#multidirectional

[figureskatingpenguin]

Sonja Hilmer (USA): Avatar The Last Airbender | 2023 Midwestern Sectionals

finally found someone skating to the atla ost! (I can't find her nationals fs, so sectionals will have to do.) I am such a huge fan of her incorporation of the dragon dance and other firebending moves!! very cool!!

[n64retro]

Xeno Crisis Bitmap Bureau Nintendo 64 2023

[cacaitos]

i still love you kurosaki.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Nicholas T. Batzig | In my first foray into public ministry, I was met with what I deemed to be a highly unusual request. One of the elders of the church in which I was serving asked me to refer to the printed order of worship as a “playbill” rather than as a bulletin. This struck me as strange for a number of...

[chisungie]

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[coridallasmultipass]

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[sw5w]

Crunch!

STAR WARS EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace 00:18:15

[evilminji]

You know The Force™? Yes, from Star Wars.

What if It and Ectoplasm, as a vague, all encompassing Primordial Force That IS... were Exs?

Now, now, I here your scepticism. But hear me out! I am going somewhere with this! Possibly somewhere amusing! Might be candy! Who knows! ANYWAY~☆

The Primordial Forces That ARE.™

Imagine um like infinite, multidimensional, multidirectional, endlessly stacking, 2-D pancakes! That are ALIVE. Gods beyond godhood. Inherently Amoral. Not IMMORAL... Amoral.

As in removed from morality.

Outside it.

Just as they are with most things. Time, change, entropy and order. They are the textbook definition of "I EXSIST" in the eldrich sense. It's like trying to understand the thought process of rocks. A black hole.

The best thing everyone can do is move on and accept that our fleshy little meat brains are incapatible with the information we are trying to take in. They DO like us though! For the given quality of "like" as they are capable of understanding it.

It's neat. They are neat!

Why bring um up, though? Well~ >.> remember that "stacked" thing? Not EVERY universe has all of them. In fact, MOST universe don't have more then one! Why would you need TWO Infinte Powers watching you? You're not that special!

And if you ARE, that's not a GOOD thing!

So like? Star Wars? Has The Force. As does every variation and fic offshoot universe. The spin off series. Unknown, undiscovered, "and everything was peaceful, safe, and fine" universe's where nothing story worthy happened.

Danny? Gets Ectoplasm.

The Zone.

Which? Is where Ectoplasm stores their blorbos. The FUNNY ones. The INTERESTING ones. The "I just think they're neat" ones. And FRANKLY? It HAS TO STOP! It's getting out of hand! A hobby is ONE thing, but THIS? The last one tried to invade OTHER UNIVERSE. And now you want to put ANOTHER little crown on your favorite OC?

Stop TORMENTING the little thing! This is BENEATH YOU! No more "edgy" halfa creatures!

Give me that!

Aaaaaand Danny is in Space? W...Why is Danny in space? Danny doesn't WANT to be in SPACE. Danny was about to finally have a burger and a NAP! Guys? Guys, this isn't funny! Where the FUCK is he?? Why are all the ghosts blue?

Why can random space monks body him? But like... only conditionally? The swords are Tingly but the hand wave throw thing? Yeets like the football? And, hell yeah aliens? But boooo, most of them are jerks?

Also >:/ not so thrilled about how people talking about Clones. Or treating them.

And your "Chancellor" fruitloop is very... Vlad. Vibes be RANCID.

He wants to go home but might Have To Cause Problems On Purpose first.

Meanwhile? Skywalker n his secret wife are somewhere VERY green and the white not-wookies are very concerned about her health. But don't worry! They caught the problem early. And prenatal care in important. Also so is mental health. Here, talk to this soft pile of fur with a soft understanding voice! That's elder Councilfang!

Why? Because Ectoplasm is petty. Fuck YOU, Force. If you're gonna take THEIR favorite bloro, then Ectoplasm is gonna take YOUR current favorite TOO! See how YOU like your bloro missing!

@babbling-babull @the-witchhunter @hdgnj @hypewinter @mutable-manifestation @spidori @lolottes @legitimatesatanspawn

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Tumblr isn't letting me find again @fictionadventurer's and my own posts on epistolary novels, but I have been thinking about it again, because I fell down a Goodreads review rabbit hall and I have thoughts again.

So many people dislike the style, and honestly, I don't blame them, because it's so often done... not well. It is in some aspects, a deceptively easy one, and in others, deceptively hard. And because I'm trying to write a novel with this format myself, I have been thinking about what makes or breaks an epistolary novel.

I talked yesterday about TGLPPS, because it is an interesting case to analyze. I have thought many times about it, and cannot think of a single non-merely-aesthetic reason for it to be told in an epistolary style. A lot of it depends on -British- people who have survived some terrible war conditions willingly opening up to a stranger about their experiences, and that's made... even more difficult if the medium is letters? typically writers will appeal to tropes like making the reserved character drunk, or have them share an extreme experience in isolation with the stranger to create sudden intimacy. None of this is possible in writing; if anything, one is much more self-conscious about the things one writes than the things one says; verba volant, scripta manent.

It seems to me the story would have flowed much more naturally if Juliet had been stranded on Guernsey for some reason -like the first author herself!- suddenly Dawsey commenting that he got a book from her library makes so much more sense! Yes, certainly, if you met a stranger out there, and they introduce themselves and you realize you have a book that once belonged to them, you would tell them so! And it is in this way that the epistolary format does violence to a story that would otherwise sound much less contrived.

Another problem is the large cast of characters and multiple settings. For all I complain about Dracula, Stoker manages this pretty well (of course he has the model of The Woman in White, but TWiW has fewer povs), at least on the first half, because structurally the storylines of the characters are converging, and that does a lot to guide the reader in the understanding of the character's relationships. TGLPPS's relationship structure is more of a multidirectional flow chart, and that becomes confusing really fast.

Another novel I read reviews for recently is one set in WWI, composed of back and forth letters between two lovers torn apart by war, and one common complaint was... that the climactic scenes, the times they meet, etc all happen... off-camera. It is a fair complaint, but also one I cannot really blame the author for, because that's what usually happens with real life compilations of letters of that kind. Sure, usually the editor/compiler will fill in the blanks sometimes and add an epilogue of sorts explaining what happened afterwards, and that is possible if you are writing it fictionally too, but some may think it spoils the effect of immediacy and whatnot, which, fair too.

But it makes me think of how aware Jean Webster was of these difficulties, and how deftly she managed them in both Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy. Both novels have aged badly in terms of content and message, but they are very interesting stylistically.

DLL is a bildungsroman with a dash of romance; through Judy's letters to daddy long-legs we can see how she grows as a person, gaining independence intellectually and economically, and as a writer, as her grammar and vocabulary change and grow. Between making Judy an orphan who hates the orphanage where she has lived her whole life, and one where she lived past the usual age of being thrown into the world, Webster does away with the need for letters between Judy and her friends and family: all her friends and family are her college roommates and her benefactor, who is the person she writes to. The benefactor scheme also makes it so that she doesn't have to write dll's replies, which in turns makes it much more natural and acceptable for the reader when Judy writes him the ending's love letter describing the feelings and impressions of their finally meeting in person and in truth; Judy has become a writer, and she is so used to write to him as another person all the time, that it just makes sense for her to write to him one more letter at the point where her benefactor and her lover become one and the same person. She has written a novel where the core is the correspondence between lovers AND managed to include as well all the moments of their meetings that we would otherwise miss.

Dear Enemy is a similar, but longer and more ambitious story. Instead of one relationship-connection (Judy and Daddy's), we have Sallie as a nod of connections: she's Judy's friend, Jarvis' "employee", the boss of several characters, has a tense colleague-boss relationship with the visiting doctor, a boyfriend of sorts in Washington, and a family we have met before. It is, in that way, a similar setup to TGLPPS: a urban girl of means becomes a fish out of water in a different setting till she ends up assimilating to it, and settling definitely through marriage. But Webster does a few things differently to make it click.

For starters, it is clear to her that this is the story of Sallie's maturation -I have sometimes talked of Dear Enemy as a novel where a Mary Crawford-like character undergoes a transformation arc. The happenings and stories she meets and tells Judy about along the way serve this arc, besides standing on their own as case studies to illustrate the problems, ideology and solutions proposed to the secondary themes of the story (education and social reform). I feel like TGLPPS is much more interested in Guernsey's survival through the war, in which case Juliet's story is already a frame, which, again, makes the epistolary format cumbersome rather than complementary.

Dear Enemy adds more correspondents, but it is very austere/economical with them, and narrows the letters we see to only those Sallie sends. YMMV regarding if it was too much cutting or not, but the undeniable effect is structural soundness; you are never confused by what is happening or who is writing to whom. We can guess the Honorable Cyrus Wykoff probably wrote some indignant letters to Jervis, and those would be funny to read, but... would they be worth the break in the flow of the narrative? I don't think so. To this effect, just having Sallie write a line to the effect of "I expect at this point you have at hand an irate letter from the Hon. Cyrus" is enough to paint a picture for the reader. Perhaps a letter or two from Dr. MacRae would have helped develop his character more -definitely a first read of the story obscures how much misdirection there is in Sallie's narration to Judy, which in turns tends to create an impression of suddenness to the closing letter that doesn't come across well to the reader.

The choice of Sallie mainly writing to Judy is, IMO, a really good one too. It not only establishes a connection with DLL, but it also allows for the intimacy that makes disclosure believable (something TGLPPS struggles with, as I mentioned above). When you add a few letters to the doctor and Gordon and Jervis, you also get a better perspective of Sallie's personality, how she deals not only with a friend, but with acquaintances, romantic partners and coworkers.

From all this it is pretty evident that for Webster the main function of epistolarity as format is aiding in showing psychological and moral development. But that's not the only thing the format can be really good for: perspective is another, and Austen uses it to great effect in both Lady Susan and Lesley Castle.

Both stories deal with mainly static characters, but who have very strong perspectives of the same situation, and it is this singularity of setting and story that anchors the narrative to avoid confusion, while the variety of perspective brings interest. In Lady Susan, we are dealing mainly with the marrying off of Frederica and seduction of Mrs. Vernon's brother, Reginald. There where Lady Susan paints Frederica as an undisciplined, irrational and ungrateful daughter, her sister in law, Mrs. Vernon, paints her as a sweet girl and a victim of her mother's ruthlessness and lack of love. Both agree that Reginald is being seduced, but, of course, with opposite goals: Lady Susan wants him to succumb, Mrs. Vernon, to escape, and this is a delicious struggle for the reader to follow!*

Lesley Castle being an earlier effort, and unfinished, does show some of the defects I have mentioned before (mainly, the relative confusion of having several correspondents in separate storylines), but illustrates well this same perspective effect: Margaret writes to Charlotte about the new Lady Lesley, and the new Lady Lesley writes to Charlotte about about Margaret and her sister... and in these contrasts lies the main interest of the narrative.

Some conclusions to these musings, then:

Not every story is suited to the epistolary format.

The epistolary format seems to work the best when it is used for either A) showcase psychological and moral development B) to play with perspective on people and/or events.

One of the main difficulties of the format is finding a narrative element to anchor and structure the letters around.

It must have a core couple of correspondents, or at most, two. More than that will make it confusing (unless, perhaps, the story is very short and about a single event or two).

A delicate balance must be found so that the secondary correspondence doesn't cut the flow of the main one, and if possible it must feed into it.

*It is interesting how Love and Friendship, being such a delightful -and I sustain one of the best ever- Austen adaptation, is by force of the perspective switch towards a more impersonal third person, more about a love story between Frederica and Reginald than a struggle between Lady Susan and Mrs. Vernon. Which isn't dissimilar to how adaptations of DLL end up being more about the romance between the leads than Judy's coming of age in college; tropes aside, I feel like if the epistolary format is well embedded in the story, it's going to be nearly impossible to reproduce the effect in adaptation.

[n64retro]

Bangai-O Treasure / ESP Nintendo 64 1999

[sepia-stained-sunset]

Tim Drake really became a central figure in a friend group where the romantic feelings of every individual were shifting, multidirectional and with queer undertones, not once, not twice, but three whole times.

[waytooinvested]

Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 28

This and previous chapters are also on AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first days after Kara was released from the med bay were a learning curve, to say the least. Despite (and to some degree because of) the conversation they had had about it, they were both a little nervous about the personal care aspect.

Well, a lot nervous, if Lena was honest with herself.

Even though she had insisted (to Kara, to Alex, to herself) it wasn’t a big deal, that had been when it was all safely hypothetical, the barrier of time between them and the moment it would become a reality making it all feel eminently doable.

Then on their first evening together, after the welcome home pizza was finished and Alex and Kelly had said their goodbyes, Kara admitted, tentatively, that she would really like to get a proper shower. She had had to make to with a bowl of lukewarm water at the DEO, and after her two day post-brain injury observation period she was feeling distinctly grimy.

‘Is that… okay?’

‘Of course! I bought a shower stool specially, and a cover to keep your cast dry. It’s fine’.

It was fine of course, but that didn’t stop Lena’s heart from jumping into her mouth at the realisation that all her rationalising and distance keeping came to nothing now they were actually here.

It was a big deal, it was such a big deal, what had she been thinking saying she could do this by herself? What if she couldn’t? What did she know about taking care of someone post-injury, especially when that person happened to be the woman she was in love with, who was about to be more naked than she had ever seen her before...

But Lena was a practical woman, and she didn’t let her sudden insecurity show as she helped her friend make the short trek to the bathroom.

At least, she tried not to.

She did spend an unnecessary amount of time explaining exactly how the shower worked and what each and every one of the various settings did (all the more unnecessary given that Kara had showered here before, and already knew the basics of temperature and pressure control), but that was just being a good hostess, wasn’t it? After all, Kara might fancy trying out the massage jets (well, maybe not, given her bruises) or the multidirectional spray (although that would put an end to any hope of keeping her cast dry even with the covering). It was only polite to give her all the options.

‘… So, which would you prefer?’ Lena asked, when she had finally run out of settings to describe. There was no answer, and she turned to find that rather than listening to the (admittedly excessive) shower options, Kara was focusing on staying balanced on the closed lid of the toilet while she fumbled one handed with the buttons of her shirt, unable to see what she was doing through the rapidly fogging lenses of her glasses.

‘Oh darling, I’m sorry. Here, let me do that.’

The guilt for having left her like that so long was sharp in Lena's chest, but it finally broke through the worst of her uncharacteristic dithering and galvanized her into action.

What passed between them over the next few minutes was a kind of intimacy that Lena had never experienced with another person before. Not the physical act – she had taken people’s clothes off plenty of times – but the way it felt to have Kara allowing herself to be vulnerable with her in this way. The nearest she had come to this was with Sam, holed up in her lab together while she tried to find a way to separate her from Reign, but even at their closest, when she had been holding her while she cried and begged and then bravely pushed on for another try, she had managed to retain a small degree of distance from the procedure that was absent now.

Maybe it was because that hadn’t been such a viscerally physical form of care, or because there was always the possibility of Sam not being Sam any more at any moment, so she had stayed on her guard. Maybe the real difference was just that this was Kara, and with Kara everything was different. Whatever the reason, as Lena knelt in front of her friend and carefully worked her way down a row of buttons that seemed impractically fiddly for someone who had to change from civilian to super hero clothes in the blink of an eye, she felt the truth of Kara’s trust in her more deeply than she ever had before.

When the last one was finally free she averted her eyes while Kara shrugged out of the shirt and wrapped herself quickly in the towel Lena held out to her, careful not to look in the direction of the mirror. In truth she had wondered (privately, guiltily) if the temptation to peek would prove too much for her in this moment (how many times had she woken hot and flustered from dreams about her best friend naked in the shower, after all? And now here she was unclasping her bra less than an arm’s length away...), but although Lena’s heart was pounding at a pace that made her very glad that super hearing wasn’t currently a factor, it didn’t feel sexual, and she didn’t try to look.

She was also painfully conscious of how Kara must be experiencing what was happening. Not only was she in pain and having to accept help that she hated needing in the first place, she was also accepting it from someone who only a couple of days before she had believed to have unequivocally rejected her romantic interest, only to find out that it was all a big misunderstanding and her feelings were reciprocated after all. That alone would take some time to get used to, but now they were in this strange in-between place where they weren’t quite one thing or another to each other, everything between them half acknowledged and less than half resolved.

And yet here Lena was, helping her take her pants off.

It was a lot.

In light of that Lena did her best to stay practical and respectful, forcing her hands to still as she helped Kara back to standing and affording her as much privacy as she feasibly could in the circumstances. Still, no matter how diligent she was at looking elsewhere, she couldn’t help catching glimpses of the injuries that had previously been hidden beneath layers of clothes.

Kara’s back and side were mottled with a huge, multi-hued map of bruises that darkened from yellow-green at the edges to angry purple and red towards the impact site, and her skin was scraped and raw. Even though it was mostly superficial and would heal fully within a few weeks, the sight of her looking so battered made rage surge up in Lena’s chest, and again she felt the burgeoning urge to kill whoever had dared do this to her.

Which was somewhat problematic, given that the person who had done this to Kara was… Kara.

Well. And Lex.

Lex.

Yes, this was all his fault, and Lena had let herself forget that for far too long.

Maybe they had been going the wrong way about Project Atlantis from the start, and should have devoted more of their efforts to finding Lex and making him talk, or else searching his various hideouts for an explanation of his separation process, rather than focusing so much on Kara herself.

Not that they hadn’t looked for him of course – the DEO had searched. Lena had searched. Even Superman had searched, once they had told him what had happened to his cousin and warned him that Lex might come for him next. All to no avail. None of them had found so much as a hint of where he might have gone after the bunker, or even whether he had ever been there in person. It was entirely possible that the set up had all been done through his lackeys, and that Lex himself was holed up somewhere on the other side of the world, the trail so cold it might as well not exist at all.

However, Lena did have one more card to play if it came to it. Because while Lex might claim to be indifferent to her, she was pretty sure that he would come if she called him, at least if he truly believed that she was ready to cut ties with Supergirl and the DEO and join him. It would be a delicate game to play, but more than worth it if she could get close enough to find out what they needed to keep Kara from ever getting hurt like this again.

But she wouldn’t do it yet.

Not until Kara had healed and didn’t need her support anymore, at least. That would also give her time to prepare, to make a proper plan and anticipate any counter moves her brother might make. As long as she was careful, Lex could be trapped by his own hubris into making mistakes, and then she would have him.

This time, no matter what, only one of them would walk away from this alive.

In the meantime, she would make the most of the time she had left with this Kara.

The Kara who loved her back.

Just in case, one way or the other, it turned out to be their last.

And alright, it was possible that Lena went just the slightest bit overboard with that intention. But she had promised that this recovery period would be just like one long best friend sleepover, and she damn well planned to live up to her word.

When they had finally completed their first stumbling shower-and-pajama routine and Kara had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep in the spare bedroom, Lena fetched her laptop and got to work with online shopping. Within the hour she had orders placed for a mountain of boardgames, card games and puzzle books; a huge stack of dvds (including every musical she had heard of and several she hadn’t, plus a few choice series’ that they could get their teeth into); subscriptions to no less than four new streaming services; a bumper set of canvases, brushes and various kinds of paints in case Kara was in the mood for some artwork; and, the grand finale, a vintage play station 2 complete with a wide array of one and two player games, because she figured if Kara couldn’t run and jump for real, she might at least get some vicarious enjoyment from doing it on a screen (the console was years out of date, but her initial plan to simply buy whatever had the highest ratings had changed when she saw that this one came with a particular game that she was pretty sure was going to be the crowning glory of the lot).

To round it all off she also scheduled a grocery delivery that would fill her cupboards with all Kara’s favourite snacks, a few of her own choice comfort foods (just to keep her company) and, after a brief hesitation, a large packet of marshmallows.

Then Lena went to bed herself, feeling tired but satisfied, and more peaceful than she had expected to be so soon after her resolve about Lex.

That peace lasted exactly five hours and thirteen minutes.

Then, quite literally, it shattered.

Lena’s eyes snapped abruptly open at the sudden noise, and she found herself leaping out of bed and stumbling out to find the source before she was entirely awake. In her sleep-fuddled state she half expected to find a man with a weapon and a grappling hook climbing through a smashed window (she was probably over due her next assassination attempt, and given her high security a mere casual burglar was unlikely), and wished that she had thought to grab her gun.

But there was no intruder. No weapon. No smashed window.

There was just Kara, red cheeked and balancing awkwardly on one leg, attempting to pick up the shards of a broken water glass with her injured hand while the other clung determinedly to the counter to try and keep from falling.

‘Kara! What on Earth are you doing?!’

Lena hurried over to her, but Kara gestured her back before she could step far enough into the kitchenette to steady her.

‘Don’t come any closer! You’ve got bare feet, you’ll cut yourself.’

‘So have you! Why didn’t you call me if you needed something?’

‘I didn’t want wake you up, and I was fine by myself, I only came out for a water refill.’

Pointing out the near-impossibility of carrying a full glass back to the bedroom with only one arm and leg available would have been labouring a point that had been better made by the mess at their feet, so instead Lena went to fetch a chair before Kara lost her precarious grip on the counter and smashed more than just the glassware.

‘Sit down for a minute while I get the this cleared up, then I’ll help you back to bed.’

‘No, no it’s fine, I can do it, you go back to sleep.’

‘Darling, that’s not how the whole ‘looking after’ thing works. Especially not when you are barely out of hospital and can hardly stand on your own, let alone walk. Now would you please sit down before you fall down and get a butt full of broken glass to add to your other injuries?’

Kara grimaced sheepishly, but sat.

‘Okay… I’m really sorry about your glass, I was trying so hard to be careful.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter, I smash them all the time. But please call me next time. I can buy more glasses. I can’t buy another Kara.’

‘I mean you probably could, if you really put your mind to it.’

That startled a laugh out of her, for all Lena was still sleep-drunk and mildly alarmed from her rude awakening.

‘Okay, well I don’t want another Kara. I want this one, thank you very much. She happens to be my favourite.’

‘Even though she smashes your things?’

There was a slight wobble in Kara’s voice that made Lena stop what she was doing and look up at her, concern creeping in to replace the humour.

‘Hey… Kara, it’s okay. You’re not really upset about the glass are you? Because it really really doesn’t matter. I’ve been known to smash them on purpose when I need to vent, it’s absolutely not a big deal.’

‘It’s not the glass, exactly. It’s just… I’m kind of a wrecking ball right now trying to learn how to manage with only two fully functioning limbs, and this place is all so… expensive. I mean, it’s lovely, obviously. But also kind of scarily immaculate. What if next time I break something actually valuable? Or… I don’t know, drip spaghetti sauce on your white couch? There is so much white.’

Lena put down her dustpan and brush and went to crouch beside Kara’s chair, broken glass crunching under the boots she had quickly stuffed her feet into before starting the clean up. She took Kara’s uninjured hand and squeezed it firmly in her own.

‘Okay, Kara, look at me. I promise I don’t care about any of that. What I do care about is you feeling comfortable. I want my home to feel like your home, at least until your leg’s out of plaster. So, what can I do to make you feel more at ease here?’

‘Well... maybe you could put away anything breakable or stainable that’s worth more than… say… five hundred dollars?’

‘Oh. Uh. Sure…’

Her tone must have betrayed her, because Kara narrowed her eyes, looking simultaneously suspicious and alarmed.

‘Lena. Please tell me you own things that are worth less than five hundred dollars.’

‘Of course I do!’

But looking around their immediate vicinity, Lena actually couldn’t see anything that fit the description aside from the basics of crockery, food stuffs and the dust pan and brush, which she suspected didn’t really count.

‘Name something.’

‘Well…’ she struggled ‘...that flower arrangement?’

‘OH MY GOD LENA.’

‘So I have expensive taste! It doesn’t mean I care if something gets damaged. There’s nothing here that you could break, stain or lose that I would be particularly upset about. They’re just things. Seriously, you want me to smash a Ming vase to prove it? Because I will smash the hell out of that priceless antique if it’ll make you feel better.’

‘DO NOT DO THAT.’ Kara yelped, and then after a moment added ‘...do you seriously own a Ming vase?’

‘No Kara, that was a joke. And plenty of things here are worth less than five hundred dollars, but it’s 4am, I’m very sleepy and none of them happen to be in my eyeline right at this moment. I’ll put away anything really valuable though, okay? And if anything does get broken, I absolutely promise you I won’t care. Just as long as the thing that gets broken isn’t you.’

She decided not to mention that there actually had been a Ming vase in her father’s study when she was growing up, and that while it wasn’t really to her taste, one or two things she did own would rival it in cost.

‘Okay...’

‘Okay. Now lets get you back to bed, and if you need anything at all in the night then you call me. Because if I find you out here on your own again I swear to God I will get in that bed with you so you can’t sneak out without me noticing.’

Kara laughed, and Lena was relieved to note that the worried edge was gone.

‘I wouldn’t mind if you did.’

[imreadydollparts]

Phoebe and the BunchEms

Have you heard of BunchEms? These little plastic balls covered in hooks like Velcro that you stick together to make shapes and stuff?

The first I heard of them was when I came across posts about getting BunchEms out of little kids' hair...

That is horrifying.

Now, I am someone that is Good at detangling and retexturing synthetic doll hair. I saw an American Girl Julie on shopgoodwill.com with BunchEms in her hair and got curious.

Are they really THAT hard to get out of hair, or were the people doing it just not that great at detangling?

I'll spare you the suspense and say that yes, they really are that horrible. I think it would be more humane to just cut the child's hair and let it grow out again rather than make them sit through an attempt at removing The Devil's Dingleberries.

I didn't win the auction for Julie but was talking to my doll friends and said that if I ever happened to find BunchEms and a doll I didn't care about at Goodwill at the same time, I'd grab them so I could experience this hell for myself.

Enter Phoebe.

This is a Battat Our Generation (Target's version of American Girl) Phoebe. You can't really see her before-hair well, but it wasn't in too bad of condition. It was matted in a couple spots, very dirty, and had grass stuck in it.

I do wish I'd cleaned and detangled her before I did this. The dirtiness had everyone in the house sneezing.

But wow was that exciting. I enjoyed being the destroyer instead of the fixer for once. That was fun.

Removing them again was not. That was the opposite of fun.

It took me about a month because I had to stop for a medical emergency and was only able to work on her again last week. Since I'm going through a series of surgeries I've had a lot of non-productive time. I just finished her hair up today.

The BunchEms were very difficult to remove. It took a lot of careful, slow, agonizing combing and brushing, picking and pulling, some ripping and tearing, to get the hair free from each little ball's many, multidirectional teeth.

What's worse is that as I would work on the balls nearer the ends of her hair, the ones closer to her face got tighter and tighter into her hairline.

They were pushing against her skin at this point.

I'd get some hair free, put it to the side, and discover it had reattached to different BunchEms on that side.

It was tedious. If Phoebe were a real girl, she'd be in agony from all of the pulling and combing and how tightly the BunchEms were pulling up into her hair.

I did eventually get them all out again. She lost a ton of hair. Battat OG dolls are rooted with the locked loop method, which means that if ONE loop pulls free, then they can all pull free in sequence. A lot of her hair loss was full plugs coming out of her scalp, and a lot of it was breakage. The hair that was left was a mess.

It wasn't tangled at all and was rather soft, though. I guess if you were desperate, a BunchEming could help emulate the texture of 4c hair? There has to be a better way to give a doll 4c hair than this self-torture, though.

A good bath, shampooing, three conditionings, and straightenings later and...

I had to cut out a few inches (I am bad at cutting shh), and her hair still has a lot more texture than it's supposed to.

I do not ever want to do that again.

She's going back to Goodwill to see if someone else wants to adopt her, and the BunchEms are going in the trash because they're full of doll hair and that's kind of gross.

[lonestarbattleship]

"Sailors aboard USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) man the rails as multidirectional Z-drive tugboats nudge the carrier to its pier at her homeport Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. The carrier and its strike group are returning after completing a six-month deployment in support of the global war of terrorism (GWOT), including Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM."

Photographed on February 29, 2004, by PH3 Sondra Howett and PHC Greg Mccreash

NARA: 6670304, 6670303, 6670305

[swaps55]

WIP Wednesday

I managed to unstick myself a little on Mezzo over the weekend, woot, so here is some proof of life:

~

When Shepard retreats to his cabin he paces as though a runtime has glitched.

“EDI, I need everything we know about the collectors and the Omega 4.”

“Downloading relevant files to your terminal, Commander,” she says, pleased to assist. Perhaps data analysis will reduce his behavioral anomalies.

He views the information on a datapad while traversing an irregular pattern through his cabin. Up the stairs to his desk. Down the stairs to his sleeping area. Around the small table in front of the couch. There are only so many routes he can take, but he never develops a consistent pattern, sometimes changing direction, sometimes reaching the stairs and turning back, other times going up and looping several circuits near his desk.

“I need a manifest of known ships that attempted to enter the Omega 4.”

“Certainly, Commander. I will compile the data.”

More pacing. He re-reads the same paragraph several times and then grunts in frustration.

“Have any known collector captives been recovered?”

“No.”

Pacing continues with increased agitation.

“Where else have the collectors been spotted, aside from colonies? If we can find a pattern, maybe we can…maybe.” Briefly he closes his eyes, gripping the datapad tighter.

“I will analyze the available data and look for patterns.”

“What did you find out about the weapon capabilities on that ship?”

“Scans revealed a particle beam weapon capable of multidirectional fire as well as point defense weapons of an unknown composition. While not conclusive, evidence suggests that either this vessel or one of similar construction was responsible for the destruction of the SSV Normandy in 2183.”

He stops still at the foot of his bed and covers his face with his hands. Above him, the stars pass slowly as the Normandy burns towards the Iera relay at sublight speeds. They should reach it in three hours, twenty-nine minutes.

Mr. Moreau, who generally seeks superfluous conversation while plotting relay jumps, had been abnormally subdued for this one. Once her assistance with the calculations was completed, he’d asked to be ‘alone with his thoughts,’ and she had complied.

“How many other ships have they destroyed?” Shepard asks.

“According to my available records, none. The collectors appear to prefer avoiding conflict and remaining anonymous.”

He utters a distressed sound and resumes his restless circuit. “Then why won’t they leave me the fuck alone.”

Her processors turn this question over several times. “I am afraid I do not have enough data to formulate an answer.”

“It’s fine,” he says with an abrupt, angry wave of his arm. “Forget it. I’ll figure it out. I need…I just need…”

She waits patiently. He sucks air through his teeth and hurls the datapad against the wall.

“Fuck,” he cries. He laces his fingers behind his head and stares at the empty fishtank, drawing a deep and shaky breath.

[sw5w]

Opee Closing In

STAR WARS EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace 00:18:09