glanced over her shoulder. A young woman was leaning out of an unmarked doorway.

“Carrie de Ville?” she asked.

Carrie nodded once, uncertainly.

“Great. I’m Lacey French, almost-forensic scientist. I’ve got something of yours here.”

Carrie crossed the corridor and peered into the room – it turned out to be a linen closet – past Lacey.

Robert was there. He was looking rather worse for wear, but then, he had just been murdered so that was probably forgivable. Carrie knew that she wouldn’t be looking much better herself and she didn’t even have the excuse of waking up in a morgue.

“Robert!”

She pushed past Lacey and threw her arms around him. “Oh, darling, I’m so glad that you’re all right!”

Robert gave a weak laugh. “It’s good to see you too, Carrie.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s a taxi waiting.”

“Thank God for that,” said Lacey. “I really didn’t want to have to take him on the back of my moped. Let’s roll. Keep an eye out for Suits, the place is crawling with them.”

She led the way out of the linen closet and along the corridor, and Carrie, Robert and Mrs de Ville rushed to keep up with her.

Carrie had to smile, despite everything that was going on. She’d never met anyone less likely to be a forensic scientist, and anyone less likely to have helped the Prime Minister in his hour of need.

She felt that she was going to like Lacey French.

[andimthedad]

Black Lives Matter: They Are Us

“The white policeman, standing on a Harlem street corner, finds himself at the very center of the revolution now occurring in the world. He is not prepared for it — naturally, nobody is — and, what is possibly much more to the point, he is exposed, as few white people are, to the anguish of the black people around him. Even if he is gifted with the merest mustard grain of imagination, something must seep in. He cannot avoid observing that some of the children, in spite of their color, remind him of children he has known and loved, perhaps even of his own children. He knows that he certainly does not want his children living this way. He can retreat from his uneasiness in only one direction: into a callousness which very shortly becomes second nature. He becomes more callous, the population becomes more hostile, the situation grows more tense, and the police force is increased. One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up. Before the dust has settled or the blood congealed, editorials, speeches, and civil-rights commissions are loud in the land, demanding to know what happened. What happened is that Negroes want to be treated like men.”

James Baldwin wrote that 60 years ago, and it seems little has changed. American systems of all kinds — banking, real estate, education, politics, and of course law enforcement — continue to engage in a complex array of racism, some with genteel violence and some more brutal, each industry carrying forward genes of prejudice implanted by earlier generations. The threads of this racism are tightly and countlessly woven into every corner of our social fabric. If you haven’t felt them, it only means you have been shielded by them instead of crushed. “Negroes want to be treated like men” because then as now: black lives matter, too.

As a white Christian, I am troubled by the responses of many of my spiritual siblings. Jesus could not have been more clear in the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and especially the prodigal son: when one of us is in trouble, and others are safe, we must focus on the concerns of the one until they are restored. Recall the prodigal son’s older brother, grumbling “all sons matter!” to his father, who responds that sometimes we need to focus on one son. And recall Cain, another older brother, with his famously callous retort to God, “Am I supposed to be responsible for my brother?” — to which God replies, “Yes, and his blood is crying out to me from the ground where you killed him!”

White Christians, including me, have acted too often like these Biblical brothers toward our black siblings. We may not have personally drawn blood, but at the very least, we have ignored or justified the police and systems that do. You and I would not want to be treated the way our black citizens are, and thus we have blasphemously violated Christ’s greatest command. In the end, we will answer to God for how we (and our police) treat other people. Our systems shed their blood, and its cries are heard in heaven.

And, as a white father, I am haunted by Baldwin’s note about children. Yes, think of our children. As parents, are we going to retreat from our uneasiness about racism “into a callousness which very shortly becomes second nature”? Judging from internet conversations, it feels like many of us are already there. Do we really want to raise our kids with the knowledge that we could have changed things, but didn’t? Kids are watching, and whether we engage in humble kindness or proud callousness, it will become part of our legacy.

Even if you and I merely inherited the sins of our forefathers — and none of us is that innocent — we own those sins now. Nobody inherits money and then claims it is not theirs to spend. So it is with systemic racism, and white privilege. Somehow we are happy to bank on its benefits while still claiming it isn’t our responsibility.

Elsewhere, I’ve heard that George Floyd’s murder is a wake-up call. If so, we have been willfully deaf to all the prior calls: Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Atatiana Jefferson, Yvette Smith, Alton Sterling, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tyre King, John Crawford III, Manuel Ellis, and too many human etceteras to count. Read their names out loud; each is an alarm. Unfortunately, the house may burn down around us before we admit the fire alarm has been ringing for generations.

For those who still doubt the existence of systemic racism or police brutality, it is time to study.

John Oliver’s episode on Police Accountability is a good intro.

Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein assembled Anti-Racism Resources for White People: a long list of articles, books, videos, and movies to provide history and perspective.

To make that list easier to digest, and harder to avoid the excuses of time, Autumn Gupta and Bryanna Wallace created Justice in June, which arranges the same anti-racism material into daily itineraries of 10-, 25-, and 45-minute units.

For parents and teachers, the Center for Racial Justice in Education has Resources for Talking about Race, Racism and Racialized Violence with Kids, and Katrina Michie put together Your Kids Aren’t Too Young To Talk About Race.

And if you still somehow think white men are underprivileged, I tackled that with a truckload of data in Dear Fathers of White Boys: What Color is the Future?.

While learning, set aside your current beliefs, keep an open mind, and think about yourself with honesty and humility. And remember: if we get to learn about racism by reading and listening and watching, instead of experiencing it regularly in our own lives, that means we are privileged.

Once educated, act. Don’t just be not racist; be anti-racist in your conversations and activity, online and offline. Participate in local protests. Write to government officials. Donate and otherwise support justice movements; this spreadsheet from Black Lives Matters and this list from The Strategist give a lot of options.

Most importantly, change yourself. In the spirit of honesty: I still find racism in myself. I am truly sorry for that. I am better than I was, but I am not yet who I should be. As one protest sign said, “I’m sorry I’m late. I had a lot to learn.” But white racism will not end until whites fix it. Will Baldwin’s description of racism still ring true in another 60 years? If so, that will be our fault.

Baldwin closed with characteristic insight:

“It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself.”

Do we see the victims? Do we see their faces? They are a reflection of us. In truth, they are us.

. . .

This post also appears on Medium, where you can read other articles from And I’m The Dad about racism, sexism, politics, and more:

The Godless Lie of White Supremacy: from Moses to Charlottesville

In Crime, Politics, and Food, the Questions Determine the Answers

DEAR STUPID YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE ENTITLED GENERATION: A Word of Advice

Hating Cops: It’s Not a ‘New’ Thing and It’s Not a ‘Black’ Thing

Jesus for President? Looking for Christ in the Political Christians

Lust and Guilt, Female Disciples, the Symbol of God as a Woman — What the Jesus F. Christ?

Help Her, or Help Myself To Her?

Her Consent is Not a Given: Raising Kids With the Right Attitudes

[justgottafinishthischapter]

Making a Fictional Language

So you’re writing a story where you want to create a fictional language. That’s great. Only problem is, you’re not quite sure how to go about it. Fear not, I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I use myself when constructing a language. Now of course, before we can discuss how to build a conlang, it’s worth mentioning what a conlang is.

The term “Conlang” is short-hand for Constructed Language. What this means is that the language is fully realized and fully formed with proper grammar, an expansive dictionary, and could theoretically be learned and used in day-to-day conversation. A Conlang is not a real language. It doesn’t exist in our real world. But it’s well formed enough that it could be learned and spoken with a wide reach of use. Examples of Conlangs include Klingon, High Valyrian, Dothraki, and Na’vi. There are some lesser forms of Conlangs such as Functional Languages. That is, languages that exist only to say a few words. Before being turned into an official language for the show, Valyrian had very few words. It was the job of a linguist to construct a language around the fundamentals that George established in his books. Another example is Atlantean from the Disney movie Atlantis: the Lost Empire. There is just as much Atlantean as needed for the script and nothing else, and if you wanted to learn the Atlantean word for fire, you’ve gotten your hopes up for nothing. Some are also simply text-based, such as Hylian in the Legend of Zelda. It uses different symbols, but it all directly translates to the Japanese language, making it just a re-skinned version of Japanese.

So, how does one actually build a conlang? Honestly, a good first step is to do some research on Phonetics. But the crash course is this: a Phoneme is the simplest sound you can make. There’s an international phoenetic alphabet (IPA) that you can find tons of online. Every distinct sound made by human language has a specific symbol to represent the sound. Learning to read these symbols and the sounds they make will make it easier to find sound links between words. Now, let’s get to the actual methods and the steps involved.

Method 1: The Library

You may have heard of a Sound Library before. For sound technicians, a sound library is a database of sound effects and noises they can Foley into film projects. Building a language can work the same way. In the Librarian method, look through the list of IPA and look for the sounds you want to use in your language. Think about the tone of the language, and whether you’re looking for something softer or harsher, and the kind of culture the people have. Once you have your library of phonemes, it’s just a question of how you want to go about forming words. You could roll die to decide syllables and which sounds to use, you could play it by ear, you could compare to languages you want to sound like. The main appeal of this method is that it creates a great consistency with the sound of a language.

Method 2: The Language Blender

You know you want your language to sound coarse and rough but you’re not sure how to make it sound that way? A good method I like using is taking common words that your world would use, such as Fire or Sun, and translate it into about 3-5 languages that fit the sound you’re trying to invoke. Once you have all of your words translated, you have two paths. Option 1: Find the middle ground. If 3/5 of your words had the letters ma next to each other, chances are, that’s a good pair of letters to carry over to your own language. Option 2: Take your real life languages and put them through the Language Mixer on Chaoticshiny.com. A major benefit of this method is systematically learning words in other languages, and even seeing the etymological roots that tie languages together. The one downside of this language building format is that you may end up with words that don’t mix well together, or as they mix, you find that the sounds of the words don’t tend to mesh well, so it’s important to have a Base Language, the root language you build your fictional language around. No matter what, include at least part of the translation from this language, and you’ll be more grounded in your approach. 

Method 3: The Root System

This is a conlang creating system I learned from Artifexian on Youtube, and I’ll link the video he made right [here] if you want to see it for yourself. He has a lot of great world building videos and I love his content, so don’t be shy about giving him your likes and support because he talks about a lot of the world building aspects people tend to gloss over, myself included. What this method does is it focuses on forming root words that then lead into forming other words.

This is a root system language sheet I designed based on my own fantasy world. In their culture, running water is associated with healing and cleaning because it carries off dirt and other foul things and wipes them away. For this reason, rivers have associations with cleanliness, healing, and life. And this is something worth keeping in mind when building your own language. How does the culture itself interact with the word you are describing? For instance, the reason we say “vandalize” to mean to destroy someone else’s property is because of the Vandal barbarians that plagued Europe during the last legs of the Roman Empire. Heck, the term Flanderize isn’t even that closely linked to the Simpsons, but it emerged as a result of Ned Flanders’ character becoming stock and one-note, which led to the creation of the term. When it comes to actually building the dictionary, this can be a really useful step. So, for example, let’s say the word for River in my language was Asar. A boatman might be Asarii, much like how we have work and worker, fight and fighter, dance and dancer, the suffix of -ii denotes someone who does the root term, in this case, they go on the river. Meanwhile, a fisher could be Asarakii, having Asar mean river, -ak as a suffix for a thing living in the river, and the -ii as a suffix for those who catch the things that live in the river. And for something more abstract like River of Time or River of Stars, you might get something like Asarag Talari.

UNIVERSAL CONLANG TIPS

Keep in mind the people the language exists for. if you’re creating a conlang for dragons, reptiles don’t have lips, so the labial sounds of [p], [b], [f], [v], and possibly even sounds that require lip shaping such as [o], [u], and [w] might not fit the creatures that need to be speaking. Furthermore, if the culture exists before global communication and they live next to the ocean, chances are, they won’t have a word for camel, desert, or sandstorm unless it’s a desert port city. This is why Dothraki has words for every kind of horse and no word for thank-you.

Remember that certain sounds can be switched around. Throughout human language, I’ve learned that certain letters can easily be switched out for each other, and this is in part due to linguistics history. Most of the letters that can be exchanged I actually realized while studying Grimm’s Law and the evolution of language, and by looking at Welsh in particular. In Welsh, the way to write a [f] sound is to write it as ff. When just one f is by itself, it becomes [v]. The sounds of [d], [t], [θ], and [ð] share a similar connection, as do [k] and [g], [ʃ] and [ꭓ], and [b] and [p]. So changing between these similar sounds could prove to be a useful strategy for mixing up your language.

You absolutely have to create a grammar system or you’re going to make a huge mess. That means word order, syntax, suffixes, tense, conjugation, and whatever else is needed. If it helps, learn how another language conjugates its terms. In Sumerian, the phrase “I am your king” is Lugdalzuimen. Lugdal means King, zu is your, and imen means “I am”. So word order is Object Possessive Subject. Then in the phrase Sesguene imes means “they are my brothers”. In actual word order it translates out as “brother my -s they are”. Now we see that the word order is Object Possessive Pluralization Subject. In the phrase Dumuninlagasakak, it becomes child queen Lagas of of. Meaning child [queen of Lagas] of or Child of the Queen of Lagas. By understanding how this language structures itself, something like the phrase River of Stars I made earlier could now be broken down to be something like Asartalariag (River Star -s of). I find it helps in this case to word it as “River star many of” to get “river of many stars” to figure out when the pluralizing suffix would be applied.

Resources:

Wiktionary.com

Chaoticshiny.com

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/definitionlookup (for all of your ancient greek translation needs. Set it to Latin transliteration)

http://www.abair.tcd.ie/?lang=eng (because Google Translate doesn’t sound out Irish words)

https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/ (it’s set English to French, but it has a lot of languages, and it’s great because it also teaches you slang uses of words.)

[the-daily-sandstone]

Life as I know it

Well, I come from a small college town in the Midwest of the USA. Home of many great thinkers and doers, to say the least. My first steps into life were brutal, my father lost our housing, and my mother was the only one working for as long as I recalled.

We drifted while I was an infant, for the first year of my life. We toured with the Grateful Dead, sometimes I have dreams about Garcia. The Tour of ’89, across the states. Years after the experiences I had all kinds of dreams, once life was less chaotic. Mother knows some of them really happened.

In ’91 my brother entered the picture, and sometime after we had an A-frame in the woods. I remember the woods always felt so magical, I was never afraid of them. I felt I belonged to them. Father seemed to always nap while mother worked, and he did not feed us until she came home. I would eat worms or sneak butter to try to keep my brother and I from going hungry.

Earth worms aren’t that bad, never chewed them, always swallowed them whole. Last time I had one I think I was 9 or so years old. Father used to abuse us, as I learned later, in more than just physical ways. It was often going from extreme emotions to the other, and I can’t recall every memory. The ones I do know aren’t the best to reminisce on. Though I have a few from then I treasure. Like the time I fell so hard in love with the neighbor girl, I told my cousin I was going to marry her when I was a full hand (5 years old).

She was beautiful, I used to play her music on my guitar, or run off around the neighborhood with her. One time we snuck into a horse field to try to talk to the horses. When we realized they did not speak with us, we were stuck, I felt foolish, but it did not matter, I was holding her hand.

My brother had a worse time with things. He was younger and had terrible luck with the woods. One time I was thinking we were warriors and needed to battle wasps. So, I talked him into fighting them with me. We threw rocks at a nest, he got stung a few times. Suppose it was stupid, but I was having fun for the time.

 That’s how things went. I grew up wanting more of nature, and my brother wanting less of it. My girlfriend moved away and so did we. After the A-frame we lived in her basement on a sub-lease, and then off to apartments. First thing I tried doing was walking around naked like I used to in the woods. Had to learn the rules the hard way.

Used to get in trouble in school, and well, felt like no one was teaching me the rules. I was just expected to know them or something. Heck, first grade was spent in in school detention, without a teacher, doing all assignments for the year on my own. That year was awful.

Therapy did little to help. I was too young to know what was wrong with me anyways. I felt I was evil, and all I needed to do was accept what came my way.

It wasn’t until third grade I was diagnosed ADHD, but the meds just gave me tunnel vision and I don’t feel they helped me focus. Sometimes I would hear a crowd talking when no one was. Other times I would think people were talking about me when passing them by.

By the sixth grade I was moved up a grade in math and learned Boolean algebra. Taught myself Qbasic and started programming music apps, little trivia games and some basic text adventures. I remember one time I wanted to make my own operating system mockup. Back then, there weren’t tutorials. Google barely had relevant results, and YouTube wasn’t around, or heard of for me. Around the same time, I taught myself HTML with a manual from a friend. And then went and taught children at the Middle Way shelter.

By high school I started smoking weed, quit my medication, and was playing and composing for violin. I taught myself to read and write sheet music from a Beatle’s Anthology piano book. Middle school did not teach me that, everyone said they had private lessons for it. Took me about half a year before I stopped writing the names of the notes above the manuscript.

I graduated with a crap diploma, some blue core crap the Bush administration made up for no child left behind. Yeah, I had a few honors and advanced placement courses, but I never read the books in English, and never showed my work in math.

After high school I went off to work in Denali, Alaska. Washed buses, climbed mountains, and lost myself to some ladies. One I somehow managed to become friends with and stay in contact all these years.

I was 19, and well, I still managed to eat mushrooms, smoke weed, and drink wild turkey that summer. In fact, one night I was with a lady, reading the epic of Gilgamesh, on mushrooms. That was the night I decided I wanted to be a writer. I read one more work from sacred texts, the Romance of Antar. I wrote my first work of fiction as an adult under the pen name, Leon Sandcastle, with the tile, Epic of Aphromann. My friend was really captivated by the writing, as she put it. I wrote it on a free writing app trial, Zoho Writer. The files are lost officially, I’ve since tried contacting admin about getting the copy, but I couldn’t remember the email (plus the email is gone now) or the password. The printout I had I threw away when I moved back into my mother’s. I just felt then it was terrible because well, one reason. I had written the work and dedicated it to my brother, but he felt it wasn’t him in the story. I felt I had done my brother wrong.

College was a mixed bag. I really did not know for certain what I wanted to be. I had no job offers on any of my hobbies, and my only work experience was mostly manual/menial labor, what with fast food, construction, Denali, and some landscaping. I chose to pursue them all. Liberal arts, science, math, English, and more science.

I was working on contract for the Department of Natural Resources, on some youth program from the governor. Work, study. Over and Over.

I had to save up for a replacement violin. After I returned from Denali, my brother became extremely sick, he burned my violin and my mother had him committed. It was awful to feel and see him go through. His diagnosis changed so many times. His story got better.

Friend found a local luthier from the university program, when I played it, I felt I was amidst the ferns and pines and all the wonders of nature. He had named it Khimaera (not sure on spelling). I bought it on contract with a monthly rate based on my term with the DNR. By the end of the summer, I owned the violin.

I met a woman that year, showed her my family’s farm up north. Went to a talk at the university with her. The last time we were together, she took my hand, held it to her heart, and asked me to marry her. And I told her no.

There was a lot on my plate sophomore year, as to why I told her no. I had began having visions in my sleep, or so it felt. I would dream and see my dream in the headlines of the morning news. I’ve since googled some of them to realize it could not have been true. However, I dreamt my grand uncle Brokenfeather would die of cancer and the Mississippi river would flood. I dreamt my friend from Alaska lost her father after his voice went horse. I dreamt I met a woman in the desert and changed her life.

I still morn the passing of my grand uncle. And days after I emailed my friend about the dream, she sent me word he had cancer and his voice was horse.

The woman I met in the desert was a meth addict who for some reason believed I was Jesus Christ, and we were married. I told her some things, and last, I know of her, she called me to thank her. That I had in fact changed her life. She got off the streets and got clean.

I used to write Obama, and the MI-6, I even wrote Stephen Hawkings about some things that were later televised in his words.

I would be sitting there, seeing people talking and hearing their words, and if I followed up on the conversations, people would ask what I was talking about, that they weren’t speaking.

I was homeless from 2010-2013. Officially receiving permanent housing out in California, in 2013.

I moved back to my mothers after a long drawn out claim for disability was awarded. I now own two violins, classical guitar, electric guitar, wooden Cherokee flute, a ukulele, midi keyboard. Took on some more hobbies along the way. On contract to compose full orchestrations for a client making a video game.

My success? While I was homeless I did not pursue drugs or alcohol, it felt almost more a prolonged camping venture, fraught with me becoming a victim to theft at the end. If there’s one thing I can say, is that California is the worse place on earth.

 Naturally I’ve not included every single event. But this should give you the gist. My official diagnosis is Schizoeffective Depressive. No I’m not two people, that’s a different type, (schizotypal).

Thank you for your time.

 Leon Sandstone

The Daily Sandstone

[ask-jumblr]

Thank you so much to everyone who’s been constructive.

Both commenters, and the anons below who were open about what they’re struggling with. Since all of the asks were either hateful, or seemed to be addressed at me, the mod, I’m going to handle them. 

Before you get too upset that I didn’t give all y’all equal chance to answer: I’m encouraging the anons to send in some asks dealing with the issues they’re mentioning, formatted in such a way that it’s easier for jumblr as a whole to constructively help. Based on their current asks, I can only ask questions about what they practically need.

Because I’ll be addressing the asks chronologically and the constructive asks come later, I’m going to put it all below the cut. If you don’t have energy today, don’t click through. Even the constructive stuff is heavy.

Here were the first two anon’s received:

Isn't Orthodox just exclusionary extremism? Aren't those the homophobes and transphobes who think you shouldn't be allowed to marry a non-Jew? Why aren't we staying focused on reform/recon Judaism?

It’s okay not to know things, although the assumption was a little harsh so I didn’t want to post it directly. In response I made a myth-busting post. Yes, it is American-centric, but here’s why: I can be pretty darn sure anon is American, or at least North American.

Given that you’re upset about intermarriage, you’re probably not Israeli. Given that the U.S. has the largest diaspora population, anon is likely American. Given that anon is referencing “Reform” Judaism as an alternative, they’re probably not in Britain (”Liberal Judaism”) or outside U.S./Britain/Canada/Israel (”Progressive Judaism” everywhere else).

Realistically speaking, I can’t call up every community everywhere. As an American coming out of a mediocre, Anglo-centric education system, I can only speak one other language with any competence and blurt a few words of a few more. If you want to know about a community in a specific place then please, please ask. There have been folks on here asking about communities all sorts of places who have gotten answers here. Jewish geography + the internet is amazing! When anon is American, with misconceptions about American Jews I’m going to assume such.

Orthodox Jews should probably stop existing. 

This ask is hateful and non-constructive. Hence the threat to block.

After this, I got some anons who are getting at some problems that we can really work on. They aren’t American, so I’ve assumed they aren’t the first anon.

hey if your responses and views could stop portraying us jewery as being the only way things are done and that we somehow all have access to the stuff you do, that would be grand

(cont) or where there zero chance of finding a group of that community that'll accept me and not treat me in hateful ways. I'm sorry that Jewery outside the US/NA is that unfamiliar to you and that our viewpoints and experiences makes you uncomfortable but I guess that's the way US Jews deal with Jewish "outsiders".

I’m going to start with part 1 to stay in order even though part 2 is what gets me antsy to help ya. You’re right. I don’t have a ton of experience with non-U.S. Jewery. That’s why I tag thoroughly and encourage folks who don’t know the answer to signal boost. If you’re specific, someone else on jumblr can help you. 

When anon asks are vague and, as they often do, reference U.S./North American terms for branches (”reform” rather than “liberal” or “progressive”), I’m going assume the anon us in the U.S. or greater North America. Most other respondents likely will too. Anon askers who want otherwise need to use terms that are more globally (”progressive”) or locally (”liberal”) appropriate, or give a little more locational information (e.g. city, country, region). Re-my new explanation above about American-centrism. I respect that you didn’t have the benefit of seeing the language in that ask, but I’m here to help you as much as I can without superfluously emailing every rabbi in every country for another anon who’s linguistically and statistically likely to be in New Jersey or Ohio or somewhere else in the U.S..

Now for part 2 (after “(cont)”), your concerns. (Getting something out of the way: Since you’re saying “Jewish “outsiders”” I’m going to assume you’re Jewish. However, many people reading this might not be; this audience has a lot of prospective converts. I want to point out that prospective converts aren’t entitled to conversion via any particular community. I might personally be dismayed, but it’s that community’s prerogative. Getting that community to a place where people who are already Jewish who are LGBTQ, have disabilities, etc. are accepted is going to be my priority if I were to harangue a community that’s not my own. In other words, people like anon. On that note...) I received another ask with a concern similar to part 2, by someone in a similar situation as a Jewish person under the LGBTQ umbrella whose only option is a community that won’t accept them. I’d like to answer these together. Here’s that second ask:

Not your first anon but there's no non-homophobic Orthodox community where I live. I live in Europe and maybe it is different in the US but the Orthodox communities here do NOT accept lgbt+ people. Or if they do it is under the "don't ask, don't tell" form of homophobia where you're accepted as long as you don't display it publicly or ask them to treat you as an equal in any way. So sorry for not feeling endeared to a group that have always hated me.

This means we’ve got a heck of a problem. There are Jewish people who don’t have a community and need one. Y’all (You all) don’t know me irl, but making sure Jewish people who want Jewish communities have Jewish communities is something I’m very big on. I’ve gotten some flack for being too welcoming or too focused on making sure synagogues are welcoming. I want you to know that we want you here. Unfortunately you aren’t close enough for me to personally offer you that hug.

You see, I’m a U.S. Jew, but I’m not one from a place like New York City where there’s a wealth of Jewish community options. (hint: #SouthernJews #ShalomY’all) I know those people near me who feel forgotten, ignored, scoffed at, or unvalued don’t always have another option (or that it’s a loooong drive and lots of gas money away). I am someone who has had to put in the work to build the community she wants and needs, and a community that is welcoming for the people she cares about. 

Putting aside the extent to which I’ve had to patch up my own education while trying to make sure others aren’t on their own doing it, I’ve also had an obstacle you’ll find more relatable. I know it’s not obvious, I’m also under that LGBTQ umbrella (sexuality, not really gender from my current self-understanding). I’m largely closeted irl because being Jewish makes me enough of a target and is harder to hide. I don’t discuss it much on the internet because I don’t want #woke #discourse about myself as I figure out my own identity, and don’t want my own processing  (yay for internalized -isms!) to hurt someone else. It’s fine that you didn’t know, but I want you to know now so that you can understand my experience:

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend in Israel who’s had to make community choices too. My friend (who is also under that umbrella) convinced me that I should go to a shul with a rabbi who was openly homophobic in the past because it’ll be the best balance between programming that meets my needs (adult learning! services!) and driving distance. The rabbi stopped being openly homophobic, so I know I can be in that community. But it’s not exactly my dream. I don’t plan on relying on that rabbi for psak or life-cycle events--at least not until I know more. Then again, I’m lucky. I’m lucky in that there are rabbis I feel comfortable getting psak from who speak my native language. I’m lucky that I know enough to know that a non-rabbi can officiate a commitment ceremony (and actually a Jewish wedding too...), and that I’m from a well-connected extended-family that is friends with rabbis elsewhere (whoot! Jewish geography!) who would happily come in to officiate for me (though it might be costly and they might only do commitment rather than marriage). And I’m lucky that my extended family would be supportive enough to do so for me (they’d be getting eager enough for me to marry anyone...).  I’m also lucky in that I could drive even farther and hit a Reform community that’s been more accepting for much longer. It doesn’t have the resources or programming I need, but I would have hypothetical access to a place with other Jews that has gender-neutral bathrooms and a rabbi who hasn’t said anything (recorded) that’s unaffirming of my existence.

But what about people who don’t have access to an alternate community? Or for whom that other community is even father from being a good fit?                   With work, it is possible to make change. Do you know why that shul’s rabbi stopped being openly homophobic? Maybe compassion. But there was an outside trend too: the community shifted away from homophobia to embrace its LGBTQ members, and he was forced to follow. It’s quite likely that movement stances and responsum helped, but community organizing, changing minds one-at-a-time, those were definitely pieces of the puzzle.

I want this blog to be here for you in figuring out how to make those changes. I began an initiative on here called Tikkunity. It’s a goofy name for an important mission: help people find strategies to make their communities more vibrant, more welcoming, more supportive, more accessible, more whatever someone needs. The ones I’ve put out so far aren’t as heavy as your topic, but Tikkunity is also here for what you’re looking for. I’ve gotten in touch with some other blogs about topics that are less obvious for communities, and a bit heavier too. If either of y’all feels comfortable messaging me from off anon (just make a side-blog with a random url), I’d love to draft a post with you. Alternately, if you send something constructive and specific enough such as “I only have one choice of community and I don’t feel safe or accepted there as a [insert LGBTQ identity/ies] person. How can I make my community more accepting of [my existence/my partnership/my pronouns/etc.]? FOR: Orthodox and [LGBTQ accepting/affirming/or other word or phrase of your choice that describes people who would be in-line with your goal]” or “ I only have one choice of community (there aren’t many Jewish people near me) and I don’t feel safe or accepted there as a [insert LGBTQ identity/ies] person. Does anyone have recommendations of what to do and tools to help me do Jewish stuff to do without the big community? How can I find people from that community willing to join me so it isn’t as lonely?” then I can post it off the bat

As much as I’m not letting askers generalize Orthodox Jews as individually homophobic/transphobic, the U.S. isn’t a utopia for LGBTQ [Orthodox] Jews looking for communities. “Don’t ask don’t tell” is how many U.S. Orthodox communities function. You’ll notice that the Orthodox LGBTQ-acceptance group I linked (Eshel) is an activist-type group from within the Orthodox community. The most effective change comes from within communities, which is why I’d rather you talk to Orthodox jumblrs than me. There are many LGBTQ Orthodox Jews on tumblr who might be willing and able to help you make that change via advice on a Tikkunity post, connecting you with other activists, or via a longer-term messaging relationship as they make change in their own communities. While I don’t think Eshel formally works outside the U.S. right now, that doesn’t mean you can’t ask them about expansion or see if they can connect you  with other laypeople community builders and shifters to provide mentorship and support.

If you can’t start within the community, you can start building alternate spaces with Jewish people you know who have been willing to engage with you. Even communities that are largely homophobic/transphobic aren’t a monolith. There’s lots of advice out there for people making “start-up” communities or “indepedent minyanim” or “chaburas.” It’s not fair that you have to do the work. But don’t take it out on all Orthodox Jews, individually, especially because some of them are on your side.

And if you’d rather move than make those changes then if/when you are able to move this blog can also be a resource for you. If you send in a message with the cities you’re considering and what you’re looking for in a community, someone in jumblr can likely help give some advice on where you’ll find the best community for you.