#next day there would be another fine arts thesis presentation so it was there for such a brief time

[zan-77]

So ummm.... *taps mic* I've finished college! ::3

My thesis project has been approved and technically speaking I'm already a bachelor of fine arts hihi

It's been fun learning and growing, and god this was so much but I managed, and now is the end of one cycle n the beginning of many others ::>

I can finally have free time to do all the shit i wanna do lmao

[wifeofkimtaehyungofbts]

Chapter 11

>> Pairing: Taehyung x Y/N, Taehyung x reader

>> Words: 2,379

>> Notes: I’m going to upload a new chapter whenever possible. Please bear with my hectic schedule! You may leave asks and let me know what you think of my writing (:

Synopsis: You run into a rather strange man one night. He seems terrified, as if fighting battles only he can see. He seems detached from the world, talking only to a voice inside his head. Oh, another strange fact: he keeps talking about angels. You discover later that you were the angel he was praying to.

>> Previous / Next

**

“Hey"

I jolted at the sudden voice echoing against the walls of the eerily quiet changing room of the McDonald’s.

Jungkook was leaning against the door. His apron was thrown over his shoulder and he cocked his head at me.

“Wanna go out tonight?”

“Huh?” I wasn’t quite sure I heard him right. Jeon Jungkook. The guy that hardly ever talks to anyone. The handsome guy who shies away from girls at the cashier trying to get his number. The guy who leaves work without sparing a second for an after-work chat with his colleagues. Wants to go out with me?

I continued to stare at him in shock. Instead of breaking the awkward silence between us, he stared back at me. His dark chocolate brown eyes looked deep. Not in the romantic sense. It almost seemed like there was an entirely different person behind them. If the person differed from the one who stood before me in a good way or a bad way, I couldn’t tell. But what I could tell was that if I didn’t reply fast, we'd be staring into each other for all of eternity.

“Don’t you have work?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “You are supposed to fill me in tonight because Felix had an emergency at his house and couldn’t make it”

“I got someone else to cover for me" he shrugged.

I wanted to know more but I figured it didn’t really matter as long as my shift was covered and he didn’t get into trouble either.

“Gimme a minute. I need to wash my face” I said turning my back on him.

As I busied myself removing my hair tie and gathering my hair in a bun, I felt someone lightly brush against my back.  I wanted to turn but it felt too cold.

“You look beautiful Y/N" Jungkook whispers, his warm breath blowing the hair at the top of my head.

In reflexive panic, I grabbed my bag pack and dashed to the girl’s bathroom. I couldn’t calm my racing heart as I tried to shake off the eerie coldness I felt a few seconds ago.

Why did Jungkook come onto me so suddenly? And what’s with the compliment? I mean sure, thank you but it felt so off. He didn’t sound sweet or shy when he said it. He sounded stern, like he was stating a matter of fact I better believe else.... else?

Else what, Y/N? He was going to kill you??

I slapped myself for overthinking and washed my face before hurrying to the front. My colleagues were busy with customers so I couldn’t wave them goodbye. I stepped outside to the chilly air, spotting Jungkook standing by the road. I walked up to him and smiled warmly.

He looked down at me and smiled back. “Do you like pizza?”

“Who doesn’t!” I giggled, already drooling at the mere idea of pizza.

He laughed as we started walking towards the Arthur’s Pizzeria around the corner.

**

We were seated by the window across from each other. The table was too big for just us two, but we were glad no one else attempted to sit with us. It was fine, just the two of us.

We ordered our pizzas and spoke about ourselves as we waited for the food.

I found out Jungkook is from Busan and he was studying music at the campus. He was in fact a top graduate from Busan Arts School along with some guy whose name Jungkook doesn’t remember. He likes to play video games and tries new activities every weekend. Last week he had attempted fishing with a friend of his and they ended up catching no fish but a cold so bad, Jungkook requested for an extension on his vocal exam. Oh, and he hates reading.

I told him about the time I submitted the wrong thesis paper for my semester end assignment and had to retake the whole module all over again in the next semester. He asked my favourite colour, movie and book. He judged me for being a book worm and laughed when I pouted at him in annoyance.

Our food arrived soon and we didn’t talk as we devoured the delicious, thin, saucy pizza. I caught him watching me from the corner of my eye but I made no attempt to eat decently. It’s not like I want to impress him or anything anyways.

Three girls seated at the table next to us wooow’ed at the sight of Jungkook. They turned their attention to me and stared on with disgust.

“What’s someone like him doing with someone like her?”

“God knows! See this is why we never get to experience anything good. Because the good guys are always after someone so random”

“It must be true love if he actually chose someone like her. I mean, look at her hair!”

I could even hear their eye rolls as loud as I heard their words. It pricked and I found myself slowing my eating. I suddenly couldn’t chew anymore. I felt restrained. Like someone had put handcuffs and a leash on me and I had to strain against them to take a bite of my pizza.

Growing up, I haven’t had the most stable family. My fatherless life had involved trying to work odd jobs since I was 13 and missing out mile stones other girls got to experience during their teen years. My first kiss wasn’t under a starry night with my first love, it was rushed and filled with greed at the car park of the local book store. And he cheated on me a week later with the girl who sat next to me at chemistry. The man I first shared a bed with was not looking for a long-term relationship and left me when he found a full time, high wage job at his uncle’s company in New York. My mother was crippling, losing a bit of herself every passing day until one day she came down the stairs to have her tea and I couldn’t even recognize her anymore. My sisters were still too young to understand life and I didn’t want them to see the world as I saw it. I wanted them to have a happy childhood and experience life as any growing child should. They were sent away to my uncle’s and although they were more than willing to also let me stay, I needed away. I left my mother as she screamed indecent words at me one night and took the subway train that led me here. The letter of acceptance from the university was the only good thing that has ever happened to me. I soon became best friends with my room mate who is the polar opposite of me but somehow, we spoke to the same stars and saw life in the same light. My life has always been rushed, difficult to comprehend and there was no easy way through. Having to hear the body that pulled me through those sleepless nights of putting my scared sisters to sleep and locking their doors so my alcoholic mother couldn’t hurt them with her drunk violence, the same body that has cried itself to sleep after carrying stack after stack of recycle paper up 7 flight of stairs for very little pay and a terrible neck and back ache, the same body that is still living and breathing and pushing through, is not good enough, is less, is devastating. It makes me want to cry.

I didn’t ask for such a difficult life. Additionally, my face is the only remainder of who my mom used to be; I am the spitting image of her. The her that was over flowing with positivity and had a heart of gold. The her that lovingly brought my sisters and I into this world and took us cycling and cooked our favourite pasta for our birthdays. To think this face, this remainder of what she looked like, who she was, is less makes my heart crinkle around the edges and burn in the deepest pits of its centre.

“All good?”

I look up to see Jungkook looking at me worriedly.

“Oh yes! I just.... should stop eating else I’ll throw up" I laughed awkwardly.

Jungkook continued to munch on his pizza as he stared at me. He was trying to read the worry in my eyes, the sad drop of the corners of my lips. I couldn’t hide my emotions on my face even if the world depended on it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if any minute now Jungkook presses me for answers and stories. Stories I’d rather keep hidden like I have all this time.

“Okay" Jungkook hums as he takes another slice of pizza. I look at him, grateful he dropped the subject. I watched on as he ate. He didn’t once lift his eyes to mine. He busied himself finishing up his own pizza and the remainder of mine. I wasn’t shocked he ate so much given the fact that he was full of muscle and stamina.

I looked out the window at the busy street. People walked by, carrying the weight of their lives on their shoulders. The lights from cars and street lights looked like stars on Earth from where I was seated. I felt a sudden sense of closure knowing I could disappear into the night, walk mindlessly around these people and no one would know who I am. I’d have no one to explain or compare myself to. Nobody would know what’s going on inside my head. Frankly, nobody would care enough to know. And it felt nice. To not be alive and surviving. I wanted to be light, float over the Earth and find my purpose at my own pace without trying to catch up with the rest of the world only to fall short of breath and lost.

“I don’t know what’s going on in that pretty head of yours, but I’ll listen if you share” Jungkook wipes the corner of his mouth with a tissue. He has cleaned the trays of pizza without leaving behind even a trace of any food being there. I smiled kindly at his words.

“Thank you Jungkook. But I’m not thinking about anything that needs concerning attention”

My smile doesn’t reach my eyes and I know he noticed it. He pays the bill entirely despite me fussing about wanting to split the bill. We make our way back to my house, the breeze a little colder and stronger than yesterday, reminding us of the oncoming winter.

**

I pace the living room painfully slow, waiting.

Waiting for her to come back home.

Daffodil.

I have been practising what I wanted to say as I give her the present over and over again in my head. I had wrapped it neatly in a brown paper bag and tied with an orange ribbon I found on her study table. The wrapping was not at all attractive, but it was neat and I hoped she would see the value of the gift that’s wrapped rather than the wrapping itself.

I look at the time. 09.19pm.

She was supposed to be back a long time ago. I heard her making arrangements yesterday to leave early from work today. I had cleaned the entire house; sweeping the wooden floor boards, removing cobwebs and brushing off the dust that had collected on top of the cupboards and TV.

I did not have a phone on me and even if I did, its not like I had her number anyway. I sighed loudly and slumped on the cold floor. My eyes kept fluttering, threatening to close for hours. My shoulders felt heavy and I couldn’t pull myself up off the floor. I rested my head on the floor and allowed my eyes to close. The coldness from the floor piercing my right cheek was the last thing I was aware of before I drifted off to a sleep full of nightmares.

**

I saw it again.

The playground.

The swing.

The boy.

I was playing in the park around the corner from school. I had sand in my old, torn shoes and my school tie was hanging loosely around my neck. My hair was a mess and sweat dripped off the ends of my bangs. I was having too much fun running around to stop. I sat at one of the swings and turned to face the boy seated in the other.

“Hey!” I waved brightly.

He did not respond, his head bent low and slowly swinging. He had dark brown hair and a piercing in his left ear. I could not see his face because it was surprisingly too dark on the side of the swing he was on. It was almost as if a dark cloud was looming over him, night fallen on the side of the Earth he was on.

I turned away and focused on swinging as high up as I can. However, my merry only lasted for a short while because I had swung a little too high and as I swung back, I was thrown off the seat and face first onto the dirty sand. I got up spitting sand out of my mouth. Any average person would have shrieked in disgust and run straight home for a good shower at what just happened. But I just laughed, almost choking on my spit as I attempted to spit sand out of my mouth.

“Pathetic”

The boy suddenly spoke. His voice was soft, melodic and had a boyish charm to it.

He’d make a great singer if he could sing, I thought to myself.

I turned to look at him, mirth sparkling in my eyes.

“Ha! So you can speak! I thought-” I began but had to stop at the sight before me.

My eyes grew wide in terror as the boy lifted his head to reveal a face with no features except for a gaping hole where his mouth should be. A dark liquid oozed out of his ears, supposed-mouth and where his eyes should’ve been.

My breath caught in my throat as I tried to scream again and again, but no sounds came out.

**

Tag list: @tae-n-u​

[xanderwithanx]

Chloe does night-time diary posts on HER tumblr, so I'm going to start doing them here, sometimes. It would be nice if you read it, but, please, don't feel obligated! This is more for me to write.

(I got tired of my normal journal, I guess. It's full of bad poetry anyway. Besides, where's the thrill of losing anonymity in a physical notebook?)

I've basically been asleep and depressed for several days, because I had withdrawal after not being able to get my adhd meds. But, I got it today, and DID THINGS. (This is SO much better than before!)

Today, I went to a small café or restaurant (focused on tea) called Alice's Teacup that was Alice in Wonderland themed! My long-standing obsession with Alice in Wonderland knows no bounds. It was a really cute place. I got pumpkin pancakes, and some really good iced tea. Like... REALLY good iced tea.

Still, it seemed like the entire place was geared towards having a pot of tea and snacks with your friends, which left me a bit lonely. The person I asked couldn't come, and by the time I heard back, I was more than halfway there. Still, I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and watched Monty Python on my phone, so I still had a good time!

I dressed pretty eccentricly and effeminately all day, but, with my facial hair, I was ALWAYS coded as a man, even by people on the street! Pastels, a stupid hat, a crop top, and facial hair was a winning combination.

On my way, I was stopped by some guys soliciting for charity. I don't make a habit of stopping for strangers on the streets of Manhattan. What if it's a scam? What if I'm being pressured to buy something? What if it's a strange political rant? But, I had already taken my earbuds off, I wasn't in a hurry, and I'm terminally polite. The first guy said he liked my energy, which seemed to come from a genuine place, because I liked his too!

They were asking for donations for a breast cancer charity, the United Breast Cancer Foundation. After a discussion, it seems like the charity helps pay medical debt, medical bills, and other practical needs, which is much better than *some* others I could name. I regretted not being able to give their minimum there, as it was pretty high, but told them I'd give what I could when I got on the website.

I... did not. Money is tight, because I'm bad and irresponsible with money, even though this is more than a worthy cause. I didn't NEED to go to that tea place, and I don't NEED to spend so much money on food. Sure, I can justify it: I wanted to go to that place for so long, and it was near the college anyway! But, if I was responsible with money, you KNOW my friends direct fundraising drives would go first, worthy charities second. Still, I feel bad about it.

Then, I went to the college library, to get books to start my thesis research. I have literally been unable to go to the college itself, aside from getting my ID, so this was great! There just wasn't a reason. It was... very empty. I went to the library stacks, which was deathly quiet and deeply haunted by the old books. I half expected something to pop out at me, as I turned the stacks, but I wasn't even paranoid or anxious. It was like I was in something else's house. I was welcome, but on thin ice.

I picked up an irrelevant psychology book on the "schizophrenia problem" from the 1930s, out of morbid fascination, and quickly put it down when it threatened to shatter in my hands.

Some students walked past (which was a suprise in those monastic basement library stacks), and I added something to their conversation, in a totally natural and casual way. But, omg the poor girls, I made them jump! Luckily, I'm the least threatening person on earth, and we laughed it off.

After a lot of hunting, I got 5 out of my 10 books (for the most part)! (The rest are, sadly, online. I like to read physical copies.) Strangely, I only came in with a list to get 3 books out of 6.

Most of the books I got are about art in the AIDS crisis, which is the core of my thesis, I think, all with different value. One about exhibitions, one about the larger narrative of those gay artists, and another contradicting the larger narrative.

I also got a book about "Art and Homosexuality". Just, the parallel construction of both "art" and "homosexuality" across cultures and times, from earliest history to the modern age. It wasn't on my initial list, but I'm really excited to read it.

Finally, I got a book called "The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel", about the pain and spectacle of punishment in Medieval and Renaissance European art. I'm mainly interested in Italian Renaissance art of the crucifixion--and its masochism--for the second quarter of my thesis.

The rest are online, and Should mostly focus on Bacchus in the Italian Renaissance (especially through art) and what I call the art of "gay liberation", concurrent with the AIDS crisis (i.e. The Cockettes). These two topics make up the last half of my thesis.

I'm SO excited to get started!!

I even got to cross the college's sky-bridges! (The college is a few skyscrapers.) Still, the loneliness and novelty were kind of the same thought. Imagine if I had been here before COVID, or, if COVID hadn't happened. Who would I have been able to meet? What would the college buildings mean to me? Because, for now, they're just buildings. But, I got to see the street from above, and that was amazing!

Just walking through New York--the Upper East Side--on a cool, sunny day was beautiful. It takes 20-30 minutes to get from my place to the college (and the tea place), but it was great being able to listen to my music (a lot of They Might Be Giants on the playlist today) and see the city. You know, people, super cool old architecture being pushed out by terrible new architecture, and pigeons.

Oh my god, the pigeons. I took pictures, but none of them are good. I kept thinking about how pigeons and doves are functionally the same. We domesticated pigeons, which is why they're here, and no one is stopping to notice them? Even the ones that were splotched with pure white, like doves? There's only so many pigeons you can take until they're just white noise and a nuisance, I know, so don't think I'm blaming anyone! But it's so hard to look away from these quirky little birds.

Also, at one point my walk, I was vaping very strategicly. The mental task of searching through library stacks will do that to you, when you already have an addiction to nicotine. I made sure no one was around, and no one would be affected. I stopped on a corner next to an old, ornate Catholic church while the traffic light changed, and I almost juuled right next to a priest! I'm glad I stopped. I don't believe in Hell, but, I would have walked down there myself had I vaped at a priest. Still, the church advertised itself as LGBT+ friendly, so maybe they aren't so trigger happy on the damnation. Either way, I DIDN'T vape at a priest today, which is good.

Once I got back, I spent a few hours watching things with my amazing girlfriend Chloe, who you may know here as @cisphobiccommunistopinions. She is so beautiful, and I love her more every day, every time I see her. God, it's almost been 5 years!

I just wish I could spend more time with her. She's in Virginia, and I'm in New York. Like she said to me earlier, I'm flighty at the best of times, and, with my lack of object permanence for the digital world, I find myself not giving her the attention I deserve, or, the full connection I long to have with her. We used to live together. Luckily, someday we will live together again! All these problems won't be forever, and we can live together again.

We watched a lot of things, but we're pretty deep into Serial Experiments Lain right now. It's a postmodern anime from the 90s, and, wow, do I have no idea what's going on in it. It's about the internet, and potentially schizophrenia as well. However, I'm obsessed! One day I'll be able to crack this artistic code, and it's unreality, thematic knots, and double-meanings. I will probably understand it better on the second watch. I don't see myself in Lain, but I see my 14 year old self in her, when I had just developed schizophrenia. Her cyberpunk fate seems like it's railroaded towards tragedy, but I want to save her, even if it's silly and irrational.

I told Chloe that I was scared about spilling apple cider on my library books, and she referred to it as "The Great Apple Juice Disaster of September 11, 2021." To which I said that it was the second worst thing to happen in New York on that date. It was funnier if you were there, and also were in my brain at the time.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm meeting some online acquaintances from the college's "Queer Srudent Union" at a Japanese Culture Fair in a park. (I do not know which park.) It emphasizes "fun"! I don't know them very well, but they're friends with the one person I know irl, so it should be good.

Tomorrow night, I should Probably head downtown to check out a gallery show by MFA (masters of fine arts) students at Hunter! After all, I was in a group project with one of them, and they're absolutely brilliant. I missed the Thursday gallery opening by a landslide, because of the aforementioned lack of adhd meds and Being Asleep, which I infinitely regret. I could have listened to all the artists and curators talk about their art and exhibition! Maybe I could have even talked with the artists and curators. But, it's best for me to go sooner, rather than later, so I don't forget. And, I REALLY want to go.

It's "This dialogue which happened to be present in all other dialogues" at the Alyssa Davis Gallery. From the email I got, "Each of these works observes a threshold of transition. [...] [These] intimations [are] of a frame of mind shared by the artists. These works perform, record, access, engage, document, and entrap, embalming the viewer within the gallery space."

sgp is a really good artist, by the way. Their work is just next-level. Be sure to check out their art, if you have a chance. Let me link their portfolio: https://saragracepowell.com/

(I highly suspect spg and the other member of my group project ghosted me afterwards, but I understand. I was really in over my head. Still, they're both really sweet and kind people, don't get it twisted!)

I ALSO really want to see The Cake Boys. They're performing at the 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn on September 26th. (It's only $15!) They're the only all drag king collective in NYC! (Are... there any Other all drag king collectives out there?) Other than the fact that a lot of them are trans or nonbinary, which I love, this show is a totally non-judgmental competition for over 40 drag kings! I've heard their shows are hilarious and unique.

I just have to wait until I have $15 to spare. I... didn't eat dinner tonight, because I'm irresponsible with my money and don't want to ask my parents for money... again. Don't worry, it's literally fine, and I don't make a habit of doing this!

Which reminds me! For my birthday, my parents gave me a gift card to Lush! I'm definitely going to Lush tomorrow, which will be great. I would describe my personality as "Lush store employee acosting you about a bath bomb demonstration", so I'll fit right in.

I also made a transition timeline, to show how much I've changed on testosterone. For the better, I hope! I really believe I'm becoming, if not Have Become, the man I was always meant to be. It's so strange to look back at who I was not too long ago, and to know the absolute pain I was in. It's also strange, in a good way, to see the man looking back at me in the selfies. I'm so much happier now! Much more candid in my pictures, at least. But, I know that I'm so much more comfortable as myself than I was even 6 months ago. It's strange. Sometimes I think to myself, "I don't pass yet; I'm not who I Need To Be yet." Then, I look at my selfie from today, and... I'm THERE. My mind just hasn't caught up with my amazing, natural, normal reality.

The end. I have to get ready for bed, (even though I could be partying on a Saturday night in the city. I'm lame.) If you actually read this, I am kissing you on the mouth right now. I hope it made you calm down tonight, like a terrible bedtime story. If you didn't read it and just skipped to the end, don't worry: you did the rational thing.

[jojoreadwhat]

you're all in my hands tonight, tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star. / honey & smoke - m.h. x OFC story

Four Days Later, On A Friday.

Matty's POV

Computer Education had already given me a sour taste in my mouth and I only sat through two of its lectures. One because I knew majority of what was listed on the slides Professor Nolan was scheming through. I really had no explanation why I applied at UNI in the first place. I had high hopes that the tapes the boys and I sent into Capital Records would hit a soft spot. Sending us on a one way trip to success, where none of these qualifications would matter as long as I wrote out the music.

Then again if it all went down hill where I'd arrive at my flat with a box of tapes with the word 'denied' repeatedly stamped over it like fragile, even though my heart would be the fragile piece in that box. It would open the door behind the scene, the little paper of a degree with my name. A ticket of being able to tweak the shitty tunes on the radio that replayed like the TV movies do on Sundays.

Two, Professor Nolan was a bit of a drag. A fine dapper looking gentlemen in his early fifties. His hair slick back dirty blonde with what looked like emerald eyes the last time I stood close. A close shaved beard that extenuated his sharp jaw line. Dressed to the nines that if you seen him on the streets, you would've thought he had millions and a white collar type business. Even though, his Gucci navy suit that my father had exactly and bought for fifteen hundred dollars could make you believe he sat on a green mountain of dollar signs.

I felt his personality and aura resembled a present me. Barely in tune with all the new things happening but completely in tune with the young ladies that gave any advantages to pass. But in his case the young ladies could pass as daughters if the sucker had any.

"Open Audio Access on your laptops." He commanded, changing the slides that was accompanied with taps and clicks from everyone following along. I sighed to myself, everything that was on those poorly designed boards. I had edited and achieved on a new track the boys and I had recorded last night.

I slouched back in my seat, listening to Nolan's cocky Mr. Know-It-All demeanor. His degrees decorating the back of his desk fact it in that he knew more. Only giving him the approval of having Professor in front of Nolan instead of Mister.

++

After commenting on Mindy's plaid skirt, Professor Feast-A-Lot finally dismissed us.

I still had a class within the hour, just some simple music class that I signed up for the laughing matter. Always stating my answers to bands I drowned myself in as the other students wanted to cuss me out. Sighing to themselves, like that mop got the spill of answers.

With the time I had between I decided to get some coffee. The tea I had earlier with George talking about his night wasn't living up to it's strong expectations. Even though the class I just left could stand as a contender of an explanation.

I walked with the rush of the hundreds in the halls, making my way to left wing lounge and turning the corner of muraled up wall, covered in vibrant flowers and weird shapes from the art program.

Waiting at the counter I turned to scan the little lounge, just many studying with their textbooks as heads. Some talking to another. Just the common vibe of any little coffee shop you stepped your foot into.

One of them sticking out like a sore thumb.

Lucy.

Writing in her leather bound journal that rested on her crossed legs, playing with the slight tear in her in the hem of her playful colored dress.

Relaxed and looking out the window on the purple wing-back in the cafe lounge. Watching the shades of orange, red and yellow converse against the blue sky. Admiring her side profile, a high cheek bone with a light dusting of blush against her milky skin, her perfectly rounded jaw. Her lashes curled with a coding of mascara that complimented her baby blues.

I watched as she grazed her bottom rosy lip with the back of her pen in thought.

The red headed barista asked for the second time what I wanted before realizing that she was even speaking. Finding it hard to take my eyes off the scenery near the window. I ordered my black coffee, then pointed out Lucy who looked disappointed in the last drops of her cup. Dark roast, light with vanilla, sugar and two shots of the sleep she had lost the night before.

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

Lucy's POV.

I was finding myself becoming a frequent patient with my therapeutic glances of the vibrant trees and the sounds of the espresso machine. Sitting in the same wingback, looking about the window, stuck in what I was going to jot in my journal next. My first week of being in London and enduring classes was wrapping up, nothing worthy had happened yet to write about and I was finding myself running around a writer's block.

As much as I wanted my creative juices to keep blending. I couldn't complain about how things were going. University has been so far treating me well. I've met a good handful of my professors in Week A, many have taken a liking to me which I couldn't quite grasp. But it wasn't a bad feeling to know about, plus Professor Jones really liked my thesis of A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Putting a good word into the librarian of the Uni's library and landing me a interview for Monday.

Things at the university housing with Liz and Abby was going pretty well too. I was growing more fond of them by the minute, both interested in the same type of books, music and films. Liz was a bit realistic and logic about life, which kind of put a damper on things if you were trying to live in a fantasy world with reality biting you in the ass. Then Abby was more free spirited and self aware of what made an individual very much happy, even when the world was not so happy.

Then lastly, home. I finally Skyped my brother Eric and my dad. It was early for them but quite late for me. But in all I was mixed with emotions, both joyful and sad that I wasn't home. They are doing well so far.

I sighed to myself, resting my leather bound on my lap and retreating my blue eyes to the shades of orange, red and yellow. Reaching for the coffee I had finished moments ago, but reluctant to get up and grab another.

But that was before one was brought to me instead. By another thing that I had happened to come across this week.

"Am I intruding?" The English native that I met my first night here had greeted, handing me the warm paper cup with pretty botanical flowers repeated. I shook my head, gesturing my free hand to the wingback across.

Matty sat down, folding his long legs over one another. His eyes meeting mine, smiling softly as his mouth indulged in a sip. Giving me a few moments to admire before another word.

He wasn't wearing his glasses today but his hair was the same as the night I met him. Pulled back into a bun with loose curls shaping out his face. My eyes leading down to his lined out jaw. His collarbones, the tattoo that always made an appearance no matter what type of shirt he wore this week. To the lasting hole over his knee.

I was broken from my stare when he had chuckled, possibly figuring out that I was staring long.

"Anything new?" He asked, his eyes gesturing to my open leather bound. I shook my head, slowly closing it against my knee before my eyes met his again.

He looked at me surprised and in disbelief, "So the storyteller doesn't have a story to tell?" He questioned, resting his cup on the table aside us. I shrugged, it was truly hard to believe but as my mind moved fast the world outside of it didn't and I was at a stand still.

"It just been classes, reading and then some." I finished, finally taking a sip of my coffee.

Matty smiled at me again, a smile I could watch curl at the ends of his mouth like a favorite part to a movie. "We may have to change that." He said, looking at me with tricks under his sleeves and me swimming in his over sized sweater.

I had to cut my coffee break short when I realized I had time run to my next class, Woman Studies.

Shortly becoming my favorite class as we debated fundamental rights and she played Kathleen Hanna fronted Bikini Kill winning my anarchy heart.

"Don't forget to read The Second Sex and please have your reasoning's sent in by 12 AM on Monday." She dismissed. I followed suit with the rest of the class as I packed away my things for the weekend.

Making my way to the hall to get lost in the hundred of others trying to head out and not miss the next Tube coming by. The boy in a leather jacket that I was sharing a coffee with an hour earlier was leaning against the wall next to the door.

His devious smirk gracing upon his face, "I'm feeling like you're onto something." I commented, a small smile plastering across my cheeks. Matty rippled a contagious laugh that I could listen to like an album on my turntable.

"Can't a gentleman just walk a lady home safely?" He remarked.

++

"No! That's a lie!" I laughed, hitting Matty's forearm lightly. We had moved onto music since Matty offered to walk me home. And let's just say we had a few differences.

Matty loved older music, which I did too. But I found Prince to be a bit cooler than MJ. Which didn't sit well with Matty. "Have you heard the magic in Rock With You?" He mentioned, "It's fucking legendary!" It was so funny to see him go off, but I never said I didn't like the man! I knew how the sounds had your hips moving. I was just a Purple Rain kind of girl.

Matty stood in front of me, walking backwards down the sidewalk.

Girl. Close your eyes... He began singing, moving his hips to the beats that played out in his head. Taking my hand, and pulling me close.

Let that rhythm get into you, don't try to fight it. Placing one hand above my hip, the other still in mine. Directing my hips into a sway, as his voice hit me like sweet serenity.

He went on, and I was enjoying every bit of it. Music was his muse like books were mine and he wasn't ashamed to show it. His hips showing that he never stopped moving either.

We had arrived to the front of my flat, Matty belting more songs of MJ.

"I have to get in," I mentioned, not really wanting to do so. Matty's lips kept moving "Not until you change your mind." Singing in the measures of Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.

I chuckled, still dancing with him till I finally caved in. "Alright, Michael Jackson is better." I confessed, meaning every word that fell from my mouth. He just chuckled, pulling me closer and bringing his lips to my ear.

"I think you're lying" his warm breath grazing my lobe. Sending chills down my spine. I went to protest when Liz and Abby got out of their car. Interrupting our manifest. They just softly smiled, saying Hello before retreating up the porch. I looked up at Matty, who still had his hand around my waist.

Matty pulled away with a soft but questionable expression on his face. I wondered what was on his mind.

"Come watch us play tonight." He said, "The boys and I are playing at the bar George's bartends in. I'd like to see you there."

Many different excuses ran through my mind. Studying, catching some sleep, watching the same three episodes of The Office, outline my far along memoir that would be a flop. Just a rush of things that could've fallen from my mouth.

"Alright, sounds like fun." Happened to be the better option.

Matty's smirk turn a bit shy, looking to the ground before he looked back up at me.

"I'll pick you up at 6?" He questioned, I nodded. Still confused on why I was agreeing to this extravaganza in the first place. A smile gracing his face once more before turning on his Vans to head back to where his road led him.

"See you soon, Blue."

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU START BY WRITING A STRIPPED-DOWN KERNEL HOW HARD CAN IT BE

Both of which are false. You must resist this. The main value of the succinctness test is as a guide in designing languages. They'll be fine.1 A typical angel round these days might be $150,000 raised from 5 people. If a hacker were a mere implementor, turning a spec into code, then he could just work his way through it from one end to the other like someone digging a ditch.2 I never read the books we were assigned. So please, get on with it. No one has to commit explicitly to what the central point is. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of ancient texts was the essence of what scholars did.

If you expressed the same ideas in prose as mathematicians had to do without. But actually being good is an expensive way to seem good. Because the fact is, if you believe as I do that the main reason we take the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. The reason they like it when you don't need them is not simply that they like what they do. The Internet is changing that. That's why I'm so optimistic about HN. And unless you already have if you can't raise the full amount. And so once university English departments were established in the late 19th century the study of literature. I'm not proposing this as a new idea. Bill Gates would probably have something to read.3 There's always a temptation to do that completely.

They raise their first round fairly easily because the founders seem smart and the idea sounds plausible. So the ability to ferret out the unexpected. Even if you only have one meeting a day with investors, somehow that one meeting will burn up your whole day. And anything you come across that surprises you, who've thought about the topic a lot, will probably surprise most readers.4 For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques.5 I can't. It means that a programming language is obviously doesn't know what a programming language should, above all, be malleable. The true test of the length of the delay inversely proportional to some prediction of its quality. Almost everything is interesting if you get deeply enough into it. It hadn't occurred to me till then that those horrible things we had to rely mostly on examples in books. And once you start to doubt yourself.

So no matter how many good startups approach him.6 But I know the house would probably have ended up pretty rich even if IBM hadn't happened to drop the PC standard in his lap. Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do or what I do is somewhere between a river and a roman road-builder. And open and good.7 A couple hundred thousand would let them get office space and hire some smart people they know from school. And yet a lot is at stake. Browsers then IE 6 was still 3 years in the future, and the power of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately. Hacker News is an experiment, and an experiment in a very young field. So when a language isn't succinct, it will feel restrictive. The paperwork for convertible debt is simpler.

Their search also turned up parse. The study of rhetoric, the art of arguing persuasively, was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights. Colleges had long taught English composition. The existence of aggregators has already affected what they aggregate.8 Study lots of different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work. I think he really wishes he'd listened. The advantage of the two-job route is less common than the organic route. There is nothing investors like more than a plan A. Long but mistaken arguments are actually quite rare. Scientists don't learn science by doing it.9 Even the concept of me turns out to explain nearly all the characteristics of VCs that founders hate. Relentlessness wins because, in the Gmail sense everything I've told you so far.

Hacker News is an experiment, and an essai is an effort. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.10 So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do, so here is another place where startups have an advantage. It sounds obvious to say that the answer is a simple yes, but no one can predict them—not even the protagonists: we're just the latest model vehicle our genes have constructed to travel around in. There are lots of other potential names that are as carefully designed and, if possible. Another easy test is the number of both increases we'll get something more like an efficient market. For example, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can start as soon as the first one is ready to buy. Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? Twenty years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work. Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up train of thought—but a cleaned-up train of thought—but social and economic history, not political history. It will always be true that most great programmers are born outside the US.11 The whole room gasped.

I've met a few VCs I like. There's nothing intrinsically great about your current name would seem repellent. Since we hosted all the stores, which together were getting just over 10 million page views per month in June 1998 I took a snapshot of Viaweb's site.12 The advantage of the two-job route, if you have $5 million in investable assets, it would seem an inspired metaphor.13 The advice of parents will tend to feel bleak and abandoned, and accumulate cruft.14 The good things in a community site come from people more than technology; it's mainly in the prevention of bad things that technology comes into play. Investors like it when they can help a startup, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing.15 Or at least, a thesis was a position one took and the dissertation was the argument by which one defended it. I didn't realize this when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be 100% sure that's not a description of HN. Indeed, you can start as soon as the first one is ready to buy. It's kind of surprising that it even exists. And there was the mystery of why the perennial favorite Pralines 'n' Cream was so appealing.

Notes

Html. If early abstract paintings seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, where many of the War on Drugs. Most unusual ambitions fail, no matter how large.

The quality of investor behavior. 03%. Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1981. Source: Nielsen Media Research.

There is no different from deciding to move from London to Silicon Valley. Sites that habitually linkjack get banned. Xenophon Mem.

Hypothesis: A company will be big successes but who are good presenters, but we do the right thing to do some research online. Here's a recipe that might work is in the general manager of the products I grew up with elaborate rationalizations.

Sometimes a competitor will deliberately threaten you with a cap. It's a bit more complicated, because you have to keep them from the DMV.

A single point of a powerful syndicate, you now get to go deeper into the work of selection. The Sub-Zero 690, one could aspire to the hour Google was founded, wouldn't offer to invest the next investor.

At first I didn't care about, like languages and safe combinations, and one VC. Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead. Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference.

In part because Steve Jobs doesn't use.

So as a rule, if an employer, I have no decision-making power. Your user model almost couldn't be perfectly accurate, and that most people will pay people millions of dollars a year for a patent is now. Obvious is an understatement.

It wouldn't cut their overall returns tenfold, because when people make the people working for me was the ads they show first. It's hard to say they prefer great markets to great people to claim retroactively I said yes.

Candidates for masters' degrees went on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and that modern corporate executives would work better, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to solve a lot of legal business. One of the iPhone SDK.

Cost, again. And they are building, they were. If a company growing at 5% a week for 19 years, it means a big company. However bad your classes because you spent all your time working on is a convertible note with no deadline, you should push back on the parental dole, and journalists—have the perfect life, and stir.

This is not an efficient market in this essay talks about the distinction between money and disputes.

That name got assigned to it because the ordering system was small. In fact, we should make the argument a little about how to deal with them. Auto-retrieving filters will be big successes but who are weak in other ways to do more with less? By your mid-game.

No big deal. This is isomorphic to the frightening lies told by older siblings. It was revoltingly familiar to slip back into it. But should you even working on that.

[estelofimladris]

A lot has happened for me in 2019.

A year ago, I was prepping Medea, my final production of grad school at UCLA, living in a home under construction with an about-to-be-finished new bathroom and a still freshly complete kitchen, and preparing to dive fully into my thesis, Snowpiercer.

By the time it was done, Medea would be one of my most fulfilling productions of grad school. I continue to feel creatively fulfilled by both the finished production of (of which I am very proud) and the incredible collaborations I had with the incredible director Sylvia, the unstoppable other designers (Madie, Luz, and special guest star Grant), Costume Shop, my amazing assistants, and the unforgettable cast. I treasure this production so completely.

The house would be finished (mostly) by February. It now feels so right that I’ve largely forgotten what this place looked like before the remodel. I love it so much still.

WonderCon was a complete, wonderful blur this past year. I had 3 new costumes (2 of which were just purchased items, but still ones that I treasure) from The Magicians and The Umbrella Academy. More than normal, I felt that I needed the break that the convention afforded me.

Then there is the insanity that was my thesis. I am so proud of many accomplishments from my time at UCLA. One of my high points was definitely completing the costume, set, and lighting design for Snowpiercer. From the moment of its conception, I was excited for the process and the end result is one that I am extremely proud of. It also marks the culmination of my time at UCLA. With the final sign-off on my Thesis, I officially completed my journey to my Masters that shifted my whole life in four years.

In the last year of school, I designed Black Lightning, Man in the High Castle, Medea, Snowpiercer, and Pleasantville. Each of them marks a completely different, immersive experience in which I had the opportunity to interface with the industry I was about to emerge into as well as a project that I am proud of.

I presented my body of work at Design Showcase West, which felt very good to share what I can do as a designer with professionals as well as friends and family.

Then I was hooded for my Masters of Fine Arts. Me. A Master of Fine Arts. Unreal.

Like most major points of change in life, I felt a little uneasy for the month following grad school. I purposefully took some time to recover from the intense run up to the end of school, but it didn’t keep it from being a very nerve-wrecking time without the promise of another year of school ahead and no secured job. I spent the time prepping for San Diego Comic-Con International and consuming all sorts of media that had gotten away from me in the times that I was utterly unavailable.

SDCC was an absolute blast this year. I loved the freedom of being done with school and knowing that things were just about to get revved up. I completed my new Crowley costume from Good Omens for the convention and proceeded to find out how much I love wearing it. I especially enjoyed getting to spend time with some incredible people at SDCC and it was a much needed rejuvenation going into the next adventure.

After SDCC, I immediately got a few days on a TV show as a PA doing returns and the usual. I enjoyed getting back into the swing of things and it was excellent preparation for what was to come. The show and I clicked well enough and I continued to get days to the point where I could have easily had enough work to get by if I stayed with them for the remainder of the season.

But that all changed very suddenly when an excellent friend texted me for a gig that I dropped everything for.

Since August, I’ve been on a Marvel project and I will continue to be into the New Year. I’ve wanted to jump into working on the media that has inspired me since I was a kid to dream bigger, push harder, and be my best, but I didn’t think the opportunity would come so soon after graduation. Though it is my first full-time gig on a feature, I feel like I’ve been training up to it for the past decade between my many PA gigs and my time at Disneyland. I’ve worked with some of the most incredible, talented, and knowledgeable people on this project and it has given me the chance to prove my mettle in the real world. I can feel the next chapter fully opening up to me.

I look forward to the new decade with more adventures ahead. It’s finally time to go for everything and I can feel it. So, 2020, get ready because here I come.

[secretgamergirl]

Let’s talk about how Ranma is trans, and not as a metaphor.

Yesterday, I had a quick, joking exchange with a friend, riffing off the general premise that the protagonist of the classic manga series Ranma 1/2 is a trans girl.Today I woke up to a slew of hateful, low-effort comments (the C-word is always a weird one to throw at a trans woman), largely objecting to this premise, so, I’m going to sit down now and show my work.

I was actually going to do this either way, honestly. Reading Ranma 1/2 and indignantly shouting “in what sense is this a ‘curse!?’“ is a pretty significant touchstone for damn near every trans girl born after 1970 or so.

For those who haven’t read it, Ranma 1/2 is a manga series by Rumiko Takahashi, which ran from 1987-1996, which also spawned a hit anime series, which itself had a lot of spinoffs, a dozen or so videogames, and a recent live-action special. The original manga itself was one of the first to ever be published in the U.S., and has also seen a recent reprinting (with an effort at colorization which I can’t say looked great). The basic premise is that it’s a long-form comedy series whose title character is A- a super talented martial artist, B- dealing with the fallout of a decade and a half of Ranma’s father making promises on Ranma’s behalf (including multiple arranged marriages), and C- being one of half a dozen or so characters over the course of the series to have fallen into one of hundreds of adjacent springs which each curse whoever falls in to change back and forth between whatever drowned in them and their original form based on exposure to cold and hot water respectively (Ranma gets Hot Girl, everyone else gets some wacky animal, basically).

It’s great. You should read it. Maybe watch the anime too. Also I’m going to spoil the ever loving hell out of a point or two in writing this, but I’m mostly going to do it sequentially, and it’s not really a series about major plot twists and reveals. Except maybe the bit I’m sticking between breaks here:

Spoiler country: I’m literally planning to sit down with the whole series and go through volume by volume here, but the series very much starts in media res, and it’s important to the purpose of my thesis here to look at everything with some backstory context that doesn’t really come out until like volume 30-something.

Specifically, Ranma’s parents are horribly abusive scumbags. Both of them. You don’t have to get terribly far in for the running gag about Ranma’s father Genma being a terrible person, prone to physical abuse, subjecting his own child to intentionally traumatizing experiences, forgoing any sort of normal childhood for her (going with feminine pronouns here, try to keep up) in favor of a world-traveling regimen of martial arts training, and of course, pimping her out with arranged marriage promises to whoever he owes money or favors to.

What comes out later though is that a big motivating factor for Genma’s abusive parenting is that Ranma’s mother, Nodoka, made Genma agree to raise Ranma to be a “man among men,” to be enforced by penalty of both Genma and Ranma committing ritual suicide should he fail.

That is, unfortunately, a very relatable experience for a hell of a lot of trans girls. Personally speaking, my father adopted the philosophy very early on in my life that he would rather have a dead “son” than a living daughter, and starting when he first picked up on my obvious girliness, he also decided on pursuing a sink-or-swim course of turning me into a “manly man” by forcing me into a series of life-threatening situations to “toughen me up” and pushed me to start dating when I was something like 10 years old. My mother was a lot more low-key about it, at least I formally came out to her, but, yeah, I relate. It’s not hard to imagine very-young-Ranma doing something obviously girly to give her parents similar concerns, and her resulting preoccupation with being tough and nominally rejecting femininity as a means of playing along with her parents’ pressuring her isn’t me doing a trans reading, THAT much is directly in the text.

The rest of the backstory mostly comes out in the first few volumes. In order to man Ranma up, Genma takes her on this international training mission, engages her to both a friend, and a food vendor he can’t afford to pay. Eventually this trip takes them to the cursed springs (so they can do the whole spar while balancing on bamboo stalks thing), splash splash, he’s a panda, she’s an ideal-feminine version of herself, basically. And Ranma picks up another couple of rivals/maybe-love-interests on the way home, because Genma picks a weird time to head back to Japan and force Ranma to live with his friend and his 3 daughters and enforce an arranged marriage to one of them.

Now leaving spoiler country.

So, jumping right in from the beginning with all this in mind...

Volume 1, Chapter 1- Ranma and Genma show up at the Tendo’s with Ranma in girl mode. Not really a conscious choice here, since it’s raining that day, and Genma’s not in the mood to wait. What’s notable though is that (aside from obvious annoyance at all the the shocked poking and prodding) Ranma seems to be totally cool meeting these people in girl mode. She’s really relaxed, happy, makes quick friends with Akane, totally comfortable:

Honestly I could probably prove my whole point here just by running through the series and tallying up Ranma’s expressions, this is a pretty consistent thing.You would expect, if Ranma were actually a boy, that the idea of meeting new people while in girl mode like this would be awkward and humiliating, and feature facial expressions and body language more like the ones we see when Ranma has to explain the situation after a hot bath (during which she flat out has the thought “might as well go out like this, they’re going to find out eventually):

V1C2- One quick flashback/exposition later, Soun (Genma’s friend with the daughters), expresses his shock about the true horror. Ranma, irritated- “Whadya mean ‘true horror?’“ ... and then proceeds to actively dodge some hot water, staying in girl mode after both get splashed to demonstrate things live, and there’s a bit here where, Akane having walked in on her in the bathroom while in boy mode and both were naked (comedy manga and all), Ranma notes that it’s “no big deal for her to see a girl naked,” because she’s seen herself plenty of times, and has a quick prideful comment about her appearance in girl mode.

The rest of volume 1 is spent introducing the first of many rival/love interest characters. Nothing that really supports or hurts a trans reading unless you want to focus in on Ranma being a girl in this dream she has after getting groped by a creep, or already having spent enough off camera casual time in girl mode for Nabiki (Akane’s sister whose whole character is basically trying to turn a profit off how sexy Ranma is) to have a bunch of cute candid pictures to sell.

Most of volume 2 is spent introducing Ryoga, another rival/love interest (mainly just the former at first, but relationship webs for this series get weird quick), and a couple of other characters who feel really important but get dropped in a hurry (remember Dr. Tofu? The guy Akane starts the series off with a huge crush on? Because Takahashi forgot all about him after this). V2C9 however starts off with this:

Again, Ranma never looks this happy in boy-mode. This early on, we already see her just, voluntarily going girl mode to hang out all day, because she enjoys herself like this.

V3C10- After a volume spent on the other half of the brother-sister pair of rivals/love interests volume 1 devoted a lot of pages to (the Kunos, ultimately not real prominent characters), wherein Ranma will wear a girly leotard and compete in rhythmic-gymnastics-based combat, just won’t get caught doing so when in boy mode, Akane decides to teach her how to skate, which she insists on being in girl mode for because:

Yeah... there’s a definite pattern here. Stuff she’s too self-conscious about doing in boy mode, she’s comfortable trying when presenting as a girl, and it’s never about embarrassment, really, but not wanting to be seen as some sort of girly boy (for fear of violence). Appearing to be a girly girl is of course just fine, but only if she’s definitely going to pass. Again, very relatable. Later in the series, she doesn’t even bother trying to rationalize it like this, and pretty much just spends almost all her free time in girl mode, and gets a decidedly more feminine wardrobe. Oh and then they have a pairs-figure-skating duel with these two one-off characters, because the guy randomly gives Ranma her first kiss without her consent.

That rolls into the start of volume 4, which throws way more fuel out there for any Ranma/Ryoga shippers than I remembered, and then we get a big stretch of introducing new characters who stick around and are fairly major, including the remaining two characters of note with curses, without a lot of gender stuff coming up beyond Ranma switching modes to try and throw off rival/love interests in various ways. The next thing worth pointing out isn’t until the end of V5C8. Ranma ends up stuck in girl-mode because pressure point manipulation makes her a wimp about hot water. Having a fight scheduled as a guy though, she shows up with a bunch of cheesy magician’s tricks, before throwing off a big bulky robe and:

So... OK we dropped the premise of not wanting her manly image tainted by wearing a girly costume pretty quick. This is her own plan, this is in public, she chose this outfit herself. Again, super self-conscious any time she’s in public in boy mode, but when she’s undeniably a girl, she’s super comfortable with basically anything. Heck, that costume gets shredded like 2 pages later, and the quick bit of public nudity doesn’t even phase her. Oh and the next story arc (V5C10) has her just getting a cute swimsuit and hitting the public pool to relax. Plus some new casual clothes:

And formal wear for V5C11...

Again, there’s no subterfuge or convoluted circumstances behind these. She just had an excuse this volume to present as a girl full-time and dove right the hell in. By V5C12 she’s at the maximum possible level of confidence, wearing a tight swim-suit to the beach that advertises her trans status. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there myself:

Not a double entendre there, for what it’s worth. It’s really about watermelons.

After that there is a long long stretch of development arcs for secondary characters, the introduction of a dirty old man, and a lot of variations of Ranma and Akane’s relationship being tested with jealousy-inducing misunderstandings with the spare dozen or so love interests lying around. There’s a hell of a lot I could analyze here if I wanted to make a point about Ranma’s sexuality, but, I’m only really concerned with her being trans for this, and contrary to popular belief, whether or not she’s into guys at all has no bearing on that whatsoever. For what it’s worth though she’s totally bi and so’s Akane and you have to bend over backwards to argue otherwise for either of them.

That being said, I’m close to a quarter of a way through here, so I might as well keep going through the end of volume 10. Don’t want to make this more than a 4 part series if I go the distance with it. The next noteworthy thing we have is the introduction of Ukyo, the focal point of the more grounded queer content in the series. Let me just say first off that taken out of context this page resembles every conversation I’ve ever seen between two trans girls:

There are a LOT of angles I could come at Ukyo from. First off, she’s got a ton of trans coding. Ranma thought she was a boy when they were friends as kids (while their fathers were trying to hook them up). Everyone else also thinks she is when she’s first introduced, because... she dresses like a guy at school and wears a chest binder. She gets really angry about being misgendered by Ranma while having a revenge-fight with him (she’s the other girl Genma arranged a marriage with, for the sake of free food, which he just kinda stole, you see), plus as seen above, she has major body image issues. So, again, whole lot of trans coding (and that’s before HER rival/love interest shows up).

Regardless of that though, hey, the only actual friend Ranma ever had as a child, and who remains the healthiest relationship in her life is a girl, so, that’s something to note.

Also Ukyo is kind of the only character in the cast who isn’t a huge jerk. She patches things up with Ranma more or less immediately, and proceeds to try and untangle the absurd relationship web that’s already getting pretty damn convoluted. And I mean, good on her for trying, but here’s how that goes:

Yeah, that’s Ranma in a floral sun dress crashing a date between Akane and Ryoga. I believe this is V9C6. She gets way too into character and they end up making out, by the way. I defy anyone to find a way to rationalize this plan if Ranma were a cis dude OR was strictly into girls.

Oh and getting into V10C10, there’s this goofy plot about Akane accidentally swallowing a magic pill that makes her fall in love with the first guy she sees, and uh...

It’s been a while since I’d read this. It gets pretty damn on the nose. Anyway, the last storyline I’m getting to tonight starts with V10C16, which introduces Ukyo’s rival/love interest, Tsubasa:

Tsubasa is unambiguously, exclusively, into girls. Also unambiguously AMAB:

I’m actually not really a fan of Tsubasa. Ranma’s a really relatable trans girl with a well developed backstory, with some serious gender-based hangups that, while totally not cool, are totally rationalized by her traumatic childhood. Ukyo is a very nice girl whose friends are all trans, and it’s less clearcut whether she’s cis or trans. The page after this one it comes out that she previously attended an all-boy’s school though, which supports a trans reading. It makes a hell of a lot of sense to read her as a trans girl with supportive parents who never misgendered her, but only recently started in on HRT after entering high school, so, hey that’d make sense.

Tsubasa though... being unambiguous with all of this, so after the reveal with get a clumsy 1980s Japanese explanation, responding first to Akane shouting “cross-dresser!?” with "I am not! I’m just an ordinary boy who likes to dress up!” Again, very 80s Japan. Also between the into-girls reveal and the AMAB reveal, Ranma’s personal hang-ups lead to a single chapter of her trying to “fix” Tsubasa, encouraging dating guys. So, yeah, kind of an awkward stretch. On the upside, Ukyo already knows Tsubasa’s whole backstory, doesn’t find any of it at all odd or notable, and figured everyone else was also just cool like that. Again, Ukyo is just great. You can do a whole lot worse than using her as a model for realistic queer characters in fiction.

Also to end on a lighter note, when Tsubasa first shows up, the immediate battle for Ukyo’s affections (and yes, this IS immediately after Ranma passed on just dating Ukyo, letting Ryoga and Akane be a couple, and having relatively no drama) which takes this form of a competition to see who can sell more of Ukyo’s okonomiyaki. And, of course, this is Ranma’s strategy:

CONTINUED HERE

[tetrakys]

Five Songs - Chapter 3: La Tortura

I was walking around campus towards the library. Even though the last couple of weeks had been calmer and I was slowly catching up with my thesis, a part of me was still worried and I knew I had to step up my game. Since it was already pretty late I thought it made sense to stay up and pull an all-nighter in the library. By the end of the nigh I was going to at least have completed a draft of the first chapter.

The other day I googled How to pull an all-nighter (yes, this was my first time, I had never been such a meticulous student before) and the first item of the list was, understandably, coffee, lots and lots of coffee. I looked at the time on my phone, it was really late. Damn it, I should have gotten some at the café, no way I was going back there now though. I sighed, the horrible vending machine coffee was my only option. I stopped in my tracks and changed direction, the closest vending machine was in the Art Building’s break room.

I went up the stairs and entered the building. The place gave a really eerie feeling at night. I made a mental note to tell Chani there was no need to travel around the country looking for haunted mansions, she just needed to walk around campus at night. I quickly walked towards the break room but I suddenly froze. I had definitely heard a muffled noise coming from the corridor on my right.

Come on Candy! Don’t be stupid, it’s just your imagination. Yes, of course… but then I heard the noise again. No reason to start panicking. Nothing supernatural was going on here, it wasn’t the first time I heard strange noises in dark places at night and it always ended up being my aunt! It had already happened in this same building at least a couple of times already. I instantly felt relieved, I should look for her and say hi, maybe she would even give me a present!

I followed the direction of the noise and ended up in front of a non-descriptive door I had never seen before. I entered the room without knocking and stopped dead in my tracks, like a deer in the headlights.

“Candy?” said the man behind the desk looking at me confused “What are you doing here?”

I was in Rayan… Mr Zaidi’s office. He was sitting behind a pile of documents, the room was dimly lit by just the lamp on the desk, but I could tell that he looked quite tired and… were those reading glasses he was wearing?

“Candy?” he repeated and I woke up from my stupor, how was I going to explain this? I really didn’t do it on purpose.

“I’m sorry… I was going to the break room and heard a noise and… and…” I was just fumbling for words. “I won’t disturb you any longer” I was about to close the door when he spoke.

“Wait” he said “come in” he pointed at a chair in front of his desk “what I really want to know is what are you doing in this building at this hour of the night.”

I sighed, entered the office closing the door behind me and sat on the chair. However I pushed it back to create a bit more distance between him and me. As if a few inches would make any difference, but I really didn’t trust my judgment when I was alone with this man, and I knew that a desk separating us wasn’t insurance enough.

“I was going to the library to study and stopped to get some coffee” I said looking at my fingers.

He was silent for a few moments and then said calmly “Candy… look at me.”

I hesitantly raised my gaze to meet his, he was smiling at me sweetly “Candy, you shouldn’t be so worried about your studies. You are a serious student and have a brilliant mind, you really have nothing to worry about, believe me.”

“How… how can you be so sure?” I asked surprised and a little flattered by his compliment.

“I am your professor” he replied as if that was a really dumb question “No one knows better than I do. Also, your thesis topic is really interesting, I am sure it’s going to be a pleasure reading it once it’s done.” He smiled and I couldn’t help smiling back at him. A sudden thought seemed to cross his mind because he added abruptly “Go get some sleep now, it’s really too late to study, you can start afresh tomorrow morning.” And went back to study his papers without giving me a second look.

That annoyed me. Had he just dismissed me? For work? It was too late for me to study but he could work?

“Pardon me… sir” I said remarking the last word. He had called me by my first name the whole time, which was perfectly fine since we had decided to be friends or… whatever this was, why treating me warmly one second and cold the next? “Isn’t it also too late to work?”

He looked at me raising an highbrow. I thought he was going to kick me out of his office when he sighed, took off his glasses and said “Touché.”

He got up from his chair, walked around the desk and leaned on its edge, right in front of me. So close that our feet were almost touching and I had to slightly tilt my head to look him in the eyes. “Believe me or not I was actually trying to relax.”

I looked at him doubtful and he laughed a little “it’s not really the type of music people would expect in an Art department.” Only then I registered that he was actually listening to… latin music? “Which is a really stupid assumption to make, as if any art historian is supposed to only love jazz or classical music.” He shook his head. “The volume must have been higher than I thought though… since it lead you to me.”

My heart skipped a beat at the ambiguous way he had expressed himself. He smirked “You should try… you know… latin music is very… sensual. The best way to take your mind off things.”

Was he trying to embarrass me? Well, two could play that game. “Depends on what you are actually trying to get your mind off, otherwise it could be counter-productive.”

He sniggered “Very true. But this is not really the case, isn’t it? Get up, I am going to give you another dance lesson, after that night on the beach we both know you really need it.”

Funny. Was he trying to make me think that all this pent up sexual frustration was only in my head by pretending to act innocently? It wasn’t really his modus operandi, he had always been pretty straight-forward with me… to a certain point. I briefly considered what had happened between us until now. More than once he had admitted to feeling something, a connection, and ended up backing away immediately. He had touched my lips and my shoulders and apologised right away saying it could never happen again. Was he actually playing me?! Was he trying to seduce me wearing me to the point that I would be the one making the first move so that, in the end, it was all my fault? Again, two could play this game, I wasn’t going to give in first. Also, I wasn’t as clumsy as he thought I was.

Shakira’s La Tortura started playing. I moved toward the edge of the chair so that he had to bend down his head to see me, and I looked at him right in the eyes. I raised my hand at exactly the right high to suggest that I would possibly… but then rested it on his thigh, just for a second, and pretended to remove some invisible strand from his trousers. “Fine” I said nonchalantly, quite satisfied seeing that he had lost a little of his composure. I raised slowly and when there were just a few inches of distance between us, looking at him innocently, I said “Teach me whatever you want.”

I saw his green eyes turn really dark. He briefly studied my face, then removed his jacket and placed his hands on my waist leading us towards the centre of the room. There he tightened his grip on me and pushed our bodies against each other. We were joined at the hips and he pushed a knee between my legs.

“Put your hands around my neck” he ordered, and I complied a little flustered. The song was right, this was really a torture, what the hell was I doing? The guy was waaay more experienced than me. Get a grip on yourself I though, he can’t win!

“Start moving your hips, whatever feels natural”

I started moving my hips in a circular motion while he pushed against me, moving us one step forward and one backward. I was basically grinding on his leg while he moved his hands from my waist to my hips. One of my hands started moving up and down caressing his neck and tangling briefly in his hair. The other was bolder. I slowly moved it to the front of his chest and did something I had wanted to do since the first time I had met him. I slid my hand under the obscenely deep neckline of his shirt.

A low growl escaped his throat. “Candy” he said as an admonishment “what game are you playing?”

“The same one you have been playing for a while” I replied.

“Have I now…” he said pensive, possessively cupping my face with one of his hands and resting his thumb on my lower lip. I could read it in his eyes he was trying to make up his mind, so I did the only thing that came to my mind. While staring at him directly in his eyes I wrapped my lips around the tip of his finger and sucked.

This time his growl was anything but low, while he crushed his lips on mine and kissed me with a passion I had never felt before. His hands where everywhere, on my back, my waist, my hips. I tried to keep up while kissing him with the same heath. The moment we came up for air I felt him stiffen between my arms.

“I’m sorry” he said “it’s my fault.”

“What?” I replied surprised.

“I shouldn’t have. We can’t… I can’t…” he left my embrace and started pacing around the room.

“It’s not like you forced yourself on me… I was quite encouraging.” I seduced him so that I wouldn’t end up being the one falling first, but I didn’t like this scenario either. He shouldn’t feel guilty.

“Indeed, but I am the teacher here, I should know better.”

“And now what, we should pretend nothing happened? Business as usual?”

He stopped in front of me, went to touch my cheek but halfway there changed his mind and stopped before he could make contact with my skin.

“This is your final year of university, I shouldn’t rob you of this time of your life. You should be with someone your age, like your co-worker Hyun, or someone else” he said pained.

“Are you really suggesting I should hook up with Hyun?” I was starting to get really angry.

“That’s not what I meant” he replied serious “I just want you to live a carefree life, you shouldn’t hide and lie only to be with someone 10 years older than you, who also happens to be your professor. It isn’t worth it.”

He saw the shocked expression on my face and quickly added “I am not worthy.”

“I will be the one to judge what is worthy my time, tank you sir…” I replied sarcastically “However I won’t stay here bagging you to want me.”

No, I wasn’t going to do that, because I knew he wanted me already, he was just scared. Of losing his job, of ruining my studies… of his past. However, we had crossed a line and there was nothing we could do to go back to that grey area we were before. I didn’t want to anyway. I bet the next classes were going to be quite interesting.

I headed towards the door and, once there, I turned around to look at him one last time and said.

“Thank you for the dancing lesson sir, it was very… instructive. Looking forward to our class on Monday.”

And with a mischievous smile I left the room, leaving him utterly speechless.

[addictedforbooksquad]

P I C K (S)  O F  T H E  M O N T H: O C T O B E R

Lie by Natalia Jaster

Villains series by V.E. Schwab

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Fall by Kristen Callihan

Scotland or Bust by Kira Archer

Dating the Enemy by Nicole Williams

Save the Date by Morgan Matson

Lie by Natalia Jaster

Genres: New Adult, Fantasy, Romance

Links: goodreads | amazon

Synopsis:

Once upon a time, there lived a liar... In the Kingdom of Autumn, Aspen is a girl of the trees. She’s a girl who knows her way around a falsehood. She’s the artful liar who steals from the Crown. Once upon a time, there lived a knight... In the shadows of a castle, Aire is a man of the wind. He’s a man who sees through Aspen’s treachery. He’s the relentless knight who pursues her. Once upon a time, there lived two enemies... In a fairytale woodland, a pair of mismatched souls are thrown together—only to find an unexpected bond. Both deceitful and passionate.

Why we love it:

beautiful, poetic prose

interesting, unusual take on Pinocchio

flawed, engaging characters who develop over the course of the book

their banter is entertaining as hell

heroine’s “skin condition” (so to speak) is not magically healed (at least not permanently) - she learns to love herself instead

Trigger warnings: ableism

Villains series by V.E.Schwab

Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Science-Fiction

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

Why we love it:

memorable cast of characters - likeable and morally grey villains, badass women

anti-hero story

a gripping, twisted tale of jealousy, ambition, murder, revenge and superpowers

interesting narrative style with timeline jumping back and forth fluidly with different perspectives

SO. MUCH. TENSION

Trigger warnings: domestic abuse, suicide, attempted rape, drug abuse, graphic violence

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Ox was twelve when his daddy taught him a very valuable lesson. He said that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left. Ox was sixteen when he met the boy on the road, the boy who talked and talked and talked. Ox found out later the boy hadn’t spoken in almost two years before that day, and that the boy belonged to a family who had moved into the house at the end of the lane. Ox was seventeen when he found out the boy’s secret, and it painted the world around him in colors of red and orange and violet, of Alpha and Beta and Omega. Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces. It’s been three years since that fateful day—and the boy is back. Except now he’s a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

Why we love it:

so many family feels!

highlights the importance of friends/family/people in your life that are not blood-related

MATES (we do love a WELL-done mates trope)

werewolves whose sexuality is fluid

angsty but worth it!

Trigger warnings: violence, death, emotional abuse

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Genres: Historical, Historical Fiction

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Why we love it:

beautifully haunting prose

set during WWII

two parallel stories that intertwine briefly towards the end

poetically written and full of rich details

there are so many heartwarming and heartbreaking moments

Trigger warnings: n/a

Fall by Kristen Callihan

Genres: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

The first time I met Jax Blackwood things went a little sideways. In my defense, I didn’t know he was Jax Blackwood—who expects a legendary rock star to be shopping for groceries? More importantly, a blizzard was coming and he was about to grab the last carton of mint-chocolate chip. Still, I might have walked away, but then he smugly dared me to try and take the coveted ice cream. So I kissed him. And distracted that mint-chip right out of his hands. Okay, it was a dirty move, but desperate times and all that. Besides, I never expected he’d be my new neighbor. An annoying neighbor who takes great pleasure in reminding me that I owe him ice cream but would happily accept more kisses as payment. An irresistible neighbor who keeps me up while playing guitar naked–spectacularly naked–in his living room. Clearly, avoidance is key. Except nothing about Jax is easy to ignore—not the way he makes me laugh, or that his particular brand of darkness matches mine, or how one look from him melts me faster than butter under a hot sun. Neither of us believes in love or forever. Yet we’re quickly becoming each other’s addiction. But we could be more. We could be everything. All we have to do is trust enough to fall.

Why we love it:

story written with SO MUCH feeling

deals with depression in a realistic way

wonderfully painful and satisfying slow-burn

actual relationship buildup, unlike the usual instalove that we see a lot in contemporaries

characters that feel very real and utterly relatable

“musician” aspect of the story is not just there, it’s a focus of some scenes

interesting and entertaining secondary characters

makes us long for the next installment!

Trigger warnings: mentions of suicide, depression

Scotland or Bust by Kira Archer

Genres: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

After dumping her boyfriend, Nicole Franklin impulsively jumps on a plane and heads to Europe. Sure, money and a job would have been nice to line up first. Even a visa, for that matter. So now she has to play tour guide at an Outlander experience for the most obnoxious man on the planet. Until she stumbles into the wrong bed in the middle of the night and wakes up in Harrison’s arms. Now his family thinks they’re engaged, and the entire village is betting on how long before she’ll be running for the hills. Harrison Troy has a reputation in the town for burning through assistants. And the bubbly new one he’s just hired is likely no different. But his family quickly has them “engaged.” He should be upset, but she’s the perfect buffer for his interfering family. She says she doesn’t need another man in her life--even if he comes with a castle--and that’s fine with him. So why can’t he stop thinking about the woman who is charming everyone in the town, and maybe even him?

Why we love it:

fake dating trope

set in Scotland

crazy adorable family

so many outlander and Jamie/Claire references

Trigger warnings: n/a

Dating the Enemy by Nicole Williams

Genres: Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Ms. Romance, Hannah Arden, writes one of the top read relationship advice columns in the nation. Mr. Reality, Brooks North, writes the top read relationship advice column. Ms. Romance believes in true love and soul mates. Mr. Reality believes love is a term humanity has assigned to the primal instinct to procreate. She believes in fate—he in chance. She knows there’s one right person for everyone—he knows there are multiple ones. The two writers couldn’t be more polarized on relationships. They’re professional rivals, and philosophical antagonists. For eight years, their battles have been fought with words and ink. That changes when they apply for the same position at the World Times and find themselves face-to-face for the first time. Brooks isn’t the sour-faced, antiquity of a man Hannah pictured. And Hannah isn’t exactly the middle-aged shrew with cat hair on her housedress that Brooks imagined either. In lieu of competing for the promotion traditional ways, the two writers are presented with playing the leading roles in a social experiment unlike any before. Can a person be tricked into falling in love? Can a relationship be crafted under the right string of circumstances? Hannah knows the answer. So does Brooks. Agreeing to the terms, the two set out on a three-month dating experiment, live-streamed for the world to watch. All Hannah has to do to win is not fall in love with the narcissistic brute. All Brooks has to do is get the starry-eyed dreamer to fall in love with him. Both are so confident in their philosophies, they expect the challenge to be easy. With the world watching, Brooks and Hannah will be forced to confront their beliefs and conclude, once and for all, who’s right. The answer is one neither of them saw coming.

Why we love it:

fake dating (we do have a weakness for this trope!)

interesting dynamic

likeable characters

The-Ugly-Truth-meets-The-Hating-Game premise

Trigger warnings: n/a

Save The Date by Morgan Matson

Genres: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Charlie Grant's older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can't wait for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect. The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster. There's the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won't stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge. There are the relatives who aren't speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo. Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner's nephew is unexpectedly, distractedly cute. Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she'll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

Why we love it:

adorable, intriguing and complex dynamic between Grant siblings

Trigger warnings: n/a

[correresmidestinoweb-blog]

How to Write a Paper in One Night

Being in college is a chore. It takes a lot of work, carefully planned over the course of a week, or a month, or a quarter to make sure everything gets done with the full attention it deserves….are you laughing yet? No one puts in the time "required" to properly complete their college work. No, rather it's a rush at the end every week or two to complete a 10 page paper or learn 200 years of ancient Roman history overnight. You all do it, I did it. It's probably a better training skill than all the random stuff you "learn", because honestly in real life do you think you'll have the time to sit and schedule everything that pops into your life ahead of time. Yeah…thought not.

Anyways, for those of you just entering college from the snore inducing boredom and ease of High School, you're probably incredibly unprepared for the shear amount of work you'll have to pull out in the last second. I'm not saying it's easy just because you'll procrastinate. No, it's still hard. You really should take the time to do your work properly. You just won't, and so you need to learn how to procrastinate. It's a fine art, in which I feel I've become something of a Renoir.

First off, make sure you've got all your books and notes. If you don't go to class, which is entirely likely for those of the procrastinating ilk, make sure you get them from a classmate. Also, double check and make sure your professor doesn't have a website. They'll usually tell you, but more than once I've found a class's notes sitting in an archive online, especially now that 90% of them put everything they teach you into PowerPoint presentations and then just read it to you for an hour every day (yeah, lazy). It's usually only an extra 30 seconds out of their day to put the stuff online, and then when they receive twenty plus emails a week asking for the lecture notes, they only have to point you to the website. Well, some are a bit more facetious about their pupils not even bothering to come to class and don't openly offer said notes. However, for sick students and whatnot, they'll put them online to save paper and all it takes is a couple of quick Google searches or an email to a sick student and you've got your notes. Or…just ask a classmate. But then you're relying on them actually paying attention.

You should have your books too. If you never bothered buying them because you would just take notes or go to sparknotes, then you'd better go buy them, because BSing your way through a paper is going to take at least some resources. You can't magically ascertain the information from just being near smarter people. School would be much easier if that were the case.

So, sit down and start reading. Yup, you're going to be reading a lot the night before your work is due. But, this is better than doing all the assigned reading, because now you're searching for specific information. Instead of general learning (which would only stick around and clutter up your brain later) you're doing targeted research. An eighth the time, and none of that pesky remembering it. You should have your topic at least. If not, start surfing message boards and snag one from someone smarter than you. Don't ever take their work though. The last thing you need is to get kicked out of school for plagiarism. It's lazy and embarrassing. Steal concepts, but never words. And if you steal a concept from the middle of their work, cite them. Your university will not take kindly to cheating. You'll be so red taped and black listed, you might as well go and get an application at Jack in the Box, and trust me you don't want to work in fast food.

You can't procrastinate now. You've done that for three weeks, so I'm sorry (I know it hurts), but in terms of actual physical writing time, you'll need at least three hours to type your paper, which speaks nothing of writing it. And writing it involves finding quotations and that ever so pesky chore of thinking. Sit down, grab an energy drink and a bag of chips, close your door and put some headphones on. No television, and put your phone on the charger. Now open up the word processor and just start typing.

You probably think you have writer's block. But, writer's block is completely unrelated to having absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You're stuck with the second one right now, so just keep on reading on your topic and finding bits and pieces to put together.

The thing here that most people don't realize is that the standard writing process isn't in effect for you. You're not drafting, or brainstorming. That's the stuff you should have done two weeks ago. No, you're writing your paper, so make sure you've got your idea and just start writing and keep writing until you create a thesis somehow.

I usually start as broad as possible, and just start talking about something. If I'm writing about the Hero Quest of Pip in Great Expectations, I start by talking about Greek Mythology and the origin of the classical hero. Working my way down, I'll talk about the modern hero, then about the alterations made in the industrial age, and how Dickens rewrote archetypes for his comedy, and finally start talking about Pip. By now you should have a general idea about what you want to say. It might be general but you'll clarify in your next few paragraphs, and then come back and rewrite the first paragraph.

Paragraph one is almost always trash. Especially with this method, because your weary, angered professor after reading 30 of these lovely last minute essays will put a big red X through anything that doesn't have to do with your paper, and those first few grasping sentences are completely unrelated. But now you can start stealing from the text. Snag a quote and make a point. Snag another quote and make another point. If your thesis ends up as something incredibly broad and useless like "Pip's quest from anonymity and worthlessness into a position of wealth and power in London mirrors the classical hero quests, but works through Dickensian views of industrial England" you're still good. It sounds intelligent and has a lot of promise. Now just find specific quotes and build a narrative. Start at the beginning of his change, talk about his childhood, then go to when he changes, then compare to the Hero quests of old, then show how they're different.

Almost any paper, if written quickly can boil down to something simple and incredibly easy to write, a compare and contrast paper. You choose a prominent theme from the book you just "read". Find a source that mirrors or better yet foils this theme and compare the two. Don't just list how they're different though. That's high school stuff right there. You'll want to write exactly how the outside source changes what you think of your book. It sounds hard but jus think about it. You've got Great Expectations. It has a main character who goes on a kind of quest. Now you have a classic archetype of which there are hundreds of sources to draw on. You take a basic outline of this archetype and apply it to Pip's quest and how he fits it, and when he doesn't fit it. Now you finish your paper by describing why he doesn't fit it sometimes. Which gets you back to the Dickensian views part. You've just pretty much written a paper that says, Pip's quest is classic but different because Dickens was writing about a different time in human history. Incredibly simple; you're not telling anyone anything new, but three things will guarantee a good grade.

If you write well at all. You've got to be a halfway decent writer, which if you're in college I'll assume you are.

Professors love outside references. It shows initiative and research and makes it seem like you did extra work (which you didn't). I've written papers overnight without drafts and without ever reading them back to myself and received comments that I must have spent hours working on it. Not quite.

Confidence in your assertions. Say everything with absolute certainty, and back it up with a quote. Do this enough and even if you're wrong, it'll seem like you've made a decent point, which gets you brownie points.

Writing a paper is a tumultuous task but it's also a scalable task that can be made incredibly quick and easy if you know how. My second to last quarter of college, I wrote three order thesis  papers in two days; two of them 10 pages, and one 25 pages, and received a 3.8, and two 3.7s. It's a matter of confidence and above all else an unmitigated fearlessness to be incredibly lazy.

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’s WAITING WOMEN “The distress button is broken”

© 2021 by James Clark

     Our film today, Waiting Women (1952), will forever be understood as only a “minor” effort due to being an early film in Ingmar Bergman’s history and therefore supposedly lacking in the full sophistication of those titles having convinced the ‘experts’ to be the best. Here’s the difficulty of that position. There is no evolution of his gifts. They began exploding world history from day one, and have marched across many decades in hopes that his dramas would find those aware that a catastrophic myopia has left planet earth to remain a “minor” phenomenon.

Within such strictures, the artist has shown that even a dying planet can supply light years of fruition. The way of such supply is truly majestic. As we touch upon our early hope today, we soon realize that one of Bergman’s most rich manifolds has spread its dark and persistent invitation to us at this site. Three women, waiting in a fine Swedish summer cottage for the annual arrival of the spouses, they being Marta, Rakel and Karin, have a mind to entertain their friends with vignettes of their past. (Before hearing this remarkably candid series of earthquakes, we have, for the asking, other such women occupying those names, in other films by Bergman. Another Marta, having been a professional symphonic musician, and going on to [feebly] transcend the pitfalls of showy skills, appears in the film, To Joy [1951]. Another Rakel, having been a professional actress on the stage, and going on to declare that the theatre is shit and sees fit to commit suicide, appears in the film, After the Rehearsal [1984]. A Karin, having resisted heavy pressure from her family to become a solo cellist, opts for being a very small-town classical orchestra player, which leaves her a pariah and seen to be responsible for her father’s suicide, appears in, Saraband [2003]. All three films are discreetly shot through with incest.) Waiting Women, deletes the arts in favor of big business. But incest races apace  there, and its malignancy brings corporate advantage and pedantry to a fresh critical perspective.

By way of a tonal cue, the preamble pertains to very young children being hidden in play along the shore and thereby a worry. The kids embrace the hidden side, and gently (this being the area of gentrification) reap a scolding from the forces of pedestrian safety. Later, when dusk falls and the mysterious forest and sky are given a quick view, the darkness speaks to no one on the premises.

Not that the startling is entirely absent. But, as we get down to business, the startling, here, brings dangers of serious destruction. The aspect of incest in the few films we find ourselves in the midst of, consists of only one of the ravages bearing down upon a population rife with crude advantage. Once again, as so often, our guide tries to take us by the hand and confront the ravenousness needing to be outmaneuvered. These films do not present the traditional soothing which mainstream film viewers crave. In sharp contrast—along with scintillating drama—we meet an endeavor as to an unsung ontology (an unsung dynamics), where mathematics are not the rule and paradox go to school, forever! The several surprising approaches punctuating the scenario, with touches of cosmic, ironic force, offer the viewer a highway of daring, not for shut ins, not for pedantic, “intellectual” craving.

   Those worried women compose a gaggle of patricians (the credits showing a rococo idyll), being a major target of Bergman’s critique. This film, in fact, being a vigorous scrutiny of that social power-play, rotten to the core. The women at the seashore are in anticipation of the arrival of the moneybags about to grace an instance of idleness and lavishness. They think to improve—one of them cursing her fate about a dull spouse—by commiseration in the failings of their households. In doing so, the women reveal that their attentions are, with a slight exception, feeble. But this being Bergman, strengths also reign, to possible rich enlightenment.

   With the rubric in the air, “It can’t be meant to be that way,” Rakel, addressing the group, begins with, “You’re not as unique as you as you think…I remember the day Eugene and I were forced to wake up and face the situation. It was both ridiculous and appalling. But that’s nothing to talk about…” More naïve interjection insists, “Why not? We can learn something about each other, and thereby make it easier living together during our vacation and maybe afterwards as well…” Rakel—a lady with a bombshell—takes a breath and remarks, “Well, if you want to… It was two years ago. Eugene and I were alone out there that summer. Eugene was writing his history thesis, and I took care of the house. Upstairs and idle at her mirror, her brother Kaj walks in. ‘Good day, little Rakel.’” (The relationship is never explicit, but on the other hand it is crystal clear.) “Where’s your wife?” she demands. His statement of fact is, “She can’t make it. She didn’t feel well with her pregnancy.” Another statement of fact is by Rakel, namely, “Eugene has gone to town.” (Kaj is there for another going to town.) As to Eugene’s studies, the visitor sneers, “Colossally interesting!” She maintains, “Eugene has always been interested in antiques”[and their capacity to deliver quiet treasures].  That he’s despised by the affluent family having to keep Rakel and her supposedly useless husband afloat, becomes another “Colossally interesting” juncture, namely a license to make love to his sister. He fondles her neck. And soon, after feeble resistance, they share a passionate kiss. He continues, “You’re just like when we were kids. You’re as soft and indulgent. Just as pretty and fragrant. And just as flushed and irritated afterwards.” Her stance, as it veers crazily, comes to, “No, thanks, Kaj. That’s good enough.” (She goes back to the dresser and her image in the mirror flies wild and ignored.) “You’re probably talented and wonderful; but I’m very much in love with Eugene…” He, not to be fooled upon this matter, quietly rebuts, “I can tell by your nose that you’re lying.” She feebly cries, “I really do love him… Get away… And you have a wife…” The unrepentant crasher ridicules his sister with, “You have pangs, Rakel, yes, of morality.” This hard-core soap opera says very little of interest about those in action, but very much about a planet needing to drop dead. Nostalgic Kaj perseveres with, “They [the pangs] are located in your stomach, and can be operated on like your appendix… Have you told your husband we were in love when we were young?” (Apparently the matter had been smoothed over by illusion that they were only toddlers.) He rushes to her gut. She holds him there. (Far less emphatic is her spiel. “No, it’s madness! Don’t you understand? It can’t be like this.”) A fiery kiss follows. He’s brought his swimming trunks and they come to the boat house. She locks the door. Before she takes a swim by way of an egress in the floor, he tells her  of a couple whose intensity of lovemaking kills them. He adds, ‘They had strokes… It’s a moral story. It shows the danger of longing.” He claims to be citing Freud. (In Saraband [2003], another bizarre Freud note is struck. Bergman’s seeing the famous exponent of sensibility to be bogus. Rakel calls Kaj’s story “dumb.” His point being that fooling around is the best policy.) Do you remember the time in our childhood when we laid here in the sun completely naked, and compared each other’s shape? We were eight years old. You remember…” She adds, “And [my] dad knocked on the door and said we weren’t allowed to be alone. He had a big hat. And that night there was a thunderstorm. The flagpole snapped in half and burned up.” (Poetry and the putrid intense.) Rakel’s painful appreciation of the “dumb” is too little and too late. “I’ve only been unfaithful toward Eugene once before. It was completely wrong. It will always be completely wrong for me. Something is probably wrong with me. I don’t know. Eugene becomes impatient and berates me.” She looks at Kaj. “Do you think it’s strange?”/ “No, not really…”/ “It was the same time I was unfaithful, needing warmth. I’m probably completely hopeless. Even though I do everything Eugene wants, neither him nor I are happy… When you grabbed me up there in the room, and pressed your head against my stomach… it was so strange [now not completely wrong?]. You have to be nice to me.” Kaj the reasoner, promises, “I’ll be just like you want.” He kisses her shoulder from behind. Fade to the moonlight on the water. The water’s stature. Their statures elsewhere.

  Next day the roaming brother-in-law bests Eugene at shooting targets at a bull’s-eye. The unflappable intruder sees no need to be modest about his shooting. “I can crown myself champion now.” (Champion of what? Champion of destruction being too gutless to grow up? Certainly being useless in managing dynamics.) Earlier that day, Rakel had mastery of their sailboat. An athlete, but incomplete. Eugene is surprised to hear that Rakel was skittish in a blustery sea. Over drinks she smashes her glass. “It’s disgusting, disgusting, disgusting…,” she shouts. (Eugene is alarmed.) She asks Kaj, “How can you? What kind of a man are you?” His response is spot on: “A bastard, like everyone else. Nothing.” She counters, “No, you’re a coward. A terrible coward.” (A moment to savor a hilt of human corruption.) On the winds of her courage, Rakel flashes out, “That’s why I’m going to tell Eugene that we cheated on him today… You think I enjoy sleeping with you, don’t you? Because you’re a nice, talented and considerate lover. But let me tell you something, Kaj. You disgust me. And you’re not a good lover… You only love yourself. Only yourself, and nobody else in the entire world. Only yourself.” He retorts, “If I’m disgusting, so are you, my dear, Rakel. (Bergman in full flight. A nuclear meltdown, as only he could frame it. And a toss away of melodramatic hopelessness. All in the service of taking the step away from dotage to religion and science, and their pedantry, their advantage and their flaming cowardice.) The incestuous patrician insists, “You needed that. Eugene always denied you.” (Maybe he didn’t find intercourse the most important thing in the world.) “And I gave it to you. And now you mock me afterwards…” (A case for an ombudsman?)

   The aftermath comprises a triumph of sorts, in making what some folks call reality. “You slept with him?” the bookworm asks./ “Yes, Eugene, I cheated on you. And I’m not asking for your forgiveness.” Eugene’s fragile notion of pedantry does not stomach full bore errantry. “You have destroyed my entire existence. You, the only person I ever trusted.” He swings into divorce matters which do not maintain the pepper. “The one thing I can’t stand is to be exposed to others” [to fail in pedantry and advantage]. He suddenly covers his face. Rakel kneels by his seat. “What is it? Can I help you?… Can you realize that we have to try and get through this together. We have to forgive each other. I know we can, if we want to, you and me.” (His mind turns to, “I should probably have a talk with Kaj’s poor wife. It’s unnecessary for her to walk through life unaware, like I have.”)  “Don’t do anything you might regret.” At this point we have an impressive form of blustery sea within their hearts. As to regret, Eugene can’t resist saying, “You’re one to talk! If I wanted, I could kill you. It would feel liberating.”/ She tells him, “You’re just a bastard! I don’t know what’s become of me, but I’ve probably gone mad. Why should I help you? I’m not your property that you can treat as you want.” He rushes toward her. He grabs the gun and runs out to a nature he doesn’t deserve. After a farcical rescue by a more measured soul, the latter floats the dubious notion, “The worst is not to be deceived but to be alone.” As we slog through this hugely presumptions, and not all that unusual family, “to be alone” seems pretty good.

   Back in “real time,” Rakel tells the ladies, “We shouldn’t be affected by men’s silly need for prestige and secrecy. We should talk to each other more openly and more often.” As to her unusual background and tastes, discretion reigns questionably. “You might think the story seems ridiculous. And it probably is.” But does “ridiculous” well cover the action. (In another episode to come, at another family gala, the leading light of the corporation is heard to describe Eugene being the black sheep of the family.) Rakel and Eugene subside to near paralysis. But Rakel, the fountain of small gifts, thinks their lives to be quite fine.  She’s asked, “Are things better now than before?”/ “Probably not,” Rakel admits, “for Eugene, but for me.”/ “How do you mean?”/ “I’ve come to realize that Eugene is my child… It’s my duty to take care of him. I feel sorry for him. He suffers greatly from what he calls his meaninglessness… Yet he means everything to me now.” The ladies call this “beautiful.” (She adds, “Sentimental, maybe. I don’t know. But Eugene is my meaning in life. We support each other in that way… It’s very simple.”

   A little turn around the coffee table, and we have Marta, “Kaj’s poor wife.” “Since Rakel has been so brave [another unsound description] to tell of her awakening, I’ll have to show some courage and tell about mine… It was in Paris, three years ago.” Some exacting structure is in play here, due to, not one, but two flashbacks. The Paris incident coming later, while being  chronologically first; the Stockholm incident, with Marta in her eighth month of pregnancy to Kaj, coming to us first. Her first statement is well put: “I had suspicions… I was awakened by the contractions…” She drops a water glass and reaches down to her lovely feet and hands. Those digits could be, if not the most, at least an almost equal to the most important phenomenon in sight. But it takes another, more daring, black sheep to make it shine. She primly packs a small bag and a rather large, framed photo of Kaj. (A premature birth on tap.) Someone, at the frosted glass door, appears and disappears. “There had to be an explanation. Yet I was overcome by a paralyzing fear of dying. And my loneliness was suddenly the loneliness of death ” (Many years later, with the film, Face to Face [1976], that apparition becomes active as a black sheep whom the protagonist needs to know well.) The other singularity is her kitten, whom she palms off to the cares of the maternity department. (Never neglect an animal. It’s your better.) The Marta in the film, To Joy, turns out to be overdependent to family ease and middling skill. Already, in this episode, we hear Kaj (AKA, Martin) unwelcome (the message from Eugene). “Don’t you want to answer? You can’t treat me like I’ve committed a crime… Don’t toy with me. I didn’t know better…”/ “You are the way you are, poor thing. I never want to marry you.”

   Waiting in the hospital for her baby to come, Marta has a reverie of the Paris days. The shadows of dancing leaves on the wall of her room become the dancing women in the cancan dance hall. “I was in Paris again, and in that awful nightclub.” (Young and snobbish.) Splits; but real splits take more than that. Her date is a G.I. who bores her. She has some trouble getting away from the man’s man in order to win a bottle of champagne by holding her thighs around a two-frank piece. Another rich youngster at the club, namely, Kaj, who, Hollywood style, was her neighbor at the hotel, and easily seen to be more saucy than the date, attracts her that night at the Toulouse-Lautrec shrine. She adds, “The Swedish painter who was always so diligent with his paintings, not to mention being of the same language.” (You can, however, have the same wording, without having the same language.) Back at the cancan, the “diligent” had sent a server to her table delivering a becoming sketch of her and the stiff being a Rocky Mountain goat. (Always about advantage.) Marta, from her poor little rich girl perspective, opines, “I had to admit that his indifference toward me irritated me…” (“He was cute.”)

   From there, we have an episode inspired by Audrey Hepburn. She ditches her overreaching date by escaping the parked taxi in leaving the champagne bottle on the street to lure him being left on the pavement, while she returns to the cab and the hotel of the “cute” stranger, the strange romantic. Reaching her bohemian vantage point, we notice the hotel’s name, “Le Tournant,” (the turning)—far more complicated than she had ever imagined. (The enterprise next door to the hotel is called , “singed chops.”) Passing the landing, she enters her room and finds that the lamp doesn’t work. Darkness that she could never have imagined. (She tries a second lamp, only to find nothing—her future.) Moving to the window she’s confronted with a fantasy moonlight. (The moon, a bright curtain and Marta. A task of friskiness never touched. Nevertheless, she raises her arms in some kind of triumph.) That was the moment for Kaj to pounce, carefully. Something comes under the door. She grabs the paper and hears the beginning of his orders. “Open the door, but only a crack.” He presents her with a glass of wine. While she sips her wine, he recites a poem. “Marta is a blossoming tree. She is as bright as a little fish./ Why are your eyes so sad, Marta?” (Perhaps the touch of moonlight presented a problematic he would never know, being a confirmed “Nothing.”) “Your true love is sitting outside, rippling your door in the flickering moonlight./ Right now my love has no limit. Yes, eternal is my love at this moment…” She feels that her unique daring has begun to reap its rewards. (Advantage all over Paris.) “Let me be,” the dubious friend gushes. “Let us play in front of the poor, the sick, the terrible… Let us play in front of death itself… My sister (sic), my bride, my blossoming tree.” He adds some fiddling on his guitar. Then he presents her with a small sculpture in her image. She ventures into the dark hallway, where his hand is illuminated from a strange source, and the arrogance from him, as supported by her, begins the train wreck.

   The whirlwind romance is not without rare beauties of the City of Light. Despite their various superficialities, a strain of ambiguity gives them a fleeting pass of frisson. They begin their tour at Sacre Coeur Basilica and its links to real art. The alphas commandeer a horse-driven cart, setting off their march to the Arc de Triomphe, where serious sacrifice may be noticed. The play of sunlight and shadows from the foliage institutes something deft and loving, far beyond their concerns. At a stand of large, magnificent trees two dead presences along the Seine where they had rented a rowboat. At a lull for a nap in the bottom of the boat, Marta’s thoughts return to her other adventure. The preamble of the departure finds her leaving a gynecologist’s with a big smile on her face. She’s close to the river and immediately goes up to a baby and her mother, enjoying a warm, sunny day. She smiles to the baby, and the baby smiles to her. But when an elderly man also enjoys the company of the baby, Marta, losing her sense of priority, quickly leaves with an angry look. (At the end of the film, we’ll find Marta making a disinterested, generous decision. It is the capacity to make such a gesture, after many faux pas, which matters in this saga of dynamics, where families don’t count. On the other hand, we have the inexplicable mystery of the vanishing of Marta’s child. At the outset of  her episode, Marta’s parents are mentioned going on a vacation. Do they cover that drama?)

   The two are routed by the “iconic” family. (“Martin has chosen the wrong occupation.”) Marta, lost in the shuffle, chooses not to tell of their baby. The sweaty arts at the maternity ward now take over. The waterfall on the Parisian canal reshapes to the birth. Filtering out the strong from the weak becomes a labor that never ends. The nurse encourages Marta to count to five. Another venture consists of that figure at the door, only for grown-ups. (Her baby seen trying to fathom her mother. Squeezing her face. Kaj joins in. He kisses her.) Marta’s baby at the maternity ward. She glowing…  First simple moments of a long, difficult life.

Back at the coffee table, a perception- deficit looms. “That was a real nice story.” (The flashback of this depressive romance is not only outrageous, but it’s lacking in strict temporality.)  The matter is saved by adding, “But why did you end up marrying Martin?”/ “I love him.”/ “You should have lived on your own with your child and fought for yourself. That would have been style!” The opinionated speaker is Maj, Marta’s young sister. She continues, “You ruined it by compromising.” The jumbler argues, “Life isn’t so stylish, dear.”/ “Life is what you make of it.”

   On that note, Karin, wife of the CEO, prepares the women for not having much to tell, but being funny, not a dramatic discovery. At a centennial gala of the corporation, with the Crown Prince in attendance, Karin approaches Kaj, “How’s your wife?” He corrects her, “She isn’t my wife” (technically). One of the other women had remarked she saw Marta in town and she looked to be in the last month. That elicits from the non-black sheep, “So what! She doesn’t care about me. She won’t even talk to me on the phone. I’ve begged her to marry me, but she doesn’t want to. Can you believe it? She says that I’m incorrigible. She won’t even give me a chance.” That was one, inflected, dead-end. Here comes another.

Karin (on the way home) is driving, due to her husband’s having had quite a bit to drink. From the back seat, Fredrik discusses his understanding of “style.” “I’ve made Father’s company into a worldwide organization, which we own 79% of the shares. Personally, I am in the prime of my life, full of job satisfaction, energy and great ideas for the future which appears quite bright… I’m revolutionizing our export industry… I’m a little drunk…” (Karin, played by actress, Eva Dahlbeck, had also played the part of a high spirited and very limited wife to a renowned gynecologist in the film, A Lesson in Love [1951], where her husband was played by actor, Gunnar Bjornstrand, who takes up the role of Fredrik here. She being perfect to tell the 79%, “And you don’t have any friends, either.”) Cruising on, the millionaire brags, “I sleep well. My stomach’s fine [a touch of irony]… Good teeth… It is as if annoyance abruptly fled the moment I showed myself…” She inserts the motion of irony when responding, “You truly are exceptional.” He takes the route of great geniuses, when using the cliché, “No man is great in the presence of their wife.” She ripostes, “God is probably not married.”

That kind of contention will flow beyond the drive and into their elevator, which promptly breaks down. In addition to various slapstick routines related to attempting to escape the little jail, some personal issues of note get illuminated. By way of a profound rubric, we are eventually provided with the repair man telling Fredrik, “The distress button is broken.” The man who will tell you he is always right makes a big mistake, in broaching the matter, “Have you ever been unfaithful to me?” Karin, the wit, of course, would have to say, “Sure,” leaving him to ask, “Really?”/ “And you acknowledge it, just like that!”/ “You asked me.” He goes on, “Has this occurred often with different people?”/ “Yes, of course. What did you think?” Fredrik asks, “Do you have a lover at the moment?” She explains, “I have two, but I don’t know which one to choose… Exciting, don’t you think?” Fredrik becomes annoyed—“I am still your husband.” This opens the question for Karin to ask, “How many times have you been unfaithful to me?” She points her finger at him, and the tone, “the style,” becomes dark. He refuses to touch such a matter, being so remote from his integrity. But that doesn’t stop him from declaring, “I have never been unfaithful to you.” Karin, trying to defuse a moment far from her best, tells him, “What I said was just in fun.” But Mr. Perfect pounces to the tune of, “You don’t have any proof.” This overbearing thrust by him causes her to look for blood. “Actually, I do” [have proof]./ “What?” he challenges./ “Now you’re scared, aren’t you? Well, well, well!” (Cut to Fredrik, shocked.) She hasn’t any more playful style this long night and, after hearing him sneer, “I think you’re bluffing, dear,” she replies, “I’ll just say a name… Diana.” (He sits down, deflated.) She sneers, rather tritely, “He’s blushing like a schoolboy. A little boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar…” (Advantage without tempering.) His adjustment is, “She was crazy, so it ended very quickly.” Karin adds, “Did you know that that 19-year-old American put two detectives on you? For two years, she watched your every step.” That Karin overdoes the facts—”all your adventures over the last two years… I have the list here in my purse”—becomes, rather than a little joke, a (momentary) trajectory for severing their relationship. He tells her, in this desperate embarrassment, “Almost every episode I’ve had has been fun. I’ve never regretted it. Each of us lives our own lives.”

His leg cramp and her massage is all it takes to recover their famous love. A policy of ironic generosity has reinstated the powers they live for. They live for being two disparate vehicles. When the morning arrives, the custodial crew and a few of the cleaners laugh as the elects ascend to their penthouse.

One other constellation, very unlike those who have shown us the sadness of the weak, bring to us their readiness to meet a new day. Coming to us, first of all, after the story of the plight of Marta, the girl chasing “style,” namely, Maj, is now accompanied by her boyfriend, Henrik, calling her to go out the open window and go a long way. Henrik had just been told by the family high flyers, who shut the door upon Kaj’s surely hopeless arts dabbling, that he was to enroll in a business program at a university. He resolves not to pursue what he might meet in the way of constrictedness (but, on the other hand possibly something quite fascinating). His plans had been to see what the wide world meant. Only running away from the overrated family could fit the bill. Of course, Maj would be his soulmate in plumbing the ways of style. In the confusion of the arrival of the menfolk’s dispensing with introspection (Marta, in a distant shot, passionately hurling herself upon the widespread lover), Marta rushes upstairs to put on better clothes, where she bumps into Maj packing her bag. The brush goes like this: “Are you going to stop me?”/ “Yes, I am.” / “With force?”/ “If necessary… I’m responsible for you.” Maj moves the action to better focus: “Should you talk about responsibility when you’ve been so irresponsible and done so much?”/ “I beg you, Maj…” / “I don’t care. I know what I want…” After a pause, they embrace. After a glitch with the motorboat, they move for their moment. (Cuts between a noisy dance party and the dark, silent waters.) En route, they do have something to say, particularly Maj. “Swear that you’ll always love me as much as tonight.”/ “I swear.”/ “Swear that you’ll never compromise, never stray, never lie, cheat or behave like everybody else.” / “I swear…”/ “Because otherwise we might as well be dead…” Cut to Marta on the veranda, speaking with a quiet reveler who notices the distant departure. She tells him, “They’ll be back in time.” (She covers her face. The water is calm. She is not.) She tells him, “I’m just so happy.” (Yes and no.) A last look at their boat, about to test their seaworthiness, their style, which could mean they won’t be back, pending a ripple of play with nature itself, and an integral play of attending to creature comforts.

[ineverhadmyinternetphase]

In My Way - Chapter 22

AO3 link, First Chapter

Genre: Chaptered. Actor!Dan AU, fluff, bit of angst, slow burn, getting together (eventually)

Summary: Fiction. Daniel Howell is 21 and Britain’s newest star. He’s just been cast in the much-anticipated film adaption of Last Man Standing, the popular teen fantasy novel with a huge fanbase hanging off his every tweet. In other words, Dan has made it big.

Phil Lester couldn’t care less. He’s a stressed out PHD student working part time at a bookshop while he struggles to get into post-production. He’s 26 and still lives in a tiny flat on the fifth floor of a building with a lift more broken than it is in use. He loves books, but he thinks big film adaptions screw with the plot too much.

Needless to say, Phil is less than impressed when Last Man Standing is getting filmed in his hometown. And he certainly doesn’t want anything to do with obnoxious, arrogant, so irritatingly perfect leading actor   Daniel Howell.

Warnings: Swearing, Ace!Phil, Bi!Dan, slight a- and bi-phobia, discussions of sexuality

Word Count: 5000-6000 per chapter (ish)

A/N: Another chapter finally! Sorry for the delay, usual life things like university happen ^_^ thank you so much to everyone still reading and leaving comments, they really mean a lot to me, and as ever, huge thanks to Meg my beta. Now just three chapters to go!

Also, two amazing pieces of fan art have been done for this story, you can see them here:

By illoura (I actually love this one so much it's currently my phone background): here

By heartbreakerlester (I especially love the Phil): here

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It was true – Phil could get down to London again for the weekends, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still absolutely terrified. So he did his best to focus on the time he got to spend with Dan, rather than the fact that he was soon to be loudly announcing his place at Dan’s side in front of a whole bunch of cameras.

Phil had to admit, though, that having a more concrete schedule for seeing Dan was doing him good. He liked knowing that every weekend he could hop onto a train and be down with Dan again. He didn’t even mind all the travelling involved. Returning to Manchester at the end of the weekend was softened by the knowledge that he’d be back in London again soon enough, that he’d have Dan back in his arms again at the end of another week.

It wasn’t easy to leave him, but it was easier than it would have been otherwise.

Phil spent the rest of the week in Manchester desperately brushing up on the last of his uni work. His final assessment, his viva, was creeping imminently closer, and Phil was feeling less than prepared.

As much as Dan was a wonderful addition to Phil’s life, he was also something of a distraction. Phil’s mind hadn’t quite been where it should be over the past few months.

But still, Phil had managed to hand in his thesis on time, and despite everything he thought it had turned out rather well. Now he just needed to get all of that knowledge stuck in his head, ready to be grilled by two of the most senior people in his department.

Nothing to be worried about at all.

The next weekend with Dan was giving Phil something to look forward to, which was much needed as he was once again drowning in books and sources and articles. Spending any time apart was proving to be difficult, and Phil found himself calling Dan up most days, or sometimes, waking up in the middle of the night to the insistent buzzing of his phone by his ear because Dan had no sense of time or normal waking hours.

The distance wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. Nothing felt impossible. In fact, Phil was starting to entertain the very real, very dangerous possibility that he might just get to keep Dan in his life more permanently.

That brought with it some terrifying ideas about the future. A future in London, with Dan, in Dan’s world. He still hadn’t completely decided what to do, but there were internships, places that would take him, especially once his PhD had gone through. He could edit professionally, full-time, not just the bits and pieces he did for PJ between his own work. And Phil loved education, he really did, but after his PhD he was itching to get out and try some of his work in a more public setting.

Meeting Dan had helped with that, he had to admit. Seeing Dan’s world, or the bits of it he’d been privy to so far, had lit something inside of Phil he wasn’t sure had been there before. Something that desired to make good things, and be brave enough to put them out into the world.

He’d talk to Dan about it, this weekend. See if he thought Phil could do this, if he should apply to somewhere in London, and exactly what that would mean for the two of them.

Phil hoped it would mean good things.

Travelling down to London that weekend brought its own set of nerves, something Phil wasn’t sure he’d get over no matter how many times he saw Dan. There was just something about the deliberate, planned nature of going to see him that felt more real, and scarier, than bumping into him on the film set had felt. This spoke of something that required forethought.

But Dan would be at the end of it, and that was enough for Phil.

He leaned his head against the windowsill, watching the countryside flash past the window, becoming gradually more and more built up the closer to the city he got. He mourned the loss of green, the wide open spaces slowly narrowing and narrowing, but there was the upside that he was drawing closer and closer to Dan. Every minute brought him nearer.

Dan was waiting for him at the station again, although this time a little more surreptitiously. He was wearing normal casual clothes, a giant baggy grey jumper and black jeans, stuff that blended in with the people around him. Dan himself still stuck out like a sore thumb, though. He was just so much taller than the people around him, and being aware of that fact just made him more awkward than he already was.

Phil greeted him with a smile and a quick, cautious hug. After what happened the last time they met at a station, they both knew to be more careful, even if Dan did pout at him a little.

“You set the date for coming out,” Phil reminded him as he shouldered his bag and followed Dan out of the station. “The premiere. No overshadowing the build-up, remember?”

“I know,” Dan grumbled morosely. “I just miss holding your hand, it’s been an entire week.”

Phil bit back a self-satisfied grin. He’d missed Dan too, but it was still reassuring to hear it from Dan’s own lips, just how much being apart hurt. It was making Phil consider serious things about the future, about their future.

But he kept those thoughts to himself for now, and instead walked faster so they’d be safely back behind closed doors soon.

Dan’s flat was empty, Tyler being out at a shoot, so Phil took his time putting away his suitcase and then taking Dan into his arms, remembering what it felt like to have him close again. They curled up together on the sofa, half-heartedly watching old reruns, but more interested in focusing on having each other back in their space again.

“I missed this,” Dan said lowly after a few minutes.

Phil shifted a little to look down at where Dan was sprawled across his lap. Gently, he drew a finger through Dan’s curls, for once not straightened to within an inch of its life, and pulled him closer. “Me too. I don’t like it, being away from you.”

“Me neither,” Dan grumbled, shifting into Phil’s touch. “I don’t think you should actually be allowed to leave, tbh.”

Phil’s lips twitched. His thoughts skittered back to the possibility of not having to leave – of having somewhere permanently within Dan’s reach.

The thought was a good one, if a little terrifying.

Phil cleared his throat, knowing if he didn’t bring it up now then he’d never really be brave enough. “I kind of agree, actually.”

Dan twisted to send him a confused look. “Not fighting me for once? That’s a novelty.”

“Shut up.” Phil nudged him, then gathered him back in close, fighting the nerves beginning to swirl in his belly. “I meant, like, maybe there’s a way I wouldn’t have to leave.”

Dan arched a brow and waited.

“I’ve been giving it some thought.” Phil gathered up his courage and looked determinedly at the wall next to the tv. “There’s a few possibilities. Editing companies here that would take on someone with my qualifications. If I ever get my degree, that is.”

“Your third degree,” Dan reminded him with a snort.

“Yeah, well,” Phil shrugged, “Depends on how my viva goes next week. And then there’s no guarantee anyone would actually take me.”

Dan went very quiet. He stilled in Phil’s arms, so Phil glanced down at him curiously to see a little furrow between Dan’s eyebrows.

“What’s a viva?” Dan finally settled on asking, still not meeting Phil’s eyes.

Phil blinked. “I told you before. The final assessment, where I have to explain my thesis idea to two professors and they rip it to shreds in front of me.”

Dan didn’t laugh, though he did offer Phil a comforting half-hearted smile. “They won’t rip it to shreds.”

“You don’t even understand it,” Phil berated him.

“Yeah, but I’m a dropout.” Dan stretched. “You’re actually intelligent, you’ll be fine.”

Phil nodded slowly. If he was honest, this wasn’t quite the excited reaction he’d been expecting from Dan if he brought up the possibility of actually moving to London. The support was nice, sure, but he’d kind of hoped Dan might squeal a little and jump on him.

All in all, Phil was actually a little disappointed.

Dan shifted again in his lap, glancing up with the little furrow still present in his brow. Phil reached down to wipe it away. “So you wouldn’t mind?” Phil asked. “If I… thought about applying here?”

“Mind?!” Dan shook his head vehemently, reaching up to cup a hand to Phil’s cheek. “The opposite. I want you to be here all the time, Phil, I thought I’d made that fairly obvious.”

Phil’s nose wrinkled. “A little, maybe.”

“I want you to be here,” Dan promised, sitting up and leaning closer, his palm still cupping Phil’s cheek. “In fact, there’s nothing I want more.”

Phil’s heart flipped over in his chest, and he was still getting used to it doing that. Feelings like this were still new and a little bit overwhelming, but the more time he spent in Dan’s presence, the safer he felt. The butterflies still hadn’t stopped, though.

Dan was looking at him very intently, his dark eyes warm, and then he leaned in to press a kiss to Phil’s lips. Phil melted against him, as he always did, because Dan knew just how much to give him, just how much was good, and had learned never to push him further than that. How had he got so lucky, Phil wondered. How had he ever managed to find someone who would appreciate his boundaries, never mind that someone being actual Dan Howell.

They drew apart again, Phil’s arms having found their way wound tight around Dan’s waist, but Dan ignored his insistent tugging and instead leaned back to meet Phil’s eyes.

Phil looked back, because he always would, and because seeing Dan this close to him was a thrill after a week spent apart.

Dan licked his lips. “I… I want to tell you something.”

“Anything,” Phil promised.

Dan swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice cracked a bit. “I did something. And I’m going to tell you, but – but you have to promise me you won’t get mad, ok, and there might not—”

The sound of the door slamming interrupted Dan and made them both jump wildly. Dan pulled back, and Phil wanted to grab him, to hold him still and listen to whatever he was about to say, but then Tyler came waltzing into the room, chattering a hundred words a minute as he went.

“You wouldn’t believe the hours I’ve been working, there are so many actors on that shoot, and if I never have to wipe another person’s sweaty brow – oh, hi Phil – another sweaty brow, it will have been too long, I’m telling you, never again.” He visibly shuddered as he threw himself down onto the sofa across from them.

Dan watched him with a small smile. He was still wrapped up in Phil’s arms, but he wasn’t looking at Phil anymore, so Phil nudged him and quirked a brow. “Tell me later?”

Dan bit his lip, threw another glance at Tyler, and nodded quickly. Then he turned back to Tyler with a small smile. “So long day, I’m guessing?”

“Horrendously long.” Tyler was lying dramatically on his back with one hand flung across his forehead. “I’m dead, that’s it, I’m never rising again.”

“That doesn’t look particularly comfortable,” Phil observed softly, making Dan snort.

“Excuse you, Mr. Northerner,” Tyler responded airily, then twisted to send Phil a look. “Oh! Now you’re here, we can go shopping, excellent.”

Dan groaned.

“Don’t think you’re getting out of it, Howell,” Tyler warned. “I told you. If you’re making a statement at this premiere, then you have to get the look exactly right.”

“I hate shopping with you,” Dan whined. “It takes hours and you make me try on every single thing in the shop.”

Tyler shrugged. “At least you’ll have company this time.”

Dan sent Phil a sharp grin.

“Oh, oh no.” Phil shook his head, looking helplessly between them. “No, come on, I thought you were joking.”

“I never joke about fashion,” Tyler said seriously, and then flopped dramatically back down onto the couch. “Give me five minutes to recover, and we’re leaving.”

Dan groaned again, and this time, Phil didn’t even rebuke him.

---

Clothes shopping with Tyler Oakley turned out to be an… experience.

He did indeed force Dan to try on every single shirt, but it wasn’t even reduced to one shop. Instead, they were dragged around the whole high street, and in every single place they went Tyler seemed to know at least three of the people who worked there.

Phil spent most of his time loitering between shelves of clothes he didn’t even dare look at the price tag for, watching as Tyler and Dan bickered over which thing looked best. Dan was holding some form of black shirt that had an uncountable number of zips in places where there should not be zips, and Tyler was attempting to talk him out of it.

For once, Phil sided with Tyler. The thing looked absolutely ridiculous.

“You’re awful,” Dan told Phil, pouting. “This is the worst kind of betrayal.”

“I’m just telling the truth!” Phil defended himself. “It looks like a hamster designed the pockets.”

“Hamsters could have good taste, you don’t know.” Dan clutched the shirt closer to him when Tyler attempted to take it, glaring.

Tyler sighed heavily, but relented, grabbing another shirt from the pile and shooing Dan away with both of them. “At least try this on too, but go, see for yourself the ridiculousness of your own decisions.”

Dan made a face, but disappeared readily enough back behind the changing room curtain.

Phil shifted a bit uncomfortably on his feet. He hadn’t been left alone with Tyler much yet, and he wasn’t proud enough to admit that he still found Tyler slightly intimidating. Tyler was just so exuberant about everything, and Phil was very much not part of Tyler’s world. With Dan around, things were easier, but alone, Phil felt a little like a ship sailing on its own on a giant, unknown sea.

Tyler, however, seemed completely oblivious of any tension. Instead he thumbed through the rest of the items on the rack, humming under his breath, and every once in a while giving Phil a considering look.

Phil tried not to look like a rabbit in the headlights.

“Good eyes,” Tyler informed him after a minute.

Phil jumped. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got good eyes.” Tyler didn’t look up from the shirt he was considering. “Don’t match Dan’s at all, of course, but I can theme an outfit around them.”

Phil swallowed. “I, uh – I don’t think anything here would really fit me.”

“Nonsense,” Tyler answered breezily, giving Phil another considering look before continuing to look through various items on a shelf in front of him. “You’ve just got to know what you’re looking for.”

Phil did little more than helplessly nod. If there was ever a fish out of water, Phil was currently that fish.

Much to Phil’s surprise, Tyler stopped looking through the clothes racks to instead turn and level Phil with a serious look. “How are you feeling about all this?”

Phil blinked at him. “Uh – all what, exactly?”

Tyler smiled, the expression slightly pitying. “All of this.” He waved an airy hand around the (very fancy) store they were in. “Dan’s world. Our world. A life of fame and vanity.”

Phil swallowed. Put like that, it didn’t sound very appealing at all – in fact, exactly the opposite of anything Phil would ever have thought he’d want.

But for Dan – with Dan – this world didn’t seem very frightening at all.

“It’s a little out of my comfort zone,” Phil answered, deciding to be honest. Tyler was important to Dan, after all. “I’m not used to it. I don’t think I’ll ever quite fit in.”

“Give it a few months,” Tyler replied wisely, giving Phil a look full of scrutiny. “I’m not so sure. Dan seems to like you, and although his taste in fashion is awful, his taste in people is usually better.”

Phil smiled without realising.

“Plus,” Tyler continued breezily, “You look good together. And the Twitter thing – it really helps that you’re active on that. Good decision.”

“It was never really a decision,” Phil answered weakly, thinking back to the first time he’d engaged with Dan online, the slight terror at all those people watching that still occasionally twisted his innards upside-down. “I just – it seemed like a good way to get his attention.”

Phil had never admitted that out loud before. He was surprised to realise he wasn’t embarrassed.

Tyler grinned. “It helped a bunch. Public flirting like that, people love it – perfect set-up for the premiere. All Dan really has to do is confirm it, no one will be surprised at this point.”

Phil carefully kept his face impassive. He didn’t really agree. He knew plenty of people who would be surprised – not least of all, his mum. He still hadn’t quite worked up the guts to tell her, though she’d called him three times since he and Dan had decided to go public. The words just… never fit into the conversation.

He had no idea how to vocalise any of his life to her now.

“You don’t have to be so afraid,” Tyler continued, mistaking Phil’s look of consternation for one of nervous fear. “Premieres are all focused on the outfits and the film, not the gossip of the actors so much. You’ll be a sideline at most – you and Dan. And like I said, most people won’t even be surprised. You haven’t exactly done a great job of being subtle.”

Phil nodded, trying to look like he meant it.

Thankfully, he was saved from having to look any more positive about things because of the reappearance of Dan, holding both his own choice of shirt and Tyler’s out with a deep furrow in his brow. “Ok, so you were both right about the black one, but Tyler – I can’t wear this thing, it’s got ruffles.”

“Trust me, Howell,” Tyler tutted, taking both from Dan and holding up the dark blue ruffly one again. “It’ll be good.”

“I’m not wearing ruffles,” Dan muttered, and he looked so much like a toddler about to throw a tantrum that Phil snorted. Dan glanced over at him, arching a brow. “What?”

“Nothing.” Phil was still grinning, all nerves completely settled back in the presence of Dan. “Come here.”

Dan went to his side easily enough, still pouting, so Phil just wrapped one arm around his waist and tugged him close. Dan smiled, but still turned his head to do a quick, darting check that no one was watching before he leaned his weight into Phil’s side.

Silently, Phil knew that he wouldn’t miss times of having to watch their every move.

Tyler was still holding the blue ruffly shirt, but at a glare from Dan that threatened much more than just a tantrum if he was going to insist on it, Tyler threw his hands up in the air and admitted defeat, wandering off to have another look at the aisles.

Phil released a tiny sigh. They’d been here for hours, and clothes shopping really wasn’t his thing.

Dan seemed to notice, as he leaned back against Phil and murmured, “Tired?”

“Not really.” Phil shrugged, nestled his head against Dan’s. “Just normally do this kind of thing on the internet, from my bed. You know?”

“Believe me, I know.” Dan’s tone turned dark. “I hate when Tyler drags me out to these things.”

“So you just inflicted it on me, too?” Phil grumbled.

Dan grinned at him. “What’s mine is yours, and all.”

Phil rolled his eyes, but he’d be lying if he said that comment didn’t warm him just a little. Here he stood, in public, with Dan Howell nestled against him, perfect and warm and accepting of everything. He even grumbled with Phil about being outside, about having to be here and do this when they both knew it was for their own good in the end. What did Phil know about what to wear to a film premiere, after all?

Tyler came back shortly, two items on his arm, and his grin was positively wicked. “I’ve got the perfect thing for both of you.”

Phil glanced at what he was holding and paled considerably.

Dan, however, actually made a noise of interest. He disentangled himself from Phil (with a final squeeze to his hand) and then made his way over to Tyler, fingering the clothing. “Hmm.”

“You bet, Howell.” Tyler was practically glowing as he lifted the two sparkly blazers, one dark gold, one bright silver. “Matching and perfect for both of you. The perfect couple.”

Phil blanched, but Dan made another interested noise. “I want the silver.”

“Dan,” Phil complained weakly. “Really?”

Dan span to face him, a small grin tugging at his lips, his dimple just appearing. “Come on. We can be sparkly together.”

Phil made a face at him. “They’re just a bit… ostentatious. Aren’t they?”

“That’s the point,” Tyler enthused. “You’re making a statement.”

“A sparkly statement,” Dan added with a grin.

Phil looked between them, from one excited face to the other, and then back at the jackets. The silver was definitely the brightest, Dan could have that, but the gold… it was a dull gold, bold but tasteful, and it looked subtle next to the silver, present but quiet. Just like him next to Dan.

Phil walked over and ran two fingers along the cloth. Soft; inviting.

“Try it on,” Tyler urged. “Then tell me you hate it.”

Phil looked at him, then back to Dan, then down at the jacket. He let out another little sigh. “Alright. I’ll try it on.”

---

The silver and gold jackets were a go, it was decided. Dan loved his the instant he put it on, and Phil felt comfortable enough in the gold blazer to accept it. He’d been to formal occasions before, after all, he knew he always felt a little out of place in fancy clothes. His mum said he’d grow out of it. Phil never had.

He had the flat to himself, which was a strange feeling. Tyler was out at a job, and Dan was out at a meeting with his agent. Phil planned to use the rare time alone to call his mum, to tell her where he was and who with and everything. So far, all she knew was that he’d gone down to London with that actor he’d been friends with. Phil needed to explain everything before the premiere, and that was happening in exactly a week.

He was running rapidly out of time.

Still, it was hard to actually pick up the phone. Phil was currently sitting with it in his lap, staring blankly at the tv screen in the giant living room which was paused on an episode of Game of Thrones that Dan had randomly decided they needed to rewatch, and then promptly left halfway through. Typical behaviour really.

Phil caught himself smiling fondly in the darkness of the screen, and quickly fumbled for his phone again. The sooner his mum knew, the better. And telling her wasn’t going to be bad, was it, after all, the thing he had with Dan wasn’t bad. She knew Phil. She knew he’d never had feelings like this for anyone before, despite her gentle pushing every now and then. She’d know, wouldn’t she? And she’d be happy for him?

Phil had always been close to his mum. He just felt like that could be about to change.

Either way, it was much better she heard it from him rather than through the news. So Phil took a deep breath, picked up his phone for the third time, and determinedly pressed ‘call’.

She picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello child, I’m out right now—”

“I’m with Dan Howell.” Phil said the words faster than he’d meant to, all in a rush, because he was sure if he didn’t then he’d never say them at all.

There was a startled silence. Then—“Phil, dear, I’m at the shops, give me five minutes…”

“Ok.” Phil sat there, heart in his mouth, and listened to the distant rustling on the other end of the line.

It felt like days before his mum’s voice came back. “Alright, what was that you said?”

“I’m with Dan Howell,” Phil answered, and then, guiltily, “Uh – did you finish your shopping?”

“No, but I’ve come and sat in a toilet cubicle while we chat.” His mum sounded soft and warm, the same as ever. “Dan Howell the actor?”

“Yeah.” Phil frowned. “You didn’t bring your trolley into the loo, did you?”

“Of course not, it’s in the aisle. With him how exactly?”

“I thought dad told you not to abandon it anymore.” Phil swallowed. “Uh. With him… in London. And. Um. Another way, too.”

“Your father hasn’t had a say in my shopping habits for years,” she pointed out with a low chuckle. “With this actor, hm? What’s he like?”

“He’s great.” Phil folded his arms, curled his legs in tight to his chest, air feeling tight in his lungs. “Out at the minute, but. I’m in his flat. I’m going with him to a premiere next week.”

“Well, that sounds fancy,” she answered. “Have you got something to wear?”

Phil swallowed, his heart in his mouth. “Yeah, his friend helped us – he’s sort of a stylist – but, mum, I’m with him. You need to understand, it’s going to be everywhere soon and I have to tell you first, because I didn’t want you to see it somewhere else—” he was close to hyperventilating, he could hear it. Sharp, harsh breaths high in his throat.

His mum shushed him gently down the phone. “Phil, honey, you aren’t making sense. What are you trying to tell me?”

Phil took in a deep breath, hating that it still sounded high-pitched and weak. But this was exactly what he was most terrified of, and now it was right here, happening right now, he was on the brink of taking this step and then he’d never be able to take it back.

An image of Dan floated into his head. Dan, smiling, happy, dimpling. His.

“I’m with Dan Howell,” Phil said as bravely as he could. “With him as in, in a relationship with him. We’re together. I love him. I’m pretty sure, anyway.”

There was a short silence.

“Oh, is he the one?” His mum said finally, sounding a little surprised, but not – not horrified, at least. “I did wonder.”

“Mum,” Phil shook his head. “Wonder what? Mum?”

“You haven’t said much about your life lately, darling, not real details anyway. I wondered what you’d been hiding, or who. So it’s this Dan, is it? I did wonder, after that article the other month.”

Phil bit his lip, but there was an odd, tight sort of relief pushing at his shoulders. His mum knew a lot more than he gave her credit for. “Yeah. The articles are kind of the problem.”

“And you said something about a premiere?” His mum made a proud noise. “So it’s serious, then?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Phil swallowed, wondered how much to say in one go. That he was even considering moving for Dan, away from her, away from his family. His previous life. Everything and everyone he knew, for something new, and terrifying, but also insanely exciting.

“How are you feeling about that, darling?” His mum’s voice was the same as ever, soft and caring, home. What had Phil even been worried about? Why had starting this conversation been so hard?

He drew in a breath. “I’m nervous. Scared. But it’s the right thing, mum, and Dan – Dan’s right for me. This is good.”

“So you’re happy?”

“The happiest.”

“Then that’s wonderful,” his mum soothed, “And everything will happen for the best. You just hold his hand out there in public and show the world how happy you are. That’s all I want for you, sweetheart.”

Phil was biting his lip, hard. “Thanks, mum.”

“Anytime, darling. Anytime.”

---

After he’d hung up with his mum, Phil curled up on the sofa staring blankly at some more Game of Thrones until the door blew open again. Dan came back into the flat with abandon, waving his phone in the air. “Tweeted a photo of our jackets for the premiere. Twitter’s already going crazy. And my agent’s setting up an audition for me, a stage show which sounds really exciting – why are you staring at Kit Harington’s face? Is one famous actor not enough for you?”

Phil blinked, drawing himself out of his thoughts and turning to find Dan standing over the sofa, pouting at him. “Hm?”

“Oh, nothing,” Dan flopped down on the sofa next to him, “Just wondering when you’re going to replace me.”

Phil shoved his side, then grabbed his hand. “You’re ridiculous. Come here.”

Dan nestled up against him, laying his head against Phil’s shoulder. Phil wrapped an arm around him and drew him in closer, pressing his face against Dan’s hair. It was straightened today, made neat for the people outside to see him. Phil much preferred it curly and messy, the Dan he knew, not Daniel Howell the actor.

He loved both parts of Dan’s life, but he was still scared of the public side. He’d adjust, he supposed, but it was just – scary.

“I told my mum,” Phil murmured into Dan’s hair, keeping him pressed close. “About us.”

Dan stilled in his arms. Then he turned his face up, met Phil’s gaze with questioning eyes. “You did?”

Phil nodded abruptly. He bit his lip. “She’s happy for me. For us. She’s going to watch the premiere with my dad and brother and his girlfriend, I think.”

Dan studied him, and then slowly smiled, just the hint of a dimple appearing. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Good,” Phil said after a moment, and pulled Dan into him. “I feel good.”

“Well,” Dan was properly smiling now as he clambered determinedly into Phil’s lap. “That’s good. I feel pretty good too.”

Phil held him, and glanced up, and hoped that every reaction would be as good as mum’s. But there was still the quiet voice in his head that said this wasn’t right – that his relationship with Dan somehow wouldn’t stand the test of prying eyes. After all, Dan might be bi, but Phil – Phil wasn’t. Phil was something else. And he didn’t quite know how to handle that when it came to something like this.

“What’s up, though?” Dan asked after a moment, in a moment of incredible telepathy. His fingers skimmed Phil’s arm, rubbing up and down in a soothing rhythm. “Something’s up. You’ve gone all quiet.”

Phil huffed, hiding a smile in Dan’s hair. “What’s wrong with being quiet?”

“Nothing, unless I can tell you’re hiding something,” Dan clarified, settling in Phil’s lap, still gently rubbing his arm. “What is it?”

Phil held his silence for a moment, and then let out a sigh. “I just – this is all a lot, you know?”

“I know,” Dan murmured gently. “Is it too much? We can stop anytime, you know – if you’re uncomfy—”

“No, that’s not it,” Phil disagreed with a quick shake of his head. “No, wow Dan, I just – I can’t wait to be able to hold your hand in public and not be constantly checking for cameras or any of your strange stalkerish fans to be following us.”

Dan stifled a smile. “Same, honestly.”

“Exactly. It’s just—” Phil paused, thinking his words over carefully before continuing. He didn’t really know what the source of the unsettling feeling growing in his stomach was, jangling around like nerves, twisting up his innards. Telling his mum had gone well. There’d been no questions at all. And that just – it threw Phil, a little.

Partly because he didn’t think he’d really said anything, yet. Not about him. People were just… assuming, and Phil worried they were assuming the wrong things.

He had no idea how to verbalise any of this.

But Dan was still looking up at him with something close to worry hidden in his gaze, and Phil didn’t want to leave that there. He wanted to wipe that look away, replace it with Dan’s smile.

“I suppose,” he started softly, “That my mum, and Tyler, and everyone – everyone we tell at the Premiere, everyone on Twitter – they’re all going to assume something about us that… isn’t true?”

Dan tilted his head questioningly. “Like what?”

“Well,” Phil floundered a bit, “They’re going to think that, like – we’re in a relationship? Which obviously we are, but – not in the way everyone thinks?”

Dan tilted his head. “I’m guessing you mean some of the more… physical stuff. Because of, like, you being ace.”

Phil bit his lip. It still shocked him, occasionally, to hear that word spoken out loud when it had lived alone in his head for so long. But he nodded. “Yeah. And I know it doesn’t matter really – I’m just glad to have you, and you understand and that’s all that matters, but—”

“But it’s still annoying to not be able to talk about it,” Dan said softly.

Phil nodded again, morose. “I don’t know why, exactly, even. I just… feel like everyone is assuming something about me, and it doesn’t always sit quite right.”

“I get it,” Dan said after a moment, still gently rubbing his hand up and down Phil’s arm. It was a soothing touch.

Phil leaned into him. “I shouldn’t care, I know. It shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“No, it should,” Dan disagreed. “It’s important. I get it – and I’m scared of that too, Phil, honestly.”

Phil sent him a quizzical look.

“Not in exactly the same way,” Dan said with a small, wry smile. “But – I’ve had relationships with girls before, you know. Publicly.”

“I know,” Phil replied, a little more darkly than he felt. He remembered all too well his deep google searches about Dan’s past with actresses.

Dan grinned. “Jealous. But yeah – people will know about them. I’m scared telling them about you will make people say I was lying before, somehow, or – or like those people were just shields, or whatever you want to say. But they weren’t. I loved those girls – I did. At the time.”

Phil bit his lip, drew in a breath. Hearing about Dan’s past relationships wasn’t really making him feel better. His fingers slid down to find Dan’s, gripping his hand hard.

Dan chuckled, leaning in. “Nothing to what I feel for you. Not even close, Phil.”

Phil looked down, embarrassed he’d needed that reassurance, but feeling better for it regardless.

Dan squeezed his fingers. “It’s just – if people see me with you, they’re going to assume I’m gay, that I’ve always been gay, that I’ve just been hiding it. But that isn’t true. I’m not gay.”

“Nor am I,” Phil agreed.

“I know.” Dan nestled in close, and then snorted. “We’re both coming out and everyone’s going to say we’re gay when that’s exactly what neither of us is.”

“Ironic,” Phil agreed, smiling despite himself. He held Dan close, hid his face in Dan’s hair, breathed him in. That was all he really cared about. Having Dan close.

Dan leaned into him, squished somehow in his lap despite the fact that Dan really was taller than him, and probably far too big for this. But Phil didn’t care. He liked holding Dan, having Dan lean into him.

“It doesn’t really matter, though,” Dan added, squeezing Phil’s hand again. “We know what we’re like. We can correct the people close to us when they get it wrong, and – and at the end of the day, it isn’t their business. We are us. That’s all that should really matter, and that’s all we’re showing next week. That we’re just… us.”

Phil glanced down at him, struck silent by those words. Dan had just said it perfectly.

Being them, Phil could do.

“Yeah,” Phil agreed, and squeezed Dan tight, pressed a kiss to the top of his head “Yes. Let’s just be us.”

[delicatefury]

Thoughts from the LCS (again)

We’ve got a pretty good sun-shower going on right now. It’s pretty damn perfect. I got a close parking spot (I don’t have an umbrella/rain-boots/raincoat so no walking when it’s a rainy day), but I still don’t want to walk out into it just yet. Sun-showers are the best. They’re just... perfect.

Two of the things I miss from my childhood in the midwest are weather related. I miss lightning heavy storms and I miss the wind. These two things are related, I think. 

Thunderstorms on the farm were amazing to watch, because we’d have gentle rain and some wind, but the sky would just light up. The best(worst/most amazing/terrifying/so hard to explain) were when it was night and wasn’t even a true thunderstorm. Just lightning. The thunder would be so loud because the strikes were literally hitting in the field across the road, but we’d stand by the door to the basement (midwest. We had storm doors that lead outside) or on the front porch and just watch the world be lit up in flashes of saturated blue-white.

The wind back home was much more present than it is anywhere else I’ve lived. Every day had some sort of breeze going on. And it was such a different wind too. It could come from any direction, but usually from the South or South-east. Even when it was strong there was still something soft and gentle about it. Not really a chilling wind. Not like the city or by the north atlantic, or in mountainous area. Those winds all seem to be more cutting, more driving. They may not be as strong, but they seem to push more, in a way.

Lent’s over. I was a terrible Catholic. I never went to church (I feel terrible about that) and I’m not sure if I stuck to my abstinence (not that kind. get your minds out of the gutter). BUT, I rediscovered my love of Reliant K (the old stuff at least). Some songs get ruined for me if I use them to get through a rough time (FUN.’s entire first album is associated with overcoming my depression/writing my senior thesis. Sometimes it can be hard to enjoy it). But I’ve listened to the first four Reliant K albums through the absolute worst periods of my life (and the best. Album #3 was my jam through my 18-day Europe tour in high school) and I can still go back. Any day, any time any mood. Cheesy? Maybe. But I don’t care.

Miraculous is a trash fandom and I’m sorry for spamming Ladybug and Chat Noir on my dash. It should be to the surprise of no one that Chat Noir aka Adrien is my favorite. I mean between having as heartbreaking of a home/family life as Obi-Wan (minus the genocide + up the overt child neglect by at least a factor of 10) and the utterly upbeat and kind personality of Luke Skywalker, how could I not love the sunshine child? If his home-life/shitty situation doesn’t get more screen-time next season (I like Marinette, but compared to being literally locked up in his home by paranoid parent and denied almost all outside contact for 14 years, her problems of promising to babysit/overcommitting her time/competing in a design-contest/talking to her crush just don’t really compare. And that’s not even touching the whole “child model/perfect son expectations/threat of being removed from school for any reason” thing) I will scream.

Writing Sample = not done. Part of this is fear. Part of this is difficulty. A major part is that my office is an absolute wreck and I’ve been distracted with thoughts of cleaning every time I sit down to work (not enough to actually clean, though, which is part of the problem).

Still haven’t made macarons. There is no excuse.

Didn’t make easter sugar cookies easter. Still no excuse.

I got today off, but tomorrow I have both the temp job and the part-time. It’s only a few more days. I might get Thursday off. I have 3 things to do today: 1) I have to do my taxes; 2) I have to file a maintenance request with the landlords. We turned the AC on last week and it leaked all over the basement. I can’t live w/o AC in this climate. I love living next to a river (dragonflies and fireflies and gulls and the bridges and boats and riverstones and-) but there’s no denying it gets muggy as hell the moment the weather passes from cool to warm. Until I splurge to buy a de-humidifier (which I won’t), the AC is what keeps the house livable. I need this fixed; 3) finish writing sample. #2 is finished and #3 probably won’t be, but #1 has to be done tonight.

I love my family, but could they all stop being so... put together? I know they’re not really, but every single one of my cousins now is married + children (except the one, but that’s entirely self-inflicted). Plus, 2 of them are doctors and I really don’t need to know the time-limit/how crazy it is to have children in your late 30′s.

In related news, I’m gonna start forcing myself to be social and joining my sister and coworkers when they go out after work. I may also re-sign up for Match. I’m perfectly fine with internet dating because the two guys I started dated via “normal” meeting ended up being either completely emotionally unsupportive or way too invested too quickly (who asks about biggest regrets on the second date? I have massive regrets tied up with self-esteem issues and depression that I barely share with my mother and sisters and they are literally the closest people to me).

I should probably buy another coffee if I’m gonna stay here any longer. I’m not even using the wifi. I’ve got comcast so my computer just automatically logs into the nearest xfinity hotspot if it’s available (I think it’s the vegan restuarant next door) but I still feel bad about taking the table.

I’m making myself a hat while I watch Miraculous and other assorted shows on my netflix queue. IF I get my office even a little cleaned up (I’m stealing my brother’s old desk. I love my art desk, but it’s beginning to get impractical/painful for typing) I’m gonna start binge-watching all the shows I feel weird about watching in the living room.

TDPL will be updated in April. Even if it’s only a scene or two and not the full chapter.

[beatiewolfe]

TEDMED2020 x Beatie Wolfe - the script

Talk In A Nutshell 

Beatie Wolfe brings the artful core of our humanity to life through music that highlights the depth of our human intention for storytelling and ceremony.

The Script

Opening Story

I’ve always loved the stories of albums, the tangibility of records and the ceremony of listening. From the time I started writing songs (age 8) and discovered my parents’ record collection, I saw records as musical books, with the artwork providing the perfect backdrop for the story, and I loved opening them up and entering into the world of the album. There was also a ritual to the occasion. I started imagining what my album could look like, what it could feel like, what worlds I could create. When it was time for my first album to be released, it was a very different era with the digital replacing the physical. So I thought about how to connect the two and that’s what my work became centred around. Reimagining the vinyl experience but for today.  

Statement Of Thesis: Music Is Core To Our Humanity

Why was this so important to me? Because music IS core to our humanity. We are a musical species more than anything else and music imprints on the brain deeper than any other human experience. 

I believe that there are three things that allow something to go deep, to stay with us and forever change us. These are: tangibility, storytelling and ceremony. 

Tangibility… as in a physical art form or space to explore… this could be a record jacket or the world’s quietest room… anything that grounds us in our present reality through a touchpoint. 

Storytelling in the broadest sense of the word, the ability for the artist or creator to tell a story through their work that can engage the imagination and transport us.

And lastly but perhaps most importantly… Ceremony, the space around and within the experience that allows us to go deep, to be fully immersed.

I believe that these three things set the stage for the music and allow it to imprint. Imprint so that every one of those experiences becomes a part of who we are and what we carry with us. This doesn’t just apply to music, it applies to anything, everything that helps to reconnect us with ourselves and one another. It’s these experiences that help to keep us alive inside. 

What Threatens These Musical Values Today?

Tangibility, storytelling and ceremony had always been part of the physical music listening experience and were just some of the things we lost when we moved to digital. 

The digital era created access, it presented solutions but it also created an idea that we could fast track a lot of what defined us as humans to begin with and without the true cost or value reflected in the process.

Music now floats around in its intangible sphere as part of the background noise along with everything else that sits there… news articles, notifications, calendar reminders, social media… everything occupying this same superficial stream of information that infiltrates our day-to-day lives, bombarding our sensory systems until we are numb, overloaded and fatigued. Music, and art, have become part of that constant background chatter and we have forgotten why they are so much more.

How Can We Rescue Music And Restore Our Humanity? Science 

There is a fine balance between what needs to be innovated and what needs to be preserved. So how do we reconcile the value of music and art in an industry that has decided that albums are obsolete and that singles need not be more than jingles, forgotten as easily as they are made? The opposite of imprinting. 

I found part of my answer in neurology. The great late Oliver Sacks studied the power of music extensively and grounded what a lot of us feel intuitively about music, in science. In Musicophilia, his book about music and the brain, he documents the impact of music for every neurological condition from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s, Autism to Schizophonia, showing how music is a remedy, a tonic, an orange juice for the ear. 

And I realised that there was no greater application of music than this healing application… using music to reconnect us with ourselves and one another when nothing else could.

A seed was planted in the back of my mind and when I found out that my grandmother had been diagnosed with dementia I decided to take my guitar with me the next time I visited her and play her my songs… because why not? 

Surprising Impact Of Live Performance For Patients With Dementia

Watching my grandmother transform from being confused and agitated to joyful and relaxed with just a song, moved me so deeply. I then decided to play for my father-in-law at his care home in Portugal and when the home director asked if I would play to everyone in the ward living with dementia and Alzheimer's, of course I agreed. Realising that no one in the home spoke English (except for my relative) and that my songs were unfamiliar to the residents, I expected a nice ambience at best. However watching people start to wake up, engage, clap along, even dance in their chairs, and become visibly reanimated from the music, just as Oliver had described, I realised that something important was happening. 

And then the director informed me it was the best he had seen the group in the 10 years he had been there.  

Something was crystalizing into view. What if music’s power was so strong, so interlinked with our own sense of self and wellbeing, that even without the memory component it could be a tonic, a remedy, a “way in”. What if it was the music and not the memory making the magic? In Musicophilia, Sacks had theorized that “music does not have to be familiar to exert its emotional pull” but he had not tested this. I had seen the tip of precisely this and wanted to see how much deeper it went.

Launch Of Research Project

Inspired by this insight, I began the Power of Music and Dementia research project with the Utley Foundation in 2014. The idea was to recreate what had occurred, naturally, in Portugal but this time with controls in place and the caregivers and doctors monitoring the residents. The intention was to show that even when memory was taken out of the equation the power of music prevailed.  

As part of this project, I went into care homes all across the UK and performed a set of my original songs while the residents were monitored both during the live performance and the weeks following as they listened to the same songs on headsets. 

The results were amazing. Both memory and communication were improved during the duration of the project and I saw some of the most powerful reactions to music I have ever seen. Reactions that imprinted on me forever.  

I watched David transform from a catatonic-like state to dancing. And Anne who had not spoken a word in 7 months; during the performance broke into song. Every one of these breakthroughs felt like the most vital link in the chain of our understanding about what moves us, what restores us, what makes us uniquely human. 

Global & Academic Recognition; Launch Of Charity

What began as a small research study in the UK was then recognized by leading academic and research institutions and was suddenly getting global attention. I found myself sitting with the top neurologists and brain experts as they picked my brain on the subject. And all because I asked a question, not as a doctor but as a musician. 

Today music for dementia is becoming a global movement. The charity, MusicForDementia2020, (established out of my project) is now actively working to get music in all care homes in the UK by the end of this year and I continue to work with them as an ambassador. 

Conclusion / Restatement Of Thesis: Core Power Of Music

So what did this teach me? It taught me to celebrate the experiences that keep us alive inside, that remind us of why we are here in the first place. At a time of more access than ever, how can we retain a sense of value? How can we choose to carve out deeper moments within the noise? How can we protect those endangered experiences that become our touchpoints, that shape our emotional sensibility, our identity, our wellbeing and create vast canyons and reserves in our very being?

We realise the importance of these choices when we realise the intrinsic value of music, and art, to us all as sentient beings.

When you have witnessed the power of music as medicine in this pure and concentrated way, which cannot be staged or fabricated. It either works or it doesn’t. When you see what music can do, even when language or memory are removed from the folds, see how the first few notes evokes a smile, a hand twitch, instantly, effortlessly and this builds and grows and it’s just them and the music... No tangible memories, no narrative, no point in time. Just them and the music, there and now. And the brain opens up like a flower, gently unfurling, presenting new pathways you never believed were there…

And you realise… that music is a necessity for those living with dementia because music is a necessity for every one of us. 

[plug2game-blog]

We keep in mind the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on - CNET

Disney World thing, seeing the last gasps of 1990s interactive games, and there it was. That Sonic Experience demo with the whale chase-- incredible to enjoy and dreadful to play.I wouldn't spend any quality time with the Dreamcast up until at least a year later on, however seeing that display was impressive for the time. At that point I still simply had a Genesis, so even a short glance of Sonic looking halfway-decent in 3D was a discovery. And no, Sonic 3D Blast does not count. Though I never purchased one myself, a buddy did, and it ended up being the go-to console for sleepovers and lost Saturdays. The mix of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power

Stone, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 which dreadful Chao Garden function from Sonic Experience 2 was more than enough to keep us playing that Dreamcast until long after it had actually died and everyone else carried on. Plus, its huge controllers were still better than the dreadful DualShock 2 on the PlayStation 2. That's simply a fact. Now playing: See this: Remembering the Sega Dreamcast at 20 Scott Stein I had every Sega system that was ever made. Yes, even the 32X. I was a Sega kid-- the Master System with Superscope 3D glasses was

my present after getting appendicitis. While the Genesis was my preferred, the Dreamcast is a place of special memories I

was residing in

LA, working as a script reader and story editor, and playing amazing NFL 2K video games to get in touch with my inactive sensations about the New york city Jets. That NFL 2K game stunned me ... it was the first TV-real sports game I 'd ever seen. Crazy Taxi was my LA commuting treatment. I loved the weirdness of Chu Rocket. And much more, I was obsessed with Seafarer. My very first E3 I ever attended had the Dreamcast, and I saw the Leonard Nimoy-voiced fish-man in all its Lynchian scary. Seaman was so ahead of its time: It had a microphone I might talk to Seaman with. It resembled if Alexa were a depressed cannibal fish. In my dusty little Sherman Oaks house, Seamanwas my

mystic surrealist fish tank. In addition to the Museum of Jurassic Innovation in Culver City, it was part of my cabinet of curiosities that made me imagine how weird art might be. Area Channel 5, the remarkably real-feeling Shenmue, and yes, I owned Typing of the Dead. It was a great system of video gaming oddities.The Dreamcast was little and magnificently developed, had arcade-perfect games, and was my first real online gaming system.

May it rest in peace in my mom's basement.Rez Infinite is a modernized variation of the Dreamcast classic. Other than the graphics, very little else was changed. Dan Ackerman The Dreamcast was

the first console launch I ever covered as a beginner "video games journalist" at the long-forgotten (however pioneering!) games-and-culture site UGO.com. My colleagues and I all spent for launch day bundles, and Soul Calibur was everybody's instant favorite.We all wound up playing a great deal of meeting room Soul Calibur with UGO's most well-known staff member, previous kid star Gary Coleman. Gary was a total fiend for Soul Calibur, and frequently held court in our Park Opportunity office, taking on all challengers and giving unlimited foul-mouthed garbage talk. He was really pretty excellent, and probably had an 8 out of 10 win ratio.Other early Dreamcast highlights for me consisted of Power Stone, Shenmue, a Local Evil knockoff

called Blue Stinger( I bet I'm the just one considering that a shoutout), and bizarre fish simulator Seaman. When my now-wife utilized the Dreamcast microphone accessory to inform Seaman she was going to consume him, he replied," Or maybe I'm going to eat you." If that's not next-gen, I don't know what is.I've come back to the Dreamcast a couple of times because its 2001 discontinuation, discussing it on my old talking head video game web series Play Worth( circa 2006), and taking a deeper dive for the Dreamcast's 10th anniversary, which I blogged about here. Would I buy a brand-new

" Dreamcast Classic "micro console? Definitely. Would I plug it in more than as soon as or twice? Probably not.Tim Stevens My Dreamcast memories are a little different than the majority of. Like Scott I was a Sega kid and, like Scott, I too owned( and still own) every Sega system. But my memories of the Dreamcast weren't a lot about video gaming as they were about coding. Lots and lots and great deals of coding.I was in college studying computer science and

composing when the Dreamcast dropped, and my dream was to combine those passions and get a gig in the videogame market after graduation. It was time to select a senior thesis, therefore I blindly emailed some folks at Sega to see if there was any way I might get consent to write a simple game for their hot new console.Amazingly, I got an action. As it turns out I would not be allowed to

develop anything for the Dreamcast-- the advancement hardware alone cost thousands of dollars and I was lucky if I might manage pizza on Friday night-- but I was admitted to the Visual Memory Unit designer package. The VMU, you might keep in mind, was the small, Game Boy-looking thing that slotted into the controller. It had a small, gray and black LCD, a four-way D-pad and a number of buttons.Games for the VMU were written in assembler, an arcane language I 'd never ever been exposed to in my research studies. If that weren't daunting enough, the

only documentation for the VMU package remained in Japanese, another language I didn't speak. In spite of all that I figured it out over the list below few months, then labored and labored and toiled to compose what would be the first-- and to my understanding only-- multiplayer VMU video game. You could, you see, connect two of the mini handhelds together at the top thanks to a cunning, reversible connector. I composed a Pong-like video game played vertically, with the ball taking a trip from one screen to the next, back and forth. Establishing that game, plus another simple, Simon-like video game, consumed my senior year at school. The resulting code, when printed out for my final thesis discussion,

filled a binder as big as a phone book. Along the method I learned enough about the game development market to recognize it wasn't for me, however that project, just me and my text editor toiling for months, is still the programming task I look back upon a lot of fondly. The recently remastered version of Shenmue. Jeff Bakalar I was 17 when the Dreamcast released and was working for a dotcom start-up run by 3 21-year-olds. I remember the day it went on sale

, among the partners bought it for same-day shipment

from a service called UrbanFetch.It showed up and we didn't do any work for the rest of the day. It was just nonstop Ready 2 Rumble. I recall being instantly pleased with how crisp the visuals were. It was a level of fidelity I hadn't ever seen before. Whatever appeared so fast, so innovative

, so futuristic. The Dreamcast showed up in between the other console cycles, so it seemed like we were getting a really early glance into what the remainder of the competitors would quickly be providing. I didn't end up owning my own

Dreamcast till college, however I ultimately fell for Sonic Adventure, problems and all. I played many of the Burial place Raider and Local Evil video games on the Dreamcast too. The Dreamcast will always have a place in my heart for its ridiculous memory card adapters, its primarily horrible controller and the outrageous speed at which its disc reader would spin and change, like some type of dot-matrix printer that went off the rails.Jason Parker I never ever actually owned a Dreamcast, but for a duration in my life, I could not

get enough of one video game: Fighting Vipers 2. It was while I remained in college and among my good friends had a Dreamcast, so when we were not out in the evening or studying, we 'd invest hours fighting match after match.The funny thing is, it wasn't called Fighting Vipers 2 as far as I knew at that time.

My buddy had a

bootlegged copy on a disc and whatever composed on the sleeve remained in Japanese, as was all the on-screen text in the game. I even had to count on him to launch video games because I couldn't navigate the menus. At the time, he discussed the video game wasn't offered in the States, however it didn't officially pertained to Dreamcast till 2001 and never in the United States. Now playing: Enjoy this: Our most cherished video game memories. 8:00 Once he started a match, it was button-mashing paradise. I remember being blown away at the crisp 3D graphics and cool-looking fighters at that time. But the best mechanic of all, and most likely the greatest factor I loved the game, was that you might kick your challenger through the wall of the arena at the end of the match. Possibly that sounds ridiculous, but fighting games in between good friends can get tense. When you can send your pal through the wall at the end of a long fight it's an exclamation point like no other. We

'd get significant about it too, shouting" Boooooooom!" as we 'd blast the other person about 50 lawns beyond the cage. No, I didn't own a Dreamcast, due to the fact that I was a poor college student, however I still have

fond memories of stomping out my good friend in Great Buddy 2Battling" You're going through the wall! "Jet Set Radio on the PC, running at 2,560 x1,440 pixels with mostly the very same possessions as the original, still looks terrific. Sean Keane The Dreamcast was the most amazing console I never owned. Games like Homeowner Evil: Code Veronica,

Sonic Adventure and the mighty Shenmue, and functions like online video gaming and the VMU made me want one terribly, however I simply couldn't manage it as a 12-year-old. Code Veronica looked unbelievable

at the time of its release-- replacing fixed prerendered environments with completely 3D ones and bringing n't rather satisfied ... but it's fine. I'm fine.Sonic Experience appeared like an extraordinary growth of Sega's mascot into 3D, even if it's misery to play today. That whale chase looked fantastic

at the time and it seemed the obvious advance for Sonic after Mario's wonderful transition into 3D. Shenmue was the big one however-- a remarkable life simulator with an abundant open world that was extraordinary. Seeing Ryo Hazuki wandering around Yokosuka, Japan, as he tries to unravel the secret of his daddy's murder was remarkable, and something I just got to experience fully through the current remaster. Eric Franklin I bought the original Japanese Dreamcast from

" http://www.ncsx.com/" target =" _ blank" data-component=" externalLink" rel=" noopener" > NCSX back in November 1998 and got 2 video games: Pen Trilcelon and Virtua Fighter 3tb. While Pen Pen was and still is dreadful, VF3 was anything however! Why did I pay a premium to have this system imported? I was a Sega fanboy and the Dreamcast was where I might continue playing Sega video games beyond the defunct Sega Saturn. But as much as I enjoyed playing the Dreamcast, recalling now, it's clear to me what it truly represented for me: A last possibility at console success for Sega. I got a Sega Master System in 1987 and from then through the end of the Dreamcast's life I was not just bought playing Sega video games, however also extremely invested-- emotionally, to be sure-- in Sega's success as a console designer. It's most likely unusual for people to comprehend

that, however here's the way I saw it: The more effective Sega's consoles were, the more terrific Sega games the company would make. I not only wished to play those video games, however to likewise have other people discover how excellent they were. To see in them what I saw in them: Games with great graphics and simple gameplay that belied a depth you had to reveal. You could play Crazy Taxi like a normal individual,

sure. But if you didn't use the Crazy Dash and the Crazy Stop, which allowed you to go from 0 to 60 in less than a second and quickly stop, then you weren't playing it right. That desire and require for the Dreamcast to be successful was genuine.

Even at the time I knew that if the Dreamcast didn't offer a particular variety of systems, Sega would likely leave the hardware company, which the business eventually did. And the anticipation of each brand-new big release was addictive for me. It was less about how much

I would like Shenmue and more about whether it would push enough mainstream audience buttons to make people purchase a Dreamcast over a PS2. It's ridiculous to think of now, however that was me. I think I simply required something to distract me from my genuine life at the time. For a couple of strong years, it was the

Dreamcast. Presents for the player who has

everything: Please that hard-to-shop-for PC player in your life. CNET's Vacation Present Guide: The very best tech gifts for 2018.

[haroldpm-blog1]

MDM691 Professional Practice

This year has been an emotional roller coaster, first with the beginning of this journey. Then hurricane Irma and Maria hit my home Puerto Rico. My parents, both sick, lived months without electricity, while I only had to go without for two days here in Florida. Just a couple of months after Maria my father passed away. Getting through all of these courses and staying focused was a struggle. Like it is shown in my experience map (see below), I had my ups and downs. I failed, I had to withdraw, but I had one goal and that was FINISH what I started. One of my motivations was my father, who was fighter until his last breath. Never Quit!

Even though it was very tough, I had to continue. Even with all the struggles, I grew so much. I’m a completely different person now. Not only did I grow on a personal level, but there was professional and academic growth too. 

My first course was Mastery: Personal development and leadership. This course helped me greatly as to what I was going to go through. When I started I didn’t know how to write an APA style essay. This course gave me the necessary tools to complete one. Besides that, it also gave me a clearer idea of who I am and what my goals are in life. Doing the Grit Scale, helped me a lot with understanding this. 

The second course, Defining Client Needs. What an experience! Out of all the courses this was one of my favorites. This course helped me to better understand InDesign, which for me was one of the software programs that I didn’t have very much experience in. Also, I gained the knowledge of typographic design, which I enjoyed greatly. 

In Brand Development, I did one of the things I am most passionate about, branding. From creating a logo, to the choosing of the fonts and getting the right colors, and then finding the right audience and researching the competition. From that, to create a branding campaign that will capture the attention of the brand. This course helped me to understand how to research and find concepts to attract the audience. Also, another thing I learned was how to respond to an RFP (Request for a Proposal). I have never done one before and this gave me the necessary tools to complete this.

Effective Copywriting was the next course to complete. For me, personally, I was very scared. English is not my first language and due to that fact, I thought I was going to fail. But, the experience was completely different. I got to create testimonials ads for a non-profit which their work I’m very passionate about. Besides that, it helped to improve my writing skills. I was very afraid, but this helped me to get better and better. 

The next course, Design Research, was very challenging. The first thing I heard was web design. I learned to start with a sketch and with that sketch develop it into a website. I never thought I was going to be doing this in a million years, but I did it, and I’m very proud of my final product. Learning how to develop the sketch, making that into a wireframe, and turning that into comp.

Then we go to Organizational Structures. What a ride! Design a video, yes, video. First, we started by designing a logo though vector artwork. I had worked with vector artwork before, but not at this level. Then, from that art work we created a motion graphic. Not only did we have to create the motion graphic, it then had to be implemented into a promotional video. It was a great course. Working with Adobe After Effect and Premier Pro opened a new area for me that I thought was never going to be possible. 

Now the fun begins with Design Strategies and Motivation. This course helped understand the importance of iteration and good organization. We had to create a map of how we were going to elevate our work to the next level that we would follow in the upcoming months. This helped me to understand that the work never stops. To be great, we must continue to iterate and elevate our design to the next level.

Continuing with the iteration, we go to Design Integration. In this course I had to go back to the beginning and revisit my work that I wanted to revise. Which was a great opportunity to get that work to the level needed for our final presentation, The Thesis Presentation. It helped me look over the work that I have done and see the flaws with the new skills acquired since I first started in the program. In this course I revised my Rainy Day Toys logo and design and took it to a to point where I got to revise other work related to it. 

In Multi-Platform Delivery I got to finish what I started in the previous course. I revisited the Rainy Day Toys campaign and re did it. But this time with the skills learned in Design Research and Organizational Structures, I got to do the website with motion graphics for Rainy Day Toys. This was the cherry on the top. The feedback received, the skills learned from tutorials, and how the instructor pushed me to do more helped me to do great and push myself to be great.

Measuring Design Effectiveness was very challenging. I had to go back 10 years when I finished my BA and do questionnaires. This course helped me to understand the importance of opinions. All feedback matters and is very important to complete a design that is going to be successful and to deliver a message. This course also helped me learn not to take the feedback received personal. Not everybody will like my work, that is fine, but the important part is that the message was delivered properly to the ones who did like it. 

Next, we went on to Presentation of Design Solutions. This course was a defining moment in my development. This was the thesis, the moment we were all waiting for. We had to present our work to a committee that would review it and decide if it was worthy of the MFA. This course showed me how to properly present using storytelling. It is, after all, very important to get the attention of the audience. Not only that, but I also learned how to use the Wix.com platform that now-a- days is used to prepare many websites for many different companies. 

To end the program, which is bitter sweet, we go to Professional Practice. This course took me back to revisit not only my work, but the emotion felt throughout this year. As we also learned about the ethics in the industry and how useful they are going to be in our careers as designers. We also created an experience map that helped me to understand that I’m not a weak person, I am very strong. After all that I have been through, to excel in something that I’m very passionate about is very rewarding. 

Next is my MDMFA experience map. This assignment, as mentioned before, brought out a lot of emotions I thought I had passed, but no, I was wrong. Going from month to month looking as an outsider at all the things I learned, all the things I went through, and how I overcame every one of the obstacles in the way. I couldn’t be more grateful for this experience. I laughed, I cried, I was angry, I was frustrated, but I’m here submitting my final assignment of my journey into completing my MFA.  Words can’t express the excitement I have today. The map will show all of it, when I was up, when I was down, when I fell, and when I got up.