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kenkamishiro · 6 years

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20190318 Translation of Ishida and TK from Ling Tosite Sigure’s interview

I wasn’t expecting another interview with Ishida, since there will already be a bunch with him and the artists in the TG compilation album, but here we are. Very interesting discussion on Ishida and TK’s creative processes, so I highly recommend reading it!

If I’ve made a mistake or mistranslated something, please let me know.

Original interview can be found here.

Ishida × TK from Ling Tosite Sigure - Everyone is suffering and fighting against something

[Tokyo Ghoul AUTHENTIC SOUND CHRONICLE Compiled by Sui Ishida] Interview text by: Kaneko Atsutake Editing by: Yajima Yukako (CINRA.NET Editorial Department)

The Tokyo Ghoul anime reached its conclusion late last year after being broadcasted over 4 cours. The compilation album "Tokyo Ghoul AUTHENTIC SOUND CHRONICLE Compiled by Sui Ishida" that assembles the theme songs from the anime sets itself apart from the typical anime soundtrack. As the phrase "Compiled by Sui Ishida" implies, the author of the original work Ishida Sui himself was responsible for directing and curating the songs used in the anime. From the lineup of recording artists including TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, People In The Box, österreich, amazarashi, Cö shu Nie and Ziyoou-vachi, Ishida's ideas and Tokyo Ghoul's view of the world are conveyed in a distinct manner.

What each of these artists have in common are, to borrow Ishida’s words, “the impression that they are fighting against something,” and to borrow TK’s words, “scraping away a part of themselves to give birth to their creations.” As Ishida states during the interview, he projected himself too much onto his protagonist Kaneki Ken, and during the serialization of his manga he physically and mentally drove himself into a corner. However, it may be safe to say that the intensity of confronting oneself in a way that only creative works can possess is what led to Tokyo Ghoul becoming such a huge hit.

I asked Ishida and TK, who provided the two songs “unravel” and “katharsis” for the anime, to speak about each of their creations and their approach when it comes to confronting themselves.

When I heard about the compilation album, I was reminded once again that it’s rare for an anime to have theme songs that clearly reflect the vision of the original author.

Ishida: At first I didn’t know much about how anime theme songs were decided. I’m pretty sure it’s something like, “The partner company is here, let’s work with this artist,” but when the anime was green-lit, I just kept repeating, “This is what I like, I want to work with this artist.”

TK: I think what’s unique about Tokyo Ghoul is how well its musical appeal can be expressed. I don’t know how it works, it might just be nothing more than conveying what you love, but it’s probably surprisingly rare for the music and the original work it was derived from to be linked in such a genuine way.

What’s more, that musical appeal of Tokyo Ghoul has been conveyed worldwide. There’s a ton of cover songs uploaded on YouTube after all.

“unravel” (opening theme of the TV anime “Tokyo Ghoul”) placed 3rd on “Most Played Songs of Domestic Artists Overseas in 2018″ presented by Spotify.

Ishida: TK-san, have you seen the cover videos on YouTube?

TK: They get sent to me if it stands out. Sometimes they’re already up only a day after the original song is released. A pretty amazing feat even if it’s just replicating the song (laughs). Whenever I see that, I can really feel just how much of an influence and pull Sui-san has.

When I was asked if I could listen to the album, I felt that the lineup was very consistent with Sui-san’s feelings, despite each band having their own different philosophy. Ling Tosite Sigure and People In The Box (hence referred to as “People”) are completely different. People and Ziyoou-vachi are completely different, but I can tell that Sui-san felt something from them. It’s because you can see the work and the people behind it, that I became interested.

I’m not really interested in omnibuses, after all (laughs). If the selections aren’t made with a clear intention in mind, it just becomes a jumbled mess.

Ishida: I agree.

TK: But when I think about how your manga was born and grew together with these songs, I can listen to the flow of them in great depth. I thought it was fascinating how it feels like these songs embody Tokyo Ghoul from beginning to end.

Sui-san, did you have some sort of criteria when deciding which artists you wanted to participate?

Ishida: At first I was thinking of a “person who looks like they’ve suffered, with an androgynous voice” kind of image...but that went out the window because of groups like Cö shu Nie...a serious disposition then? As if they’ve been fighting against something. I have that feeling inside me too, so I feel like this is my way of empathizing with them.

TK: When I’m listening to an album, it feels like a part of themselves is being scraped off no mater what song I’m listening to. Even though Ziyoou-vachi’s sound is very upbeat, you can feel how delicate Avu-chan’s (Ziyoou-vachi’s vocals) voice is. You can definitely hear it in each song, whether it be fighting or suffering.

TK: It seems like this time you’ll be talking with various people (the CD booklets contain conversations between Ishida and all artists participating in the album. The conversation with TK contains a different version than the one shown in this interview). I’m sure you’ll be talking a lot about creative works and music with the others, so I thought I’d talk about something else, are you fine with that? (laughs) I think even the people who love Tokyo Ghoul don’t know anything at all about Sui-san as a person...though I’m not in a position where I can talk about people (laughs).

Ishida: Yeah. I want to hear about you instead (laughs).

TK: But I’m worried about you. Didn’t you mention once before that you were only eating chicken tenders?

Ishida: Yeah, I remember. There was one time where I didn’t take in any carbohydrates and only lived off of chicken tenders. And recently I’ve been eating paprika raw.

TK: You’ve on a whole new level now (laughs).

Ishida: And after, something like celery. I began thinking I needed to eat more vegetables, but because cooking is such a hassle, I’ve been eating anything that looks nutritious raw like celery or paprika. It’s not like I’m eating a ton of it, I’m just standing around for a bit munching on paprika every now and then (laughs).

TK: Munching on paprika every now and then, what kind of life is that? (laughs)

Ishida: I’m sitting down all day since I’m writing, drawing, and doing menial tasks for long periods of time. So the stimulation from standing up and walking around eating something reduces my stress and passes some time.

TK: Do you complete your work in your studio?

Ishida: I wouldn’t call it a studio, but yes, when I shut myself in there I do. When I was serializing my manga weekly I wouldn’t have any time to go out, so I’d move around as much as possible inside the house, or even walk a block around the neighbourhood for a few minutes. That was my life.

Between when your manga was being serialized and now, your pace of life must have changed as well.

Ishida: It’s completely changed. I have so much free time now (laughs).

TK: Have your thought patterns changed? Yesterday I just completed my next song “P.S. RED I” but while I was working on it I was constantly thinking, “What do I do about the lyrics? How can I arrange the instrumentals while I’m doing the mixing?” That song took up most of my brain space, but when I’m not doing anything creative my thought patterns drastically change.

To me it feels like serialization goes on forever, so my concern is about the thought patterns during that period. Plus when that suddenly comes to a stop, would you be struck by a sense of emptiness, or the contrary, where the next thing you want to work on will appear right in front of your eyes? I wonder which one it would be.

Ishida: I was emotionally unstable every day soon after my series ended. The moment I finished I was like, “Is it over?” and I was in bewilderment for half a day or so until it finally sank in and the next day I was thinking, “I did it! It’s really over!” Instead of feeling accomplished, I felt free because I didn’t have to draw anymore (laughs).

But that feeling lasted for a few days, and after I became scared since I didn’t have anything to do now. “Huh? What am I supposed to do now?” While I was serializing my manga I was so sleepy that if I laid down I could pass out in two seconds. But now that it was over, I couldn’t sleep because I was so tired, and I ended up having insomnia for about a month.

TK: So your next idea didn’t come to you right away.

Ishida: That’s right. Rather, I came up with concepts during my serialization. The busier I was, the more I wanted to do something else, the more I wanted to draw another manga. While my manga was serialized in Weekly Young Jump, I’d say weird things in my head like, “I wonder if this can’t be serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump?” (laughs) I might have a hot idea and think, “I want to build more on this,” but once your serialization ends, that incredible feeling disappears.

TK-san, how do you feel once you’ve finished a piece?

TK: That I’ll never be able to make another one again. That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since the second album (released in 2007). Since the title of that album is “Inspiration is DEAD” (laughs).

Ishida: Really!? (laughs)

TK: I’ve started thinking about it again recently, but it’s something that I’ve always thought about for a long time. But now I’ve come full circle and started to think the contrary, “What if it [inspiration] might not be dead?”

But I think it’s true that it’s when you’re chasing after something that inspiration really hits you. Since my mind is moving at a lightning speed right before finishing a piece, it’s during those last moments that I find lots of things I didn’t notice before. And because I can’t bring myself to overlook them, I end up saying, “Give me another hour.”

Ishida: I totally understand. I always end up noticing or adding in new things right before the deadline.

TK: Every time I think, “Why didn’t I notice this in the beginning?”, but it’s never noticeable then. There’s certain revelations that unfortunately only come at the very end.

Ishida: It is unfortunate.

In the beginning we talked about having “fighting against something” in common, and Sui-san said, “We don’t know what we’re fighting against.” But if you think about it, I wonder if it can be phrased as “fighting against ourselves” or “confronting ourselves”. What do you think, TK-san?

[T/N: This wasn’t mentioned in this interview, so they may have been talking about this during the other Ishida x TK interview that will be in the TG compilation album.]

TK: I don’t think there’s anything like that inside of me.

Ishida: Oh really?

TK: “Can I create music from within my empty self?” That’s where I’m starting from.

I mentioned earlier about how once I’ve finished creating a piece, I think about how I won’t be able to do it again the next time. But by then I’ve dug deep down into myself, deep down to the very bottom, grabbed everything I can, and after coming back up to the surface, I’m in a state where I’m devoid of anything inside me. I’ve been gradually digging deeper, digging in different places, and just barely writing new pieces. It feels like I’ve dug all the way to Brazil once I’ve finished digging (laughs).

Ishida: You’re gonna split Brazil in half (laughs).

TK: If I’m given a story based off an anime like now, I can just throw myself out there because the story already exists. But when I’m making my own creation starting from scratch, I have to confront my empty self and start asking myself, “What do I want to create?”

That’s why I’m so happy once I’ve grabbed onto something, and the moment I think, “This might be it,” I feel like I’ve been saved. That’s when I’m truly able to feel that I still have something I want to hold on to.

Can Tokyo Ghoul also be considered a work that you’ve dug deep into yourself in order to draw?

Ishida: Tokyo Ghoul is a work that almost has a “me, myself and I” kind of mentality. I should’ve just tried drawing an ordinary manga from the start. Like an average everyday manga (laughs).

I didn’t know much about manga, I just wanted to start my manga right away without any self-reflection. But when I started drawing it, I had to face myself a lot more than I expected. I found it very tiresome, not understanding the nature of my roots, not being able to draw unless I dug into myself in various ways.

TK: What volume were you on when you realized that?

Ishida: I think it was a bit before OG volume 7? I was very conscious of it in volume 7, so I decided that I had to suffer. I came up with the idea of torturing Kaneki, and because I thought I wouldn’t be able to draw it if I didn’t do the same to myself, I drove myself into a corner.

How did you do that?

Ishida: To put it simply, by just not sleeping and working non-stop. At the time, I slept so little that I’d lost my sense of taste. But I thought that by doing that I’d get closer to Kaneki, so I continued to step it up, letting it become a part of me more and more, until I was no longer in the right state to draw manga. Actually, there was a time where I was just barely drawing for a while. That was the first time I thought that creating was dreadful.

TK: To me it feels like what you experienced up to your sixth volume is similar to my experience with my first album. For my first album, because I was drawing on a blank canvas, I could create freely without a thought. Because at first there was definitely something on the canvas that I could see, it could take form if I placed something there.

However, once you’ve got something down in the middle of the canvas, when you start drawing on it again, it’ll depend on my choices as to how to expand the canvas, where I should draw.

Ishida: I see.

TK: There was this one moment where although Kaneki had looked in front of him until now, he could no longer see what he wanted to do because he had retreated deep into himself. I think that’s close to how I felt regarding my second album.

After all, it’s really difficult to continue on from there. In my case, it’s whenever I’m writing a new album, but in the case of manga, when I think about how you have to write a new chapter every week...it leaves a weird taste in my mouth.

This may be hasty to ask, but now that it’s been a while since your series has ended along the anime having concluded, how are you thinking about the concept of your next work?

Ishida: I won’t have an easy time starting it if I don’t have a firm objective in mind. I know it’ll be difficult for me to get started, so I need a really good reason and some degree of preparation.

Isayama Hajime of Attack on Titan also says something similar in “Jounetsu Tairiku”.* He said, “But I probably have to start over again,” and I thought, “Is that so, that sucks.” (laughs) So right now I’m in the middle of searching for a reason, the significance of it, my next motivation.

[T/N: “Jounetsu Tairiku” is a documentary. Isayama had an interview with them back in November 2018 which included talking about Attack on Titan’s final arc.]

TK-san, once you made your first album and felt empty for the first time, what did you find was important to help you move on and start your next work?

TK: It’s really tough for me since I have to scrape off a part of myself when creating something, but I feel very strongly that I only exist in my songs or during live concerts. I’ve got the sense that I really might disappear if I quit, so I can’t stop.

Even if I say I feel empty, if my empty self disappears, then I truly will disappear. I think it’s also different from motivation, but it’s because I feel that way at a cellular level that I can continue to keep making my next piece.

End of the interview.

#Tokyo Ghoul #Ishida Sui #TK from Ling Tosite Sigure #Interview #Translations #my translations

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carry-the-sky · 7 years

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my head is filled with ruins (most of them, i built with you)

Kastle Christmas gift exchange for @itsybitsylemonsqueezy

(or: Karen and Frank slowly reconnect after the events of TP. Featuring some angst and hurt/comfort with an eventual happy ending. :) Also on ao3. I hope you enjoy, and have a great holiday!)

Karen sinks back into her routine like she’s trying to hide in it, like if she tries hard enough she can avoid thinking and can just be. It’s dark most mornings when she leaves for work and if she’s lucky she’ll actually make it back to the apartment, fall asleep in her bed and not at her desk. Even when she’s not at the office her fingers are never far from her laptop, keeping her busy, keeping the quiet from settling in.

There are some things she can’t avoid. She watches the news, knows that something happened at the carousel but isn’t convinced she’s ready to hear what. He’s alive, he’s alive - and in the rare moments she thinks his name or pictures his face that’s as far as she allows herself to go. She let him go once before. She can do it again.

(She keeps the roses. They brighten up her room and sometimes, without thinking, she finds herself running a hand over them, the petals soft and smooth between her fingers. She plucks one from its stem, tucks it under her pillow and sleeps without dreaming.

There’s a petal hidden between the pages of the book she’s reading, another slipped down into the pocket of her coat. It’s not enough, it’s not enough but it’s something.)

-----

“Karen?”

She jerks in her seat, adrenaline spiking through her as her eyes dart up to see Ellison framed in the doorway of her office.

“Jesus christ, you scared me,” she gasps.

He sighs in response, eyes roving over the empty coffee cups and stacks of paper that litter her desk. “It’s almost midnight.”

She turns her eyes back to her screen. “And?”

“And what the hell are you still doing here?”

He’s on edge, Karen can hear it in his voice and she feels something simmer low in her gut, a quiet anger rising to match his. She’s not in the mood for this tonight so she says, all snark, “My job. You know, the thing you pay me to do?”

“Cute,” Ellison says. “That’s real cute, Karen, I get enough of that bullshit from my kids, now I have to deal with it from you, too?”

Karen swallows the retort burning on her tongue, takes a deep breath and centers herself in the middle of it. “What do you want, Ellison?”

He’s quiet for a moment. She feels his gaze on her like a laser and knows what he’s doing, choosing his next words carefully, methodically turning each one over and analyzing the effect it will have on her. Editorial prowess at its finest.

“I’m worried,” he finally says. “About you. And before -” he holds both hands up - “before you tell me I’m being a misogynistic asshole, I know you can take care of yourself. You’re an adult, you can handle things however you want to, I get it. I just -” he heaves a sigh. “I’ve been around the block, alright? I’ve seen too many friends, good people, good journalists, get swept away and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

Karen laughs, more breath than anything else. “I’m not...come on, Ellison, I’m not getting swept away. So I’m working a few late nights. I’m hardly the first person at this paper to do that.”

“It’s not just about working late, although you really need to stop doing that, I can only pay you so much over-time -”

“Ellison -”

“Does this have anything to do with him?”

Karen blinks, processes the words slowly like she’s hearing them from underwater. She is very, very careful to keep her face neutral. “I don’t -”

“Cut the shit.” His eyes are cold and hard and the shadows cast up from her desk lamp cut dark lines across his face. “You’re the furthest thing from an idiot and it does you no favors to pretend to be one.”

She falls silent, lips cinched tight together and his face softens. “Look,” he says, still firm but with less bite, “it’s been almost two weeks since the world discovered Frank Castle was still alive and suddenly you’re working through the night, barely sleeping, walking around here like a goddamn zombie half the time...you’re telling me none of this has anything to do with him?”

She shrugs. “What do you want me to say? I watch the same news as you do. Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing now, it has nothing to do with me.”

Ellison looks less than convinced. “You’re absolutely sure about that?”

Karen feels it then, how tired she is. There’s something hollow inside her, some vacant space she’s not sure will ever be full again and even though it aches to think about him she can’t help but hate Frank for a fleeting, furious moment. She knows it’s unfair, knows that he’s finding the after he deserves on his own terms but she’s sick of dragging all this unfinished business around with her. Just once she’d like someone to lean on, unshoulder the weight and share it.

(She doesn’t have that. She has a few moments in an elevator, his skin on hers and all the things they couldn’t say hanging between them in that shared curve of space. She has roses.)

“Yeah,” she tells Ellison, “yeah, I’m sure.”

-----

Karen’s become a bit of a lightweight since moving to the city. She’s halfway through her second beer when she starts to feel it, warm and tilty like the world’s been pulled off its axis. It’s good, though. It helps.

‘I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to…’ her radio hums from across the room and she takes another swig, sways slightly on the couch. Kevin had spent weeks learning this song on guitar, no music, just him picking and strumming away until the chords came to life beneath his fingers.

The memory stings, cuts through her alcohol-induced fog. Just another reminder of all the things she’s lost. With a frustrated sigh she grabs her phone, scrolls until she finds Foggy’s face and hovers her finger above the dial button. They’ve talked a handful of times since the hotel bombing but he feels like a stranger these days, more uptown lawyer than friend.

She keeps scrolling, stops when she gets to Matt.

“Shit,” she whispers, eyes squeezing shut. Matt’s always been further beyond her reach than she knew, now it’s just permanent. The thought makes something ache, pull beneath her ribs so she shoves it down, straightens up and tosses her phone to the other side of the couch.

No Foggy, no Matt.

Karen opens her eyes, glances towards the empty window sill.

‘With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow…’

She tips her head back and drains her beer.

-----

Ellison starts screening her work mail the day after the bombing. Karen doesn’t bother protesting. She knows it will get her nowhere and as much as she tries to deny it, she really does appreciate that he cares enough to go through all the trouble.

This morning’s delivery is smaller than usual, just a simple package waiting for her on her desk when she gets back from lunch. There’s no name or return address and she peels the wrapping away slowly, uncertain.

It’s a book. Principles of Horticulture.

Karen takes a measured breath, then another. There's something written inside the cover, a phone number, and just beneath: Thought this might help with the roses.

She can’t tell if she wants to laugh or scream. This is just like before, thought I’d try my luck out here, not get my head blown off. The only difference now is that he’s testing the waters from a distance, letting her decide on her own terms if she wants to see him and it’s somehow both infuriating and a relief all in the same breath.

She traces a finger over his words, pulse fluttering in her throat.

Bastard, she thinks and reaches for her phone.

-----

He’s grown his hair out again. Karen focuses on that, on the way the sunlight slanting through the window seems to catch and tangle in it, on his hands absently tugging at his beard as he gives the coffee house they’re sitting in a cursory scan. She focuses on the details and pushes the more pressing questions - why are we here, where has he been, why now why now why now - aside.

“You look good,” she says, more to break the silence than anything, but it’s true. His face is just a face, no bruises smudged under his eyelids or in the hollows of his cheeks and his eyes are brighter than she remembers as he glances her direction.

“Yeah, you too,” he says, tilting his head. “You get a haircut?”

She digs her nails into her palms. “Only a few inches,” she says. “But I like it. I’ve had long hair ever since I moved to the city. Figured it was time for a change.”

“Yeah.” His eyes dart to his thumbs, tapping lightly against his coffee cup. “Yeah, that’s good, change is good.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, not entirely uncomfortable but still enough to put Karen’s nerves on edge. The questions she wants to ask are sitting heavy in her lungs but she fights the reflex to speak, takes a long swig of coffee instead. Frank initiated this meeting and she’ll leave it to him to explain what he wants.

He’s still not looking at her but she can tell he’s anxious, feels the nervous energy radiating off him like sparks. A few months ago she might have reached out, laid a hand on his arm and told him it’s okay, everything will be okay, but things are different now and so is she. The realization is a black hole inside her, nothing but void.

“It's done, Karen,” Frank finally says, low in his throat. “It’s over, and at first I didn't know what to do with that. Everything was so quiet, you know, nothin’ but quiet. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get out from under that.” He pauses, bobs his head up and down slightly as if to convince himself to keep going. “I have this buddy, runs a group for vets down at St. Mary’s couple times a week. Turns out talking about all this shit, it actually helps. And Curt’s a good guy, yeah? He’s got a good heart. Smart, too, doesn’t take bullshit from anyone. You’d like him.”

He lifts his eyes to meet hers as he says this and she gets the vague impression that he’s trying to tell her something else, something more. She takes a breath. “Frank -”

“Pete,” he cuts in, mouth twisting. “It’s Pete, now, thanks to Madani and company.”

She feels her own lips curve in response. “That’s the best they could give you?”

“Yeah,” he says with a smirk, “yeah, you know I asked for Eugene but I guess it was already taken.”

Karen laughs, a dry puff of sound. She’s seen this lighter side of him a few times before but it feels different now, genuine, like a weight has been lifted and he doesn’t have to pretend anymore. Maybe, she thinks, maybe this is the closest she’s come to seeing him for who he is. Maybe this is the most honest interaction the two of them have had.

As if he can hear her thoughts, the smile fades from his face, his mouth shrinking into a thin line. “Look, Karen,” he says, soft and ragged and almost a whisper, “I wanted to reach out, alright, let you know I was okay. At the very least, I owe you that. But I’m not -” he scrubs a hand across his face. “I want you to know I’m not looking for anything from you, yeah? If you want me to leave, if you don’t want to hear from me - I get it.”

There are things Karen wants to say, things he needs to hear but she can’t seem to force the words out of her lungs. She wants to tell him that he deserves happiness, he deserves to live a life day after day like everyone else and she’s proud of him for seeking that out, finding his footing on his own. She’s proud but she’s also tired. It’s too much, him coming back and getting pulled away again, not knowing if the next time she’ll see him will also be the last.

She wants to tell him to leave. (She wants to ask him to stay.)

“Okay,” she says instead. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes.

She feels like the look in his eyes, confusion and longing all blurred together like watercolors. Her throat balls up tight as she stands, grabs for her coffee and work bag. “I have to get going -”

Frank’s hand jerks slightly, like he’s resisting the urge to reach across the table. “Hey,” he says. “Thanks, Karen.”

She releases the breath she was holding, turns to leave and says, over her shoulder, “I’m not calling you Pete.”

He laughs and it sounds a lot like hope.

-----

Karen goes the better part of a week without seeing or hearing from him. She knows he has her number and he definitely knows where she lives, but he doesn’t reach out. He’s giving her space, time to decide what she wants.

She’s still working on that part.

With the end of the week and a deadline rapidly approaching, Karen goes into full work-mode, holed up at her desk and ignoring anything and anyone that isn’t her computer. She’s so absorbed that she doesn’t notice Ellison until he’s halfway through her door, poking his head into her office.

“Hey, Christiane Amanpour,” he says. “You have a visitor.”

“Tell them I’m busy,” Karen says without looking up from her screen.

“Yeah, I tried that,” Ellison replies. “This woman’s pretty insistent, says she just needs a few minutes of your time.” He pauses for a beat. “You’re not in trouble with the feds, are you? Because she looks like a fed.”

Karen stops typing and glances up. “Did she give you her name?”

“Dinah, I think she said -”

She pushes back from her desk, runs a hand through her hair. “Shit.”

“Do I want to know what this is about?” Ellison says, fixing her with a scrutinous stare, and she hesitates before answering. This has to be about Frank, there’s no other logical explanation. For a fleeting moment she wonders if his name is really clear, wonders if everything he’d told her at the coffee house had been a lie -

But no, she thinks with a shake of her head, no, Frank’s doesn’t lie, at least not to her. She trusts him.

Ellison is still looking at her so she quirks her lips and gives a vague half-shrug. “Send her in and we’ll find out, I guess.”

Dinah is smaller than she remembers, stepping into Karen’s office a few moments later, but she still carries herself like her spine is made of steel, a force of nature wearing human skin. It’s a strength that’s almost palpable and Karen can’t help but admire it.

“Agent Madani,” she says with what she hopes is a neutral tone, “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

Dinah’s lips tug into a grin. “Just a bit of gentle intimidation from one professional to another?”

“More like impending story deadlines,” Karen says, gesturing for her to sit. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Would you believe me,” Dinah answers, eyes sparkling, “if I told you I wasn’t here to talk about our friend Pete?”

Karen laughs softly. “To be honest, no.”

“That’s...fair,” Dinah replies with a laugh of her own, and Karen finds herself momentarily stunned by the sound. We once had a conversation about trust, Dinah had told her after the bombing, and she’d started to believe then, that maybe this woman was different, maybe the system could work.

“Agent Madani -” she starts to say, but Dinah politely cuts in.

“Call me Dinah,” she says, and then, almost as an afterthought, “please.”

“Dinah,” Karen repeats, hesitant. “Listen, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come across town, but I’m up to my neck in unfinished work -”

“And you’d appreciate it if I skipped the small talk and told you why I was here.” There’s something in Dinah’s voice, something layered just beneath the veneer of poise and professionalism that she recognizes but can’t quite place. “Look, Karen, you’re clearly very good at what you do. I wasn’t trying to patronize you when I said that you’ve made quite a name for yourself since moving to the city. I think we both want the same things. And between the two of us, I think we could do a lot of good.”

Karen’s lips twist wryly. “Sounds like Homeland wants a friend at the Bulletin.”

“I would like a friend at the Bulletin. Someone I know I can trust, who I know will fight as hard as I will for the truth. Think of it as a sort of informal partnership. I help you, you help me - everyone wins.”

Not for the first time, Karen is taken in by Dinah’s presence, the unfaltering conviction behind each word that falls from her lips. She certainly knows what she wants and Karen feels a sharp stab of resentment, eclipsed only by frustration with her own indecisiveness.

“I’m not sure what to say,” she admits.

Dinah digs through her bag and retrieves a business card, which she offers to Karen. “I completely understand. All I’m asking is for you to think about it.”

“Yeah,” Karen replies, “yeah, absolutely, I will.” A thin silence falls between the two of them as Dinah stands, shoulders her bag and turns towards the door -

“I never thanked you,” Karen says, the words breezing past her lips in a rush before she can stop them. “Everything you did for...for Pete, for his case...I know it might not mean much but it’s good to know there are people like you who care about doing the right thing. Thank you, Dinah.”

Dinah ducks her head, fingers curling around the door handle. “I know what it’s like to be lied to by people I trust,” she says softly. “I’ve never felt so powerless, so alone. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Karen feels each word like a gut-punch, all the shame and loneliness she’s kept so carefully buried suddenly wrenched out and laid in front of her on display. The vacant space within her swells, and as she looks at Dinah she sees the same pain and heartache mirrored on her face.

“Hey,” she says, tilting her head to catch Dinah’s gaze, “I know we don’t really know each other but if you ever want to talk, even if it’s not work-related -” she breaths a laugh. “You know where to find me.”

Dinah’s smile is soft and sad. “I’d like that.” She hesitates, looks like she might want to say more but instead shakes her head and pulls the door open. “Thank you again for your time, Karen.”

Ellison pokes his head in a few moments after she leaves. “So?” he says. “What did she want?”

Karen moves Dinah’s business card between her thumb and index finger, presses hard against the sharp corners.

“I’ll let you know,” she says.

-----

Her father had liked routines, doing the same thing at the same time every day. Karen could time it down to the minute when he’d be out the door in the morning, and as soon as he was gone everything felt lighter, like the whole house had been holding its breath waiting for him to leave. She grew up appreciating the meaning of time, learning how much of it was hers to hoard.

Her deadline comes and goes, then the weekend, then half of the next week, and as she’s packing up from her latest long night at the office she starts thinking about routines, routines and the time that’s eaten up by them. She can almost hear her father’s voice in her ear, cold and calculating, looks like I taught you something after all -

She’s on edge the rest of the evening, unable to quiet her thoughts or her feet as she restlessly prowls her apartment. Frank’s horticulture book catches her eye every time she circles back through her bedroom and she finally grabs it, sinks onto the couch and flips to a random page -

Rose bailing, she reads, is a condition in which the outer petals of the flower die and become stiff. The inner petals are thus prevented from emerging to produce a normal bloom -

(She doesn’t remember falling asleep. All she knows is that she’s downstairs, curled up in the dark against the far corner of the closet and waiting. Even with her hands pressed over her ears she can still hear the shouting, like muted thunder from a storm in the distance. Their arguments are getting worse.

You’re far away, she thinks fiercely, you’re somewhere far, far away -

There’s a rumble of approaching footsteps and then someone is yanking the closet door open. Karen flinches, squints against the sudden brightness, and she’s -

- overlooking the water, sitting on a bench beneath a wide canvas of sky. She hears him come up behind her but keeps her eyes elsewhere, skims the horizon and imagines wings sprouting between her shoulder blades, lifting her up and away into the endless blue. Up and away, gone so easily.

“Why are you here?” she asks, still not looking at him.

Frank is quiet a moment before answering, softly, “Don’t you know?”

She wakes with a sigh.)

-----

Karen’s never really believed in things like fate, but when she runs into Frank the next day she has to wonder if the universe is laughing at her.

He’s two people in front of her in line at the coffee joint and she doesn’t notice until he turns his profile, looking at something out the window. She freezes, staring at him and he must feel her eyes locked on his face because he turns just a fraction further to meet her gaze, brows cinching together with surprise when he’s sees it’s her.

She stifles the urge to laugh. What was it Mahoney had said? Funny how the two of you keep bumping up together.

He lingers by the door while she pays for her drink and the two of them leave together, falling into step like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like walking shoulder to shoulder down the street in broad daylight is something they’ve done many times before.

“You’re not following me, are you?” Karen asks, taking a drink of coffee to hide her smirk.

“Nah,” he says and she can hear the smile in his voice. “Not my style.”

She darts a glance his direction. “Right. You’re an old-fashioned kind of guy.”

He chuckles low in his throat, lips slanting up at the corner and Karen swigs down another gulp of coffee to give herself something to do besides stare at him as they continue walking. She’s keenly aware of how close he is, elbows knocking lightly together as she adjusts her purse, but she makes no move to widen the distance between them.

(He doesn’t either, she notices, something bright thrumming in her chest.)

It’s warm for late December, but Karen still dips her nose into her scarf as a thin breeze kicks up. The cold here reminds her of Vermont, humid and biting, the kind that settles deep in your bones. She really should be more used to it than she is, she thinks, tugging her coat more tightly around her.

“You cold?” Frank asks, with only a hint of judgment.

She shoots him her best mock-glare. “You’re not?”

“I’m warm-blooded. Takes more than this to make my teeth chatter.”

“Yeah, my brother was the same,” she replies automatically, the words tumbling out before she can process them. “Kevin, he practically lived outside in the winter, no problem, shoveled snow in jeans and a t-shirt like it wasn’t below freezing outside. He -” she swallows, hard, heat rising in her throat and cheeks as she forces the next words out. “He’s gone, now. Passed away a few years ago.”

They slow to a stop at the next corner. Karen realizes, with stinging clarity, that this is the first time she’s said it out loud since moving to the city, the first time she’s admitted to someone else that her brother is gone.

“Hey,” Frank is saying, leaning in. “Karen, hey, I’m...I’m sorry -”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know why I told you that. I just...” she laughs harshly, tugs a hand through her hair. “I just forget, sometimes, you know? I forget exactly how long it’s been. I’ll go days or weeks without thinking about him and then something or somebody will remind me...”

His eyes never leave her face so she sees the shift when it happens, a subtle flash of pain that bursts across his face one moment and vanishes the next as he attempts to cover. Karen knows what heartache feels like, how it drags and scrapes against the ribs, the weight of it, and that’s how Frank’s eyes look now, heavy with complete and absolute understanding. He knows what it’s like to hurt. He knows it like she does, in the most personal way.

“Shit,” she hisses, “Frank, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean -”

“Don’t,” he cuts in, “don’t, Karen, don’t do that.” He steps closer and before she can register what he’s doing he’s reaching up, brushing his thumb along the hollow of her cheek. His eyes search her face, fire-bright. “You have nothin’ to be sorry for, you got that?”

Karen nods slowly. Her skin burns where he’s touching her and it’s all she can do in this moment to remember how to breathe. She recognizes the look in his eyes, fractured and pleading and soft in a way he might have been when he was just Frank Castle, nothing more. It's hope and fear tangled up like wires, like if he tries hard enough he can tether them both to this moment.

(Danger, her heart kicks in her chest, danger danger -)

“So,” she breathes, “what now?”

The sound of her voice seems to break the spell. Frank blinks, lets his hand fall and rocks away from her. She can see his jaw working, fingers fluttering at his sides. “You tell me,” he says as he tilts a glance up at her.

“I should be getting back to work,” she says, inclining her head in the direction of the Bulletin. “That’s -” she presses her lips together, wills her pounding heart to settle. “That’s about as far into the future I can see right now.”

The look on his face isn’t quite disappointment but it still makes something twist in her gut. “Yeah,” he says, backing away, “alright, yeah.” His eyes find hers. “See you around, Karen.”

-----

(For watering seeds and cuttings, she reads later that night, a fine rose turned upwards is recommended in order to minimize any disturbance by droplets -)

-----

The roses finally start to wilt the week leading up to Christmas. She cuts the stems and lets them dry, hangs them in the hallway so they’re the first thing she sees when she comes home.

The day after that, she buys herself a fresh pot.

Halfway through the week she ducks out of the office early to meet Dinah for drinks at the dive bar down the block from her apartment. It’s not Josie’s but it has its own personality, and besides, she tells herself, she’s starting fresh. Moving forward.

Dinah is surprisingly easy to talk to, once the initial awkwardness has settled and they’ve both made it through their first beer. She tells Karen about her family and growing up in the city, and Karen laughs as she fires back with a stories about rural, small-town Vermont. She tiptoes around the questions Dinah asks her about her family, sharing just enough to satisfy before dancing to a new subject.

(Frank’s face swims behind her eyes for a moment, just a moment.)

��I don’t know, Karen,” Dinah is saying, “Fagan Corners sounds very appealing to me. Quiet, charming, no national conspiracies or organized crime.” She shoots Karen an all-knowing glance. “No vigilantes.”

Karen smiles and tips her beer back. “I’ll drink to that.”

Dinah follows suit, finishing hers and gesturing to the bartender for another. “God, so much has changed. I used to love this city, you know? It was never just a place to live.”

Karen tilts her head. “And now?”

“Now -” Dinah sighs, pushes back in her seat. “Now I just see its shadows.”

(I don’t see the city anymore. All I see are its dark corners -)

“If it makes you feel better,” Karen says, “I feel the same.”

Dinah looks at her, long and hard. “How do you live with it?”

“I don’t know,” Karen replies, a confession. “Most days I’m just making it up as I go, trying to stay afloat.” She holds her beer up. “This definitely helps.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Dinah smiles in that soft-sad way and Karen feels the vacant space within her begin to shrink, change. It might never be whole again, not the way it once was and for the first time in as long as she can remember, the thought doesn’t scare her.

Change is good, Frank’s voice echoes in her ears and she carries his words home with her that night, something bright and buoyant stirring its restless wings against her ribs. Her hand brushes up against her phone, once, twice, and then she’s fishing it from her pocket, fingers shaking as she punches in Frank’s number.

To making it up as I go, she thinks, and hits dial.

-----

With no holiday plans and Christmas Eve a day away, Karen throws caution to the wind and invites him over. He tells her not to worry about food so she spends the day cleaning her apartment, working out all her nervous energy. Halfway through her second round of vacuuming she briefly considers calling to cancel, every nerve in her body screaming to run, get away from this thing before it spirals into something she can’t control, and it’s this barrage of thoughts that keeps her from reaching from the phone. They're on the precipice of something here and even though she's terrified, she's tired of running from it.

Use two hands and don’t let go, he’d told her a lifetime ago, and she has to laugh. It only took her a year and a half to listen.

Frank shows up a few hours later with a bag of takeout in one hand and flowers in the other. The small bouquet is an assorted arrangement and Karen dips her face towards the petals as he hands it to her, breaths in the powdery-sweet aroma.

“They’re not much to look at,” he grunts under his breath. “Best I could do this close to the holiday.”

Karen glances up. He’s shifting his weight between both feet, eyes firmly on the ground and he looks so uncomfortable that it would almost be funny if it were anyone else but him standing in her doorway. This is uncharted territory but she refuses to spend the evening like this, both of them tiptoeing around the other and unable to relax, so before she can change her mind she steps forward and kisses him softly on the cheek.

The stunned look on his face when she backs away is enough to pull a laugh from her lungs. “What?” she says as coyly as she can, “you’re the only one who gets to do that?”

His answering laugh is rough, a low scrape of sound against his throat. “Sorry, Karen, I just - you scare the hell out of me, you know that? Christ, I feel like a goddamn teenager again.”

“Hey,” Karen says, meeting his sparking gaze head-on. “I’m scared, too. But it’s me, Frank. You know I don’t bite. Usually.” She cocks her head in the direction of the living room. “Let’s just start with dinner, see where things go from there. Deal?”

His smile is crooked, all teeth, the one she’s starting to think is just for her. “Yeah,” he says. “Deal.”

-----

They eat on her couch, takeout boxes scattered across the coffee table and Christmas music crooning from the radio in the corner of the room. Frank knows his way around a pair of chopsticks, something that shouldn’t surprise her but does anyways. He’s always doing that, catching her off guard with glimpses of the person he used to be.

Their conversation is sparse but the silences in between aren’t uncomfortable. Karen appreciates that Frank doesn’t talk simply to talk - she feels more herself sitting quietly with him than she does anywhere else, she thinks, watching him reach for the fried rice. He’s perched a safe distance away, both feet planted firmly on the floor but Karen has opted for a more comfortable position, tucked against the corner of the couch with both legs bent at the knees in front of her. She’s not sure if it’s intentional or not, but he shifts closer to her as they eat, close enough that she could reach out with her foot and nudge his thigh if she wanted to.

(She wants to, she really does -)

“You, uh -” he glances over at her and she curls her toes up quickly against the impulse. “You want the last eggroll?”

“I’ll split it with you.”

He makes an appreciative sound in his throat. “Miss Page, all heart.”

“Only because it’s Christmas Eve,” she fires back and when he laughs she’s momentarily lost in the flash of his teeth, the crinkle of skin into laugh lines beneath his eyes, the way his face changes and melts into something that’s less Punisher and more human. She aches with the feeling that this is who he could be, this is who they could be, two people filled to the brim with more happiness than either of them know how to hold.

‘Christmas Eve will find me where the lovelight gleams…’ the radio sighs -

“Frank,” she says, almost a whisper but his eyes still snap to hers, laughter dissolving on his tongue. Pulse roaring like thunder in her ears, she reaches out and grazes her fingers against his wrist. His eyes are blazing, fire and starlight and her breath catches in her throat as he softly turns his hand, draws his fingertips against hers.

“What do we do here?” he rasps, voice hitching against the words. “Please, Karen, just - just tell me what to do.”

She can feel every point of contact between them, every nerve sparking and singing as the pads of his fingers skim along hers. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what this is or where we go from here -”

She trails off, suddenly aware of just how close they are. His eyes drift to her mouth and she’s not sure who leans in first, only that she can feel the warmth of his breath and his lips are brushing against hers and there’s nothing, nothing beyond the two of them and this moment.

“Okay,” he breathes, reverent and hopeful.

Karen smiles. “Okay,” she echoes, and closes the space between them.

#kastle #kastlechristmas #kastle ff #kastlenetwork #itsybitsylemonsqueezy #frank x karen #my fic

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tessatechaitea · 4 years

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Cerebus #4 (1978)

Elrod! So soon? Be still my quivering loins!

I may not have understood a lot of Dave Sim's historical references when I read began reading this series in my early twenties but I sure as hell got all of his Looney Tunes references! I read the Elric books the summer after my first year of college. I was eighteen. I would have begun reading Cerebus a year or two later. I was definitely reading it by 1992 when I was volunteering with the Santa Clara Junior Theater helping backstage because I passed the first Cerebus phone book around to anybody I could convince to read it by telling them about the characters stowing away on a ship and hiding in some barrels where one of the characters says, "Nobody here but us mice!" and Elrod pipes up with, "Squeak, I say, squeak!" Goddammit that still makes me chuckle. That was my long-winded and autobiographical way of saying that I understood the Elrod/Elric parody! I sometimes think of the first 25 issues of Cerebus as being less than the rest of the series. I suppose because they're a lot of individual stories coming just before the huge 25 issue High Society story arc, they can seem trifling and inconsequential. But we're only on Issue #4 and we've already been introduced to Red Sophia and Elrod of Melvinbone, two of the series most iconic characters. And examples of what Dave Sim does so well: characterization, parody, and mimicry. Sure, Red Sophia is basically just an exaggerated mash-up of Red Sonja and Pepé Le Pew. Of course, Elrod is just a blend of Elric and Foghorn Leghorn (mostly Foghorn Leghorn with an outer glaze of Elric). But he does their voices so well and makes them completely his own, fitting their foibles and eccentricities into Cerebus's world. And Dave Sim is funny. He can be absolutely hilarious. And is it next issue already that we'll get The Roach (it is not. Next issue is Bran Mac Muffin!)? I mean, can you name a comic book that got off the starting block faster without any actual planning?! Deni Loubert announces that she and Dave have moved in "A Note from the Publisher" and not much else. Well, she does exclaim how she forgot to write her editorial. I'm getting the feeling she doesn't really give a shit about these notes and just wants to get on with the real work of getting the stupid comic distributed. In his Swords of Cerebus essay, Dave Sim admits to having never read an Elric story so I guess I probably never had to bother with it either! Although knowing the author's name, Michael Moorcock, helped score some pretty good points in Scattergories on occasion. Speaking of Scattergories and not Cerebus, I once played the game with Sam Adams (ex-Portland Mayor and also my Uncle-in-Law. He also played the assistant to Kyle MacLachlan's Portland Mayor in Portlandia). The category was "type of dance" and the letter rolled was an "L". So my answer was "Lap". Sam sneered and said, "Classy." At least it scored me points and I didn't have to cheat the way Sam and his mom did! That was the Brush with Greatness story I would have told on David Letterman if time and experiences and space were different.

I realize a lot of you are living your worst online life because you view everything on a phone so, really, don't bother trying to read this. Although maybe it's actually easier to increase the size of on a phone! Stupid laptop. I hate you now!

In this essay, Dave Sim mentions how someday he's going to write an issue with Elrod, Lord Julius, and Cerebus locked in a closet. I'm pretty sure that eventual story is the one I mentioned earlier about the mice. I believe the story takes place between High Society and Church & State, maybe Issue #50/51 or something weird like that? When they're fleeing Iest after Cerebus's run as Prime Minister ends? Anyway, it was a great idea and a well executed and hilarious sketch. The issue begins with some guy dying mysteriously to some cursed gem he stole. But never mind his story. It's over and it probably wasn't very interesting anyway. The gem, however, continues on until it winds up in Cerebus's clutches. Cerebus has arrived in Serrea to spend the last of his gold (remember, he never keeps his riches for long) gambling and drinking apricot brandy. I called it Peach Schnapps in a previous review because, have I mentioned, my memory is utter shite? This is also the first appearance of Cerebus's vest. Dave Sim says so in that essay I scanned. But I'm sure I would have commented on it without the prompt because he's so fucking adorable. Plus his snout is nearly to its regular shape and size. That means he's maturing into an adult Earth Pig. After picking up the gem, some strange shit begins to go down.

Cerebus could have been meeting the stripper love of his life but instead he's battling weird magic figments of his imagination.

Remember that thing about my terrible memory? I can't remember if Death was an imaginary character brought on by the aardvark's strangeness mixed with the gem's magic. But I do remember Elrod was some kind of illusion created by this confluence of events. One of the saddest moments in this entire series for me was when Elrod blinks out of existence. I can't say how long I was in denial about that but, month after month, I kept hoping that he'd come back in another of Dave's retcons to make sense of past stories that didn't fit his vision of Cerebus's current world and story. I kept hoping that a bedraggled Elrod would wander into Cerebus's bar in Guys having once again somehow eluded death or capture or nonexistence through his strange blundering overconfidence. Maybe my hope in the reappearance of Elrod was what really kept me reading until Issue #300! Death's plan is to have the Crawler (that's the squiddy, octopus, vagina-stand-in thing) drive Cerebus into Death's clutches. But Cerebus has a knack for winning battles by knowing when to retreat and when not to retreat. Previously, he would have died in the wizard's tower while hunting the flame jewel if he had attacked the skeleton; this time he realizes that if he keeps retreating, he will lose the battle so he presses the attack. Four issues in and I now have total confidence in Cerebus's strategic mind. He can't be defeated even by what amounted to a Great Old One! At least according to Death's description of the beast. I'm not sure Death is the most trustworthy of narrators though. Also, is he really Death? Seems like a crazy character to introduce four issues in. How many issues was Gaiman's The Sandman on before readers were introduced to their next huge comic book crush, Death? Death realizes he can't manipulate Cerebus to force Cerebus to bring him the gem. So he searches for somebody he can manipulate.

Or does he create one? I suppose that spark is the moment Elrod comes into existence.

The first half of this issue was lacking in, as Dave says, "Ha-ha." And true to form, it wasn't that great. Standard sword and sorcery fare with Cerebus battling a monster and magical forces intervene in the barbarian's life. Death isn't much of a character and the monster wasn't much more than any of the listings on a typical wandering monster chart. But then Cerebus wanders into the market to meet one of the top three characters in the series! No wait. Maybe top four because I just remembered another character I love. Whoops! Make that top six. No, no, top seven maybe? Top ten? Christ I forgot about all the characters in Guys who read that Wankerman comic book which puts Elrod in, what? Top twenty, maybe? And do we count all of The Roach's incarnations as one character or several?! Anyway, he's a pretty good character.

Is this the most iconic entrance for a character ever? You know what? Don't answer that. I already said that I hate debating other comic book nerds.

Oh man. I'd completely forgotten about how Elrod refers to Cerebus as the kid in the bunny suit. Which provides for some great imagery later when we see their first encounter through Elrod's eyes. It must have been tough living in barbarian times and also this fictional world because, once again, Cerebus finds himself drawn into a sword fight for practically no reason. I mean, there were probably more reasons for every other fight he got into, like the one against the shadow beast and the one against the skeleton and the one against the wizard and the one against the Boreleans and the one against Klog and the one against the army hypnotized by the succubus and the one against the succubus and the one against Red Sophia and the one against Thugg the Unseemly and the one against Feras and the one against the Crawler. This fight happens because he just tries to ignore Elrod and Elrod is all, "Look at my hat! It's tall and pointy!" Remember that joke from Dave's essay where he said it made him laugh a lot? Yeah, it was pretty good.

Elric's sword was black but it was not called "Seersucker." It was called, um, Black Razor? No wait! Stormbringer!

Speaking of Black Razor, does anybody remember the names of the other two magic weapons that could be found in S2 White Plume Mountain? If so, I'd like to steal your lunch money and give you a swirly. A minor bit of explication happens on the next page which describes Death's motivations for seeking the gem currently in Cerebus's possession. It's the Chaos Gem and would be the 13th magic gem in Death's collection. That would enable him to kill even more people than he presumably already kills. I figure he's eventually going to kill everybody anyway so what's the hurry? Elrod's sword shatters when Cerebus blocks his first blow and Elrod decides maybe they should team up instead. Cerebus has yet to say a word as Elrod talks enough for the two of them. Also, it's a Foghorn Leghorn parody and Foghorn's foils usually have little to say. Half the character is in the bluster and overblown confidence. Elrod gets them both in trouble with the guards and hauled off to prison.

Maybe I loved Elrod because he reminded me so much of my gaming group's role playing encounters.

Cerebus breaks his chains in prison and escapes while Elrod continues to shoot his mouth off. He's useless for anything but talk, evidence, I suppose, that he's nothing but an illusion. I'd like to believe Dave Sim retconned Elrod into being some kind of magical, illusory creation because I don't like to believe that any writer plans that kind of stuff. Why even consider if he's a real being or not this early? But Dave Sim has that bit in the Swords of Cerebus essay where he says, "He always pops up, seemingly from nowhere, with no explanation of how he got out of the fix we left him in (Aha! You hadn't noticed, had you) and an entirely new vision of the best direction for his life to take." It's almost like he's winking at us and nudging us with his elbow, daring us to guess that there's something not right with the character. Maybe Dave Sim only came up with the "Elrod is an actual cartoon character" after a few more Elrod appearances. Cerebus throws the gem in a well, figuring it must be bad luck, and Death walks off dejected that his plan failed. Who's he going to manipulate into climbing down a well?! I mean, The Roach would probably do it. But it seems like Death's heart wasn't really into killing everybody quicker anyway. He probably realized it was just too much extra work. And that's it for the story! Not much in Aardvark Comment except for this list of creatures Cerebus has fought which I did not know existed before I wrote out my list earlier or else I would have simply used it and missed out on some of them.

Also, Frank Thorne wrote another letter.

Cerebus #4 Rating: B+. Dave Sim was correct in his essay about not much really happening in this issue. It's a lot of Death hoping for some gem for some reason which he never gets and nobody ever notices he's even trying, and Elrod going on and on and on about himself. It's a good first appearance by Elrod but he's definitely better utilized when he has actual dialogue with other characters. I loved this issue so don't take it the wrong way when I say my favorite part of this issue was probably when Dave mentioned of Wendy Pini. Elfquest was my favorite thing from 6th to 9th grade. Wendy Pini and Dave Sim have this thing in common: they're two of three comic book creators whom I went out of my way to get to sign my books. The other one was Terry Moore. And I guess you could include Richard Pini but I just think of him as a subset of Wendy.

#Dave Sim #Cerebus

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angeltriestoblog · 4 years

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I took an online course!

Hello, and welcome to my first proper post under the #quarantingz tag: a little series where I chronicle all of my virtual endeavors and adventures in the time of COVID-19. Through this, I hope to achieve the following (research paper ka, gh0rl?):

Share what I’m doing with all of you guys, since it’s much easier than messaging and video calling you all one by one to confirm that yes, I am alive despite my inactivity on Messenger;

Hold myself accountable so I strive to find ways to keep myself occupied instead of sinking back into stagnancy;

Inspire you to pick up a hobby or try something out while we’re all cooped up indoors! I’ve seen a lot of my friends post that they’ve been getting so bored that even sleeping seems like a chore to them, but the four walls of your room present more opportunities than you think. Let’s try them out together!

And before anything else, it’s worth mentioning that this pandemic is not a productivity contest and we should not feel pressured into making or being the Next Big Thing. But, I believe there’s nothing wrong in seeking structure for one’s self-improvement if your mental health is up for it!

Ok. [START]

During the early weeks of the pandemic, online classes were still ongoing for students at my university, and needless to say, I was not having it. I was already worried enough about the possibility of contracting a life-threatening virus, and on top of that, I had to decipher lessons I could barely understand in a face-to-face set-up, and submit a paper on it that was worth half my grade. But thankfully my university opted to exercise cura personalis—“care for the entire person”, individualized attention to their needs—towards those who lacked the resources needed to keep up with the demands of e-learning. So, they cancelled the rest of the semester! I was filled with relief because as necessary as it might have been to stay on track, it was not an effective way to facilitate learning and retaining of information.

Which is why it’s kind of ironic that one of the first things I did once I realized I had so much free time on my hands was sign up for an online class. *cricket noises*

A friend had sent me a viral listicle of 500 free Ivy League courses. I guess a lot of people had looked at the indefinite quarantine period available at their disposal as an opportunity to learn something new! And well, I couldn’t help but join along, especially since Harvard was my dream school growing up, and they were offering hundreds of programs for me to choose from. (Sorry, Ateneo. I did say otherwise on my application essay.)

Growing up, I had wanted to be an author-doctor-scientist-rockstar-supermodel. I consistently proclaimed this to anyone with ears, whether they liked it or not, with all the conviction my four-year-old body held inside. I hadn't the faintest idea which degrees I needed to get to make a livelihood out of these childhood fantasies, but I figured that if I was going to be a legendary multi-hyphenate, I’d have to come from the best university in the world. I also remember negotiating with my family members from the States that I would have to live with them while I was finishing my college education, not knowing how far their humble home in Orange Country, California was from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reality inevitably took over—more like, held the reins on my ambitions—and I had to accept that there were several constraints in place that would keep me from studying there despite my desire to.

Well, that was until I chose to take up a course on rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and public speaking under HarvardX! I picked this out of the several options because I believe learning to separate logic from emotional appeal helps me analyze an argument better and craft more well-informed decisions—definitely a skill we must have in our toolbox given today’s media landscape that is constantly inundated with fake news.

I was to learn about how arguments are structured and how rhetorical techniques are usually employed by dissecting a number of influential and prominent speeches in American history. I then had to apply these learnings in two major written requirements: an opinion editorial and speech, both on any topic of my choice.

Every morning for a week and a half, I would wake up as early as 9:00AM—just when some people on my timeline are getting ready to go to sleep—and dive straight into my lessons. I decided to take on a module a day since each was pretty packed with information in the form of readings and videos. More often than not, the flow looked like this:

The transcript of an address by a prominent American figure: examples of which are Former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr. I would annotate this with my first impressions, opinions on any lines and ideas that struck me.

The background of the speaker and the context of the speech: This honestly contributed a lot to my understanding and appreciation of the material. Although I’ve heard of most of them through almanacs I’d read as a kid, I never knew the story behind them.

The key concepts of the module: These consisted of terms and examples, as well as how to make use of them properly and to my advantage. Examples of the topics covered were modes of appeal, kinds of reasoning, and logical fallacies (my favorite).

The transcript, again: For the second round, I would have to spot the concepts that were previously taught to me, in action. When I was fully drained of my brain juice, I had the option to view and respond to the comments of my peers, as well as the lecture notes of my virtual professors. I admit I didn’t get to interact with any of my fellow students: majority of them were from different timezones. I would occasionally creep on the forums, look at the replies my peers would leave, and see I was in the presence of people from Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Videos of actual lectures regarding the reading, held by the professor: This course is an online version of an existing in-person Harvard class called "The Elements of Rhetoric". Probably the best part of the daily lessons, because it felt like I was also sitting in, watching his students recite from the other side of the room.A quiz on the topics discussed: Very easy, and you get two attempts before you submit your final answer so it’s almost always a sure pass.

As I mentioned a while ago, there are two major outputs to be submitted and they involve a lot of writing and preliminary research. (I personally wouldn’t recommend this to you if you don’t derive pleasure from activities of that sort.) In an attempt to shed a light on a timely issue, I wrote my op-ed on the steps the Philippine government must take to rehabilitate our healthcare sector, and my speech on the use of social media as an effective political tool amid a crisis such as this. The last one was a requirement I had done for my Comm subject, which I tweaked for the sake of formality.

The op-ed was subject to self-evaluation: I had to answer questions on whether my submission met the set criteria or not and give proof as to why I thought so. The speech, on the other hand, was graded by two anonymous peers, who gave encouraging remarks and cited points for improvement. Although I knew I gave my best, my final grade was very much dependent on what they thought of my work so I was a bit nervous. Thankfully, everything went well: I got a perfect score on almost every component and secured a certificate of completion (which I had to pay for, but looks great on my Linkedin, if I do say so myself).

Overall, I enjoyed a lot and found the learnings I picked up to be useful. The ideas might seem abstract but the building blocks of rhetoric pepper even the minutiae of our daily conversations, whether we're aware of it or not. All of us engage in discourse and form our stances on issues using emotion, authority, or hard facts. We elaborate on them by stating the general premise then delving into specific examples, or the other way around. Our last resort tends to be a form of character assassination, faulty generalization, or leading question. The list goes on! I don't think I can speak or listen without policing someone in my head!My response towards this experience is a far cry from how I felt towards my required online classes for school, it's true. But, there are several factors that differentiated both of them.

I was able to choose what I wanted to study. No Quantitative Methods or Computer Science being forced down my throat (although I am revisiting my lessons in those respective subjects after I’m done with everything else I want to do, because I remember my parents paid for those). I am free to invest in areas outside the scope of my degree and gain key insight from the most reputable institutions around the world. I have the luxury to study to test something out, to see if it’s simply a hobby or a potential minor/double degree/career trajectory. If I find out after a few sessions that it’s not my cup of tea, I can easily unenroll and move on. Trying to do that in college would lead to disastrous consequences.

Another thing I liked was the freedom I had to go through everything at my own pace, mull over what I wanted to write for as long as I needed to, rewind and go back to parts in the videos that I liked. Additionally, if I wasn’t in the mood to do anything productive on a certain day (it happens to everyone), I could easily do so without the fear of missing out on anything. I know that a handful of courses do require you to stick to a schedule but everything is still within a reasonable time frame.

Now, I understand that several things are chipping away at our (deteriorating) focus right now. It’s hard enough when school demands so much of our energy—I remember my Quant prof had offered to teach us once via Zoom and though if we were only preoccupied with Netflix and trashtalkan groups back then, we collectively decided to ditch him. But, if you’re determined and committed to learning for leisure purposes, here are some tips that helped me hold myself accountable!

Tidy up, both physically and mentally.

Find a workspace that is conducive to learning. In the absence of a desk in a bedroom, the living room couch or the dining table when no one's eating meals are suitable alternatives. As long as there is a constant source of light, little to no noise, and a simple set-up that minimizes the chances of you leaving your work, it should be perfect!

And while we’re on that note, eliminate distractions. I only had my notebook, pen, and correction tape on the table along with my laptop: I made use of the Forest app regularly as well and now I have a nice collection of various shrubs and trees. I even put my phone on top of the cabinet, God knows my sedentary lifestyle keeps me from exerting the effort needed to stand up and reach for it.

If you aren’t sure that you can devote your full attention to the task at hand, get someone you trust to help you! I update my mom that I’ve been studying and fill her in on my progress not only because I am naturally predisposed to telling her everything going on my life, but also so she can help keep me on the right track and ensure I do my work.

Take it seriously.

Allot a specific time of the day for it. That way, it’s easier to integrate it into your routine and stop you from bailing halfway. For me, it's not advisable to go at it early in the morning, because your mind won't be ready to process anything of that scale. But, it has to be one of the first tasks of the day so you can avoid putting it off in favor of whatever your subconscious feels is more interesting.

Take notes when needed, complete the assigned activities seriously without consulting other sources, and participate in the forums as a substitute for recitation! Be the star student you wanted to be, but were probably too shy to turn into for the fear of being smart-shamed by your peers!

Try to see the purpose in what you’re doing.

In my case, it gave me the motivation to finish it so I could apply it in real-life situations and make the necessary changes in my behavior and habits.

This definitely isn’t the last online course I’m taking: as a matter of fact, I have a couple lined up! I’m currently working my way through something on strategic planning by this website called Culture and Creativity. Although the material has been tailor-fit to address the social and economic development of countries in Eastern Europe, the concepts can easily be utilized in local contexts. Here’s a list of other programs that caught my eye while I was browsing the different catalogs across other platforms.

Investor Pitching Course for Creative Businesses | Culture and Creativity

Applied Psychology: Introduction to Consumer Behavior | Alison Courses

Marketing Analytics | edX

Transformational Leadership | Alison Courses

Global Trends for Business and Society | Class Central

Wishing you all the love and light the world can offer at a time that can be as apathetic and dark as this one. Wash your hands, pray for our frontliners, and check your privilege!

#quarantingz #recs #angeltriestoblog #life dump #online courses

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onceuponamirror · 7 years

Text

heart rise above

///// CHAPTER 4

summary: It wasn’t an experiment with freedom borne of some Americana fantasy; rather, a road trip of purely logistical intentions. The plan was simple. Drive from Boston to Chicago for his sister’s college graduation. That’s it.

Or, he drives a Ford Pickup Named Desire.

Mechanic!AU

fandom: riverdale

ship: betty x jughead

words: 16k

chapters: 4/?

[read from the beginning] [read the latest]

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Jughead stares at her, and then crosses the room to place his bag in the chair he’d been occupying. He seems to hesitate. “Should I…do I need anything?”

Betty presses her lips together, trying not to smile at how oddly confused he looks. “No. Might want to take off your jacket, though. I’ll grab you a jumpsuit. This work is dirty.”

She quickly turns around, cheeks blooming at the way that had come out. He doesn’t seem to notice, because he’s busying himself with shedding his jean jacket, but she hadn’t meant it to sound so coy.

He follows her to the supply closet, where she sifts through the available uniforms. She normally keeps her work suit in her office, so she’s forgotten her father’s uniform was still there, stuffed in the back. Hesitating as her eyes fall on his embroidered name, she sighs and skips forward a few hangers.

Joaquin isn’t coming in today, so hopefully he won’t mind sharing his. Betty hands him the jumpsuit and he wordlessly slips into it.

“The truck is on spot three, if you wanna pop the hood. I’m just gonna change again,” she says, nodding to the other side of the garage. She hates wearing her clothes under her suit because she always overheats, but maybe she’d grabbed a new pink shirt because she’d felt slightly embarrassed about the state of her appearance when she’d first met him.

Betty moves to the corner blind spot to change out of sight. As she pulls her top over her head, she remembers her promise to investigate the relationship status of whichever Veronica had dubbed the cute one, but she’s still not totally sure who that’s supposed to be. Archie is good-looking too, if albeit reminded her a bit uncomfortably of her ex-boyfriend in personality.

Veronica seemed to have zeroed in on the redhead, though Betty silently decides there’s something cuter about the perennial pout of Jughead, even if she can’t tell if he’s something of a jerk, or just someone in a bad position.

But if she asks Veronica if Jughead is the one she’s interested in, her friend will just assume Betty thinks he’s cute (she does) and she’ll never hear the end of it (ever). Veronica has been borderline obsessed with getting Betty “back out there” since breaking things off with Trev, but it’s been barely four months and she doesn’t understand the rush.

More than once, she’s wondered if it’s Veronica’s looming guilt for leaving her in Riverdale at the end of the summer, as if Betty wasn’t the one who encouraged her to apply for law school.

Even if she does feel the imminence of her absence, eying it like some dark cloud thundering off over a far mountain, she still has Kevin and Joaquin, her sister, and even her mother or Cheryl on a good day. But by Veronica’s calculations, Betty would think she’s about to become some spinster recluse.

Then again, Betty has been at the garage since five to avoid her mother, so maybe she’s not too far off. Betty decides she’ll just cover her bases and find out about both guys for Ronnie. If she even can. She’s never been entirely good with subtlety, but she’ll have to find a way to sneak the question in.

When she steps out of her office, fully changed, Jughead is standing to the side of his truck, eying her rolling work cart. She bounces up to him and pulls the cart around to the hood.

“So this is all we need to get started, for now. Sorry, this is a little cluttered! I wasn’t expecting anyone. Here, can you move the book? Just put it anywhere with a clean surface.” She realizes that doesn’t give him a lot of options, but he hesitantly takes the thick book and quickly drops it on a storage shelf.

“Bit of light reading?” He jokes, walking back to her. His nose wriggles slightly.

“Sure, if you call 500 pages of paperback dedicated to murder light,” Betty smirks, jerking her head towards the engine in a gesture that asks him to join her. He comes to stand next to her, though noticeably keeps his distance and she instantly feels silly for her putting on the new shirt earlier. He peers over her shoulder into the engine.

“So what am I looking at? Besides the obvious,” he adds, eyes narrowed as they dart over the machinery.

She points to the dark spot burned in on the left side. “See that there? That’s where your compressor fried. That’s why your car started smoking; the engine overheated when it failed. The first thing I’m gonna do is pull that out.”

Jughead nods once, eyes moving rapidly around the spot she’s hovering over. She gesticulates to the main engine. “And this is the head gasket. It basically locks everything in place. Without it—”

“I’m dead in the water,” he summarizes correctly. “So why do I need a new one?”

“Head gaskets are tricky, because they’re not always symptomatic. The whole point is that they’re sealed. So you have to look beyond what’s right in front of you. It takes a bit of detective work, but between you and me, that’s my favorite part. See your cylinder block?” She points to it.

“That’s why you think I need it replaced? That rust on the underside?” Betty gives an mm-hm. The rust is almost fully hidden, and not everyone would see it right away. “So it’s leaking,” Jughead guesses.

“You’re a fast learner,” she says truthfully, impressed. His eyes dart down and to the side as he shrugs.

“It’s the long-earned habit of a slacker,” he replies dismissively. “So you weren’t kidding about an engine being more than the sum of its parts. Wouldn’t have thought Aristotle would be this relevant to 20th century machinery. Huh. And you said something about a valve?”

“Right. It’s called that for a reason. The whole engine works like a heart.”

“That’s apt,” he says softly.

Betty glances over her shoulder at him, meeting his gaze. Something indiscernible but vaguely intense moves across his face. She takes a breath of air to steady the buzzing across her chest and looks back at the engine. “So that one, on the right? You can see where it’s thinning.”

Jughead leans in over the car, moving closer to her. “Yep,” he says, as she grabs a rag to wipe off as much of the carbon remnants from the compressor as she can. It’ll be a lot easier to remove if she can see what she’s doing.

“So, what’s in Chicago?” She asks, deciding to push an opening to investigate. She resolutely keeps her eyes on the engine, lest she burst into the same flames that claimed the compressor.

“The women in our lives,” Jughead says off-handedly. When she looks up, surprised, he adds, “Archie’s mom and my sister. Respectively.”

He grins down at her, and she realizes it might be the first time she’s actually seen him smile. She finds it suits him, especially for a guy who seems to wear a scowl like it’s a personal edict. “Why do you ask?”

She turns her gaze back down to her work and tries to keep her voice innocent. “I can’t make conversation?”

He pauses. “Yeah, sorry, of course. I’m kind of bad at…small talk. Uh, my little sister is graduating from Northwestern, hence the firm deadline. Archie just tagged along for the ride since his mom is in Chicago too. And we’ve been talking about a road trip on and off since high school, so we figured we might as well give it a shake. Although it ended up being a pretty pathetic attempt, obviously.”

She chuckles. It’s not exactly the firm answer she’d hoped to get for Veronica, but the derisive tone in Jughead’s voice when he’d talked about the women in their lives seemed to imply an equal shot. “You and Archie have known each other a while then?”

“Since we were nothing but mindless wee babes. We grew up in the same town, a bit outside of Boston.”

She glances over, feeling amused. “All those remarks about Riverdale and you’re from a suburb?”

Jughead turns bright red. “I didn’t mean it like that. Yesterday, I was just…you might’ve noticed I’m already not the cheeriest guy around. My beloved truck breaking down not 5 days into a road trip I hadn’t even planned for didn’t do wonders for my mood. Somehow.”

“I know, I could tell. You’re forgiven,” she says, with mock seriousness even though she means it. Privately, Betty decides that even if she weren’t her pitifully lenient self, she’d still let it go after seeing that anxious look in his eye.

“Thank you, I can now sleep easily once more,” he says, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling again. Then he rubs at his neck. “So, do you like that book you’re reading?”

She blinks, surprised by the question and the suddenly informal pitch in his voice. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while, and I finally got to it last week.”

“That’s not much of an answer. What do you really think of it?” He asks, squinting at her.

Betty raises an eyebrow, but he’s got a hard look in his eye and she might as well be honest. “It is good. It’s lonely, but good.”

He wrinkles his brow. “What do you mean, lonely?”

She sighs, trying to think of a way to summarize her thoughts. “There’s a lot of open space in the writing. Like the main character is always waiting for something that doesn’t come. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Jughead scratches at his temple. “No, it…does. That’s a very editorial thing to say.”

It’s Betty’s turn to look away. Considering that’s more or less what she went to school for, she takes it as a compliment.

“So you’d recommend it, then?” Jughead presses. He quickly adds, “I’m looking for something to kill the three weeks with. Was gonna try to find a book store.”

“Sure. I like that it’s not a vendetta. I like true crime books, but they’re always about some guy whose wife was murdered in front of him. Sometimes that works, but I decided I’m kind of done with the fridged female character. But I’m only halfway through, and it’s a little lacking in diversity.”

He shifts against the hood, frowning. “Meaning?”

Betty shrugs and switches back to the engine, tools now in hand. She starts unloosening the screws of the burnt compressor. “I like that it’s really about this guy’s relationship with his family, especially his father, but there just isn’t much presence of women in the book.”

Jughead is silent next to her, but she can feel his eyes on her, so she twists back. “What?”

His tongue digs into his cheek thoughtfully and shakes his head. “You just didn’t strike me as a true crime kind of girl.”

She leans next to him against the truck. “What did I strike you as?” She asks, feeling unusually bold.

Here in Riverdale, she’s the same old Betty Cooper that she’s always been. Everyone knows her here, knows her to be kind and giving and good. Simple and plain. But Jughead is a stranger, he’ll be gone soon, and she wants to know what he sees.

His lips lift slightly, but his face betrays nothing. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

He leaves not long after that, with some vague excuse about work (though she’s forgotten to ask what it is exactly that he does)—but then, much to her surprise, Jughead comes back the next day. In fact, he’s already there waiting when she pulls up the drive.

“Nice car,” he greets, with an impressed kind of look.

“It’s just advertising,” she laughs, shutting the door to her blue Chevy Bel Air. “If I didn’t drive something like this, people would think I wouldn’t know how to handle an old engine.”

“Fair point,” Jughead says. His eyes run over it, and then her. “Well, you’ve convinced me.”

She tries not to flush under his curious gaze, but seizes the opportunity to shield her face by grabbing her bag from the open window. When she turns back, he’s shifting on his feet. “Sorry to come back unannounced,” he says, clearing his throat. “I wasn’t sure how much of me you’d signed up for. I mean, whether or not I could shadow your work again today. I didn’t want to presume, and I thought about texting you first, but—”

“Jughead, really, it’s okay,” she insists, even though it’s a bit adorable watching him ramble. She gets out her keys and fiddles with the garage padlocks, smiling over at him. “I think it’s good that you want to learn. This truck isn’t getting younger, and maintenance is important on a car like this.”

And yesterday she found him to be good company, despite the recurring frown, so she genuinely doesn’t mind. Jughead looks relieved, and scurries over to help her push up the rolling overnight gates.

He hangs around a few feet behind her at first, but after she hands him an engine manual to study, a switch seems to flip between them. Or, she realizes, he just relaxes. Somewhere between Jughead’s scowl smoothing out and her cracking her father’s worst car joke—

(“I try to think of a good car pun, but I’m always too exhausted.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Because of the exhaust pipe.”

“Yeah, I got that. Terrible.”)

—Betty decides that Jughead is not only good company, but he’s also a surprisingly calming presence. She’s not sure if it’s his dry humor or his blunt honesty, but all he has to do is roll his eyes her way and stretch his long legs out against something as he makes some clever quip and she’s laughing again in a way she hasn’t laughed all year.

She’d gotten so used to the hours ticking by unaccompanied in this garage that she’d nearly forgotten what it was like to work alongside someone—even if Jughead isn’t actually much help. He doesn’t quite have the natural talent for mechanics, though still an observant, diligent student. He occasionally asks questions while leafing through the manual or leaning over her shoulder, but mostly seems content to watch her work.

After an afternoon of switching between his engine and the other cars she’s responsible for, she decides it’s time for a break. She stretches her arms high over her head. “I’m gonna make a pot of coffee, do you want some?” She asks, rolling her neck.

“A woman after my heart,” Jughead says, glancing at her over the top of the manual. Only his eyes are visible, but that’s enough to find herself blushing. Then, with a flash, it just reminds her that she forgot to update Veronica on what she’d gleaned yesterday.

“I’ll be right back,” she says.

“And I’ll be right here,” he replies, attention returning to the manual. He gets up and wanders over the truck, head turning between engine and book as he studies the two.

When she gets to her office, she settles into her desk to catch up on her work emails. She shoots off a request for the compressor she needs to her friend Adam—who runs a much bigger garage up in Hudson and is usually the one she turns to when she’s in a bit of a mechanic bind—and then responds to a thank you email from a satisfied customer. There are more things to sort through, but she owes Veronica a response first.

V, not 100% sure, but I think both boys are single, she texts.

Veronica’s reply comes almost instantly.

C’est magnifique, isn’t it? One for me and one for you!

Betty looks up from her phone and across the garage, where she can see Jughead sticking his head over the engine and muttering to himself. She turns back to her phone keyboard. Wait, what? Did you already know?

Of course. Archie tracked me down yesterday and asked me out. Of course, we’re going to have to drive down to New Paltz for any kind of decent dinner. Candlelight should be present at all first dates.

So it was Archie that Veronica was interested in. She tries to ignore the quickening of her heart. Then there’s a pause, the little ellipsis appearing ominously as Veronica begins to type.

Wait, how do YOU know?

** Well, you left me with very vague instructions, V! **

?? Did you think Archie’s friend was the cute one??

It’s impossible for a text to gasp, but Veronica somehow manages it. Betty supposes there’s some kind of satisfaction in predicting exactly how this conversation would go but there’s not much.

** I just asked him when he was at the garage yesterday because I wasn’t sure who you were interested in! that’s it! **

He was hanging out at the garage with you?

** V, I’m fixing his truck, it’s not unreasonable for him to be here. **

Is he there again today?

Shit. She shouldn’t have used the present tense. Betty definitely doesn’t want to tell her that. But Veronica doesn’t wait long for her not to answer, sending over a flurry of angel and heart emojis.

B!!

This is going just as badly as she’d expected it would, so she quickly puts her phone on silent and sets it face down on the desk. Exhaling, she decides to busy herself with making coffee. While it bubbles and percolates, she muses with what’s just transpired.

She’s not sure why she feels so defensive; probably because she wants her next relationship to be developed on her own terms and not pushed into it because her well-meaning but boundary-stricken friends are overly invested in her life.

Still—it wouldn’t be so crazy for her to like Jughead, would it?

Granted, she doesn’t know him very well, but she’s already admitted to herself that she finds him attractive. And he’s since apologized for his occasionally rude behavior, which was her main put off. And she’d been ready to break up with Trev long before actually summoning the courage, so it’s not like she’s not over him. If anything, she feels bad at how much she is over him.

Really, there are only two problems with allowing a crush on Jughead to bloom. One, she finds him hard to read, and with the amount of literal space he keeps putting between them, she guesses he really is just here to learn about his truck. Two, he’s leaving. In three weeks. And she’ll never see him again after that.

And that is the bottom line. What if she ends up really liking him and all she’s left with is an empty garage and feeling more trapped here than ever? The risk just doesn’t seem worth it for a guy who, right after meeting her, said: “let’s get this over with."

She’s never been able to separate sex and feelings, so the last thing she needs is to put emotional stake in some rolling stone. So she decides right then and there that she won’t let her mind consider it any further.

As she’s making that vow to herself, she spots Kevin moving silently across the garage, clearly mindful of where he steps. Jughead is bent over the truck, his nose pressed against the manual she gave him and unaware of the sneaking figure creeping up behind him.

Betty comes out of her office to watch it unfold more closely. She’s unsure what Kevin is doing, but then he wraps his arms tightly around Jughead’s torso and says, “Surprise!”

Jughead freezes. “No shit,” he says, after a long pause. Kevin scrambles back.

“Oh. You’re not Joaquin.”

“Definitely not,” Jughead replies, turning around. His eyebrows are so high on his forehead they’re practically in his hairline.

“Joaquin isn’t working today, Kev,” Betty says sheepishly, coming around towards them. Jughead looks over at her. “He had to go up to Catskill to see his mom.”

“Oh, damn. I forgot. He did say that,” Kevin sighs, scratching awkwardly behind his ear. “Sorry about that. I was just trying to surprise him with lunch. Trying to extend the honeymoon period and all that.” He lifts up a brown paper bag and shoves it at Jughead. “Here, you can have it. It’s the least I can do.”

“I was gonna say you’d have to buy me dinner first,” Jughead mutters, accepting the bag and peeking inside it. “But this’ll do.”

Kevin grins at Betty. “You didn’t tell me you hired a new guy. About time.” But he doesn’t give her a moment to reply, immediately offering Jughead his hand. “One day we’ll laugh about this. I’m Kevin.”

Jughead takes it, but exchanges a look with Betty, who jumps in. “Kev, this is Jughead. His truck broke down in Riverdale during a road trip. He just wanted to learn about fixing his engine, so that’s why he’s here.”

Still shaking Jughead’s hand, despite his mounting discomfort, Kevin stares at Betty with the kind of expression she’s learned to hate on him: one of mischievous curiosity. He looks back at Jughead and seems to realize he’s been forcing him to shake his hand for about half a minute.

He releases Jughead from his grip. “You don’t say. How long are you in town for?”

Jughead glances at Betty, who nods. “She said three weeks.”

Kevin cocks his neck, gears clearly working. “And what are you doing here again?”

But a ringing from across the garage saves either from answering. Betty raises a pausing finger in the air. “Uh—hold on. That’s my office phone,” she says, already cutting across the room. She catches it just before it goes out. “Cooper Garage, Betty speaking.”

“Hey, Betts, it’s Adam. Got your email—I do have the compressor part you need, but I’m out of town till next week. Will that work?”

She lets out a thankful breath. “That’ll be great, Adam. Lemme know when you’re back and I’ll pop up to Hudson. You’re a lifesaver!”

He chuckles across the line. “You’ll have to owe me,” he says, which is what he says every time. They make a bit more polite chatter (Adam always manages to make her look like a comparable introvert, somehow) and then Betty finds her goodbyes.

Kevin corners her as she’s coming out of her office. “So, were you planning on telling me about tall, dark, and broody?”

“There’s nothing to tell, Kev. Just because that’s your type doesn’t mean it’s mine,” Betty says, although she’s already decided that’s not strictly true. Still, she resists the strong urge to tell him to keep his voice down. “And he can’t wait to get out of here, trust me.”

“If you say so,” Kevin says, crossing his arms. “But for the record, he’s been staring over here the whole time we’ve been talking.”

They both turn and look over at Jughead, and his head immediately jerks upwards to the ceiling, like he’s found something very interesting up in the high beams. He sulks off, shoving his hands forcefully in his pockets.

Kevin grins back at her smugly. “Stop,” she sighs.

“I didn’t do anything,” he replies innocently.

“I can hear you thinking,” Betty mumbles. “Besides, he might’ve been looking at you.”

Kevin seems to consider this. “That’s fair. I did practically just grab his ass. And I am something of a Kennedy, so I wouldn’t really blame him.”

She raises a hand in the air as if to say “see?” but the smile drops from his face, his lips pinching together. “I’m not trying to push Veronica’s agenda on you, to be clear. I’m just all a-flush with new romance and I can’t help but want that for my best girl too.”

Betty smiles softly. “I know that. And I appreciate that. But if I’ve learned anything, my next relationship needs to have…meaning. I can’t get that from a guy with one foot out the door. And besides, honestly, I don’t think he’s interested. And I’m not—I’m just fixing his engine. So please, just—”

But Kevin doesn’t look satisfied. “I’m not just talking about dating though, Betty. I want you to be happy. I never see you anymore unless I come here and… If it were me, and I’d just gotten out of a two year relationship that dramatically, and I was spending all my time at work and my dad had just—”

“Stop,” she repeats it again, but this time with force, closing her eyes briefly. “Kevin, please. I’m fine. I’ve just been busier with everything since Joaquin started classes. Which is fine, Mr. Boyfriend, I’m not complaining, I’m really happy he wants his degree, but it just means I need to put in more hours for now.”

Kevin doesn’t look convinced and she hates the concern in his eyes. “But what happens when he and I go to Europe? What are you gonna do when it’s just you alone in this garage for two months?”

“I’ll hire someone,” she huffs, tightening her ponytail. “When he leaves.”

He puts up his hands. “Whatever you say. It’s your business. Literally. But can we at least make some plans to see each other outside of this grease trap? I mean, you should appreciate the depths of which I care for you and Joaquin to show up here in my best khakis.”

She smiles, finally relaxing. “Yes, definitely. How about tomorrow at Pop’s?” Kevin nods approvingly, and just then, Jughead wanders back over towards them. She turns to him, happy for a break from the ghost of the Spanish Inquisition inhabiting her friend. “Hey, Jughead! Good news! I heard back from my guy in Hudson and he has the part for me. I can go get it next week.”

“Oh, he’s definitely got a part for you,” Kevin mutters under his breath, much to Betty’s annoyance. She shoots him a warning glare, unsure how many times she has to insist Adam doesn’t think of her that way. Then again, most of her defenses had come about in the era of Trev, and she’s not sure how’ll they hold up with her single. She’s secretly suspected it’s not a completely unfounded theory.

Jughead glances between them. “Great,” he says finally. His voice is back to its usual flat tenor.

Kevin gives him one long, parting look before bidding them both farewell, saying he has to get back to the mayor’s office. They’re planning a 4th of July parade that has been one misstep after another and he is very needed, apparently.

Afterwards, she brings the coffee pot out to her work station and they settle in on folding chairs. Jughead guzzles down two cups of black coffee without seemingly taking a breath in between and amiably asks her about good examples of books that don’t fridge their female characters (a topic on which she has nothing but thoughts).

Later, once Betty can no longer excuse a longer break, she and Jughead fall back into their routines (her working, him hanging around observing). It’s quiet but comfortable, and she lets him pick the next music, even after he jokes that he’s a loyal metalhead.

Instead, he puts on The Beach Boys (he gives, “it’s the road trip playlist that never was,” as his excuse), and when Wouldn’t It Be Nice comes on, she thinks simply that maybe it would.

He excuses himself to the restroom halfway through the song, but she’s spared from analyzing that as the red garage phone rings across the room.

“Cooper Garage, this is Betty,” she says into the receiver. Polly’s voice breaks across the line.

“Hi Betty! Sorry to bother you at work, but I was wondering if you minded picking up the kids from day camp in an hour? You know I hate putting this on you, but I thought I could get off earlier today but something came up last minute here. And Jason is so picky about nannies and we just haven’t found a new one we like. And you’re so great with them.”

Betty pulls the phone away from her mouth in order to take in a long breath. Jughead walks back into the room as she’s straightening up. “Of course, Pol,” she says, forcing a bright voice. “No problem. I came in early today, so I can close up by then.”

“You’re the best,” Polly says, with evident relief. “Do you wanna have dinner tonight? You can hang out with the kids till we’re home and then I’ll order us some well-deserved take out of your choice.”

It’s a roundabout way of asking her to also babysit, which frustrates her. She’d appreciate Polly just being direct about it at this point, since it’s been two months since Jason fired the last nanny and essentially hired her, minus the pay.

But since she’d come home last night to her mother very pointedly saying Trev had dropped off another box of Betty’s things (if one could call a couple of socks and books that) and tried to wait around for her, she’ll take the excuses to stay out that she can get.

“That sounds great. I’ll see you tonight,” Betty says, and then hangs up with a bit more force than she’d like Jughead to see. She pivots back to him. “I’m gonna have to close up. Do you want me to drop you somewhere on my way out?”

His gaze is eagled and she doesn’t like it. “Uh, sure. That would be great. Everything…okay?”

She waves a hand and starts putting tools away. “Absolutely. Everything’s fine. Just babysitting duty again.”

Jughead hums. “You just don’t seem too thrilled.”

Betty cocks her neck up at him, momentarily thrown off guard. She narrows her eyes. “I love my family,” she says sharply. “I’m happy to help out.”

He shrugs indifferently, but there’s still something working behind his eyes. “Okay, sorry. That wasn’t my place.”

“It’s fine,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m just gonna finish packing up these tools and then get changed. Do you want to wait in my office?”

It’s an unspoken dismissal, and Jughead nods, scratching behind his neck. Once he’s gone, she lets out a shaky breath, trying to convince herself she’s unsure why she suddenly feels so frustrated. In reality, she knows it’s because she’s spent 25 years perfecting perfection and it’s unnerving that a guy she barely knows can spot her discomfort right away.

But she is fine. It is fine. She does genuinely love her family, but she also wants to appreciate having them. Life is fickle and she’s learned the hard way that no amount of rigorous planning can hold up against fate. So if that means she needs to hand her time over to her sister once in a while, she will.

After a few minutes, she’s ready to go. He emerges from her office looking pensive and frowning once more.

She locks up. Jughead follows.

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #betty x jughead #betty cooper #jughead jones #fics

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kthyunngg · 7 years

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Ephemeral [2]

↳ (adj.) - lasting a very short time; short lived

Member: Namjoon

Genre: Angst, some sort au that is tbd (i think i’ll keep it a secret for now), romance(?)

Words: 1.6k

Summary: There is a man in your dreams. You don’t know what he looks like or what his name is - you only know the sound of his voice. His voice. His voice follows you where ever you go. These dreams are your only source to see him, yet these dreams feel so real.

A/N: Part 2 going strong :) I also created a little something for the future so stay tuned :) Enjoy Xx

[ one ] [ three ] [ four ] [five] [ six ]

“Where did you go?” Aeri whispers in your ear as you take your seat next to her.

“Just to the washroom. The wind messed my hair up a bit. Is it starting soon?” You mentally pat yourself on the back for the subtle change in topic.

“Yup. They just announced that the show should be starting any minute now.” And right on cue, the lights dim and the spotlight focuses at the centre of the runway.

Although Aeri isn’t speaking, you can feel her excitement; it has practically been pouring out of her since she got the tickets. People simmer down and the cameras are beginning to be pulled out. Looking around the crowd, everyone is dressed to their best. Blacks, whites, nudes; none of the colours are too sharp, yet everyone stands out in their own ways.

Suddenly a rush of deja vu overcomes you.

This atmosphere, the buzz of hushed voices. It seems so…familiar?

In a matter of minutes, the first model struts down the runway in time with the music. One after the other, you’re overwhelmed with the different styles created by this designer and it’s absolutely amazing. From jackets to dresses, suits to casual wear, everything is so unique. Some outfits brighter and other darker, yet each one is able to highlight a single aspect of the entire set of clothes.

The whole experience is truly amazing. Somewhere deep down, you’ve always been interested in fashion, but recently you haven’t been spending time on it as much. It’s almost as if today you rekindled a fire that’s been put out years ago. Surprisingly, after the show, you had a rush of adrenaline. You’ve been inspired to go on a shopping spree and you’re sure that Aeri would not mind one bit.

Despite all the excitement from this fashion show, something was constantly itching at the back of your head. The designer comes out to the runway to say his thanks, but you’re not able to pay attention to a single word that’s said.

Your head is buzzing with thoughts, yet nothing is being pieced together. It feels as if someone is knocking at the back of your head, pushing you to remember something, yet you can’t. No matter how hard you try, nothing is coming up except for a weird sensation of nostalgia.

“Ready to go?” Aeri brings you back to reality and you nod in response.

Some people stay behind to try to get a word to the designer while others slowly make their way out of the building. You and Aeri follow behind the group of people who have gathered at the front doors, stepping out into the cold of winter.

“What did you think of the fashion show Y/N?”

You think back to the lights, the colours, and the flow of different fabrics. Only one word to describe it.

“Extravagant. I wasn’t expecting anything like this! I mean, half the outfits I would probably never wear, but for some reason, they all look so good!”

“Ahaha I knew you would like it! What can I say? I’m just a great friend. Let’s go get something to eat now shall we?” And on cue, your stomach rumbles louder than waves crashing against rocks.

“You couldn’t have proposed a better idea Aeri!” Both of you burst out into laughter and link arms, cheerfully strutting down the streets of Myeongdong.

Y/N

“What is it Aeri?” You look towards your friend who is looking straight ahead with a huge grin plastered on her face.

“Hm? I didn’t call you Y/N.”

“Oh…my bad, sorry.” You turn your attention back in front of you, but there’s an odd chill down you spine.

Y/N

There it is again. What’s more frustrating? Not knowing where it’s coming from or not knowing why it’s even happening in the first place? Both are strong contenders for first place, but rather than angry, you’re quite intrigued and confused as to why this is happening right now.

What’s even more puzzling is that you don’t remember exactly when it started. Just out of nowhere and suddenly those dreams, if you can even call it that, are occurring as if it’s routine. There’s something about his voice that feels so familiar yet, so foreign.

After a long day with Aeri, you’re finally at home, resting your aching feet and trying to recover from a minor migraine. It was fun, no doubt, but lately you’ve been feeling more fatigued. Physically you’re completely fine. No sudden spikes of hormones, eating fine, and drinking your water, everything that the average person does, but you’re hearing voices. In anybody’s book, that’s far from average.

So like all average people in this world, you consult the most trustworthy source - Google.

why am i hearing voices and having strange dreams

A little psychotic in terms of word choice? Perhaps, but there’s no other way you could possibly describe what you’re going through.

According to the search results, Google must have also thought that you’re a serial killer, nothing less.

Signs that you’re a serial killer

Should you see a therapist?

Nearest therapists in your area

Best psychologist in the world

You’re a little disappointed with the results, as you thought better results would come up, but then you think about what you’re actually going through. You wouldn’t even believe that you’re going through this. Out of curiosity, you continue to scroll through different searches. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary popped up - as if your search itself isn’t already out-of-the-ordinary - but then a little link catches your eye.

Is there such thing as a past life?

A past life? With a few seconds of hesitation, you click that link and a very basic website pops up with a few articles. Skimming through a few, you realize that they’re all editorials with no sound proof. Some people are claiming that fate is real and all their lives are just continuations of their past life; that they’re connected to someone from the past. Others have put together slideshows of photos where people have similar faces to those of the past.

There have been “cases” where people have experiences flashbacks of their past life that were triggered through little actions, sounds, or sayings. Others never realize it and push it off as an ordinary dream. The more you read, the colder the room feels.

This can’t be true. This is ridiculous. Past life? Reincarnation?

That’s enough.

Hastily you shut your laptop and jump onto your soft bed. You grab as much blanket as you can and stuff your face into your makeshift pillow.

A past life? Unbelievable.

No matter how you think of it, it just doesn’t make any sense. It goes against all science that your high school years taught you and it just goes against the way the world works. Right? Once someone dies, that’s it. Done. Fini. Goodbye. Sure there are tons of people and there are bound to be some that are similar, but a reincarnation? No, no, no. That’s not right.

After long minutes of helplessly debating with yourself, you finally decide that that’s enough hand you should call it a day. Unfortunately, your mind didn’t want to call it a day.

Every inch of your bed was like sleeping on a bed of nails.

No matter how much you scrunched into a ball and how much of your blanket you gathered, it was still cold.

Your pillow felt like a block of steel.

Your mind was rushing with thoughts, the loud ringing in your ears would not stop.

Dreadful hours were spent tossing and turning, physically and mentally.

When is this ever going to end?

“Y/N,”

The man calls for you name, but you don’t see him. You try to turn around, but a there’s a firm grasp on your shoulder that’s preventing you.

“Don’t. You can’t. This is the only way.”

“Why.” You’re shivering. You manage to croak out one word, but it’s barely loud enough to hear.

“I’m sorry. Please, don’t turn around.”

The ground is ice cold, you’re not wearing any shoes. The wind rustles through the wind, creating a thundering sound. Ravens are cawing out in the distance, but around you, everything seems quiet. The blood is rushing through your head, it’s getting harder to breath. You feel like fainting.

“Y/N, listen to me.”

It’s the voice again. He sounds closer this time.

“Y/N,” Against your cold skin, his breath is like the warm sun.

“Y-yes?” Every word you speak burns your throat.

“Y/N,” This time he’s closer. A lot closer. You feel his arms snake around your waist. His touch is so warm, so familiar. You never want to leave.

“Y/N, don’t forget.” His voice engulfs you, but int the background, you hear the thundering of trees and cawing of ravens creeping up.

“Never forget me Y/N, I will be back. Please don’t be afraid.” His grasp is no longer tight around your waist. His touch creeps away as the cacophonous background ambushes you. You scramble for his touch, for his hand, anything, but there’s nothing.

“Namjoon!” You turn around, but only an empty field illuminated by a burning red sky greets you.

You awake with a gasp. Once again a layer of cold sweat has formed around your body. The dream is the most vivid it has ever been, but like always, you have no idea of what it means. However, you do know one thing.

The man’s name.

Namjoon.

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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The Robots Microsoft Assigned to Do My Job Can’t Do It

The most important skill in journalism is not fucking up, and in early June, MSN’s new programming algorithm fucked up. MSN UK published a story about the British pop duo Little Mix, mistaking one of the duo’s mixed-race singers for the other. It was an error that would have gone unnoticed 99 times out of 100 prior to the installation of AI programming, but trended vigorously because it came just days after the Guardian reported that 50 editors had lost their jobs to make way for this algorithm, which would handle the bulk of MSN’s programming going forward.

I was one of the editors who was let go, and it was bittersweet to see reporters at outlets like this one finally acknowledge the existence of MSN, a behemoth news-redistribution shop that trails only Google sites for total traffic, and is ahead of Facebook—though I never thought there was any mystery about why it was ignored. MSN had long since abandoned creating its own content in favor of licensing news from premium partners at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, et. al. when not receiving it free from smaller operations that act as remoras via affiliate links in articles—a category that includes hundreds, if not thousands, of partners around the globe. If you use MSN at all, it’s likely indirectly, posting articles you found via a search or your default browser homepage:

My job was to create the MSN Money section every morning from these stories and monitor it, a job I called “fantasy newspaper” because of its relation to the pick-and-choose games of fantasy sports. I was good at it. I fucked up the same way the algorithm did when it misidentified the Little Mix member more times than I can count, but I either never got caught or, more likely, caught it myself. One thing about creating a morning news section by yourself for a site that gets more than six billion hits per year (and that’s just MSN Money, in America), is that you tend to be a bit peripatetic; I checked and rechecked my work repeatedly like a news junkie and full-blown digital addict. Imagine a lone old-time phone operator in a room where the ringing never stopped, and that’s pretty much what it felt like. It was a volume business with a skeleton staff, but it kept people—a lot of them—connected to the world, even though I had never really met these people. It was way more of a job than a career; just as smaller news operations feed off Microsoft, so do hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of individuals like myself, all happy enough to cash a check to push news around.

Here is where I’d like to get into salacious details about the politics of our programming, but they’re disappointingly bland. Like any operation of a certain size, MSN professes to be non-partisan but is in fact aggressively non-confrontational, to the point where a single user comment on any of our stories that raised a red flag would be brought to us at once. This is theoretically absurd, given the scale of things, but it happened rarely enough not to be too much of a bother. (By far the best one of these was a multimillionaire yacht owner whose boat had ended up in our photo system saying his ship was a nation unto itself that he did not allow to be photographed, so we needed to remove it.) Occasionally articles deemed too left- or right-wing would come down at the request of an editor, but there was such a deluge of content that you never needed to worry about finding a softer-edged replacement for them. It will not surprise you that virtually everyone I worked with was vaguely center-left, politically, and it will shock you even less that some of the smarmier full-time employees were sure to remind us not to let it affect our coverage. For my part, at least, being in the Money vertical allowed me to run as much left-leaning content as I wanted, given that the entirety of the rest of the section skewed right. I never had to elucidate it like this, though it came up once or twice; I just showed up and worked and that was it as long as no one was embarrassed.

About the only other time I can remember someone citing MSN was when certain outlets objected to the editorial disclaimer we were asked to put on articles that bent toward Scary Opinion, on the grounds that said articles (I believe they were from the Real Gawker family) were not, in fact, opinions, but facts. They were right, of course, but the language and tone of most of their stories precluded us beaming them to virtual Middle America in the first place.

This record of successful blandness, combined with the internal head-slapping after the Little Mix-up, does not bode well for the future—or the present—of news. MSN never got into real hot water for messing up a headline or story, which was a minor miracle but was at least the goal. Now, at a time where context is needed most, MSN is handing the reins from editors to engineers. A Microsoft spokesperson said the contract lapses had nothing to do with the pandemic, and I believe them; Microsoft has haltingly moved toward automation for years, usually in a cycle of job cuts followed by partial rehirings when they realized (as the editors did immediately) that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

This time feels different, though. Based on how far they’ve come down this road, the algorithm will sink or swim on its own, which is to say it’ll probably sink and take down the whole of MSN with it. Maybe that’s overstating things, but MSN is low enough in the Microsoft hierarchy that its existence has felt like it was on the chopping block for years. (This is all ultimately speculation, because I had no idea, after nearly a decade, who makes the decisions there, nor did my boss or talent agency.)

A lot of the friction in the changeover from human to robot involves negotiating the change from the contractor model, which Microsoft and others use to save themselves from paying benefits or severance or providing long-term work assurance, back to the full-time employee model, which takes a bunch of people who are harder to fire and forces them into jobs to which they may or not be suited. The tension in the old model was between the contractors like myself with news backgrounds, who produced the lion’s share of news, and the full-timers with Microsoft backgrounds, who “oversaw” it and did a lot of thinking about whether we should be pivoting to video to slideshows or vice versa that week. There were exceptions on both sides, but this is how it went until July 1, when what the Guardian cheekily called our “algorithmic robot” replacements stepped in, kicking the full-timers down to grunt duty and the contractors out the door, context —in and outside the newsroom—be damned.

That is to say that there are still human eyes on the site, just fewer, and that the people behind those eyes know the writing is on the wall. Even the process of losing my job was impenetrable; my boss couldn’t tell me who made the decision because he simply didn’t know. This is how announcements come at Microsoft: from on high. In that way, the algorithm’s ascent is just part of the natural order of things. If the decision-makers aren’t even identifiably human, why wouldn’t they rather wipe us all out?

The nice part of the job was having access to all the world’s news, though it gave me scant time to read it all, given the constant maintenance MSN Money—just one vertical!—required. Each section—News, Money, Sports, Entertainment, Travel, etc.—was its own fiefdom, as was the Home Page, which was and is the ultimate traffic driver for MSN. Much like the CD business thrived long after you and I stopped buying them, the MSN home page is still big money for legacy media of all shapes and sizes. It is common for popular stories there to get 15 million pageviews and have 15,000 concurrent users, and for super-popular stories to bury those numbers. I produced all these stories, and I still don’t know a person who actively tries to consume them. But someone does.

Who? From what I can tell, old people. The most consistently popular topic we ran in Money, and we did more or less daily, was “At what age you should take Social Security?” I could spend my whole morning agonizing over which Times story to feature (the Big Three old newspapers had strict limits on what we could take), follow it up with a Social Security story from another partner, and bang—the latter would do better numbers, invariably. I largely avoided learning about popular topics in the other verticals, but as Money and Lifestyle were next to each other on the home page, I can tell you the only true rivals to Social Security’s popularity as a topic were Duchesses Catherine and Meghan, about whom it was not possible to program too much.

The Social Security stories are a good example of how some partners gamed the system for the better. Most of them came from the Motley Fool, a financial publication that effectively parcels out stories on the same seven subjects a day, incredibly effectively— think Chipotle for popular retirement and savings topics. On the flip side, the same Motley Fool, along with several similar smaller operations from which we licensed content, was found several years ago to be publishing articles from writers who had been paid to write articles specifically to move stocks in a certain direction. All of the organizations settled, likely because they were all caught dead to rights. Given that these are the exact type of articles we—humans, with knowledge of what makes a piece plausible or not—chose or did not choose to program at MSN Money, I think the problems are about to get much worse.

There are two problems, as I see it. First, I don’t think the algorithm will be able to keep things orderly. So much of the job was about maintenance that, against my better judgment, it reminds me of Hamlet: “Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” My job was often that of a gardener, and as someone who is now doing quite a bit of actual gardening in unemployment, the difficulty and necessity of it—the effort it takes to produce something worthwhile—is top of mind. The only difference is that I fear things “rank and gross in nature” will not merely possess MSN, but subsume it to the point Microsoft wants its name completely disassociated from it. I hope I’m wrong.

Second, the algorithm won’t really know the game, the way even I didn’t when I started. I can see it now, and if you’ll allow me another analogy I’d compare it to antichess, which is exactly what it sounds like: A game you’re trying to lose. The quirk that makes the game go is that you must take a piece if you are allowed, and as a novice, I quickly learned that this can lead to easy cascades from which there is no escape, far more so than regular chess in that, at least in a proper chess death spiral, you think you have agency over the moves. In antichess there’s none of that: It’s usually a cascade to certain finishes, with the fatal mistake so obvious to be easily perceptible. This feels like that mistake. MSN is up against forces it hasn’t reckoned with, and whoever’s left can only hope they get one more move to fight back, even if it can only all still end one way.

Follow Bryan Joiner on Twitter.

The Robots Microsoft Assigned to Do My Job Can’t Do It syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years

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The Best Marketing Newsletters: 8 We’re A Little Bit Obsessed With

Newsletters are no new kid on the block.

It’s funny; I think my first recollection of the word was actually something related to a fan club in a rerun of the sitcom Saved by the Bell -- but enough with my 80s’ references.

Despite their advancing age, newsletters are currently making a bit of a digital comeback.

With their email inboxes clogged with spam and being busier than ever, consumers demand more information in less time.

With this in mind, they (as well as marketers) are turning to newsletters to consolidate all of the information they need into one place.

This is actually part of the reason we started writing and sending out THE LATEST, last September.

If you’re not familiar with it, THE LATEST is our newsletter, hand-curated and delivered to subscribers 3x a week. It replaces not only our daily blog email, but the majority of our individual promotional emails as well.

It took some time to come to this model and we are definitely still fine-tuning, but I think it’s safe to say that this is quite common.

What Makes A Great Newsletter?

As a marketer, a great newsletter primarily results in increased traffic or nurtured leads, but that really depends on the value and experience you deliver to your subscriber.

From a subscriber’s perspective, a great newsletter accomplishes the following:

It delivers unique value they can’t get anywhere else

It saves them time (by concisely compiling multiple things into one digestible package)

It’s relevant to their needs and interests

Below, I’ve shared the eight best marketing newsletters that our team is subscribed to and frankly, we feel have cracked this elusive formula:

1. Non-Obvious Insights by Rohit Bhargava

To be honest, I don’t really read many newsletters.

I do so much reading for work as is, I try to avoid email for the most part. However, that being said, the fact that I do read this one really speaks to how much value it delivers.

Non-Obvious Insights is a newsletter I discovered at INBOUND 2015 after attending the breakout session of its writer, Rohit Bhargava, a marketing strategist and Wall Street Journal best-selling author.

The weekly email is unique because it compiles “the most interesting and under-appreciated stories of the week” from the brand and businesses worlds and explains why marketers and entrepreneurs should care in a friendly, conversational way. You won’t find the same old headlines in this one!

The newsletter is also simply, but clearly organized to make it easy to skim and has ample share links and visuals to catch your attention.

2. Talking Shrimp by Laura Belgray

Here’s a favorite of our VP of Marketing, Kathleen, and Director of Web & Interactive Content, Liz.

Written and distributed by Laura Belgray, this copywriting-focused newsletter is delivered almost daily, but the messages are jam-packed with personality and even a bit risque, at times, making them a welcome inbox addition.

Visually, this is much more bare-bones than Non-Obvious. It’s generally a plain text email with a logo-header and little formatting, but occasionally you will see some emojis or video incorporated.

It’s not as easy to skim as others on my list, but with Laura’s one-of-a-kind copy, you’ll muscle through it.

3. In the Headlights by trustinsights

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Delivered every Wednesday, the team at trustinsights (often times co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast, Christopher S. Penn) compiles and reflects on the week’s biggest news centered in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

This is the most MarTech and data-focused newsletter on my list and always includes actionable ideas and tips that can be implemented right away.

Its biggest selling point? It also uses its own custom-built technology to “share the top 3 articles

In machine learning, data science, marketing, social media, SEO, and business leadership, culled from over 1,500 blogs.”

4. Damn the Best Practices by Jay Acunzo

Former HubSpotter Jay Acunzo’s newsletter is one after my own heart.

As the Head of Editorial Content at IMPACT, my personal goal is to ensure that all of the content we publish goes beyond best practices; that it offers more advanced knowledge and advice to our audience, not just the same old.

That’s what Jay Acunzo’s “Damn the Best Practices” newsletter is all about as well.

Delivered once a week, Jay shares a personal story and idea with his subscribers that will help them be better than best practices.

He says they “question conventional thinking to think for yourself...get angry at commodity and crappy work, and have the audacity as a community to aspire to something better.”

If you want to challenge the status quo, you need to sign up.

5. The Hustle

Delivered daily, The Hustle is a cheeky round up of some of the latest in tech and business. Another no-frills layout, it delivers a handful of compelling headlines with detailed context, and links to back to their site to dive even deeper.

The Hustle’s biggest selling point is undoubtedly its quick-witted copy and with over 1 million subscribers, it’s clearly working for them.

6. Total Annarchy by Ann Handley

As a self-declared fANN girl, I strongly believe that anything Ann Handley touches turns to gold and her newsletter is no different.

In this bi-weekly treat, Ann delivers not any old email, but a letter to all of her subscribers and this personal approach is much of what makes it stand out from other marketing newsletters.

It’s significantly longer than the other I’ve listed but with its mix of “useful ideas, fresh links, and some high-spirited shenanigans” it’s one you certainly don’t want to miss.

7. Marketing Dive

Now, Marketing Dive keeps you updated on a variety of critical topics like marketing technology, advertising creative, social media, analytics and measurement, and mobile marketing, but its biggest selling point is SPEED.

The newsletter’s value proposition says it all claiming that you can read the whole thing in just 60 seconds. What marketer doesn’t have time for that?

8. The Daily Carnage by Carney

Last, but not least, we have The Daily Carnage.

Pulling from all across the web, Carney curates what it believes is the day’s best marketing content then categorizes it as a either “read,” “watch,” or “listen.”

But it’s not all work and no play.

In addition to these features, The Daily Carnage shares an inspirational quote of the day, an often-hilarious ad from the past, and some hidden reaction GIFs.

The format is easy to skim and find what really interests you and the voice is friendly and playful, keeping work fun.

Be Subscribe-Worthy.

There are dozens of other wonderful marketing newsletters out there, but also a good amount leaving much to be desired.

At the end of the day, regardless of what your business or industry, if you’re going to craft a newsletter and ask your subscribers to welcome you into their inboxes regularly, you need be worthy.

You need to offer them true value and give them something they actually enjoy and want to read day-in and day-out.

If you can delight your reader through education, insight, or entertainment, they’ll keep clicking open. If you can’t, then take some inspiration from our favorites above and see where you level-up.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/best-marketing-newsletters

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click2watch · 6 years

Text

Planting Bitcoin Part Three: Soil

Dan Held is the founder of crypto portfolio service Picks & Shovels. He previously founded data service ZeroBlock, which sold to Blockchain, and served as VP of product at ChangeTip.

This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series.

In my last article, “Seasons,” I covered the precise moment in which Satoshi planted Bitcoin, the 2008 Financial Crisis. In this article, I cover the Cypherpunks or the “Soil” in which he planted the Bitcoin seed giving it the best chance for success.

(I’ve paired this song to “Soil” because I think it fits the feel of the piece and adds additional depth. If you enjoy listening to this, please follow my playlist on Spotify.)

Cypherpunks

Sending the Bitcoin white paper to the cryptography mailing list on October 31, 2008 was the obvious choice.

This was the right group to gather feedback from, the right channel to engage with. The list was predominately populated by the Cypherpunks* who were activists advocating widespread use of strong cryptography, as a route to social and political change.

*”Cypherpunks” is a play on the word ‘cipher’ or ‘cypher’, for encryption; and cyberpunk a genre of sci-fi.

The group was originally comprised of Eric Hughes, Tim May and John Gilmore. At first, the meetings were in-person meetings in the San Francisco Bay Area, but they decided to expand the group via the cryptographer mailing list which would allow them to reach other Cypherpunks.

The mailing list was a place to exchange ideas freely through the use of encryption methods, such as PGP, to ensure complete privacy. The basic ideas behind this movement can be found in the Cypherpunk manifesto written by Eric Hughes in 1993. The key principle which underpins the manifesto is the importance of privacy and finality in transactions — PetriB

“Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system.” — A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

We want the ability to ensure that others cannot use the information in the history of our transactions against us. For example: a purchase indicating that someone is wealthy, an embarrassing purchase, or one that would make you subject to spam or harassment. We do not want our financial purchase to haunt us further down the road. We want an endpoint beyond which we do not have to worry about further contingencies.

In the world of payments, this is closely related to the concept of “finality” — ideally we want to be able to state with certainty that at some point the payment has been made, the debt has been cleared, and the funds are secure. But recent developments have increased the ability for more powerful parties to clawback funds (via trusted third parties, legal funds, etc).

We hope that existing laws would provide protection against these difficulties. However, we can remove that moral hazard by not having to trust third parties or more powerful adversaries which can revert transactions solely based on their capabilities. This is what the Cypherpunks were fighting for with cryptography.

They were the “Men of words,” or anti-establishment intellectuals that laid the foundation for individuals like Satoshi to come along.

“The words of anti-establishment intellectuals sow the seeds for revolution. They present ideas and sometimes discredit the establishment, paving the way for a charismatic leader to package their thinking into a movement.” — Tony Sheng

Elliot Alderson, the “Cypherpunk” in the fictional show “Mr. Robot.” He joins a group that aims to destroy all debt records by encrypting the financial data of the largest conglomerate in the world, E Corp.

The first attempts at making an anonymous transacting system were made by Cypherpunks on that cryptographer mailing list, including:

Adam Back, the inventor of hashcash, the proof-of-work (PoW) system used by several anti-spam systems. A similar PoW system is used in bitcoin

Nick Szabo, designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called “bit gold.” Bit gold was never implemented, but has been called “a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture”

Wei Dai, who published “b-money”, an “anonymous, distributed electronic cash system”

Hal Finny, who created the first reusable proof of work system before Bitcoin (And in January 2009 he became Bitcoin network’s first transaction recipient). He was also a developer of the secure communication method known as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)

David Chaum, founded DigiCash (1989) as a form of centralized “electronic money” that deployed the same kinds of cryptographic protocols — public key cryptography — that support the nature of bitcoin transactions. It is often called “Chaumian eCash.”

Satoshi cites many of these Cypherpunks in the Bitcoin whitepaper and references their influence on Bitcoin’s development in public statements made post code launch.

“Bitcoin is an implementation of Wei Dai’s b-money proposal… and Nick Szabo’s Bitgold proposal” — Satoshi Nakamoto

In fact, Satoshi thought he was late to cryptocurrency! While the Cypherpunks had attempted many times to genetically code a species of money that would survive, none had been successful.

“A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990’s. I hope it’s obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we’re trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system.” — Satoshi Nakamoto

He had written the white paper to fit his target audience, the Cypherpunks. That’s why he uses the words “electronic cash,” “proof-of-work,” etc. which was previously used terminology in the other Cypherpunk white papers. He uses an e-commerce example to make it easier for everyone to comprehend.

He’s crafting a narrative that will resonate with the Cypherpunks, to get them interested and involved. Bitcoin was the holy grail — it had solved the problem of finality and provided a small measure of privacy. The source code implementation was his product spec.

“The functional details are not covered in the paper, but the sourcecode is coming soon.” — Satoshi Nakamoto

The following things not described in the whitepaper, but are included in the source code: 21M hard cap, 10 minute blocks, 1 MB block caps. Those were incredibly important components of Bitcoin. The whitepaper was merely a teaser.

“If the Bitcoin Whitepaper is the Declaration of Independence, the Source Code is the Constitution.” — Pierre Rochard

In true Cypherpunk fashion, the publication of Satoshi’s white paper (October 2008) was quickly followed by code release in January 2009. The notion that good ideas need to be implemented, not just discussed, is very much part of the culture of the mailing list.

“Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can’t get privacy unless we all do, we’re going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide…We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down.” — A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

Importantly, Satoshi didn’t pre-mine any Bitcoins. Satoshi gave the Cypherpunks a two month heads up before mining the Genesis block. To prove fairness, he included a proof of no premine timestamp in the Genesis Block of the Bitcoin blockchain.

It carried a strong political message. What he was trying to accomplish was clear — they were building a new financial system. Bitcoin wasn’t merely digital cash, it was an alternative to banks.

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” — Genesis Block

Part 4… “Gardening”

In Part 4, I will cover Satoshi’s involvement with the early software development and community or his “Gardening” of bitcoin.

Rows of plants via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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coin-river-blog · 6 years

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A year ago, bitcoin split into two. That’s about the only thing the bitcoin and bitcoin cash communities agree on.

On August 1, 2017, "Bitcoin Jesus" (Roger Ver) issued two Twitter edicts. First, he instructed his followers to use the /r/btc subreddit rather than the "censored" /r/bitcoin subreddit. A few hours later, Ver shared an article from Bitcoin.com about SegWit, (a soft fork that changed Bitcoin's code to allow for faster confirmation times). In his second tweet, Ver appended a lone hashtag: #BitcoinCash.

No celebratory tweets from Ver. No emoji with party hats and streamers. Just the simple hashtag to commemorate the launch of a new cryptocurrency: bitcoin cash. Bitcoin cash uses a larger block size than bitcoin, allowing for faster transaction speeds (at the potential expense of decentralization).

When bitcoin forked a year ago today, creating bitcoin and bitcoin cash, it was unclear how that fork would play out, with hodlers left to draw conclusions based on who joined which side. Several early bitcoin adopters, like Erik Voorhees, signaled support for BTC:

Gavin Andresen took a wait-and-see approach:

But everyone knew where Roger Ver stood:

Both sides – those backing BTC and those behind BCH – laid claim to Satoshi's glorious legacy and positioned their token as the one, true bitcoin. Though, it's worth noting Vorhees later expressed support for the existence of both coins, despite his preference for bitcoin.

So, why didn't bitcoin cash become known as bitcoin? After all, when Ethereum forked, the original Ethereum became "Ethereum classic" and those in favor of reversing The DAO got to keep the name. Yet somehow the original bitcoin is still bitcoin.

The simplest answer may be inertia. ETC backers asked the Ethereum community to prioritize the "code is law" ethos above reinstalling people's trust (and funds) in the project less than a year after its creation. The bitcoin split, however, occurred nearly a decade into its existence. When BCH split, BTC had a market cap around $45 billion and a price of $2,700 per coin, according to CoinMarketCap. The status quo was working just fine for a lot of people.

Note: Bitcoin cash is trading at around $750 to the US dollar after opening around $310 a year ago. Its market cap, which was $7.8 billion the day after it opened, is now $13.33 billion. Today, BTC is at $130 billion and a price of nearly $7,600.

Despite the numbers, it's too soon to declare a "winner" – and perhaps it's even unnecessary so long as the coins coexist. But a glance toward social media certainly makes it feel like the war is still being fought. Just recently, Bitcoin.org owner Cøbra was asked to step down, seemingly because he showed too much support for bitcoin cash. And bitcoin cash supporters like Craig Wright (who may not be Satoshi after all) have their own feelings:

With both sides taking shots over social media – and being wounded by all the sniping (don't you dare call it "bcash"), it's awkward for bystanders to know how to refer to this odd day in bitcoin history. The terminology has the potential to ruffle some sensitive feathers.

The bitcoin cash community seems to have settled on "Independence Day," as if they were liberated from the confines of block size. Of course, bitcoin core supporters won't accept that narrative. Core believers might prefer the snarkier "Guy Forks Day" (a clever play on Guy Fawkes Day):

Unfortunately, "happy birthday" doesn't really work either – since both BTC and BCH ultimately claim birth from Satoshi. Therefore, maybe, before we settle on a name, we should wait for what Satoshi has to say.

Jeff Benson is Managing Editor of ETHNews. He's worked as a writer and editor everywhere from Sudan to Reno. He holds a bachelor's in politics from Willamette University and a master's in nationalism studies from University of Edinburgh. When he's not in the newsroom, he trots the globe and writes about it. He holds a bit of value in ETH.

ETHNews is committed to its Editorial Policy

Like what you read? Follow us on Twitter @ETHNews_ to receive the latest bitcoin, bitcoin cash or other Ethereum opinion news.

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keijay-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on http://cookingtipsandreviews.com/making-moms-shrimp-dish-my-own/

Making Mom's Shrimp Dish My Own

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[Illustration: Tram Nguyen]

When I graduated from high school, my parents took the family out for dinner at Frankie and Johnny’s, a small, family-run restaurant in Cape Neddick, Maine, that prepares the kind of elevated “New American” cuisine that’s now so popular: blackened pork Delmonico with a sweet pear cream sauce, peppercorn-crusted seared tuna, and the like. My graduation was an accomplishment worthy of celebration, given the significant difficulties I had as a teenager with attention and anxiety. I squeaked through high school with a truly embarrassing GPA, but ultimately succeeded, in no small part because of the support of my parents.

In a sunlit dining room overlooking a small garden, I received two gifts, both heirlooms but of different kinds: a gold pocket watch, which my parents encouraged me to use every day, and a book that they handed over with no instructions at all. It was understood that I would know how to use it.

The book is bound in soft leather, a shade halfway between maroon and aubergine, and it feels sturdy and well made. If you open the now-scratched and -pitted cover and page past the marble-patterned endpaper, you’ll see an inscription written in my father’s exuberant hand, which reads, “With Love and Admiration on your high-school graduation. Hallelujah!” Their names are signed plainly, just “Dad” and “Mom,” and my mom’s curling handwriting continues on the title page with the following inscription: “Recipes from Home: a personal cookbook presented to Jacob Dean, June 14, 2002.”

This book, and the recipes it contains, are the legacy of my family. My mom, Denise Landis, was a recipe tester and occasional columnist for the New York Times for over 25 years, and is now the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Cook’s Cook. We ate at Frankie and Johnny’s that day in part because of a relationship she forged with the owners during that time, after she included a recipe for their smoked salmon and potato terrine in the Times.

Being the son of a recipe tester means never knowing what you’re going to have for dinner. While my friends’ parents stuck to a limited range of dishes served on a rotating schedule, our table was a cornucopia powered by the editorial calendar of the Times. My friend Hunter says his favorite childhood dish was “beef in a bag,” a pot roast sealed with vegetables in an ovenproof plastic bag and cooked until fork-tender. When I went over to my buddy Kevin’s, dinner was almost always pasta with jarred sauce. Eating at my house was different. It meant being exposed to odoriferous and oozing cheeses, like Limburger and Camembert; wild pheasant that still had tooth-cracking shards of buckshot in its flesh; and primordial-looking monkfish. My mom had to special-order the monkfish from our local fishmonger, whose typical stoicism was often broken by her esoteric requests. It meant seasonal vegetables, at a time when all of my friends were eating frozen carrots and peas; steaming tagines of lamb and couscous; and cold salads like tabbouleh. Cracked wheat mixed with chopped parsley, garlic, and tomato may not seem all that exotic now, but in New Hampshire in the 1990s it was pretty radical. One time I came home from school to a crown roast of pork, its cavity filled with a bread and sausage stuffing. Meals of that magnitude didn’t happen often, but they were always in the realm of possibility.

The cookbook my parents gave me is an encapsulation of that childhood, the favorite dishes of the family, taken from multiple sources across disparate cultures. A recipe for a piquant, red-tinged Thai shrimp soup, tom yum goong, lies next to one for a standard Italian-American chicken Parmesan. A few pages after that are instructions for “grilled Basque wings,” which describe coating chicken wings with a fragrant slurry of chopped garlic, lemon juice, and fresh herbs, along with a note that says, “You need a grill for this.” (Thanks, Mom.)

But the real treasure for me is entry number 13, the recipe labeled simply “Shrimp Dish,” with the subheading “also known as ‘Pain in the Butt Dish (who is it named after?)'” We don’t really know the recipe’s origins, although I’m certain that it’s not a Denise Landis original. The subheading tells you a bit about how often I asked my mom to make it, and about my general behavior through childhood.

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Shrimp Dish was a dish of celebration, something served on birthdays and other special occasions. It’s an étouffée made with a caramel-colored roux, which binds the sweetness of alliums, like onion, scallions, and garlic, with the savory punch of tomato paste. A light stock made from shrimp shells thins the sauce to an almost gravy-like consistency, and lemon juice adds an acidic bite. Seasoning is scant: salt and pepper, sugar, a bay leaf, and a dash of Tabasco. It’s traditionally served with plain white rice, but I’ve found I like it with fragrant basmati. And it’s even better the next day, which, in my experience, is not often the case with seafood.

I started making Shrimp Dish for myself shortly after I moved out to attend college. Because of my dismal performance in high school, I was admitted on probationary status, and thus wasn’t eligible for campus housing. I rented a junior one-bedroom that overlooked the wide central street running through the heart of Keene, New Hampshire. I had a small pot rack, which my mom hung for me; a butcher’s block my dad had made for himself when he was in college (the legs were four cast iron pipes that he had screwed into the bottom); and a junky, beige-colored stove with electric coils that were either stone-cold or ripping-hot. I stored my pot lids in the oven’s broiler drawer, because I didn’t know what a broiler was.

I’d make Shrimp Dish whenever frozen shrimp was on sale, the sweet spot being $10 for a two-pound bag, and it quickly became my go-to recipe for whenever I invited girls over for third or fourth dates. It was one of the very first things I could cook with any confidence, and it was the first recipe I felt comfortable modifying to fit my own preferences. I like to cook it a little bit less than the hour of simmering the original recipe calls for, and I cook the stock for longer to coax more flavor out of the delicate shrimp shells. Not huge changes, but for a kid whose mantra in the kitchen had always been “follow the recipe,” they were a big step forward.

The dish is also the first recipe I’ve ever felt that I was better at preparing than my mother, who is, needless to say, tremendously talented in the kitchen. While the old cliché says that hunger is the best seasoning, I think that pride can heighten the taste and sweeten one’s experience of a dish, too. My mom can still do a lot of things in the kitchen that I can’t, but this is a dish I feel I can make from muscle memory, one whose exact flavor is imprinted in my mind.

These days, when I go home to visit my family and my mom asks what she can cook, I pick things that I might not make for myself. But more commonly, my mom takes the night off, and I’m the one in front of the stove. My mother’s Shrimp Dish, the one I used to eat with my family at my childhood table, is just a cherished memory. I don’t need her to make it for me anymore.

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char27martin · 7 years

Text

10 Ways to Overcome Lonely Writer Syndrome

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One of the downsides to becoming a fulltime author or writer is that, by its very nature, writing can be a very lonely business. Typically, it’s just you and a computer, shut off from the rest of the world, all alone with your thoughts.

If you’re someone who is not totally comfortable being a literary hermit like me, you might experience feelings of loneliness and depression, or what I call Lonely Writer Syndrome.

There are things you can do to avoid such feelings. It starts with changing your surroundings and your routine. To that end, here are my Top 10 Tips on how to avoid lonely writer syndrome and become a happy hermit.

2. Create A Positive Workspace

For me, it all begins with the space where I spend most of my day writing, which is my home office. The space must be comfortable and convenient to work in, and conducive to the task of writing. Otherwise, you may spend most of the time being distracted by negative things like a messy desk or rickety chair, or outside distractions like traffic noise or the kid next door banging a ball against the house.

I’m also a bit of a neat freak. If my workspace is a mess, I’m unable to focus on the writing, so my creativity goes to pot. There is nothing on my desk but a computer and the legal pad and pen I use to doodle when my brain needs a break from writing. I don’t buy into the adage that “a messy desk is the sign of a creative mind.” To me, a messy desk is a sign of a person too lazy to clean up their desk.

The same is true of the ergonomics of the profession. Writers sit a lot, usually hunched over a desk or a table at Starbucks. If your chair is uncomfortable or your setup awkward, you could suffer back or wrist pain, or lose feeling in your backside. That’s going to affect your creativity and your mood.

Investing in a chair or desk that is ergonomically-designed for how you work could be the best money you’ll ever spend. Notice that I didn’t advise you to buy a comfy chair. It’s been my experience that getting too comfortable can be just as detrimental to the writing process as being too uncomfortable.

Remember high school typing class from the dark ages, boys and girls: feet flat on the floor, spine straight, shoulders back, arms extended at the elbows, wrists in a relaxed position, fingers on keys. Who knew that old Mrs. Reed the typing teacher really knew what she was talking about?

2. Invest in Modern Technology

Nothing is more frustrating (at least to me) than being in the middle of a thought and having my computer crash, which is why I recommend investing in a good computer that doesn’t freeze up every time you launch Word or Scrivener.

Trying to write on a 10-year-old laptop is like hammering words into a stone with a dull chisel.

Basic, reliable computers are cheap. Buy one. Today. You’re welcome.

[Scrivener 3.0 Update: What’s inside, and is it worth the cost?]

3. Take Frequent Breaks

When I tell people that I make my living as a writer, they say witty things like, “It must be great being a writer. All you do is sit all day long.”

What they don’t understand is that sitting too long at a computer can be mentally and physically exhausting. I’ve found that taking frequent breaks helps refresh my body, mind, and mood.

I write in thirty-minute chunks, which means every thirty-minutes I get up and stretch for a few minutes, or grab a cup of coffee, or just walk around the house. Thirty on, ten off is what works for me. Try it and you’ll soon figure out what works best for you.

4. Get Out of The House

At least once a day I shut down the computer and get out of the house for an hour. I may go out to lunch, take a walk around the neighborhood, go to the gym, or run errands. The point is to disconnect the digital umbilical and come out of your cave for at least an hour every day, even if you have no particular place to go. I find that I’m usually eager to get back to work after such a break, which increases my productivity and satisfaction.

5. Interact with Others in The Same Boat as You

As I said in the beginning, writing can be a lonely business. That’s why I recommend that you find ways to interact with other writers, virtually and in the real world.

Joining online and local writer’s groups is one of the best way to do this—if you can avoid the aspects of such groups that often eat into your writing time (drama, committees, you read mine and I’ll read yours).

Spending time with others in the same boat as you will often keep you from having those feelings that your boat is sinking.

One additional word of warning: don’t waste time writing long Facebook posts or getting into philosophical arguments in forums to prove how well you can write or how smart you are. These groups can have positive and negative effects, so participate and contribute wisely.

Upcoming Online Courses:

Advanced Novel Writing with Mark Spencer Writing Nonfiction with Carolyn Walker Short Story Fundamentals with John DeChancie Query Letter in 14 Days with Jack Adler Writing the Picture Book with Terri Valentine

6. Attend Writer’s Conferences

This takes No. 5 to the next level. If you can afford to travel, check out the various writers and publishing conferences that are held around the country every year. Choose the one or two that you feel are best for you and plan to attend. Some writers prefer small regional conferences while others enjoy the big nationals.

My advice would be to choose a conference that fits your niche and needs (romance, sci-fi, etc.) rather than a large general conference that may not focus on things you’re most interested in.

Either way, conferences are a great way to meet other writers, agents, editors, and publishers. I always come away from conferences with a renewed energy and list of new contacts. Since attending conferences can be expensive, do your research and attend only those that you feel will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

7. Coauthor with Other Writers

This is one of my favorite ways to shake off those feelings of loneliness and depression because it forces you to communicate with others on a regular basis.

Coauthoring simply means that you write a book (and share credit) with a writing partner, or someone who can provide complimentary skills to your own.

For example, I coauthor with several writers in the science fiction and space opera genres. Sometimes, we both contribute to the writing equally while other times I might do the lion’s share of the writing while they handle most of the editorial and marketing tasks.

Coauthoring is a great way to build your brand and reach a wider audience. And while the project is in full swing, you will have frequent chats with your writing partner. You may find coauthoring so appealing that you never want to work alone again.

8. Ignore the Bad Stuff

There’s nothing more depressing to some writers than getting a bad review or receiving yet another rejection letter. Those things used to bother me, too, but now, not so much. If I get a bad review, I determine whether it’s just some jack wagon who didn’t even read the book or a serious reader with something genuinely worthwhile to say.

Genuine reviews, negative or not, should be considered valuable feedback from readers, and can give you great insight into what you may need to do differently next time.

Don’t let the bad reviews get you down. Garner what lessons you can from them and move on.

The same is true with rejection, typically from agents or publishers. I have enough agent rejection letters to wallpaper my master bathroom.

Every author, from King to Grisham to Rowling has been rejected dozens of times. Consider yourself part of the elite club: authors who are not afraid to try.

9. Learn to Meditate

One of my favorite ways to recharge my mental batteries and shake off feelings of loneliness and depression is through meditation. The thing I love most about meditation is that I can do it anywhere, anytime, all I need is ten minutes and a quiet place to sit.

You don’t have to take classes or read books to learn how to meditate. I simply go into my den or office where there’s no noise or distractions, sit in a comfy chair, close my eyes, focus on my breathing, and let my mind wander for a few minutes.

At first, you may find turning off your thoughts to be difficult, but over time you will learn to shut out the world. In the meantime, you can wear noise-cancelling headphones or listen to soothing music to block out noise.

The key is to keep at it until you are meditating for at least ten minutes a day. Or ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon. Or whenever you feel stressed or alone. Meditation is a tool you can use at will. I highly recommend doing so. I think you’ll find it to be a great way to keep the writing process positive and productive.

10. Listen to Upbeat Music

When I write, I prefer a quiet environment, but many writers believe that listening to upbeat or inspirational music helps them stay motivated and in a creative mood. The key is to listen to music that inspires rather than interrupts the thought patterns, which is why many prefer instrumentals. If you find yourself singing along rather than writing, you might want to change your playlist.

[Want some music recommendations? Check out Robert Lee Brewer’s 20 Best Songs for Writers and About Writing.]

…

Once more, writing can be a lonely business, but there are ways to help battle those feelings of loneliness and depression.

Give these tips a try to see if you find them helpful. And feel free to share other tips you might have in the comments below!

The post 10 Ways to Overcome Lonely Writer Syndrome appeared first on WritersDigest.com.

from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/writers-perspective/the-writing-life/how-to-avoid-lonely-writer-syndrome

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succeedly · 7 years

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7 Things to Know About Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom

Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers on episode 202 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Children as young as four can start coding, but not in ways you might think. Today, Dr. Marina Umashchi Bers from Tufts University discusses her research findings about what works (and doesn’t) with young children in the classroom. You’ll get creative ideas for hands-on programming that works for early childhood.

Today’s sponsor: Metaverse is a free simple augmented reality tool. Students can program. You can also use and create breakout educational experiences. See http://ift.tt/2iLwSjB or download the Metaverse app today.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom

Link to show: http://ift.tt/2iQscJo Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Vicki: Today we’re talking to Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers @marinabers from Tufts University, where she is Director of the Dev Tech Research Group.

We’re going to talk about coding in the early childhood classroom.

#1 – How do you define “coding?”

Now, Marina, how would you define “coding” because obviously, we’re not going to have them write long lines of code, right?

Marina: Right! So coding is a new fancy word for computer programming. But it’s not just about computers today. Today the world is full of SMART objects. These are objects that respond to stimulus in the world.

For example, if you have a faucet in the bathroom that has a sensor, and you put in your hands, water comes out. So those SMART objects “know” when there is the need to dispense water. That’s just an example of one of the SMART objects that we have all around us.

Those SMART objects were programmed (or coded) by someone. So when we are talking about coding, it is something young children understand. Objects are not “magic,” but that they have been programmed. They have been coded. And they (need to) understand how it works.

#2 – Students today are surrounded by SMART objects. These are not “magic.”

Vicki: What kinds of things can children do in early childhood? And what ages would you start coding?

Marina: All of our work starts in early childhood at four years old. When we talk early childhood, we talk 4-7 years old. We work with robotics, because robotics are tools that allow them to learn coding and to learn abstract logic and thinking while not sitting in front of a computer screen. So robots have motors, they have sensors, they can move around.

The particular robots we have developed in my Dev Tech Research Group at Tufts are called Kibo. The allow you to program them with wooden blocks. So coding happens without screens, without keyboards — just by putting together sequences of wooden blocks.

#3 – Coding happens without screens, without keyboards. Just sequences of wooden blocks.

Each block represents a command for the robot. For example “Move Forward” or “Move Backward” or “Turn the Red Light On” or “Turn the Blue Light On” or “Sing” response to a sound. The children put together all of these blocks in a sequence. The robot has a scanner, and the blocks are barcodes, so they scan one by one.

Once they are done with the scanning, they press the little button, and the robot comes alive. It will perform whatever sequence of action the child has programmed.

What’s even more interesting is that the robots all look different, like in a classroom all children look different. They learn differently, and they do things differently. So same as with a robot. These robots are designed to have an art platform, so children can integrate them with recyclables, with art projects, and dress up these robots in many different ways.

Vicki: That sounds like so much fun!

Now, why do you think that early childhood is the time to start coding?

Marina: In early childhood is when we start learning how to read and write, the time when we develop our literacy.

I believe that coding is the literacy of the 21st century, in terms that it will allow us to think in new ways, to solve problems that we never encountered before, and to open our world to new projects and new solutions that we don’t even know we need.

#4 Coding is the literacy of the 21st century.

And so when do we start literacy? We start in January. We start literacy when kids are young and curious and open. The same is true for coding. We should start when all literacies start.

There’s another point of why we start in early childhood, and the stereotypes about gender are not so strongly formed yet. So we really are talking about young kids who are open and curious about the world around them.

If kids wait until they’re older, they start thinking, “Well, I’m not good in math, science, engineering. This is not for me.” In all our research we found that if we start early on, everyone gets excited.

Vicki: There are so many apps and things out there that people say are for early childhood. And sometimes I look at them, and I say, “Oh my goodness…”

What are the common mistakes that people are making with trying to teach coding for early childhood?

#5 Let Kids Play and Learn in the Playground versus Playpen

Marina: I coined a metaphor. I called it “Playground versus Playpen.”

A coding environment is like a language. It’s a programming language. Just like any natural language — English or Spanish — it allows you to express yourself, to create any project you want, to do anything you want, really. It’s open-ended. It allows and brings creativity. And that’s like a playground.

Especially when you bring in robotics, creativity happens also in the physical world, because they’re interacting with objects. They’re interacting with each other, not by looking at a screen.

So if you think of the activities that happen on the playground, and you compare those to the activities that happen in the playpen… A playpen is very limited. You can do one thing, over and over. The adult is in charge, and it gets a little bit boring if you use it over time.

That’s very different from a programming language. So I would say, how to choose? Use the playground versus playpen metaphor when we’re encountering technologies for early childhood.

I would say that most of them fall in the playpen category. The playpen types of technologies are safe — that’s what a playpen is good for, it’s a safe environment. But that doesn’t really promote collaboration or an open-ended and creative imagination like a playground does.

Vicki: And Marina, from what I’ve read about young children and technology, the tactile piece is so important because so many adults don’t seem to understand the virtual world in an iPad or in an iPhone or whatever. How important do you think this whole tactile — having objects to use to program — is, in the grand scheme of coding with early childhood?

#6 How important is the tactile piece when it comes to technology?

Marina: I think it’s really important. We know that children learn about the world by interacting with it, and so the more objects and the more different textures and aesthetically more colors and forms and shapes — that we can expose them to, the better it is.

Nowadays, we do have technologies that allow us to program with tangible objects and tangible blocks. That wasn’t possible in the seventies, when people started to think about programming with children. But nowadays, we can. So we really should be thinking about what the best approaches are to bring coding skills to children.

Vicki: So, Marina, we have a lot of kindergarten teachers who listen to the show.

What is your message to them, because so many of them feel overwhelmed. Many of them feel like they have been over-standardized in the past with so many things.

What is the best way to bring coding into their kindergarten classrooms without feeling overwhelmed?

#7 How can I bring coding into my classroom without feeling overwhelmed?

Marina: There are two things I would say.

First, use the playground approach. Observe children on the playground. All of us know what good play is, and the possibilities of play. Try to bring a playfulness into coding.

The second one is integrate. Coding doesn’t need to be separate, and at a different time. Try to integrate into math, into science, into social studies, into language. Find a project that you really love to teach, and try to integrate coding into that project.

Vicki: So many fantastic ideas!

You know, we’ve had so many guests who’ve really proven to us that young children can do so many more things than we think they can, sometimes.

Build that remarkable early childhood program — and include coding!

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

[email protected]

Bio as submitted

Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers is a professor at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University (http://ift.tt/1kvL5Lx). She also heads the interdisciplinary Developmental Technologies research group at the University. She is also Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at KinderLab Robotics.

Blog: Marina Umaschi Bers, PhD

Twitter: @marinabers

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post 7 Things to Know About Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

7 Things to Know About Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom published first on http://ift.tt/2jn9f0m

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ralph31ortiz · 7 years

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7 Things to Know About Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom

Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers on episode 202 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Today’s sponsor: Metaverse is a free simple augmented reality tool. Students can program. You can also use and create breakout educational experiences. See coolcatteacher.com/ar or download the Metaverse app today.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher.com/e202 Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2017