#maybe ill edit and crop and post again later

[churmandurr]

anyways I'm like a conservative mom now and must delete that selfies post bc my tits were a BIT much

[only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are]

Redwood Psychiatric Institute - Part 1

MASTERLIST

Edit: Not me accidentally giving the dr two names - I originally had him as Morgan but changed it to Wilson later. I must have left a Morgan in there. Sorry for the confusion!!

Note: This was going to be in two parts, but I thought it would make more sense to combine them and put them in one post. So if you've already read the 1st bit, please keep reading!

Also, Happy New Year! I wanted to kick off 2023 with some whump writing that I'm proud of.

CWs: noncon drugging, forcedsedation, medical restraints, medical gaslighting, forced 'mental illness' treatment

"The psychiatric hospital stands tall with three story buildings, a sprawling lawn, and 6 foot fences enclosing the entire property." The figure narrated from the edge of the grounds. “In the moonlight, it’s an eerie sight to behold.”

He paused the recording temporarily to fiddle with the settings on the microphone, and snap another photo on his camera. ‘Low battery!’ warned the camera. 

“Damn..” He muttered under his breath. 

He turned back to look up at the building, and suddenly heard a twig snap behind him. He froze in place. It was just his mind playing tricks on him, he reasoned. He was alone. He didn’t speak again - just in case. The wind howled through the trees off in the distance. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. 

“Who’s there?” He breathed. 

No response. The woods stood silently swaying in the breeze. 

WHAM!

Something slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground. The camera and recorder were sent flying, the air was shoved out of his lungs from the impact. He didn’t even get the chance to scream, before something sharp pricked his neck. The world dissolved into darkness.

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

His eyes flew open to find that he was lying on a bed.

'It was just a dream, Rowan. Take a breath. You’re home. You’re safe.'

He looked around. Except, he wasn’t home. He was in a vast, empty room with pristine white walls and white linoleum flooring. Definitively not-home. 

'Where am I?'

The door cracked open. 

'Finally, someone to explain what’s going on,' Rowan thought. 

Three men stepped in. The first, a middle-aged, medium build man with small round glasses, a clean-shaven face and wearing a doctor’s coat. The other two were well built, tall, and wore white nurses’ scrubs. One had a scar below his left eye, with thick, dark curly hair on his head, and the other had blonde cropped hair and a mean-looking jaw. Blondie also had a nasty black eye.

These were not exactly the people Rowan was expecting. 

The doctor gestured for the two nurses to stand in front of the door, and then he slowly approached Rowan’s bed.

“Hello again. Glad to see you’re awake.” The man had a calm, quiet manner of speaking as he sat on the end of Rowan’s bed.

“Uh.. hi.” Rowan said slowly.

“Ah, I’m sorry.. one moment.” The doctor pulled a small penlight from the pocket of his coat, and shine it in each of Rowan’s eyes. “Hm..”

“Am I in hospital?” Rowan asked as the doctor put away the light.

The man glanced at the two in front of the door, before turning back to Rowan. “You don’t remember?” He asked, his cool tone giving nothing away. 

“No. I was.. what..” Rowan sighed, furrowing his brow as he tried to remember how he’d gotten in this room. 

Oh! The article!

“Well, I was conducting an.. article on a mental hospital.” He said, trying to mimic the doctor’s cool tone. Technically, he wasn’t lying. But he couldn’t let on the full truth, either.

“I see.”

“And then.. and then…”

'I can’t remember. What happened between the woods outside, and here?'

“Can you tell me your name?” The Doctor asked, pulling Rowan out of his thoughts.

“Rowan Murdock.”

“I see, Rowan..” The man glanced at the two nurses again.

“I’m a journalist for The Daily Press, maybe you’ve heard of me?”

The man looked back at Rowan. “Ah.”

“Look, am I in a hospital?” Rowan asked.

The man sighs softly. “What I’m about to say might be very hard to hear. I want you to stay calm, or those two orderlies will have to give me a hand, alright?” He asked, pointing with his chin at the two men in front of the door.

“Okay…” Rowan murmured. “Just, tell me.”

“Yes. You are in a hospital. But... Your name isn’t Rowan Murdock. It’s James Lawton. And you’re in a psychiatric hospital.”

Breathe, Rowan. Just breathe. Stay calm.

“But- that can’t be right. The last thing I remember was walking through the forest. On the outside of Redwood Psychiatric."

"Well, at least you remember the name of this place. You're a patient here - this is Redwood." The Doctor explained, gesturing around the room.

"But I'm not. That's what I'm trying to tell you! There's been some kind of mistake." Rowan pressed, fighting to keep his voice level. "My name is Rowan Murdock, and I'm a journalist. Not a crazy person."

"Listen, James. Take a deep breath. You're in good hands here. Of course you aren't crazy. That's a very outdated and harmful term. You just need help. There's nothing wrong with that." The Doctor placated. "And you've clearly lost your memory after the relapse caused by your escape attempt. So let me refresh your memory. My name is Doctor Wilson. You voluntarily placed yourself in the care of this hospital four months ago, after an increase in hallucinations, paranoia and violent behaviour. The most accurate diagnosis for your symptoms is schizophrenia. I'd like to continue working on your treatment with you, James."

"My name isn't James. If you found my camera, or looked in my-" he'd started to reach for his pant pocket as he spoke, only to realise that the clothes he had been wearing had been replaced by a thin white hospital gown. "-pocket… Well you must have, then. You'd have found my ID, with my name on it. Rowan Murdock."

"We didn't find any camera or ID, James."

"Stop calling me that."  Rowan protested.

"As your Doctor, it is not my place to play along with your hallucinations. I will only set back your recovery further."

"But I'm not your patient! You can't do this!" Rowan fought back tears.

"Take a deep breath, James. You voluntarily committed yourself to our care, meaning that you gave your permission to be here. We can even show you the paperwork if you like. We can keep you here for as long as we think necessary to treat you, because you legally gave us permission to do so." The Doctor tried in a soothing voice. "In a moment, Nurse Dean will bring your meds. You're going to take them for me, and you're going to calm down, okay?"

Rowan stared at the wall, refusing to meet the Doctor's gaze. A knock sounded at the door, and the two orderlies stepped aside to open the door. A man entered, wearing nurse's scrubs and carrying a tray with a dozen small wax paper cups, each with names printed on them. 

"Hello, James." The man said as he stepped up to the bed, handing the tray to the orderlies and picking up a cup with James Lawton on it. "Glad to see you're back with us. Here's your meds." He held the cup out to Rowan.

Rowan reached out and took it, holding up the small cup to inspect the half a dozen pills of different colours and sizes. "What are all of these for?"

“James, you might not remember, but I have told you this before - I can’t tell you, or any of the other patients’, that. You’d only try to avoid certain medications to avoid their effects.” Nurse Dean said firmly. He pushed the tablets closer to James. “Come on, take them. You know the drill, if you don’t take them, we have to inject the medication anyway. So you choose - easy way or hard way.”

Rowan stared into the cup for a moment longer, then slowly tipped the pills back into his mouth. And proceeded to subtly tuck them under his tongue. 

“Open wide.” Nurse Dean pulled out a tongue depressor, and used it to check in Rowan’s cheeks, and then lifted the patient’s tongue. When he found the tablets, he sighed. “James….” 

The nurse lifted the pills onto the wooden stick, then deposited them all at the back of his throat. Then, he placed his hand on Rowan’s throat and massaged firmly, forcing him to swallow the assortment of drugs. Rowan’s throat hurt from the large mass being shoved down his gullet all at once. He coughed, and the Doctor picked up a paper cup from the bedside table, and handed it to Rowan, who took it gratefully and swallowed several mouthfuls of water from the cup.

“I’m sorry. But that one’s on you.” Nurse Dean took back the tray of pill cups from the orderly, and turned to leave. “See you, James. Behave for Doctor Wilson.”

Rowan didn’t say a word as the nurse left, cataloguing the doctor’s name away - information that he was likely supposed to already have, but he didn’t want to add fuel to the Doctor’s claims that he had lost it. He balled the bedsheet in his fists for a few minutes in silence, until he realised Doctor Wilson was talking to him.

“-I’m very disappointed in you, James. You’re going to have to try better than that.” Doctor Wilson said, brow furrowed. 

“Ma nerm.. isen J-” Rowan stopped, realising his tongue was thick and heavy in his mouth, and words and syllables weren’t coming out properly. “Wh-”

The fluorescent lights were blurring above his head. He couldn’t hear, the world had been submerged in water. Where was he again? 

'The article. Something to do with the article. He said-'

'I didn’t-'

'Where am I?'

'Why is everything moving. It hurts.' 

'Let me sleep.'

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

James lay on the hospital bed, his head lolling around. He was blinking furiously, trying to stay with it, but they’d put him on such a high dosage that his efforts were futile.

Doctor Wilson stood and pulled the blanket off of his patient. He then turned to the orderlies. “Move him to the maximum security padded room, and restrain him.”

“Yes, Doctor Wilson.” 

The two orderlies approached the semi-conscious patient, picking him up from underneath his armpits, and began dragging him down the hallway.

“Excellent.” Doctor Wilson stepped out the room and closed it behind him.

He walked down the hall of the hospital, following closely behind the orderlies with James. He stepped in front of them, and opened the door with his thumbprint so that they could enter. 

The orderlies placed James on a small, frameless bed against one padded wall. The young man looked tiny as he curled into himself on the mattress, wispy strands of his short caramel hair hanging in his eyes. The orderly with the scar reached under the bed and pulled up padded cuffs that had straps attached to them, with the other ends of the straps sewn into the mattress. As the orderlies and Doctor Wilson held James down and started placing his arms and legs in the restraints, the patient tried to pull away, but he was too weak in his drugged state. With ease, the three men restrained him to the bed. 

Doctor Wilson and the orderlies left the room, closing the door behind them. Doctor Wilson knew that there would be a problem when his patient woke up, but he or the other staff would be watching from the cameras inside the room. 

“Martin, I need you to destroy that camera and ID.” Doctor Wilson said to the curly-haired orderly.

“Yes sir.”

~~~~~~~

PART 2

Taglist (there will be more parts so please let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!): @whatiswhump and @jancameforthewhump

[neopuff]

hello, i hope you're having a good day!! i was wondering, do you have any tips for making amvs? like, what programmes you use, how you handle the timing, etc. thank you for all the fun edits you make!!

hi!! sorry for the delay in answering this, i just wanted to take the time to answer it thoroughly and i kept forgetting lol & thank you! i already typed this once and tumblr made it disappear so i apologize if anything i say comes out short ‘cause i’m just trying to remember all that i typed before lol

ok so ill just go through my general editing process in Vegas, i dont know any other program well enough to talk about it at length:

(disclaimer: this is just how i do it, i dont watch tutorials and my editing friends and i don’t watch each other edit often so i would assume that my way is very different from other ways you’ve probably seen! i might even do something in a very stupidly hard way, please feel free to tell me if theres an easier way to do anything lol)

1. Song: So skipping past the “choosing song and ship/character/show” theme, I’ll dive straight into CUTTING THE SONG! I’m not about that Editing The Entire Song life, and neither is most of the editing community anymore, so I cut it up into a shorter thing that I’m better equipped to edit to. I’m just using a random example but here I’ve taken this long ass song and turned it into this:

(the next step just kind of depends on my mood, or ill do both, doesnt matter)

2-A. Subclips: if im making a shorter video or a video where i’m not 100% super familiar with the footage, i will immediately start making subclips using the episodes ive already pulled into the project. if it’s a ship/character that i’ve edited before, i’ll just go to Import->Media from Project and import the subclips i made previously. either way, subclips are there! 

2-B. Sheets: for ships that i know very well/have a lot of footage/im concerned about potentially repeating something, i will go to Google Sheets/Excel and take the lyrics im editing to and put them in column A, separating by pauses in the singing. then i put corresponding footage i think will go well in column B! im often not super specific because i know the beats are gonna be different than i remember, so i usually stick to referencing whole scenes instead of specifics moments. here’s an example:

3. Clip placement: Then I start placing clips down! Below is how I organize my timeline tho I know a lot of editors who put the music on top, this is just how I like it. I also keep a single muted audio layer in between for the video footage’s audio and then I’ll delete that layer when I’m done (or sometimes I don’t, it doesn’t really matter)

I think it’s good to hit the beats as much as possible, it makes for a more dynamic audio-visual experience! In general I try to make my videos so that, if I didn’t add any zooms or typography or coloring, it would still be a good amv. And don’t limit yourself to just one layer, you can have as many layers as you’d like and put clips on top of each other (cookie cutter/changing the layer to dodge or add or screen or whatever) is a good way to mix things up

when I zoom in you can see I’ve got some variety already in my transitions, I know I use that motion-blur-zoom a lot these days but I still try to mix it up and keep my brain invested

4. Typography: After all the clips have been placed (or most of the clips, ofc sometimes I’ll want to add more later) I move on to typography! I’m lazy so the first thing I’ll do it just put down unedited text where I think I’ll want it to go. It just helps me organize myself. Then I’ll pretty up the text afterwards.

Typography isn’t necessary for a good AMV, but really nice typography can really spruce things up. I’ve only very recently gotten confident in my text editing skills, and I just kept watching typography done by editors I really like until I figured out what they were doing. My recommendation is to just KEEP ADDING EFFECTS! Convolution kernel, gaussian blur, mask the text so it appears from angles that the transitions wouldn’t be able to do - of course there’s gotta be a limit for taste, but just add stuff until you like how it looks. Also changing the blending style of the text layer is good, dodge and difference are my go-tos for typography layers.

5. Transitions: I don’t go crazy with transitions, but it’s fun to mess around with them. You don’t want too many crazy/different transitions, you want them to match the mood of the song and the type of beat you’re hitting. I usually ensure that all similar beats in the song have the same transition type on them, bbbbbbut that’s cuz I’m overly obsessed with parallel structure. There’s plenty of fantastic AMVs where they just go ham and do whatever types of transitions they want to in each part of the song and they make it work just fine

(next step, once again, kind of depends on my mood lol)

6-A. Zooms: Time for zooms! I usually just use the pan/crop for zooming, but often I’ll incorporate Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves or NewBlue AutoPan, especially if I’m trying to zoom typography with the footage at the same rate. I try to keep my zooms short and slower, I mean obv it just depends on the song but yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to do zooms so I recommend experimenting and just playing around with different effects

6-B. Zooms...but different: Another way that I’ll do zooms which is definitely pretty different (but this is what I do for crossovers like 95% of the time because I am laaaaaaaaaaazy) is I’ll drag the project into a new project timeline and start editing it there. It’s similar to how After Effects works and it makes it easier to put effects overtop of multiple layers without having to pre-render anything.

So you can see I’ve just pulled in the .VEG file and popped it in the timeline! So this way I can add zooms and transitions without worrying about layers. And if I see a mistake I need to fix, I can just go back into the original .VEG file and edit it, and it’ll be edited when I come back here. So it’s much easier than pre-rendering or trying to do zooms on a lot of layers. To be clear tho, this doesn’t work well if you have a lot of fade transitions, it’s best for sharp transitions and it’s great when you’re using Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves a lot.

7. Overlays: After that I’ll add more typography (or if you didn’t add any earlier, you can add some here overtop of the new project file) that kind of goes on top of everything. And then I’ll add any overlays or objects or whatever else I wanna add! I’m not someone who uses a lot of backgrounds cuz I don’t have a background-creative-brain so I stick to simple overlays at the most.

8. Coloring!!! This is very sad but I only JUST learned a few weeks ago that you can add coloring/effects to your entire video with this button here, so in case anyone else hates watching tutorials as much as I do here’s where I’m talking about:

This shit would’ve made my life so much easier throughout the years lol But alas. Anyway so for coloring there are some effects that are popular for any colorings you’ll find on YT (but you can certainly just download some, Riverdale editors in particular share a lot of really great colorings but you’ll find them anywhere in the live action editing community):

Channel Blend, Color Curves, Color Blend, Color Balance, Convolution Kernel (best for live action footage or footage that isnt very crisp), Color Corrector Secondary

These are all just fun to mess with. Channel Blend in particular is something of a mystery for me, I haven’t studied it fully to understand what I’m doing so I mostly just mess with it randomly until I like what I see lol

9. Render time! First render, anyway. Usually there’ll be some random problem in the footage or something and I’ll have to either go back into the project and fix it OR if I’m feeling particularly sour (or maybe if I’ve rendered like 3-4 times already) I will just take the finished render and manually remove any errors, stretching out the good footage to cover my tracks. You’d be surprised how often I end up doing that lol

And then it’s good to post! I primarily render as .WMV but I also go for .MP4s every once in a while. If I want to upload it to Twitter I’ll do an .MP4 but it’s a new thing for me so I’m still stuck on .WMV mostly.

Anyway I hope this answered your question at least a little bit, I can go into more detail about certain parts of this if you’d like!

[punishedvenomyumiko]

December 17th I waited as the bombs fell But I didn’t leave

i made this blog after december 17th. before the announcement i used to open a bunch of tabs of posts i liked and then look at them again later and decide which ones i woud reblog. there would be a lot of them. after that i was in a flurry to sort through them all. september is when i learned tumblr has a limit on how many posts you can queue, and how many you can reblog in a day. i would fill a queue and set them to post something like 100 at a time over a number of minutes. it might have been annoying to anyone who followed me, but that was never relly a concern to me if im honest.

the social aspect of tumblr wasn’t the main draw for me. it was personal. iliked to have my little private gallery. but if someone else happened across it and reblogged from it then i could check out there blog and maybe find something new or interesting. i wasn’t looking to make friends or anything, but the communitty is what made tumblr. it was a human system of sharing content that made it easy to find cool stuff, and conect people with similar taste

i wasn’t super precious about my blogs. i did put some effort into them, but after a whilei didn’t worry too muc about if a post fit my theme entirelly . or if it was good enough. the feature i most enjoyed on tumblr was the archive view. moreso then each individual post i enjoyed being able to step back and see an new aestetic emerge from the totality of it. you could scroll up and down and see the mood change on a blog as i followed new people, or found new fleeting fixations. a single post might be flawed but have its own something that shun through. something that contributed to a larger experience. sometimes the thumbnail painted a picture that was only lessened with detail.

obviously all my frentic reblogging was a bit pointless if it was all gonna be nuked by the algorythm, so i found a few different means of backing up my blogs on to hard drives (the crappyest of which was the official tumblr one. not a singl one worked after multiple attempts). so now i had all my blogs, as well as some of my faves by other ppl, some formatting missing, a few corrupt or missing files, but i had them. But the archive view was missing…

so december 17 approached. people posted there twitters. people said their goobyes. it was a bit emotional if im honest. (this one from one of my faves got me https://jazzisthebestformofmusic.tumblr.com/post/180842185944/4309-file-backup-rar-containing-a-majority-of-the) so everyone got down in their bunkers and waited for the bombs to fall.

in the end, only the blogs i had marked as sensitive got hit. i was expecting a lot worse, as all my blogs are pretty horny tbh >__<;; but i had my blogs backed up now, and i had said my goodbyes. i drew a line under the whole tumblr thing. __________________________________________ then i made this blog. partly out of embarasment having said i would go partly because i had my blogs preserved now, and didn’t want to ammend them further. partly because i still felt a disire to collect images and build this weird achive view tapestry i enjoyed. and also i never found a replacement. i tried twitter, but besides not being the same i have to constantly wrestl with the algorhythm there and keep getting shadowbanned. besides, a lot of blogs i liked are still here. albeit with a little less spice and weirdness.slowily coming back as they came to similar conclusions.

<b>Punished Venom Yumiko Wanders The Wasteland</b>

so recently i went back to my backups i made, and spent a few hours fucking around with the html. i managed to make a rough approximation of the old archive view. its superior in some sense. i can edit it freely, and i now include all the images in a photoset, not just the first one. So I guess what i am gonna do is continue drawing lines every now and then, downloading my blog, on my terms where onlu i can decide what gets deleted. then ill make a new one

if you read this far, thank you for indulging me. like i said, this is my personal blog. but if i have a point its that tumblr, (and not just tumblr, any large platform), cant be trusted for foster an environment, and cant be trusted with your content . i dont have a solution to this, besides continuing to try and use tumblr on my weird temporary basis for content aggrigation and maintaining my own personal archive, but if a viable alternative crops up, someone let me know

also, pls check out the archive for https://waterfaerie1.tumblr.com/archive i don’t plan to update it, but i liked this one.

[norcumii]

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

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

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

SHORT ANSWER

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

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

Of course I went downstairs.

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

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

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

I like Ewoks.

VERY LONG ANSWER

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

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

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

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

On the one hand, I was dazzled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She drew a Wookiee. That was a character?

I’d always liked Wookiees.

And I needed something to read.

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

I’m also endlessly weak to her art.

Wookiee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

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

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

I still had never seen Episodes 2 or 3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THIS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How’d I get into Star Wars?

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

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

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

[mxadrian779]

It really sucks when you find out someone you thought was a friend (or at least a good acquaintance) is actually a pretty trashy person.

Okay, let me build up the backstory. Almost seven years ago, I created a niche political page. I tended it alone for about a year before enlisting the help of a second admin. In comes this guy we'll call Richard. Richard and I got along decently. We shared a lot of thoughts and identities. I thought he helped me with the page considerably. He helped tend the page with me for about two years or so. We chatted a lot, and I really liked him. Then things start getting weird between us. Richard seems to start getting weird. There's stuff going on in his life, divorce and whatnot. I get a notice that the page we had was scheduled to be deleted within seven days. I loved my page; I certainly didn't schedule it for deletion. I ask Richard, who swears he didn't and blames his ex-husband, whom he insists must have hacked his account. I don't know who to believe, although I am certainly more suspicious of Richard than of his ex. I remove the deletion schedule, and bump Richard's page access down—basically, I took away his power and control over my page. Things are okay, kind of. The stuff Richard posts to the page is half decent and half questionable. Then he posts a swastika picture, a meme comparison of some current figure to a past Nazi figure with a swastika flag in the background. I wasn't aware of the post at the time; I was busy with school. I only heard of it when my stalker elsewhere online started circulating news of that post (my stalker watches every one of my online pages and presences) and calling me antisemitic—because of something I didn't post and wasn't even aware was posted! I immediately track down that post and remove it, and talk to Richard about it. He claims innocence and dodges the matter. I don't remember what else went on between us, but I certainly remember him being vague and dodgy about it, even after I told him what a shitty thing that was, and told him to at least consider the image that post projects. He didn't care.

(edit: looking back at my messages to him and finding a host of other problems that happened at once. I wanted to address them but he just ignored me. Transphobia, the swastika post, and he'd made some crude sexual posts, as well.)

 Now, I don't remember the exact timeline of events, but this was coming to a head about two years ago, when I was coming out of my transphobia. Richard had made a few transphobic posts on the page over its lifetime, which I didn't protest then. But then I started to see its shittiness and started deleting it all. I tried to open a discussion about it with him, like, “hey, what's up with this stuff?” kind of thing. Richard ignored me. A little later, I removed him from the page completely, which he didn't protest or maybe even notice. Richard was no longer an admin, but I spent the next few months cleaning up his messes and remaking the tone of the page. I tried to track down his old crappy posts and delete them. I know there must be many more, but they're buried beyond reach. I made it clear on the page that we are no longer to be transphobic, and that we are to be welcoming instead of mocking. I ran solo for a long time, afraid to enlist another admin and another Richard.

 A few years ago, before anything went sour, Richard decided we should have a group counterpart, which he created and added me as an admin. I was hardly active with it, though, more focused on the page part. I was last in the group three years ago—my last post. The group fell inactive and I stopped caring about it, especially when I started seeing what a richard Richard was.

Recently, this group came back to the fore when one of the other people Richard enlisted as an admin came back and started poking around. He took issue with what I had posted three years ago, and flew into all these weird accusations about it. He questioned my integrity and my identity, and said I shouldn't be an admin there. He especially didn't like when I told him I was transgender (he said something derogatory about me being a woman or something, so I countered). I private messaged Richard, and said, “What's going on with the group (i.e., this asshole)?” He replied that he'll handle it. I wish I took record of exactly what was said in the group by the other guy, but that wasn't on my mind. I'll finish this off with the transcript of our messages.

>me

>>him

 >Okay, what's going on with the group?

 >>I have no idea. [he] messaged me about your post im reading it now. But i dont particularly see anything controversial

 >It's so old xD I don't get the sudden action and the “I don't think you should be an admin”

 >>Think he just wants my attention...:P

Ill tend to him

I didnt know your not a woman

 >I'm female, but I don't identify as a woman.

 >>K well.. he says and I agree thats [accusation]

 >No, it isn't.

 >>And I was having such a pleasent day... haha

Drama queening over a dead group

 >Did

Did you just ban me?

 >>No y

 >I think [the other guy] removed me.

I can't access or even FIND the group.

 >>Dont worry about it. Were chatting ill take care of u in a min

And dont talk to him... shes just in a mood. This a mans job

 >? [I have no idea which of those was intended for me]

 >>Sigh... just let the men talk thats all you gotta do. RN

 >Uh, okay then, I'll let the penises talk.

 >>Lol

>> […]

>>Ok weve decided to reinvent the group and its gonna be male exclusive

 >Why??

 >>Because its a dead group anyway and if we reinvent it we can just say its been here for years. Also engage gay men in intellectual discussion and dialouge

Which isnt something woman are not typically interested in anyway

 >Only cismen are interested in intellectual discussion? Wow, seriously dude?

 >>Yeah actually. Its true. But ill let you know if theres something interesting going on in it :)

 >No, it actually isn't, and I didn't have you pegged as a sexist turd. Don't bother. I'm not interested in whatever Grindr knockoff you're going to turn the group into.

I can't believe you're doing this. We used to be a team. You wouldn't even have had the platform without me and the page, and you're just going to turn around and betray me like this?

 >>Its a dead group hun. Buisness comes first... also didnt need page platform for anything. Actually thats what killed it imo

Also no its not grinder. Its for intellectual dialouge and discussion.

We smoke cigars and drink brandy like men. And its a beaitiful thing

 And that's that. Richard is gone. I feel betrayed, but I don't know what I'm entitled to feel when I wasn't that close with him for the last few years anyway. He was married to a man and for all intents and purposes, he bills himself as gay, but he recently had a very strong and public relationship with a woman and got close to her son. Apparently that relationship is no more, and he still calls himself gay. Meanwhile, his page is full of questionable things. I haven't been keeping track of him, but he had recently started cropping up on my feed again. One of his posts said something to the effect of “the country went to crap when we gave women and minorities the vote” and it's just like WOW ARE YOU KIDDING ME. How was I EVER friends with this dude??

[londonerbecky]

Parachutes 7a - The Mission

This AU sees Claire working for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II.  She is on her way to France for a special assignment with two Scottish paratroopers in tow…

Previous posts

My thanks to @bonnie-wee-swordsman for the mammoth edit and @suhailauniverse for the beta reading.  There is a 7b, coming very soon... Hopefully not as long as the last one...

A long, languid sigh of contentment came out as Juliane opened her eyes. Gaston’s head was coming up to meet her neck, lightly kissing her hollow.  

‘He’s happy with me?  Are you sure?  Karla knows who I am?’ he asked between kisses.

‘But of course my dear!  You are a vital part of the French cause!  I have made sure he has heard everything of your exploits and how you are the most committed agent he could hope to have in his ranks.’   He chuckled and she could feel his chest expand in a peacock fashion.  He moved down to her breast, lightly nipping and kissing which brought a sharp intake of breath from her.

‘The British have instructed me to head out on another, longer mission.  I’ll be away for at least a week.  We have a series of drop offs and reconnaissance to undertake.’

She sat bolt upright, eyes flared and glowing with anger.  ‘We? Who is we?’  Hearing the pique in her voice, Gaston looked up sheepishly at Julianne.  Moving back up towards her, he rested his head on her shoulder, slightly pouting.  

‘Don’t be like that, my little ‘witch’.  It’s only orders and they’ve said someone needs to be with La Dame Blanche for as long as she needs; and as commanding officer, I thought it only appropriate for it to be me’.

Her head snapped towards him, her eyes gleaming.  ‘La Dame Blanche is here?  Do you have a name?  Who is she, then?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that and compromise another agent.’  He started stroking her long auburn hair, moving it away from her ears, nibbling her lobe.  ‘What’s so special about her anyway?’ he whispered.

Julianne, hoisted herself up on her elbows, hair falling down around her and hiding her breasts.  Gaston gently moved it away.

‘Special?  My dear, La Dame Blanche is the British Army’s medical botany specialist!  I heard they’d sent her out into the field but didn’t believe they would be so stupid to do it.  They must be desperate.  Or she’s working on something big.’

----

I sighed and looked around again waiting for Gaston to appear.  He had been due thirty-five minutes ago and we had already missed the train to our destination.  The longer we waited, the more nervous I became.  My general antipathy for Gaston was a large part of that.  The relish with which he had delivered the news that London wanted me to go ‘with a commander’ on this mission filled me with dread.  I highly doubted that he was named in the dispatch itself, but he wouldn’t let me see all of it, just the aspect pertaining to my set instructions.  Of course, it made no sense to the other members of the resistance group.

‘Sources say Culloden almost prepared, the bitter cascara might be the only option’

I had groaned at the thought.  The Nazis were close to preparing the lethal botanical weapon and I had to sabotage the production.  The cover was that Gaston would be my husband, an executive for a beauty company and we were visiting the town and factory for product.  We had been told that the beauty factory was only a cover and that a separate factory was adjacent and where Culloden was being manufactured.  We had secured a meeting and now journeyed for a week long mission.  Anyone else I wished.  Anyone.

A cough stopped my train of thought.

‘Madame? Claire?’  I recognised the soft voice with the hint of Scots lying underneath.  For some reason, I caught my breath and felt the valves in my heart quicken.I looked up to see a riot of ginger curls, the sun beaming through, blinding me.

‘Jamie? Where is Gaston?  I’ve been waiting for nearly an hour and the next train is due in ten minutes’

He scooted next to me, the warmth radiating so violently that my cold body was fighting to not sit up against him.

‘Taken ill, weird sickness.  Raymond said it’s almost like M. Robichoux, so God knows how he caught that.’  His feet tapped on the platform and he glanced down at them. ‘So, I’m your husband’ He coughed again and looked towards my bags and before I could respond to his statement, stood up and collected everything and strode towards the platform, leaving me to rush behind him.

‘What do you mean you’re my husband? Are you saying you're taking his place?’  

Jamie stopped so abruptly, I almost crashed straight into his tall frame, panting with the quick exertion.  

‘Well, er. Yes. What kind of a friend would I be to leave you in the arms of <Rupert>?’ I smiled and was returned by a glint in his blue eyes. ‘I don’t know what we’re doing, but I figured at least one of us does, I am at your service, madame’.

---

By some luck, we had it all to ourselves, which seemed to be both a blessing and a curse.  There was a lingering tension in the air, from what I could not say, but it was palpable.  Maybe Jamie was nervous about the mission, seeing as he didn’t really know the full extent of it.  It was musty and dishevelled through wartime neglect.  I smiled.  Not unlike us all, I mused.  I settled myself into the corner, by the window.  Jamie, after placing our luggage in the overhead shelves, sat opposite me.  The French countryside looked calm and reassuring, green fields suggesting fertile crops seeming to mock the shortages being felt by the population.  I looked away to find him staring at me.  I looked at him quizzically, and raised an eyebrow, he responded by reading a copy of the local newspaper, but his constant glances up at me, at the door, put me on edge.

Mission nerves.  We all got them from time to time. Luckily, I had other things related to the expedition on my mind; how we were to find the cascara substitute, and how on earth we would be able to get into the factory in the first place to disrupt the process.  I opened up my book and begun to study the composition of the plants the Nazis were using.  Seemed simple, if yet very clever stuff.  The fact that the British hadn’t even thought of it when the French surrendered was mind-blowing.  Well, in truth, they had.  Or rather I had.

My inability to get the team I was working with to consider the possibility that the plants could or would be synthesised was part of the reason I transferred into the SOE.  Very firmly one evening, I was pulled aside by the section leader, the cigarette smell stale and worn on his motheaten jacket.  It was ‘explained’ to me rather idiotically, that my idea would not get far, that I should give it up.  Three weeks later, he came back again and warned me to drop my theory and protests to the head of command.  But I persisted and found it so frustrating, that they moved me to another team.  The boredom of that work was the reason, despite Frank’s displeasure, I ended up in the SOE.  

But I was right.  I was bloody right, the bastards.

The jostling of the train relaxed me and I looked up out of my window, closing my eyes to envisage the structures of the plants and how they were fusing together in the most deadly way. Clarity and sense of purpose flowed and I began to see how much cascara we may wish to use.

‘What have you got in that wee book there?’ I was thrown out of my meditation by Jamie’s soft Scottish burr.  I glanced around and seeing that we were still alone looked at him ‘Your lack of security is quite something. En français, s’il te plaît’.

A lopsided smile came across his face. ‘Well, what is in your book that has you tapping and muttering so?  Can I take a look?’

My large companion moved, to sit next to me.  I moved closer to the window, the seat barely registering my presence, yet Jamie seemed to completely disrupt the wadding inside and,  much to my amusement, bounced me in the air as he settled into place, dust moving everywhere like tiny wisps.  In all the commotion, and in his eagerness to see the book, he practically sat on top of me, so close that our legs touched in a familiar, yet strange way.  

‘It’s nothing really, just a little book on plants that I like to read from time to time.’

‘On plants you say?  I’ve noticed you picking up little bits here and there.  Is it a hobby of yours?’

I glanced up at him, meeting those earnest blue eyes.  I breathed slowly, not knowing how much to give away in this area.  I’d talked freely to Jamie, as open as one could be in the circumstances.  I found him easy company.  He was a born storyteller,  like most Scots I’d come across, we had shared many stories and had reached a friendly intimacy and I felt awkward telling him the truth.  I wanted to tell him more, yet I was torn.  Any more information could certainly put him in jeopardy and I didn’t want his death on my head.

‘You could say that’.

I saw him eyeing me up, wondering what to say.  ‘You could say that…’ he trailed off.  ‘Something tells me you’re not telling me the whole story with that Claire.  It’s more than just a hobby isn’t it?’  I could feel the perspiration begin to form on my neck, the clamminess uncomfortable and I moved my hand to my neck to try wipe it away.  Jamie continued, low.  Like a horse tamer trying not to startle a newborn foal.  

‘I think there is room for secrets in the world we live in.  God knows, you have to have them.  But not lies.  Not between us.  Know that you don’t need to tell me anything that isn’t classified, anything that would compromise the mission and’ he paused and looked at me ‘more importantly you’.

I gulped.  It was now or never.

‘Medicine isn’t my specialty.  I am a trained nurse, but botany was my first love.  The two together are rather fascinating to me, how nature itself can heal.’  And that was it.  I found myself explaining my background, mindful to not tell him everything.  I couldn’t tell him about Frank.  Something always stopped me.  

Silence.  Jamie just looked at me.  His face impassive and hard to read.  I felt anxious but resolved.  He wanted the truth, and I gave it to him.  He knew some measure of the type of woman, the type of person I was.

He smiled that lopsided smile that gave me reassurance, a dusting of stubble lightly flecking his face and a twinkle lept to his eyes.

‘Now! I almost forgot, time to make it official!’ And with that he jumped up off of the banquette and grabbed at his case.  ‘Can’t have my wife going about without a ring now, can I?’  I rolled my eyes.  He chuckled, his shoulders raising.

‘Heaven forbid! What did Gaston give you, some old dusty gold ring?’

His eyes shifted to his case.  The mood in the carriage suddenly went very serious.  

‘Ah well, no. I brought my own.’  And with that he ceremoniously got down on one knee, I couldn’t help but smile at the sweetness of it all. ‘Claire Beauchamp, will you do me the honour of being my wife? My mission wife that is’.

I nodded, and he slipped the ring on, muttering something I couldn’t quite make out.  

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing, just a bit of the Gaelic. Seemed wrong to put it on and not say it. Traditional like.’

‘Have I sold you my soul?’ I teased, laughing ‘and more importantly, did you give me your soul to so with as I like?’