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the-final-sif · 4 years

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interview about writing processes

Hey Lady Sif,

thank you for taking time for us and agreeing to answer our interview questions.

Since this was of short notice we decided to change the deadline to June 19.

We hope the time frame suits you.

Here are our questions:

Can you shortly describe us your writing history? How did you start off? How did you come across fanfiction?

Do you have a writing philosophy that helps you overcome challenges in writing?

Could you describe your writing environment? (workplace, prefered writing tools, fandom discourse, discourse with friends)

What inspires you to write and post in and for a fandom? What triggers your headcanons? Does your educational background influence your writing?

In how far does your fandom experience influence your writing?

In how far do you work with others to create fan content? And what ideas do you integrate in your writing?

Are there certain steps you take/decisions you make when/before responding to a post/prompt?

When and why did you decide to host writing events like your fake fics event? What was the purpose and how did you approach the title prompts?

How would you describe the difference between writing alone and writing spontaneously with others (first in creating fan theories and headcanons and second in creating fanfiction)?

Do you think knowing that others read and can comment on your texts subconsciously influences your writing?

What motivated you to create a story where your readers can decide for an ending (name)?

Is there anything else you consider important in your writing process that you would like to tell us?

Thanks again for your time and effort, we are very much looking forward to your answers!

If you’re interested we’ll keep you updated on our findings.

Kind regards, Dana and Helena

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Can you shortly describe us your writing history? How did you start off? How did you come across fanfiction?

I started writing when I was very young! I was a huge reader, and even before I was writing stuff down I was a storyteller. It’s a really important part of my family & how we communicate with each others and others.

My first experience with fanfiction was when I was,, 7 or 8? That sounds about right. I hand wrote a fanfiction called “ShoppingCats” which something between warrior cats and Cats vs Dogs, but also made primarily of my OCs (+ a handful of warriors characters I liked). I still have most of it, it’s sitting in my desk drawer in it’s original binder, since my mother saved it.

I came across fandom spaces / online fanfiction in 2012 with fanfiction.net, and published my first fanfiction in 2013 (under Rosae-Sif on fanfiction.net). I’ve taken breaks as my interests changed & life got chaotic, but I’ve always enjoyed retelling stories that I hear and changing them to suit me more / explore new themes, so I’ve stuck with it after all this time.

Do you have a writing philosophy that helps you overcome challenges in writing?

Yes! I write for myself above all else. It’s fun to write stuff for other people sometimes, and I like getting feedback and what not, but I never let that be the focus of my writing. I always try to write what I want to be reading, so when I go back and reread what I’ve written, more often than not I find I’ve produced something that makes me happy, and that helps keep me going when a lot of other things couldn’t.

Could you describe your writing environment? (workplace, prefered writing tools, fandom discourse, discourse with friends)

Uhhh, I don’t really have any one set thing. I mostly write on my laptop, sometimes I use a notebook + pen. I have 5$ fountain pen that I got that I really love when I have writer’s block.

I think the most consistent “workplace” for me is actually discord/my friends. Almost all of my AUs/fics/ideas start as me storytelling (either typing things out or out loud) to someone else. That’s where the spark comes from, and then that slowly is refined through several iterations until I have something I like.

I really like taking long walks with headphones & nobody else around. That’s when a lot of the very early forms of my favorite ideas come to me. It’s a key part of my writing process the few times I get stuck on stuff too. I just go walk till I figure it out.

I don’t really get involved in discourse much. I like debating people, but I try to stay away from destructive stuff and just have my own fun corner where I create things. I’m in fandom for fun, and I refuse to let me experience be tainted by people who try to turn it into Discourse Central.

What inspires you to write and post in and for a fandom? What triggers your headcanons? Does your educational background influence your writing?

As I mentioned before, I write and post primarily for myself! I have a lot of ideas in my head all the time, and things I want to see, so I create those things and then put them here. It’s fun when other people interact with me + add onto my ideas + create things in response!

My headcanons are usually just kinda,,,, coming out of my brain. I think it’s just how I am. I have a question or a thought and I start looking into it and before I know it, a whole new thing has come out of it.

I think my family actually influenced a lot of my writing style more than anything else. I mean, I was homeschooled for a long time, and my parents were very encouraging of whatever weird projects I was creating (my dad once even let me cut down and drag actual brambles into the basement to create a warriors style fort). I was allowed to dress however I wanted (during high school I worn nothing but PJ pants b/c they were most comfy for me, and also I had/have several capes that I would rotate through), I was allowed to dye my hair (still do! it’s current a side shave in red + purple + blue!), and I was encouraged to just,,, be weird and happy. I think that shows in how I write. I pursue the ideas I want to go after, I indulge myself, I commit to thinks and I focus more on what I want to write rather than what I feel I should write.

That being said, a lot of science nerding that comes out in my writing is def from my educational background. I’ve got a bachelors and stuff. I did take some writing classes, but to be honest, I think my fanfiction experience influenced those a lot more than they influenced my fanfiction (years and years of writing constantly and quickly paid off in college where I would BS papers the night before and get top marks on it).

In how far does your fandom experience influence your writing?

Hmm, I don’t think it does that much? I mean, for the BNHA fandom in particular, I think that seeing all the cool content + ideas other people create really keeps my brain chugging along and creating new things, and god, having seen people make fanart and fanfiction for my stories has been one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced, but I don’t think that’s really changed how I’m writing.

At my core, I’m still doing the same thing my 8 year old self was doing with her pencil and that binder full of paper. I take the strange thoughts out of my head, and I follow them onto the paper until I create something that makes me happy.

I’ve had some negative experiences of course. I mean, everyone does. They’ve all been fairly minor, mostly just people trying to tell me I’m wrong about stuff that’s either in an AU that’s already not supposed to be canon, or stuff I’m right about. Most of the time it’s just annoying. Sometimes it’s concerning. I ignore or delete the annoying stuff, I don’t want to give it any of my time or attention.

The concerning stuff I try to reply to. It’s been rare, but sometimes I get comments on certain fics trying to tell me what’s being depicted in my fic isn’t abusive when it absolutely is. I try to correct that and link to resources when I do get that. I usually don’t get a reply, but a few times I’ve had people realize that what they thought was normal was actually abusive behavior. I’m happy that I’m able to help people come to that realization.

In how far do you work with others to create fan content? And what ideas do you integrate in your writing?

Hmmm, I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure how to answer this one. I don’t exactly work with others when creating my fan content? All of my writing (save one RP collab homestuck fic from ages ago) is done by me exclusively, and most my ideas are also mostly from my own brain. Although I will say one exception to that is @windschildfanfictionwriter whose an amazing bnha writer I chat with fairly frequently when I need help figuring something out.

It’s less of “working” with people, and more discussing things/ideas, and being excited about stuff. Sometimes literally all I need is someone to be my rubber duck while I talk about an idea for 2-3 hours to get it solidified. People in my discord server often help me by betaing (editing/reviewing) my wips. My adhd means I often make weird mistakes, and they’re wonderful at helping me catch that.

As for ideas I pull into my writing, it’s hard to pick out specific ones. I think I kinda create + absorb + integrate lots of stuff at once. A lot of the times my ideas don’t come from things other authors write, but instead come from things other authors didn’t write. When I see an thought/idea/thread in a story that isn’t followed up on, or isn’t handled how I think it should be handled, that often inspires me to either use a similar base concept or similar thought but in the way I wish it had been done.

Are there certain steps you take/decisions you make when/before responding to a post/prompt?

Not really? I tend to just go with whatever comes to me or what I already had prepared. I’m rather impulsive, so unless it’s a delicate subject matter, I roll with whatever’s going on.

I do always make myself take a step back before responding to stuff that annoys me/any sort of anon hate. I have to remind myself it’s not worth the effort and I should focus on positive/fun stuff. I’ll admit though, I have a very combative nature that can get the better of me sometimes. I’ve gotten better at that though! Hooray for proper adhd medication to help prevent destructive stimulus seeking behavior and therapy! Although I do still like to debate stuff for fun, I just don’t let myself get hostile about it.

When and why did you decide to host writing events like your fake fics event? What was the purpose and how did you approach the title prompts?

Oh, I just saw the post and thought it looked fun so I reblogged it. Stuff like that is mostly an impulse more than anything else.

I just kinda went with the flow for the titles. God, I got so many of those, I still have a lot of them sitting in my inbox, most of which I probably won’t ever post. For the ones I did do though, I picked ones that sounded like fic titles I would actually use, and then asked myself what sort of story I would use that title for. Then I just kinda wrote whatever came to me.

How would you describe the difference between writing alone and writing spontaneously with others (first in creating fan theories and headcanons and second in creating fanfiction)?

Hmmm. This one is also a bit hard. It’s rare I truly “write alone”, most of my stories start as a form of oral storytelling and then are adapted to “proper” writing. Most of my theories/headcanons start the same way.

You’ll notice a lot of my posts start with “Also” “Okay” or “I’ve been thinking” or “You know”. When I’m writing my headcanon/theory posts, it’s all written very conversationally because I’m still following my family’s storytelling in a way. It’s a public post, but I’m not just making statements to a void. I’m still talking to people, addressing them, leading them through stuff. It’s just how I communicate on a very fundamental leave.

I’m still writing for myself, I’m creating for myself, but I’m doing it with others. I’m telling a story constantly, and sometimes I’m telling that story to myself, but I’m still telling it to someone.

I think you can read that in my fics, with the perspective I tend to use. I use limited third person POV, but when I’m writing, I try to write it how the character I’m writing from the POV of would tell their own story. I’m not just describing what’s happening, I’m letting this character tell their story through their own voice, to others, to me. It’s a core part of my writing, and that makes it hard to say that it was ever really written alone.

Do you think knowing that others read and can comment on your texts subconsciously influences your writing?

I mean, it’d be impossible for it not to. But I don’t think it influences me that much. I’m still writing for myself most of the time, and I hold onto my bullshit tightly. I don’t change my writing based on what I think other people want to see from me.

That being said, it’s still something I think about. It’s more of a conscious choice, but specifically regarding my stories that have abuse in them, I try to connect in elements of realism and common underrepresented traits/habits of abuse (which I do try to check via research when I can) and ensure that they are then called out as what they are. I’ve gotten a number of comments/asks/discord messages from people telling me that my works helped them realize they were in a crappy situation / understand what they were going through, and that’s something that’s important for me.

I think The Green Eyed Monster is an example of that, where I explore platonic stalking/obsession/pressuring. It’s something I don’t see taken seriously often enough, so I wanted to frame it in a serious but realistic light and make it clear that what was happening was wrong and harmful. I wanted to explore this concept, but I purposefully did it in a way that I hoped would help others who might’ve dealt with it on some level understand it for what it was, and I think it really shows. In the comments of that fic, there’s a lot of very personal responses/stories from people who went through similar experiences. I think that’s important, so it’s something I try to do when I can.

The other thing is I do 100% put references/lines in certain stories with an evil grin on my face knowing that a certain handful of my commenters are going to rip their hair out over it, either because they have no idea what I mean by it, or they know exactly what I mean by it. But hey, I’m a hurt/comfort writer at heart, so you can hardly blame me.

What motivated you to create a story where your readers can decide for an ending (name)?

Oh, uh, “Seven Year Old Katsuki Has The Ability To Kill A Grown Man And No Concept Of Legality”.

I actually can’t remember the exact inspiration for this one? I think I saw uhhh, Markiplier, playing a text adventure game, and I got curious about creating something similar.

I considered using a platform meant for text based games, but true to my family’s long history of needlessly complicating things and creating things where they aren’t meant to be created out of some mix of spite and creative hubris, I decided I wanted to make it on A03 instead. I looked up a style formatting guide, and went to work.

That whole project took like 1-2 months, around school work and everything else. It was created entirely using links that sent you to the next page. That’s it. That’s the only ‘code’ functionality I had to work with. So I made a whole paper map of the routes, separating them out into “steps” and then created unique text blocks for each step based on prior choices. I used a secret point system for one of the main routes, and ended up with 97 unique steps, and 155 different text blocks/variations.

Fun project. A03 was having some trouble/going down right after I released it, and to this day, certain members of the discord server still blame me for that as I was forcing the website into bullshit it was not meant to contain.

Is there anything else you consider important in your writing process that you would like to tell us?

Nothing I can think of off the top of my head. Other than maybe I have an African Gray named Cecil, and sometimes when I’m not ready to share an idea with humans, I’ll talk it out with him first. He’s an excellent listener sometimes, and by that I mean he’s usually ignoring me or I’m giving him scratches and he’s not paying my rambling any mind.

Though sometimes I get lucky and when I finish up a point and ask for his opinion, he’ll just look at me for a moment and say “I love you.” He does it because I’ll always cave and give him treats since I’m weak for him, but it still makes me smile.

#sif speaks #sif answers #my writing #long post #if there's anything else #just let me know!#submission

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polyamoroamer · 4 years

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Earth in My Fingers

'I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth...' Hamlet, Act 2, Scene II

Right now the world is a whirling catastrophe of ignorance, cruelty, malice and ill-intent. Cops resign en masse in protest of their colleagues facing some meagre form of justice for their murders and assaults and rapes. People rage and fling up Nazi salutes against the Black Lives Matter protestors just desperate to change the world for the better. Famous authors with worldwide audiences demonise trans women and infantilise trans men in the same breath. People in Yemen face all of the Four Horsemen at once and the ghoulish spectre of incoming extinction. Children and adults languish in concentration camps, prisoners die like flies from this sudden disease that grips us in its claws. We have a prat as president and a pillock as prime minister. People protest against wearing a mask because they don't want to risk the chance that they might inadvertently save someone's life by wearing one.

Every day some new horror emerges, some new enemy of peace and gentleness.

On a personal level, my elders, my family, are disintegrating before my eyes. Hospital, cancer, grief, abuse, unknown maladies that sap the strength from legs and hands both. Grief upon grief pours in through my door every day, as I think it does for everyone right now. This is a bad year for love, for friendship, for family and care.

My brain, like that of many others, can only take so much grief before it tries to destroy its fleshy home with knives, fingernails and teeth, walls and scalding water.

So as of late I have taken to my garden. I have quit the campervan for the last few weeks and have spent them wrist deep in mud and earth instead. I have removed over a quarter ton of rubble from its grave under my mother's garden and have replaced it with raised beds of vegetables and leafy greens; a herb spiral built of rubble remnants, guarded by a hagstone and a small fairy made of twigs and leaves and charcoal; a trench for beans and peas, a small space saved for a pumpkin; a wheelbarrow that will tumble with nasturtiums and strawberries when I am done. I have bought clover seeds to sow in with the grass when I scatter it on the paths between. Another crop, a lawn, a footpath. They will be one and the same.

My hands are tougher now, rougher than even the woodwork made them, always with dirt under my nails, earth in the cracks between my fingers.

I have spent every day tearing out brambles, knotted couchgrass and tangled roots, ivy and the dead wood of an old, felled tree. I have harvested sage and lavender. My room is hung with over sixty bunches of sweet smelling herbs, to do with as I will. I am experimenting, crumbling some and burning it as incense, bundling some into smudges to chase out bad dreams and welcome slumber in.

I have given bundles and smudges of freh and dried herbs away, to bless my friends' homes with my love and well wishes as well as the sleep and peace I hope they will bring. It is all I can do. I cannot fix the wrongs of the world, I cannot argue every waking hour with intolerance and ignorance. I must pick my battles. I stand where I can and take refuge when I must. But I can grow things. I can learn the ways of plants and soil (if not now then when?). I can give these small gifts to those I love, to those who could use some peace. I can tell stories in the silence of my home, teach myths and legends to my eager partner even if I cannot face continuing my online storytelling presence. The words are heard. They fall in soft, dry places like rain and yet more stories flourish there. Dash has started reading, devouring books like his dyslexic brain has suddenly understood something small and different. He has subverted a cat. It is pleasant to have her sitting on our bed when she takes a fancy to it, me bundling herbs to dry, Dash reading and her quietly watching the rain fall outside.

We fiercely savour every moment of peace and comfort, sieze every opportunity for celebration because God knows we need something to celebrate.

The earth in my fingers, the dirt under my nails, this reminds me that something here lives, survives, thrives because of me, because of these thin-boned hands. I need something to nurture. Dash has his cat, Petra has her best friend-cum-child, my mother has us, and I have my plants.

Self care can be the strangest of things. I light my room with candles every night because it's softer than electric, and it feels safe to me, like home. My mother has always fed us by candlelight, put us to bed in our heavy canvas tents by the glow of pierced tin lanterns, spoken deeply with us by the light of a wick. I take baths like everyone says to do, but I turn the lights off and fill the room with candles. I make calming playlists of fantasy soundtracks from Oblivion, Skyrim and How To Train Your Dragon. I set my alarm half an hour before I want to get up and allow myself thirty minutes to doze. I cut herbs. I turn earth. I go to look at my kitchen garden, to see how it grows when I'm not looking, to think 'I did that'.

We all have our ways, we all have our needs. I find myself wanting to offer to post herbs, bundled and smudges and bunches, to those of you on here who would like them, but I know I can't afford the postage, don't have the mental fortitude to make it to the post office and back. But I still want to wish you all peace and lavender-sweet sleep, scented gentle dreams. I'm sure you're all as exhausted as I am. Thank you for keeping going, for continuing to exist, however you're managing it.

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diabolikmosquito · 5 years

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Tag Game because I have no self-restraint

@the-mostdiabolik-of-lovers posted this one with permission for anyone to tag themselves so obviously I’m gonna take it and run. My asks are empty and I’ve been craving ask games and surveys lately, sue me. Putting it under a cut so I don’t clog anyone’s dash!

Gender: Female Star sign: Taurus Current time: 8:15 PM, though it’ll prolly be later by the time I finish typing this all out. Favorite song artists: Don’t make me choose. A lot of my favorite music is instrumental OST’s, though an instrumental artist or two that I love are ones like Jami Sieber, Brambles, Otto A Totland, and Joep Beving. For non-instrumental.. there’s a lot. Ellise, SYML, Nico Collins, Frank Sinatra, and Bohnes are a few I’ve had in some playlists lately, but there’s way too many. Favorite songs: This is harder than the last one and I am not obligated to answer it. (’: But if you’re someone who reads my samples or threads, you might find some of my favorite OST’s/mood musics that suit the post/hint at something hidden in there. Song stuck in your head: Again, these change so often daily it’s hard to pick one, but a handful include A Little Messed Up by june, Dance Monkey (the slowburn edit), and way more OST’s than are healthy. (Highlights for that include the original Medievil soundtrack, which for some reason reminds me of Castlevania at times.) Last movie you saw: Birds of Prey! I almost didn’t go due to not feeling great, so I’m glad I bucked up and saw it with some friends. Last thing I googled: If you ignore the numerous Castlevania-related things in the last 24 hours, then it’s “cat keeps sneezing.” If not, then it’s “castlevania vampire generals” because being totally frank, I didn’t even know the generals with no lines in the first two seasons had names until recently. Other blogs: I haven’t been on it in ages and actually forgot the password, but once I get on that I’ll get back to you. xD Do you get asks? Not really, but I stick around for the people who’re kind enough to take that interest! I keep all the ask/rp prompts tagged neatly in links on my profile so if someone new comes by one day and wants to interact, it’ll be easy for them to. Reason for your url: The original concept for Pepper was very much a mosquito-like cryptid created for a certain purpose, hence the mosquito. The diabolik part is because I originally joined Tumblr to find a community for Diabolik Lovers (due to some other writing sites being very.. standoffish if you don’t write canons/don’t exclusively write gay ships), but now it’s just all kinds of vampire hell. Once I actually get into some more vampy verses you can bet I’ll be writing/reblogging stuff from those as well! and yes I am looking for more recommendations in that vein (heh, puns) if anyone has some. Average amount of sleep: Erm.. 3-12 hours. During the week it’s about 3-5, and weekends is sometimes my “catch up” time where I still stay up quite late, but actually sleep in to let my body get some rest. Lucky number: It’s always been 9, and it tends to come up a lot in odd places so I might have to stick with it. Currently wearing: An old super comfy high school t-shirt and shorts, complete with a coat of long hair courtesy of my cat who was just laying on me. Dream job: Honestly? Still figuring that out. I’m going on a clinical psych track at the moment, but I’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching and testing to see if I’m actually strong enough for the therapist/clinician route I was originally after. I just don’t know if I’m strong enough just yet to settle into a job where I could very well have to help abusers in their early stages, something that I have no doubt will be upsetting to me personally. I’m a bit of an empath at times so it’d be excellent for the job, but I also feel I’d take it home with me which is dangerous. I don’t feel like I’m smart enough for psychology research on regular basis, though, so I have some thinking to do. Thankfully I’m still getting my bachelor’s so it’s not like I’m hard-pressed to immediately figure it out. On a lighter note, smol me was very much convinced I would be a marine biologist due to my love of the ocean and my skill in scuba diving, but that evaporated when research told me they travel nonstop and frequent travel makes me anxious Dream trips: I’ve been on a cruise a couple times and the experiences were honestly life-changing for one odd reason or another, be it how that time had me interact with my family and the things I got to see and experience. There’s a strange sense of freedom, even though you’re mostly confined to a boat. I’d love to visit Ireland and Germany since it’s where almost my entire family come from and often the landscape is beautiful, and since our culture’s kind of been watered down after a few generations living here I’d like to connect with that. Favorite foods: I have like 2-3 cups of tea in a day and keep exploring all kinds of new types, so that’d probably be it literally. Ones that I idealize in my head though wheeze would probably be things like steak, or scallops, or a specific kind of ice cream shaved ice thing I had once that legitimately made me tear up because it was so good. Play any instruments? I tried to pick up the coronet in grade school since my dad played the trumpet and I thought it’d be fun, but I had some trouble memorizing the order of notes for songs, and it all kind of fell apart after an instructor dented up my instrument with a drumstick and tried to refuse to apologize/pay for it. (Yes, seriously, but that’s a story for another time. xD)

Of course I’ll pass the blessing and say anyone who wants to do this absolutely should, but I’m also gonna tag @sherbetcoloured , @natacular , @lachrymosestorm , and @l-e-w-d-y (provided they’d like to do it, of course)

#yes this is a shameless excuse to feed my questionnaire addiction and yes i'm sorry #ooc

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sage-nebula · 7 years

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I'm done watching the TMSE eps! The action was cool! And Alan jumping to reach Lizardon when he's hurt was great.

I’m happy you enjoyed them!! ♥ And YES, aside from how much I love (beyond words) what Alan sparing .01 seconds before leaping out of the aircraft to go save Lizardon says about their bond and how much Alan loves that dragon, I also think that was one of the coolest bits of animation the series has had to date. (That, and Lizardon corkscrewing around … I think it was one of Kyogre’s attacks, might’ve been one of Groudon’s, though.) It was just so fluid and smooth, and so realistically done, in that you know that Alan’s body weight and the momentum of his jump would swing him around like that. God, it was awesome. One of my favorite parts. ♥

But that aside … yeah, no, I don’t think you’re being picky at all. While I did like it the first time I watched, the more times I’ve watched TSME + Alan’s main series episodes (and I’ve rewatched them all dozens of times—I have some parts of dialogue straight up memorized), the more I’ve come to realize that Alan’s and Manon’s relationship is not only unhealthy, but was also very poorly developed and written (which is part of what makes it so unhealthy). I’m putting the rest of this under a cut, because it’s an unpopular fandom opinion that’s very critical, and I do not want Discourse™, so no one better start any with me when I’m being as polite as I can by putting this under a cut to begin with.

(And that includes vaguing about me, because so help me, if I find out you’ve vagued about me / made passive-aggressive posts whatsoever as a result of this, I’ll block you at best and give you the aggressive fight you’ll clearly be craving at worst, no forgiveness and no mercy. I’m seriously not in the mood whatsoever. So if you really like their relationship / believe Manon did no wrong ever in her life and can’t stand to read opinions to the contrary, just do literally everyone a favor and don’t click to go under the cut.)

To begin with, Alan’s and Manon’s relationship is predicated on Manon ignoring Alan’s boundaries and denied consent for companionship and partnership. She develops an interest in him when she sees him use mega evolution, and overhears him say that he wants to “defeat all mega evolutions and stand at the top.” Manon believes that Alan has a lot of personal ambition, which is something that resonates with her (given that she also has personal ambitions, and she admires / values those who believe similarly). All of that, plus the fact that she (as part of her own personal ambition) wants to use mega evolution for her own strength, power, and glory, leads to her latching onto him so that he can lead her to mega stones.

The problem is that Alan does not want her company. He makes this explicitly clear time and again throughout TSME 1. He calls her “pesky” (i.e. annoying), he tells her flat out “don’t follow me,” he tells her that certain things about him aren’t her business, he ditches her at every opportunity, et cetera. It’s made abundantly clear, over and over again, that Alan does not want Manon’s company. Manon, however, ignores this. When he tells her, “don’t follow me,” she shouts at him, “I can do whatever I like!” When he ditches her at the PokéCenter and goes to meet Siebold for a match on his own, she chases him down and shouts at him to stop leaving her behind in the middle of the restaurant, causing a scene because he didn’t wait for her even though he never consented to their partnership (and flat out told her that he didn’t want it). Some have argued that since he stopped to help her capture that flabébé, and that since he escorted her to the PokéCenter, that clearly meant he wanted her to come along. However, not only is Alan not anywhere remotely near that level of tsundere (calling him a tsundere shows a blatant lack of understanding of his character; if anything he would be a kuudere, but he’s not that, either), but he stopped to help her capture the flabébé because he saw that she was struggling (he flat out says, “You’re struggling” before he offers assistance) and he doesn’t like to see people struggle or suffer. He always steps in to help, first thing. And after that, he escorted her to the PokéCenter because she demonstrated twice in that battle that she was prone to getting distracted, the second time of which was at the detriment of the poisoned pokémon she had just captured. (“That’s great, now get it to the Pokémon Center so you can treat the poison,” Alan says, as Manon celebrates her capture.) Alan stopped to help an inexperienced trainer, and then escorted her to the PokéCenter so that her flabébé wouldn’t suffer from poison any longer. Once both things were accomplished, he left, because he did not want to travel with her. He had his own journey, he didn’t want to be a Babysitter™.

But Manon didn’t respect that. She continued to hunt him down, no matter how many times he said “no” or “don’t” or “stop.” His refused consent meant nothing in comparison to her own desires. Eventually, by the end of the episode, she wears him down and he gives up, allowing her to “do whatever [she] want[s]” because he realizes that nothing he says or does is effective enough to get her to back off. (I mean, if I were in his shoes, I would have resorted to calling out Lizardon to scare her into running away, but Alan is a lot nicer than I am.) Manon railroaded over his boundaries until he gave dubious consent because nothing he did to turn her away was effective.

So the very foundation of their relationship is Alan saying “no” and Manon saying “yes” and Alan sighing and giving in because she won’t take “no” for an answer. They didn’t enter into truly consensual partnership at the end of TSME 1, because someone giving in purely because saying “no” and “don’t follow me” and “stop following me” isn’t the same as truly consenting to partnership. Perhaps because of this, we don’t see anything of them enjoying each other’s company in either TSME 2 or TSME 3. In TSME 2, we see Alan having to pull Manon out of jam after jam; she trips down the hill and gets stuck in the bramble, and Alan (exasperated, and having to pull himself away from his work) chases after her, only to find that Steven rescued her first (which Alan thanks him for). She does the same thing a little while later, and this time Alan—grousing over the fact that “you’re always like this”—goes to get her again. During the Mega Rayquaza attack, she gets thrown off her feet and Alan dives to catch her. He protects her, obviously, and looks out for her, but again: This is the type of person he is. He’s not going to let a ten-year-old child come to harm when he can do something to prevent it. He’s not going to let her be stuck in bramble after she tumbles down a hill if he can help get her out of it. He can’t stand to see people hurt or suffering, even if it’s a minor inconvenience they brought on themselves, and even if they annoy him (which Manon does, because these are two whole specials in which he doesn’t once smile genuinely at her). To that end, while I still find the scene funny because of how big brother - little sister it is, he flat out tells her to “go somewhere else” when Lysandre arrives, and is constantly stressing over her annoying or agitating Lysandre (because you know, the last thing someone who has been emotionally abused for several years wants is for their abuser to be set off by something), so yeah, in TSME 2 it’s readily apparent that he found her presence more stressful than fun.

TSME 3 is along the same lines. Manon insults Alan when he follows Steven into the Devon building so they can communicate with Lysandre about the megalith and Primal Legedaries (“Don’t you have this thing called ‘emotion’?”), because she, I guess, doesn’t recognize or respect the fact that he’s working, this is serious, it was never meant to be a fun journey, she should have realized that when she refused to stop stalking him. She then grows agitated when he volunteers to go stop the Primal Legendaries, because she has finally realized that he does not have personal ambition, that he is the type of person who will volunteer to “fight against the world’s destruction” because it’s the Right thing to do. Manon is not that type of person. That type of motivation doesn’t make sense to her. When she does stow away to go to the Primal Legendary battle site, she does so for Alan’s sake, because she’s attached to him and views him as one of her own. (You may notice all these Slytherin qualities piling up, and yeah—Manon is very Slytherin, as I’ve discussed at length before.) Regardless, she fights with him over it, and Alan—recognizing that she cares about his safety, and feeling a bit touched by that, but not wanting her at the Primal Legendaries site because it’s dangerous and she would just be at risk again like she was before, particularly if she doesn’t even want to be there (and she doesn’t—she flat out says that she’s not going)—tells her to go back to Kalos. Again, some people take issue with this, but Kalos is her home region, she only went to Hoenn to tag along with him, she can resume her badge quest (if she’s even on one—tbh, she never says she is) once she goes back home, and anyway, he’s not forcing her. Even if she doesn’t go back to Kalos, she can go somewhere else in Hoenn. The point is, he’s telling her—once again!—not to follow him.

But she does. And to be fair, it works out for the best; thanks to Hari-san’s quick thinking (because remember, Manon did not give him a single command in all of TSME 3) and Steven’s Mega Metagross, Manon was able to drag Alan’s body to safety after Primal Groudon knocked him unconscious and almost killed him. And this, at the tail end of TSME 3, is what finally makes Alan warm to Manon. It’s not that she saved him, but rather, it’s their conversation near the end of the episode. This exchage:

Alan: “Were you scared?”

Manon: “Yeah … but … I was really worried, so—!”

Alan: “Thank you.”

This is the very first genuine smile we get from him to her, and it’s at the end of TSME 3. Alan is not only courageous, but he values courage; there’s a reason why he specifically asked Manon if she was scared when she did what she did. He was confirming a thought, which is that she was terrified, but did what she felt was right anyway, which is important to him. True courage is doing what must be done despite being frightened, and that’s what Manon did. When Manon showed true courage, that won Alan over. It took nearly three entire specials to do it, but she did it. She finally did it.

The problem, as you pointed out, is that this isn’t good writing, because we never actually see them bond. Not once does Alan want to be around her. Not once does he actually enjoy spending time with her. To be fair, in TSME 2 and TSME 3 he’s stressed the entire time because Lysandre is there. But even before Lysandre shows up, Alan shows exasperation at Manon’s antics, rather than enjoyment. He’s not spending time with a friend; he’s babysitting a child that won’t stop tagging along with him. TSME 1, the entirety of which shows him repeatedly trying to ditch her while she refuses to be ditched, doesn’t help this. Lysandre isn’t physically present at all in TSME 1, so Alan is as relaxed as he ever is in TSME, and yet he still doesn’t have any desire to hang around Manon. The fact that he repeatedly tries to ditch her cements this.

So even though he warms up to her due to her act of courage in TSME 3, yeah, we have no real reason to be invested in their relationship, unless Manon’s feelings are all that you care about, in which case you just want him to be a pretty trophy for her to finally win. If your objective is to see Manon happy by having her “get the boy,” then yeah, I guess that would make you happy. But as for me, well, I actually care about Alan, so to see his wishes and consent explicitly disrespected again, and again, and again, and again in TSME 1, and then to see him having to just try to babysit / protect her in TSME 2 and 3 until she finally does something for him in return … yeah, that relatonship doesn’t do very much for me. I’m not a fan.

That said, we can kind of understand why, perhaps, the sudden (platonic) affection he felt for Manon in that moment made her so important to him if we consider the fact that he has not only been protecting her throughout the past two traumatic events, but also that he’s been emotionally abused by Lysandre for the past two years (well, the actual time span isn’t given, but it’s been a long time, and that’s the time frame I gave it), and that Manon’s hug is probably the first hug he’s had from another human being in that time. He hasn’t seen Sycamore since he entered Lysandre’s service, which also means that he hasn’t had any emotional support from another human being at all in that time. He has Lizardon, of course, and Lizardon is irreplaceable, but it’s a bit different when you can get that affection from another human being. Alan already demonstrated that he never wanted Manon in danger, over and over again in the specials, and that was just when she was a kid that was tagging along with him. Now she’s someone who genuinely cares about him, she’s given him the first human hug he’s had in potential years, and now he wants to make absolutely sure she’s not in danger. He wants her to be safe, he wants her to have a good journey. He wants her far, far, far away from him. When we think about it like that, Alan considering getting strength to protect her can make sense, even though I once again agree that it was rushed as hell and doesn’t feel as emotionally satisfying as his relationship with Sycamore. (Because even though we only have flashbacks of their relationship at this point, the very first flashback we get of them in TSME 1 is one where Alan was enjoying spending time with Sycamore, where he grinned and smiled genuinely at him; and in TSME 2, we not only see him once again beaming at Sycamore (and calling him voluntarily), but we also see that the only reason why he agreed to Lysandre’s service was to protect Sycamore, so that makes their relationship feel satisfying even before their main series interactions, which is something that—despite all the on-screen time they spent together—we just did not get from Alan and Manon.)

Of course, then TSME 4 happens, and Manon once again hunts him down (across continents, this time!) when he leaves her behind. She confronts him, and he rebuffs her. Contrary to what some try to claim, in this fight, he does explicitly tell her that they cannot travel together, and when she demands to know why, he explicitly tells her because she will be in danger again. And she doesn’t care. Not only does she repeatedly cut him off when he’s in the middle of talking during this argument, but she rebukes each and every attempt he makes to end the partnership (that, as he points out in this fight, he never even consented to) before he screams a lie at her. He tried every single tactic he had to try and end that partnership. He told her no, and that didn’t work. He told her not to follow him, and that didn’t work. He tried leaving her behind, and that didn’t work. He told her they couldn’t travel together anymore, and that didn’t work. He told her he was worried about her safety, and that didn’t work. I have to point out that if their genders were reversed, people would be up in arms about a girl getting so desperate to get a boy to stop following her that she has to scream a lie at him to get him to back off, and they wouldn’t feel any sympathy whatsoever when the boy cried later for it. But sexist double standards mean that the fandom hates and trashes all over Alan for this instead when Manon finally leaves, and then sends her chespin away from her (instead of recalling him to his pokéball), which then results in him getting in trouble and landing in a coma. Fandom thinks that’s Alan’s fault.

It’s not. It’s hers. Her constant railroading of Alan’s boundaries aside, she was the irresponsible trainer who sent Hari-san away instead of recalling him to his pokéball. It’s no different than when newbie!Ash abandoned Metapod in the first few episodes of the OS, to the point where Metapod was taken hostage by the beedrill. The only difference is, Ash was raked over the coals for it, and forced to own up to his own irresponsible behavior. He learned his lesson and grew as a trainer and person because of it.

Manon never did. Not only is she never called out by fandom, but Alan blames himself as well, feeling guilty for yelling at Manon, somehow construing what happened to Hari-san to therefore be his fault (presumably because he didn’t protect her, as he feels was his responsibility). Therefore, he decides to devote his gathering of mega evolution energy to healing Hari-san, so that Manon will no longer be in despair. (Because remember, Alan hates to see people struggle. He didn’t even want to see Manon struggle with bramble. So how do you think it makes him feel to hear someone, much less a child like her, sobbing? Alan cares too much. He can’t shrug and say she should have been more responsible. It kills him to see someone heartbroken like that, so he decides to save Hari-san to make her smile. Again, it’s just the type of person he is.)

Without giving too much away about the future episodes, the problem with this is that Alan’s motivation is guilt. He feels guilty for what happened to Hari-san. He wants to make it right. And because he blames himself for yelling at Manon, which he then thinks led to what happened to Hari-san, how likely do you think it’s going to be that he’ll tell her “no” to things in the future? The last time he asserted his boundaries, Hari-san ended up in a coma. He fixed that, but he won’t want it to happen again. This makes their relationship very unhealthy, especially because later episodes make it very, abundantly clear that Manon has not learned a damn thing from any of this and continues to push her own desires onto him. (What happens in XYZ045 was so bad that it actually triggered me re: bad memories of my own boundaries being violated in my youth. It’s a huge part of why I disavow everything after XYZ044.) Unless Manon learns her lesson and stops overriding his boundaries, and Alan has it reinforced that he’s allowed to set those boundaries, their relationship could get very toxic, very fast, and all at Alan’s expense. And again, this is on top of being so poorly developed that we don’t actually see them enjoying each other’s company, that we don’t actually see Alan wanting to spend time with her, that the most we get is that he’s grateful for her assistance, responds warmly to her display of courage, wants her safe, and feels guilty about Hari-san. The fact of the matter is, these two characters are just incompatible, but because the anime team was worried that the children in the audience wouldn’t be able to relate to Alan since he’s a teenager, they inserted Manon to be a viewpoint character for the audience. No wonder their relationship is so poorly developed; Manon’s function was to be an audience surrogate, not to have a positive impact on Alan’s life.

So yeah, just … you’re not being picky. I’ll admit that my feelings are especially negative given the way fandom likes to treat Alan as Manon’s pretty trophy, stripping him of just about everything he is so that he can be a prize to prop her up instead, but again, I’ve rewatched TSME and Alan’s main series episodes at least ten times each over the past year. And every rewatch I have makes me realize more and more just how underdeveloped and honestly not good their relationship is. I try to fix this in my own writings by having Alan assert his boundaries more + having Manon go on on her own separate journey at the end of canon, without him, so that she can learn and grow as an independent trainer and person (because she’s barely a trainer by the end of it all, tbh; she never once battles, and the series repeatedly draws parallels between her and Bonnie, a seven-year-old who also doesn’t battle because she’s too young). I try to fix the damage as best I can, but it’s damage that had no real reason to exist in the first place. If Manon had been in the main series instead as a traveling companion for Ash’s rival Shouta, and a rival / protégé for Ash, then she and Alan could have met as opponents in the League, she would have had more screentime and agency in the narrative, and literally everything would have been improved by a thousandfold.

But c’est la vie, that’s not what happened. Not very much I can do about it. :/

#somegiantmess

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dawnfelagund · 7 years

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Hi! I thought it was interesting that you mentioned becoming self-sufficient was very important to you. If you feel like sharing, I'd love to hear more about it!

Absolutely! I love talking about this topic but, since I’m aTolkien blogger, I assume my followers aren’t interested. But I’ll gladlyjabber on about sustainability and self-sufficiency for hours. (However, I’lltry not to actually write a post thattakes hours to read! ^_^)

Mr. Felagund and I are both millennials. We were both bornin 1981, which makes us oldmillennials, but the definition in recent years seems to have settled into arange that includes us. As such, we were beginning our lives as independentyoung adults right when George W. Bush was destroying the U.S. economy. Iremember when it was officially announced that the U.S. was in recession andbeing surprised that no one had realized that yet. We’d been suffering foryears: the usual borderline poverty that most young people endure when theyfirst move out on their own, compounded by the fact that unemployment was high,which employers took as license to underpay, overwork, and otherwise abusetheir employees.

We were both among those employees. For more than a year, Iwas led on by my employer to believe that my contractual position would be madepermanent if I helped him with the restructuring of the agency within I worked.He wasn’t very academically smart; I was, so when something needed to bewritten or created, I did it, although it was not in my job description and Iwas not being paid for it, in an attempt to secure a tiny bit more economicsecurity for my family. Probably needless to say, when the time came forpositions to be made permanent, my boss’s was and mine was not. My hours werealso cut 20% and my workload simultaneously increased due to the restructuringof our agency. At the same time, my husband was commuting two hours one-way toa good-paying job; he had to leave at 3AM to avoid Washington, DC, traffic, sohe had the choice of giving up his life to go to bed at the same time as aseven-year-old or to live on four or fewer hours of sleep. He chose the latterand became sick and depressed as a result. Like me, he was also a governmentemployee and, under Bush administration appointees, was more regularly beingexpected to support positions that intellectually and ethically he found to bewrong. We were both constantly fighting against our employers both in overt andin passive-aggressive ways. (I may have used work time to write an awful lot offan fiction and run the SWG, for example. >.>)

In the midst of this, it occurred to us that we had verylittle control over our lives. We were both being asked to do things regularlythat we found wrong or that made us physically or mentally unwell. We were bothbeing required to do work for which we were not being compensated. We werebeing forced into actions like crushingly long commutes that robbed us of ourlives outside of work. We could fight these indignities only at the risk oflosing our jobs during a recession, starting a domino effect of possibly losingour car and home, which would further jeopardize our ability to get a new job,and so the vicious cycle goes.

We decided this was not a life we wanted to live.

We’d followed the trajectory of correct adulthood: went tocollege and graduated tops of our respective classes, found professional jobs,moved into our own apartment, married each other, eventually bought a house. Werealized that the need to pay our bills forced us into a position where wecould be used however an employer wanted with little recourse because of fearof losing our home. So it seemed the first thing to do was to get rid of thebills.

The biggest was, of course, our mortgage. We lived inMaryland, currently the wealthiest state in the U.S. We lived in the hinterlands,not in the pricey Baltimore-DC corridor (which is why we had the longcommutes), but cost of living was still high. We decided our number-one goalneeded to be getting rid of our mortgage. You gain a lot of power when you havea home that cannot be taken away from you. Of course, no one tells you that youdon’t have to have a mortgage! The normal, correct adult life is depicted asthirty years working and thirty years paying back a bank for the roof over yourhead. Success is measured in the things you possess over those thirty years:nice cars, a house bigger than you need, regular upgrades to your wardrobe,fancy vacations, all the nicest and the latest things. It’s the “Youdeserve it!” culture that leads people to spend the better part of theirrent or mortgage on a watch or a handbag or tickets to a sporting event.Because if you put your earnings primarily toward securing a home for yourself,why would you work? And if you chose to keep working even if you didn’t need to,what power would an employer have to force you to do their bidding? I’mconvinced that these things are all connected.

So, to make a long story short, Mr. Felagund and I dedicatedourselves towards increasing our self-sufficiency so that we could walk awayfrom a job at any time without worrying about the consequences. We’ve sincemoved to Vermont, to a rural region where the cost of housing means that allthat we poured into our more costly home in Maryland means that we will nothave a mortgage. (Currently, we rent our house in Maryland to friends whoneeded a place to live on short notice right when we were moving last year, butwe will be putting it on the market in the next couple of weeks, and once itsells, our mortgage is gone.)

We’ve also dedicated ourselves to learning and practicing self-sufficiencyin other areas of our life to the extent that we can. Since we both workfull-time, we can never do all that we want to, but we’ve accumulated a lot ofskills over the last ten years so that we could live much moreself-sufficiently if we had to.

First, we learned how to produce our own food. We flew bythe seat of our pants in our first garden, but we made mistakes and learnedfrom them. When I left the job I mentioned above to freelance write for a yearwhile finishing my teaching certification, I wrote about sustainability and, inthe process, studied plant and soilscience. We began a concerted effort to improve our soil in Maryland. (We livedin the foothills of the Appalachians, so our soil was clay and rocky.) We bothtook classes at our local agricultural extension office and went to conferencesabout sustainable agriculture. We had less than an acre in Maryland, but webegan to use what little space we had for growing food. We put in fruit trees, asparagus,strawberries, perennial herbs, and brambles. By the time we moved, we were ableto grow much of our own food.

Mr. Felagund converted an old, disintegrating shed on ourproperty into a chicken coop, and we always kept around ten hens for eggs. (Wedidn’t raise meat birds in Maryland because we lived in a residentialneighborhood, and slaughtering chickens in our backyard would perhaps drawunwanted negative attention from our neighbors; we always did try to be goodneighbors with respect to our various little projects.) We also took amonth-long course in beekeeping and kept one or two colonies of honeybees.

Both of us learned to cook from scratch. We were both raisedwhere “cooking” was dumping in ramen and a flavor packet into boilingwater, or emptying a can of condensed soup and pouring in an equal amount ofmilk. We sometimes laugh over how, when we first got married, we wouldcelebrate special occasions by buying a frozen pizza and jazzing it up with allkinds of special toppings. But I think it’s important to recognize theimportance of small steps and not to feel the need to go overnight frommicrowave dinners to baking your own bread from scratch and pressure canningyour excess meat and beans. It took us years to go from the special pizza stageto being able to feed ourselves from stuff we grew or raised and a few staples.Mr. Felagund is the better cook, so he has learned how to make things like breadand preserve any extras we grow.

Now that we live in Vermont, we are hoping to expand our small-agoperations yet again. We have our first clutch of chicks growing up right now.They will provide us with eggs, and we are now able to raise meat birds withoutworrying about neighbors. We have three turkeys on the way in June. We hope toadd dairy goats or even a cow within the next couple of years so that we’llhave a source of milk and cheese. And Mr. Felagund has started fishing(although he hasn’t caught anything edible yet!) and wants to learn to hunt.We’re both hoping to study more deeply of wild foraging.

Next is independence in terms of energy and other resources.We already have well water and a septic system. We are hoping to soon invest insolar panels on our roof; we have a south-facing house that would be ideal. (Wecurrently use all renewable energy, but again, one of the goals is to reduceour bills as much as possible, even though the electricity bill in a house thissmall is negligible.) We heat our home primarily with wood pellets, which isgood in some ways compared to a regular woodstove (it’s far easier to use and much less messy!) but less than ideal asfar as self-sufficiency goes since this isn’t something we can produceourselves.

Also important to us is strengthening the self-sufficiencyof our community. It always amazes me that people don’t worry when most oftheir food is imported from places nowhere near where they live. What do theythink they will do if a natural or other disaster interrupted the constantdelivery of food from far-flung places?

In Maryland, we had relationships with a number of farmerswho raised and grew what we could not. We are building those relationships nowin Vermont. For example, we don’t tap our maple trees for syrup (yet!),but Mr.Felagund knows quite a few people who do, so he barters for maple syrup, whichwe can use as an all-purpose sweetener to limit the amount of (imported) sugarwe must buy. We’ve found sources for the animal products we can’t or areunwilling to raise. (Mr. Felagund is forbidden from owning a pig, for example,because he has a soft heart and would become attached.)

We want people inour community to be doing things that are useful to our community, and we want our money to go toward supportingour neighbors rather than a corporate office a thousand miles away. This is anargument Mr. Felagund and I have constantly with our Walmart-obsessed families:savings at the cash register often mask more costly losses to a community wherepeople cannot find good work that pays good wages. We are very fortunate inVermont; almost everything we need as far as food is produced by someone inVermont (often the Northeast Kingdom, where we live) or nearby (like Maine orsouthern Quebec), and even our supermarkets sell local products. Big box storeshaven’t taken over here, so we can buy other necessities from local businessesrather than relying on Target and Home Depot (and having our money flowconstantly out of our community as a result).

In general, we try to avoid buying things, especially disposable things. We’re not obsessive about it,but we use things like cloth napkins to avoid cluttering the landfill withpointless trash. We compost food scraps and much of our paper waste. We have developed a flavored seltzer habitsince moving to Vermont (and my husband can’t resist Vermont beer!) so we dohave a lot of recycling, but everyone’s allowed one sin, right? ^_^ We’ve alsoworked to unlearn the cultural mindset that success, happiness, andaffection/love are represented by material things. This is deeply ingrained andhard to unlearn. When we moved from our house in Maryland, we were both shockedby the amount of stuff we had accumulated over the years and had to give away.(We live in a single-wide trailer in Vermont which is roughly half the size asour house in Maryland, which had a basement, i.e., a clutter pit.) It wasembarrassing: stuff we’d bought and used maybe once or even never, that we’dwasted money on for no reason.

For us, self-sufficiency is more a process than adestination. It’s possible to go entirely off the grid, but really that’s notthe objective for us. Instead, we never again want our lives to be governed byan employer’s (or anyone else’s!) convenience or to feel we have to choosebetween doing the right thing and having a roof over our heads. We both teachhere and both adore our jobs–I love my school so much that I even love the wayit smells when I walk in every morning!–and I hope to have a long teachingcareer here. But were things to change–and under the current presidentialadministration, one has to worry about that in a public school–I like havingthe power to walk away rather than being forced to do something I completelydisagree with (e.g., teaching to standardized tests versus critical thinkingskills and global citizenship, or denying services to students withdisabilities, as our Secretary of Education would like to see done). So we’vededicated ourselves to doing as much as we can on our own, to always improvingand doing better in terms of our obligations to protect and care for the Earth, and most importantly, to learning skills that maybe we’re notalways using at a particular moment in time but could use if the need arose. Over the course of years, it’s justbecome life: weird or fascinating to some people but just our life as we’vegotten used to living it.

#dawn felagund #self sufficiency

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poetjenharris · 4 years

Text

The Reasons I Moved to Oregon

Nine Reasons Why….

1. Weed is legal.

a. Ghost Train Haze was named the most potent sativa strain in the world. In West Eugene, one could, say, if they so choose, buy a “pre-roll” joint of aforementioned champion strain for $6 at a dispensary that opens at 8 a.m. and shares a parking lot with a perfect espresso shot pulling walk up coffee shop. Perhaps, if we’re speculating, one could then mosey the 3 blocks back home, face to the perfect wind, salty sea air braided with whispers of conifers and evergreens, running one’s fingers along rows of bamboo so tall and wide they make the aspens quake. You can then, hypothetically, sit on your porch in your soft sandals with your hips stretched from the brief jaunt and you could sip your coffee and smoke just an teensy weensy little bit and of ol’ Ghosty and about 15 minutes later, you would perhaps, probably, likely find yourself lunging toward your computer, desperate to write (allegedly).

b. For me and my mind, body and spirit, there is no antidepressant in existence that takes place of the healing powers of CBD & THC and for perhaps the first time ever, it’s possible to enjoy marijuana for recreational purposes (as one enjoys a cold beer or two) rather than solely as a coping mechanism for last-night anxiety.

2. The state offers expanded Medicaid a.k.a. health insurance for everyone pretty much no matter what your income. I first experienced healthcare through expanded Medicaid in Denver, and I’ve never received such remarkable treatment in my life. Healthcare is a human right, so I moved somewhere which reflects that value of mine by actively putting that value into practice.

3. Oregon’s weird. There’s a lot of weird fucking people here. I don’t stick out in the slightest and it’s nice. Eugene in particular is like all the characters in my imagination got together and decided to build their own sort of Roger Rabbit Toontown / Exchange City in my honor and then lured me here under the guise of you only live once.

4. I get the chance to start fresh in a community. I love getting to know those people whom you’re not quite friends but sort of like, regulars, in one another’s life. The cashier, the budtender, the trash man, that guy on the corner, the barista, that one particular booth at farmer’s market, the venue owner, the community organizers…I like knowing where the obscure spices can be found, and who sells the most beautiful dishware, and which artists are currently underdogs but are going to skyrocket in the next few years, I just know it. I long for a future for more residencies. I have applied for jobs to work with homeless youth so I might meet more likeminded people in ways that help me grow and fulfill my desire to serve those in need.

5. Look. I haven’t posted pictures because there’s too many people suffering – this is not the time to brag – BUT THE WEATHER IS GOD DAMN PERFECT HERE AND I’LL FIGHT ANYONE WHO DISAGREES. Lol I walk, EVERYWHERE. I work in the park at least 3 days a week, a small cooler, a picnic blanket, there are always more trees than people, the moisture from the river cooling the wind. I’ve not bothered to Google WHY and I can’t remember anything from college or high school Science, but the humidity here isn’t a Midwestern wet blanket. It’s an agent of peace. It keeps the air cool and we are in love and probably gonna get married, me and the wind.

6. Jaden wanted to be here. She has always dreamed of living in Oregon, in Eugene. She gave up a lot to make this happen. She took a lot of risks. She put a lot of faith and trust in me. After all, I fled to the West Coast (alone) at her age (27) and I was scared shitless basically the entire year I lived in San Francisco but I fucking did it! and if there’s a tour guide you want, it’s the one crazy enough to have taken on the mountain alone a time or two.

Jaden and I, we banded together and made a lot of really intense, intimidating promises to one another and there’s really no way to get out of them. We have to see them through, because my success here is dependent on her success here and vice versa. We can both expand our mutual and individual dreams here. We’ve made investments and commitments and our cats are in love. We read the brochures about training to be whale watchers and how to volunteer with the organization that you call (instead of the cops) to help people who are dealing with substance use or mental health crises. Yeah, you read that right. You don’t have to call the cops here. You can call an organization that knows what they’re doing because they’ve been trained in these fields and people get the actual help they need and the cops can do they’re real and only job, which is to maintain the peace and protect citizens.

ANYWAY… Jaden could go back to school here. So, could I. We could also open a competing thrift store – animal adoption center BECAUSE THERE’S ALREADY ONE HERE AND HOLY FUCK WHAT A GREAT IDEA! I don’t know how we’d give them a run for their money, but I’d be down to figure it out. There’s a lot to see and do here. Everything is green and stimulating and easy on the eyes. There are no laws in West Eugene, just explosions of fruit trees and vines of fresh grapes. There are too many apples here. No one could eat them all if they tried. There are brambles of blackberries in every direction. We steal them by the fistful and eat them on our walks. The sky’s the limit here.

7. The violence of Kansas City’s streets became too much to bear. I alone witnessed 2 murders and 1 drive by shooting in a month’s time. In Eugene, I’ve barely heard anyone raise their voice.

8. I always wanted to come back to the West Coast. This time I treated it more like a gift I could give Jaden. We were living so meagerly before that when PUA and grant money rolled in, it became possible to repair or replace nearly everything in our own personal junkyards. And when all the adulting was done, I looked toward the future. I had a feeling that students wouldn’t be returning to campus and housing would be more widely available. I had a feeling we could have a grand adventure camping all the way across the country until we got here. I wanted to challenge myself to do something I’d never really done – enjoy the great outdoors, make the most of this chance to exhale from the 24/7 grind of entrepreneurship. I had a feeling this place in particular would feel like home for me, for her, for us. And it does. And it did. We got the first apartment we looked at, the one that’s like all our apartment dreams come true. AND FOR THE RECORD, can EVERYONE collectively PLEASE stop discouraging other people from moving someplace magical with the phrase, “But it’s so much more expensive to live there.” Please, just shut up! You know what’s expensive? Dying young and slowly of a heart condition because you spent your life stressed out in a place you didn’t like all that much because your job was there or your family was there or it is where you’re from or what the fuck ever. Please, be happy where you are. I do not begrudge anyone their conscious choice. But keeping other people from pursuing their dreams by provoking financial anxiety as an insurmountable obstacle that no one should dare broach – is bullshit. I will ALWAYS be a small-town farm kid who listened to every god damn country song about a girl escaping to California as if it were a promise. I set my watch by that promise. I waited round the sundial rather impatiently for the day I could make a break for it – and I would’ve gone a whole lot sooner if everyone who’d attempted to dampen my dreams with their insecurities and microaggressions, had given me $20. The statistical odds I’ve defied as a poor, queer, woman, a multi-tiered violence survivor, substance abuser… the number of times I should have been dead or incarcerated it a bit too much to think about for too long – but I know the truth. I’m lucky to be alive and if I have figured out how to survive THIS LONG through THIS MUCH, I’m sure I can figure out how to pay a rent increase of $300.

9. I just wanted a fresh start someplace I could imagine buying a house where wildflowers grew recklessly across the modest landscape and I could raise a child or two who went to school with kids whose families looked just like ours and there would be art and music and dancing, laughter and sunshine and that impossibly cold, vengeful ocean just an hour away so that I might be reminded of my miniscule place in it all when my fragile ego gets my heart broken, as its been prone to do on a regular basis since the dawn of time. It really is a gift, a relief, even, to stand on the edge of something mighty and know that no matter how hard you strive, you will never be as powerful or influential as the ocean and that’s ok, because it’s not another ocean we need; it’s you, it’s me, just as we are.

#writing #Poet Jen Harris #blog #august #2020

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mmtread · 4 years

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Please allow me a paragraph or two or a few to vent.

A few days ago we traveled to a hospital in Barcelona for Susan to receive some routine medical treatment. When we got there, I was horrified.

In front of the single open entrance to the hospital there was a guard checking passes and printed appointments. We hadn’t realized that we would need to print her appointment schedule, so that was a problem, but the far more serious problem was that there were hundreds of people passing in and out of one bottle-necked entrance. When you go to the supermarket, folks are spaced at least 2 meters apart, calmly and patiently waiting to enter. When you go to the hospital, on the other hand, WHERE THERE ARE A LOT OF FUCKING SICK PEOPLE, it’s a rugby scrum where no one, NO ONE, is separated at all. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Needless to say, I was pretty upset by the time I and my immunocompromised wife got to oncology. We sat in the waiting room. Seats had been marked off so that there was an empty seat between each patient. Susan and I sat next to each other at the end of a row in two adjoining seats. A few minutes later, two doctors passing by stopped as though slapped and glared at us in horror and outrage, ordering us to separate immediately. So instead of sitting next to my wife, with whom I’d recently shared a bed, a car, a kiss, and whose ungloved hand I was at that very moment holding in my own ungloved hand, I moved from roughly 90 cm away from an elderly cancer patient, whose immune system was no doubt weakened, to about 45 cm from him. Made perfect sense.

Susan’s morning appointment wrapped up around 8:30, and her next appointment wasn’t until 12:30, so we got in the car and started heading up into the hills. Almost immediately a police car pulls up next to us and indicates that we should roll down our window.

“There are two people in your car,” the cop driving says to us. I immediately launch into an explanation of how we had gone to the hospital, and my wife can’t drive, and her appointments…. Until the passenger seat cop leans over and explains that if there are two people in the car, the passenger has to be in the back seat. And we should both be wearing masks. Oh, okay, no problem there officer. They glower at us and drive on.

We pull over so Susan can climb into the back seat. Now, I can understand (somewhat) the reasoning behind this, and for taxis and public transport and such, distancing makes good sense. But I might note again that my wife and I had recently shared a bed and a kiss, held hands, and were at that very moment in the enclosed confines of a car. How was moving her to the back seat going to protect either of us? Perhaps if she rode on top of the car…but hey, whatever, she can move out back if necessary.

Anyway, by this point I was feeling angry, sad, frustrated and, since my wife is in a lot of pain and the only thing I can do about it is go to the pharmacy to get her more meds, helpless. But since we had a lot of time on our hands, we drove through a gorgeous spring morning into the hills above Barcelona and parked at the Can Coll Center for Environmental Education, which has access to some really lovely walks.

Now, having to go to the hospital under lock down has advantages and disadvantages. On the minus side, it exposes you and your loved ones to the toxic cocktail of illnesses to be found in hospitals (1.7 million Americans develop hospital-acquired infections each year, and 99,000 die from them), you risk run-ins with police, and you have to leave your kids at home alone. Oh, and, you know, cancer.

On the plus side, you get to leave the house and go somewhere – anywhere, you can potentially find a place with no one around where you can sneak off into the forest, and you get to leave your kids at home alone.

While Susan sat in the car and had a snooze (windows open, a wildflower-scented breeze blowing through), I grabbed my binoculars and headed out on a trail. I can’t even begin to describe what that did for my physical and emotional well being. I’ve written quite a bit about the health benefits of being out in green spaces, but I believe those benefits have grown exponentially with each day I’ve spent indoors. (And we’ve all spent a lot of time recently learning about exponentiality.)

Iris, alyssum, cistus, wild garlic, cherry and dozens of other flowering plants dotted the fields and forests, and I followed a path that wound through meadows and mixed woodland, past a small pond, and along a tiny burbling stream in a spring-green valley. I surprised a little owl perched on a post, listened to a woodpecker drumming for a mate, heard a hawk keening above the trees, and stretched out in a meadow to revel in sunshine and birdsong.

I swear I could feel my cortisol (the “stress hormone”) levels dropping. My frustration ebbed away. My NK cells (“natural killer” cells, crucial to the immune system) multiplied like mushrooms after rain, and I found I could concentrate on my immediate surroundings without worrying about what latest evils America’s orange monster was perpetrating, or how many new infections there had been in the state of Maine, where my 85 year-old mother lives, or whether at that moment curves were flattening around the world.

But of course at the time I wasn’t thinking about cortisol, or NK cells or “mindfulness” (And let me digress slightly here. You tell me you’re going on a ‘mindfulness walk.’ I’m not sure how to feel about that, but if you have to consciously bring your attention to your present surroundings and situation, if you have to focus your attention on being conscious of your consciousness, you’re maybe not doing it right. I don’t know. Look around you. Turn over logs and stones to see what’s under them. Smell stuff. Feel stuff. Eat stuff, if you know it’s safe. Check shit out without being mindful of your own mindfulness. But hey, that’s just me going off on one.), I was just hanging out in the woods. And it made me feel a lot better.

Which brings me, I suppose, to the whole point of this bramble of a ramble. At some unknown point in a truly unknown future, all of us are going to go outside again. It is my dearest, most fervent and heartfelt desire that when we do so, we choose not to flock back to the shopping malls, to the MegaMarts, to line up for hours in front of the sleek minimalist wonder of an iStore for the latest iDevice. That we don’t purge our weeks or months of isolation with an orgy of consumption. That we don’t heed our leaders who tell us the best way to get back to ‘normal’ is to go shopping. What we’re going to need most, at the end of all of this, are open green spaces, trees, flowers, plants, clear-flowing rivers and clean seas. We will need to reconnect not only with the people we love and have missed but with the natural world around us.

Here in Spain children have not been allowed to leave their homes for over 5 weeks. I think that has been a grave mistake on the part of the government. Everyone needs to get outside, needs to feel a connection with the natural world – even if it’s only on tree-lined city streets or in public parks – for their mental and physical well-being. I feel that sensible measures could have been taken to allow this to happen. But what’s past is past. What we need in the short term is to get out into nature, hopefully with new-found affection and appreciation. What we need in the long term is only to change the entire way humans think about, use (and abuse), and interact with the our planet, its resources, and our fellow inhabitants. That’s a pretty tall order, I know. So let’s just start with a walk in the woods.

Cancer Tourism in Corona Times Please allow me a paragraph or two or a few to vent. A few days ago we traveled to a hospital in Barcelona for Susan to receive some routine medical treatment.

#coronavirus quarantine #health benefits of nature #nature barcelona #nature collserola #sitges coronavirus #spain coronavirus #walking collserola #walking near barcelona

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odinknows · 7 years

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New details emerge of Rebekah Vardy’s sexual abuse

She shocked her fellow I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! camp-mates after revealing she attempted to take her own life aged 14.

And now a close confidant of Rebekah Vardy's has discussed how the WAG's life was turned upside down after she experienced years of harrowing sexual abuse by a family friend.

Speaking to The Mirror, a friend of the reality star, 35, revealed new details of Rebekah's shocking ordeal which led her to attempt suicide.

Scroll down for video

Candid: A close confidant of Rebekah Vardy's has discussed how the WAG's life was turned upside down after she experienced years of harrowing sexual abuse by a family friend

The pal began: 'He didn’t rape her. But he would grab her boobs, he tried to shove his hands down her trousers if he could.

'There was a time he was trying to grab her behind a bush and then someone came walking up the path and he just shoved into this bramble bush. She started drinking, getting into fights at school, she became the black sheep of the family. Then she tried to take an overdose.'

Her friend revealed that she was thankfully rescued in the nick of time by a passerby who forced her to vomit following her attempt.

Unfortunately for Rebekah however the abuse continued and when she tried to tell her mother about her secret ordeal, she was kicked out of her family home.

Brave: Speaking to The Mirror, a friend of the reality star, 35, revealed new details of Rebekah's shocking ordeal which led her to attempt suicide

Harrowing: The pal began: 'He didn’t rape her. But he would grab her boobs, he tried to shove his hands down her trousers if he could'

'It carried on,' the pal added. 'When she tried to tell her mum about it she was kicked out of her house because she mum didn't believe her. She was given a bin bag full of her stuff and had the door slammed in her face.'

Initially her friend told the publication that she believed Rebekah would end up homeless but thanks to the help of another pal she had a couch to sleep on and got a job as a glass collector in a local pub.

MailOnline have contacted Rebekah Vardy's rep for comment.

Last month, Rebekah opened up to the panelists of Loose Women in a candid interview about her abuse.

She explained: 'In my early teens, I experienced numerous unpleasant incidents. It was someone pretty close to my family, I had conversations with numerous members of my family about it.

Shocking: Her friend revealed that she was thankfully rescued in the nick of time by a passerby who forced her to vomit following her attempt

Coming to her aid: Initially her friend told the publication that she believed Rebekah would end up homeless but thanks to the help of another pal she had a couch to sleep on and got a job as a glass collector in a local pub

'I got persuaded not to take it any further. I made quite a few bad mistakes when I was growing up, which I now link back to that. I was troubled child, I didn't know what direction to take… but it's really important that I came through it.'

In 2016, Becky first revealed she was sexually assaulted for three years as a teenager and had fallen out with her mother over it.

The mother-of-four explained that it was the reason her mother Alison and other family members did not attend her lavish wedding to Jamie earlier that year.

Becky admitted that she is no longer on proper speaking terms with her mother because she 'didn't believe her' when she told her as a teenager that she was being abused.

Frank: Last month, Rebekah opened up to the panelists of Loose Women in a candid interview about her abuse

The man, who she described as a 'friend of the family', first assaulted her when she was 13 years old and continued the abuse almost once a week for the following three years.

Recalling the abuse during a Loose Women interview in October, Becky – who has children Megan, 12, and Taylor, seven, from past relationships, and Sofia, three, and Finlay, 10 months, with Jamie – said she only talked about it after having therapy to cope with her post-natal depression.

She said: 'After I suffered post natal depression with Taylor and I didn't even want to leave the house at that point, the doctor persuaded me that I needed medication and to go to therapy.

'I was made to feel like it was my fault, it's one of those things that you don't discuss. Having children of my own, I would never want anything like this to happen to them.'

Becky went on to reveal that her troubled teenage years led her to make poor relationship decisions – until she met her husband Jamie.

Happy: Becky went on to reveal that her troubled teenage years led her to make poor relationship decisions – until she met her husband Jamie

She said: 'I've made some horrific choices with men, I get blackmailed and harassed by certain people. I'm still dealing with it now.

'I didn't tell Jamie straight away, it was one of those conversations that is difficult. It still is difficult. Jamie is so supportive, he likes that I'm able to stand on my own two feet. Up until him I didn't trust anyone.'

In the midst of the pressures that the jungle life brings, Rebekah opened up about her mental health struggles with her fellow campmates Iain Lee, 44, and Stanley Johnson, 77, on Tuesday night's I'm A Celebrity… Get Me out of Here!

The brunette beauty candidly discussed her battle with post nataldepression with her second child Taylor with her jungle pals, bravely revealing she contemplated suicide as a teenager.

Candid: Rebekah opened up about her mental health struggles with her fellow campmates Iain Lee, 44, and Stanley Johnson, 77, on Tuesday night's I'm A Celebrity… Get Me out of Here!

Huddled around the campfire, Stanley asked controversial broadcaster Iain about his radio show The Late Night Alternative with Iain Lee on talkRadio.

The comedian – who had overcome tensions with Stanley on Monday's show – revealed that mental health and depression regularly get discussed on-air, admitting that the subject matter comes from his listener who call in.

He began: 'We have phone ins and we try and extract stories from the people that call in, we talk a lot about mental health and depression.'

To which Stanley asked: 'As an interviewer would you say to a person do you often feel like killing yourself?'

Chat: Huddled around the campfire, Stanley asked controversial broadcaster Iain about his radio show The Late Night Alternative with Iain Lee on talkRadio

Honest: The comedian – who had overcome tensions with Stanley on Monday's show – revealed that mental health and depression regularly get discussed on-air, admitting that the subject matter comes from his listener who call in

Answering his frank question, Iain revealed that he has suffered with depression and has had suicidal thoughts.

'I wouldn’t put it quite like that but in essence that question would be asked because I’ve had suicidal thoughts in the past. I've been there' he said. 'It is the biggest killer of men, suicide, between 30-45'.

Overhearing their conversation, Rebekah added to their discussion by sharing her own mental health struggles, revealing that she attempted to take her own life after shocking experiences of sexual abuse and domestic violence as a teenager.

She explained: 'You draw from experience don’t you, I tried it when I was younger this when I was 14.'

Question: To which Stanley asked: 'As an interviewer would you say to a person do you often feel like killing yourself?'

Brave: Overhearing their conversation, Rebekah added to their discussion by sharing her own mental health struggles, revealing that she attempted to take her own life after shocking experiences of sexual abuse and domestic violence as a teenager

Taken aback by her confession, Iain admitted that he was heartbroken hearing that she suffered with mental health issues so young and asked if she ever looked for help.

'Wow, that’s incredible, I’m sorry to hear that,' he said. 'It breaks my heart to think that as a 14 year old you would consider doing something like that but it is really common, did you get help?'

The mother-of-four explained that she pushed her issues to one aside but she's couldn't run from her problems any longer after welcoming her second child Taylor, six.

She confessed: 'No. Because when I was that age it was something that was pushed under the carpet and it had such a bad effect on me and I made such horrific decisions in life and I got to a point after I had my second child where it just hit me and it does because you can’t run from it forever and that is what I was doing.

Shocked: Taken aback by her confession, Iain admitted that he was heartbroken hearing that she suffered with mental health issues so young and asked if she ever looked for help

Frank: The mother-of-four explained that she pushed her issues to one aside but she's couldn't run from her problems any longer after welcoming her second child Taylor, six

'I had really bad post natal depression with my second, it’s like Pandora’s box opens and when it opens you have to deal with it.'

Stanley added: 'I heard it can sometimes hit women after their second child.'

Becky continued: 'It was a knock on effect after that.

'I had CBT therapy which changes your brain’s thought process, I had counselling and I was on anti-depressants for a while and then all of a sudden things just started getting better because you learn to deal with things and you need to talk and talk helps you overcome so many things. It is so different now.'

Listening: Stanley listened carefully as Rebekah shared her story

Sharing: She added: 'I had really bad post natal depression with my second, it’s like Pandora’s box opens and when it opens you have to deal with it'

Following her open conversation, Iain hoped his children's generation will pave the way for mental health to no longer be a taboo.

He said: 'For my kids’ generation the way will be cleared slightly, I’m not proud that my head went that way, but it’s not a weakness.

Agreeing, Jamie Lomas added: 'The mind is a powerful tool. If you let it run away with itself, it will do.'

Taboo: Following her open conversation, Iain hoped his children's generation will pave the way for mental health to no longer be a taboo

Grateful: After their deep discussion, Iain thanked Becky for sharing and being so honest with them

After their deep discussion, Iain thanked Becky for sharing and being so honest with them.

Just last month, Becky took to Instagram to share her struggles with mental health after fell victim to 'nasty men' in her teens and 20s.

She posted the details in a poignant Instagram essay in October as women from the music, modelling and movie industries continue to come forward with their stories.

She simultaneously praised her footballer husband Jamie Vardy, with whom she shares two children, for being kind and supportive and giving her the life she loves.

Dicussions: Just last month, Becky took to Instagram to share her struggles with mental health after fell victim to 'nasty men' in her teens and 20s

Via DailyMail

The post New details emerge of Rebekah Vardy’s sexual abuse appeared first on Odin Knows.

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