#the day I learn to speak *any* language eloquently I’m writing you a book-long love letter

[pedrorascal]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVE

Thank you for all the amazing gifs and icons that you do, I love you so much and I hope you have the utmost amazing day!!

Sil!!!! Thank YOU for all your amazing fics and friendship! 🥹 Your gift was one of the most thoughful things I’ve received in years, and you made my day 1000x better! ♥️

[spatort]

I’m at my parents’ house and I have too much time on my hands apparently, so it’s time for a trip down memory lane! More specifically, a trip into the weird world of 1990s for-profit teen idol RPF, such as this beauty:

No, I did not find this at my parents’ house, I bought it second-hand specifically in order to make this post because I’m a person who enjoys studying fan culture in her free time. So, if you’re wondering what the hell the monstrosity pictured above is, and why it exists, don’t worry, I’m about to answer that question extensively.

LONG (AND HOPEFULLY FUN & INTERESTING) POST UNDER THE CUT

Let’s start with a bit of history: In the pre-internet era, fan culture differed from today in a few key regards. Although fanfiction existed, without the internet it was much harder for fans to share their stories with each other. Large fandoms such as Star Trek did have fanzines where fanfic could be printed, but all in all it was a much more niche thing than it is today with millions of fics accessible on AO3.

Fan culture in general, however, was a big thing in the 90s – particularly when it came to pop acts that appealed to teen (and tween) audiences, such as the Backstreet Boys, the Spice Girls, or (mostly in Europe) the Kelly Family. When I was in elementary school, you basically had to pick whether you were a BSB or an NSYNC fan – and god forbid you were a Kelly fan like me, then you were the lowest rung on the social ladder and the target of relentless mockery. Like many German kids in the 90s, me and my sister would religiously read teen magazine BRAVO, cut out every single bit of material about our faves and collect them in folders and self-made fanzines. We created fan art and fanfiction without having words for these things. Without the internet and social media, fans did not have a constant stream of content about their idols, and were left with no other choice but to cling to every bit of information they could find in magazines, on TV shows, or on the radio.

Enter a savvy businessperson who comes up with the perfect merchandise product to sell to these popstar-obsessed teens: fan novels! These books, featuring taglines such as ‘The novel for all Backstreet Boys fans’, typically revolved around a relatable female teenage protagonist who is a fan of the celebrity or music group in question, and usually ends up meeting their idol or, gasp, even becoming romantically involved with them. As far as themes go, they look pretty much exactly like your classic self-insert RPF. Except there is a big difference setting these books apart from ‘actual’ fanfiction: Rather than being written by real fans to express their ‘fannish’ feelings about the subject, fan novels were most likely commissioned works created by professional romance authors purely to profit off of actual fans. There is very little background information available about this ‘genre’, but I did stumble across an academic work on Google Books which featured a passage about these fan novels (translated into English by me):

There are several commissioned works by professional authors, which could be mistaken for fanfiction. Especially in the 1990s, when lots of boy bands were on the market, many books of this kind were published. […] These are fictional stories for fans [redacted].

Jennie Hermann: Backstreet Girl. Projektionsfläche Popstar - Wenn der Fan zum Schriftsteller wird (2009) [Popstar as Projection Surface – When fans become writers]

One of the things I find most intriguing about this type of commercially published fanfiction is the question of personal rights. Obviously, the celebs in question or their management must have consented to using their names in the story, their pictures on the cover and so on – because a profit could be made with this. Especially with the fan debate around RPF allegely being unethical, I wonder if the celebrities themselves were aware someone was writing these stories about them, putting words in their mouth, and if they had any clue what exactly happened in these novels. Now, I’ve read a couple of them in my own youth. Some of them deal mostly with the state of being a fan, e.g. I recall a novel about a girl who is so obsessed with Leonardo Di Caprio that she doesn’t pay attention to real life guys at all, only to learn that her actual dream boy has been in her life all along! This story did not feature Di Caprio himself as a character, it was more about the protagonist’s arc of realizing your idols are not all that matters in life. Others do describe fan encounters with teen idols, and some even feature (hints at) romance with a celebrity. When I decided to purchase a vintage copy of one of these books, I opted for one of the latter category, precisely because of the popular argument that writing romance stories featuring real people is somehow ‘wrong’. For only a couple of euros, I was able to get my hands on a weird and wonderful relic of fan culture: Mein Frühling mit Nick (My spring with Nick) by the likely pseudonymous Maxi Keller, heralded on the book cover as ‘the novel for all fans of the Backstreet Boys’.

The story revolves around 16-year-old musical prodigy and designated wallflower Katharina, who lives in a German small town and cares about nothing else than playing the organ – certainly not about boys, let alone ones that are super-famous American pop stars. This means she is not initially a fan of the Backstreet Boys, which I guess is something of a trope itself – the protagonist meeting a celebrity by chance without knowing who they are and the celeb being thrilled that someone doesn’t just like them for their fame. Anyway, the boys visit Katharina’s hometown while on tour in Germany because band member AJ is doing some research on his German ancestors who happened to live in this very town. Katharina runs into them, she and Nick (who was only 17 himself when this was published in 1997, so it’s legal) fall in love at first sight, she helps them dig up information on AJ’s ancestors and finds out the two of them are related, the boys invite Katharina and her friend Saskia backstage after their show and … nothing happens. The book is 200 pages long and Katharina doesn’t even get one kiss with her boy band sweetheart, even though they mutually crush on each other right away. Perhaps that’s as far as the band or their management agreed for the novel to go – a hint at romance, but no trace of any on-page action, no matter how innocent.

That said, the book is so hilariously poorly written that it was still very entertaining to read. Although I could not find out anything about the author Maxi Keller, and therefore assume this might be a pseudonym, their writing style very much suggests that their are a professional romance author who usually writes for an older audience (plus, the book was published by Bastei Lübbe, who also publish a range of cheap romance novels known as ‘Romanhefte’). The language is extremely flowery at times, and even teenage characters speak with an eloquence that is hardly age-appropriate, with some 90s teen slang peppered in at unfitting times (such as the overuse of the English word ‘girl’). Often the novel loses itself in pointless detail that does nothing to move the plot forward (such as an extensive description of a house party hosted by Saskia’s rich parents, with minute details of their luxurious lifestyle and assets, even though Saskia is only a supporting character in the overall plot). It appears as if the author is desperately trying to fill the pages with meaningless drivel so they don’t need to write too many scenes featuring the presumed main attraction, the boys themselves.

If Keller was indeed merely hired to write this, and is not a fan themselves, one must still admit that the author did their research when it comes to the band. Whereas fanfiction typically assumes that the audience is already familiar with the characters and often skips any introductory descriptions of their appearance or personality, Keller makes sure that even a reader who is completely unfamiliar with the Backstreet Boys can keep up. The author delivers extensive descriptions of the boys’ appearance and demeanor, even spelling out their full names repeatedly, and frequently peppers in ‘fun facts’ such as ‘Kevin was raised on a farm in Kentucky’. While an actual fan might do so to prove how knowledgeable they are, and earning their status as a ‘true fan’, in this case it only seems like Keller really wants to show off how much research they did – as if not a single piece of information they took in must go to waste by not being used in the novel.

When it comes to the question how realistically the non-fannish author replicates the way the boys act and speak, there are two barriers to delivering a well-founded answer: Firstly, I was personally very young when BSB were popular and I really don’t remember too well what each member was like. Secondly, the elephant in the room: the language barrier. All of the aforementioned fan novels were written in German, and the problems posed by writing about an English-speaking band interacting with German OCs (and teenage ones at that) are addressed poorly, if at all. Pretty much all dialogue is written in German, and the audience is left to assume that everyone is actually speaking English whenever the boys are involved – except the novel does nothing to explain why two 16-year-old German girls would be able to express themselves so effortlessly in a foreign language. (Remember, the internet was not a thing, so German kids were not exposed to the same amount of English in everyday life as they are these days.) It would have been easy to make one of them a language nerd who gets straight A’s in English class, and give the other a British parent and make them bilingual. Instead, Katharina initially even worries about the prospect of having to talk to boys at all, and in English on top of that! But when she actually does, the language barrier never comes up again. The suspension of disbelief expected from the reader is therefore immense. The language barrier also gives the author an easy way out when it comes to imitating the way the boys speak in real life – there is no need to take into account idiolects or regional differences (such as ‘you guys’ vs. ‘y’all’) if the boys’ speech is essentially translated into a foreign language. However, I wanted to give you guys (or y’all, if you will) a taste of how Keller attempts to write a scene where AJ and Nick discuss the latter’s crush on Katharina:

I would argue that this sounds realistic enough for what it’s worth, if a little cheesy, which is excusable in this genre. Perhaps a true 90s BSB fan would beg to differ, so if you happen to be one, feel free to drop me a message. But in my semi-professional opinion, this most likely holds up for readers.

So, to answer the initial question that drove me to purchase this book: Do fan novels like Mein Frühling mit Nick count as fanfiction?

If we assume that something is only a fanfic if the author themselves is a fan of the subject matter, then I would argue no, Maxi Keller is probably not a fan themselves and therefore this work of for-profit real-person fiction does not qualify as fanfic. However, fan novels definitely have a (however small) place in the history of fan culture and fan-adjacent works, and I personally found reading this relic both entertaining and insightful!

[hispeculiartreasure]

All We’ve Got is Time - Chapter Thirteen | B.B.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

AU: If They’d Survived/Post-War/Window Washer!Bucky Barnes

Rating: Teen

Word count: 3,540

Chapter 13/24

Warnings: Language

AN: Spanning the time of Bucky’s entire on-site training, this chapter is pretty different from anything I’ve ever done before. I have a sneaking suspicion y’all are really going to enjoy it. Lemme hear your thoughts when you’re done!

Chapter Twelve

‘All We’ve Got is Time’ Masterlist

July 7, 1946

Dear Bucky,

I can already imagine the panic on your face when I hand this to you at the train station this afternoon. I hope you take my assurance that it isn’t a Dear John letter seriously. I just wanted to give you something to read on your long trip to Pennsylvania. A 10 hour train ride to Pittsburgh and then a 2 hour bus ride to New Castle, I think you told me? I know you packed some textbooks but one can only do so much studying in a 12 hour window - you’ll go crazy. And I’d really appreciate it if you returned semi-sane. But I also wanted to circumvent any uncontrollable emotions I may have during a goodbye, no matter how temporary it may be. In short, you’re very welcome.

I know you’re a big brave combat veteran but I also know this training is a big deal for you. It’s all new material, a new place, new people. A lot of change in a really small amount of time. No matter how much you insist that you’re fine, I’ll still commend you for facing this challenge head on. And I’ll be in your corner as long as you’ll let me. Hopefully you’ll be so busy that you forget about any discomfort you may have.

I have to admit, I’m a bit jealous of you. You know how tough work has been the last week. With Anderson piling more tasks on me while he’s been mysteriously out of the office and Flannery being even more strict on how the office is run after the Fourth of July debacle, my job has been exhausting. What I’d give to leave it behind for a while, to learn useful, practical skills. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be - well, I guess I already had my turn, huh? I’m hoping you’ll let me live vicariously through you over the next month. Write to let me know all about what you’re learning and how you’re feeling about it, if you want to. Who knows, you may be able to teach me a thing or two when you get back. But not more than two. That’d be far-fetched. Don’t forget, I did teach you everything you know.

See you in 34 days. That’s doable, right? What am I supposed to do with myself with all this free time? You’ve put quite the cramp in my social life, apparently. I’ll have to see what kind of trouble I can get in without you.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Be good,

Your Girl

July 8, 1946

Sixth Floor,

Gotta admit, you shoving a piece of paper into my hands as you pushed me onto the train did take me by surprise. After the split second of panic I realized you’d miss me too much if you let me go. But in all seriousness, thank you for writing that letter. Kinda felt like I got to carry a little bit of you with me here. That’s cheesy. Nevermind. 

I haven’t written a letter since I was discharged from the army, so I apologize if I’m a little rusty. It’ll be especially strange since my CO won’t be reading it or redacting any information. I’ll have to get Becca to show you some of the letters I sent home - most of the time half of what I wrote had been blacked out due to “sensitive information”. Towards the end of the war my letters were short and sweet, just telling everyone I was alive and okay. I don’t get the impression that the teachers here will have much interest in my mail. Time will tell. But I do remember in the beginning that writing down things that had happened to me over there was helpful. Like I could get a tragic event out of my head with just a pen. Writing down helped make sense of it somehow. Hopefully these letters will have the same effect.

While I technically wrote this on the train, by the time I get this to a post office I’ll have made it to New Castle safely. When I was young we never traveled very far out of the city, so ironically the most “country” I’ve seen was in Europe and it was nowhere near as pleasant as here. Places that have had the ever-loving shit bombed out of them can hardly be called pleasant. Maybe getting out of the city will be good for my head. Like you said, being able to get away from the usual responsibilities to focus only on this training will be a nice break, I think. And a vacation from washing windows. I’m gonna get spoiled.

You called me on my bluff and I like to think I’m an honest man. To be real honest with you. . . I’m nervous. Part of me wonders if I even have what it takes to finish out this training. But I’ll take your word for it. If you think I can do it, you can’t be completely wrong, can you? And don’t worry, the problem won’t be ‘how long will Bucky keep me in his corner’ but closer to ‘will Bucky ever let me OUT of his corner?’. The answer will probably be no. To be determined.

Don’t be afraid to share about your days, too. Maybe it’ll make me a little less homesick, if I get to that point. And I know your days will be infinitely harder without me there by your side. Whatever will you do? I really wish you could be here, though.

33 days better pass quickly, for your sake and for mine. 

Yours,

Bucky

July 12, 1946

Dearest Bucky,

If you can’t actually address a letter with my real name instead of using “Sixth Floor” I’m going to find an embarrassing nickname for you so the postal worker snickers when they hand letters over to you, see how you like it.

It’s been a fairly innocuous week. A quiet one, that’s for sure. Just been trying to keep my head down and avoid Anderson as much as I can. Suzy has dragged me out for dinner and drinks a few times to keep me busy. She says hi, by the way. And she demanded I tell you that if you don’t come back soon, I’m going to drive her crazy with my “mopey-ness”. Also, you owe her a drink for cheering me up while you’re gone - she’ll collect when you return. The other girls are doing great; Alice got married and is moving upstate with her husband, so we’ve got a new girl taking her place. She seems sweet, but extremely shy and quiet. Hopefully she warms up to us soon.

Funnily enough, it’s my turn to write a letter on a train. Earlier this week Mom called and complained about not seeing me often enough since I moved into the city, so I’m on my way to Tarrytown. I hadn’t realized I’ve stayed in town every single weekend since we’d gone steady. Guess I’ve had a good reason to keep my plans open, huh? 

Mom also fished around for when I’d come back next even though I haven’t even arrived yet. In her round-about-way, she hinted that she wants me home for Halloween. I can’t blame her, I’ve never not been home for the festivities. I was going to buy my ticket in advance and began to wonder if I should buy two. One for me, one for you? I mean, if you would like to visit Tarrytown with me the weekend before Halloween? The 31st is a Thursday, which puts a damper on things, but it’ll still be a blast. Mom mentioned wanting to meet this “mysterious new friend” that’s kept me in New York so often.

Since I had the pleasure of meeting your family, I thought I should return the favor and ask if you’d like to meet my parents? If that’s something you’re not comfortable with, I understand being that it’s way ahead of time and a fairly intimate situation. I’m sorry, I’m not being very eloquent am I? You don’t need to make a decision. Just think about it.

How’s it been? Are you getting along with everyone? Tell me everything!

We’re down to 29 days, but that still feels far too long. 

Truly,

My Name is Not Sixth Floor

July 17, 1946

Dear Sassafras,

Buy 2 tickets to Tarrytown. I’m looking forward to spending Halloween with your folks. You’ll have to try a lot harder than that to scare me off.

Have we gone steady? I don’t remember asking you. Did you hypnotize me? Please advise. (Hopefully you can read my teasing tone and not leave me heartbroken as a result of this horrible joke)

Tell Suzy I’ll happily buy her a drink as long as she keeps guys in bars away from you, huh? All is well here. The guys are okay, but they’re not you. No one is you. But chatting passes the time and they’re easy enough to get along with. It’s interesting to see all the different paths that have led us here, all our different motivations. There are people here from all over. I thought I had to travel a long way, but the guy from Maine’s got me beat. His letters take longer to travel too, makes me grateful I get to hear from you fairly often.

I know this doesn’t come as a surprise to you but the training has been tough work. Motor oil is permanently stained into my skin, I’m convinced. But I have to admit that everything you taught me gave me a definite leg-up on most of the other students. I was the only one who could replace a spark plug successfully on the first try. They didn’t believe me when I told them my girl showed me how. Obviously they don’t know my girl.

I was daydreaming the other day about something you whispered to me at Steve’s birthday dinner. It was right after you had finished chatting with Peggy. You kinda tucked yourself into my side when you slid back into the booth, you just grabbed my hand almost wondered out loud, ‘What kind of cake do you like? I wanna know so I make sure you get in on your birthday’. My birthday isn’t even until March, but you were still thinking about me and wanted to have the little bit of info to save for later. The fact that you had ‘for later’ in mind . . .  I think about that a lot.

How are we only at 24 days? Seems like time should be passing faster.

Always,

Bucky

July 22, 1946

James Buchanan,

You’re right, that is a terrible joke. Never do that again or you’ll find I’ve died of a heart attack. Ya big tease.

Speaking of Steve, I dropped by y’all’s apartment on my way home from work to return that book I’d borrowed and we ended up talking for a while. It’s funny, I don’t know if I ever voiced this to you, but he is absolutely nothing that I expected him to be. We were so engrossed in talking about art and literature that I ended up staying way longer than planned, making him late for dinner with Peggy. Hopefully she wasn’t too upset about it. He’s so easy to be around, to let my defenses down with him. I’m really really glad you have him in your life, Bucky. He’s solid, he’s kind, he’s loyal. Knowing him by knowing you has been a treat.

Not to be a downer, but things with Anderson seem to be turning worse. I’m getting up my nerve to talk to Flannery about it. He’s been extra grouchy and demanding. Either he’s raging in his office or he disappears for days at a time. I can’t pick up the slack anymore. And the way he’s been eyeing the new girl - did I tell you her name was Marjorie? I can’t remember - makes me anxious. Something just doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to kick up a fuss, but I’m also reaching the end of my rope and want to look out for the other girls.

Anyway, on to happier things. I remember my hands were covered in all kinds of stains for a while after training, too. Have they taught you to weld yet? That was one of my favorite lessons, welding to fix damage or create a new part. Glad to hear you’re working hard and learning a bunch. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little smug at my having played a small role in your success. I knew you had it in you. Now please don’t prove me wrong out of spite.

You’re such a sweet talker, Barnes, you’re gonna make me shed a tear before this is all over. Of course I think about the ‘for later’s. I like learning the little things about you. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the big picture stuff, we forget about the small details that are even more a part of making us who we are, ya know?

By the way, I’ll kick your ass in 18 days for addressing your letter to Ms. Sassafras Pants. If you won’t properly address, I won’t properly sign. Do you even remember my real name at this point? I got some input from Steve and he recommended a nickname, but it was too offensive for a postman’s eye to put on the outside of the envelope - contrary to popular belief, I do have a reputation to uphold. I’ll let him write it in the postscript. 

Always yours, 

Sixth Floor

(I’d rather be Sixth Floor than Sassafras)

P.S. I only told her to call you a dumbass. -SR

July 27, 1946

Sixth Floor,

I hope you appreciate your proper name on the envelope this time. But please let me keep calling you by your nickname inside. Sound like a deal?

Anderson hasn’t made you feel unsafe, has he? Are you okay? Do I need to send Steve over to teach him a lesson? I trust you’re fully capable of looking after yourself, but a visit from Captain America couldn’t hurt, could it? You know he’d be there in a heartbeat if you asked.  I hope the conversation with Flannery was helpful. Keep your eyes and ears open, your gut feelings are usually right. Lemme know what I can do, I feel useless sitting all the way in Pennsylvania.

 I feel like I’m starting to get overwhelmed by all the information. Training isn’t over for a couple more months, I know that, and having Harvey’s help makes me feel a little better. But some days I wonder if I’m cut out for this. If I’m smart enough for it. Can I even fake it good enough to pass? Sorry for rambling. Just processing, I guess. Don’t know if I could ever say that out loud.

But did you know they’re starting to talk about putting telephones in the radios of cars? Isn’t that crazy? And apparently new models are going to have power-operated windows. Guess the future is coming fast. I’ve also discovered that I hate carburetors with every fiber of my being and they hate me back. The majority of the time it feels good to work with my hands, to keep my brain busy. As an aside, when were you planning on telling me you knew how to weld? Envisioning you handling a welding gun is both adorable and incredibly attractive. Is that too much? Probably. Oh well.

I miss you. 2 weeks left ‘til I’m home. August 10th, please come quick.

Thinking of you,

Dumbass

P.S. Steve - write me letters your damn self if you miss me so much. Dumbass. 

August 1, 1946

My dearest Bucky,

I get to see you this month - that feels so good to say! We’ve almost made it! Given the timing of our past letters this is probably my last one before I get to hug you. I miss you so much, but honestly, writing letters has been fun. Our relationship blossomed from only speaking with our hands and mouthing words, and here we are now, only using the written word. We’ve come full circle, huh?

Truly, I don’t think I’m in danger at work. Just extremely irritated and on guard. I don’t feel the need to involve Steve at this point, or Peggy. Let’s be honest, she could take him down in the most satisfactory way that would definitely tarnish the symbol of Captain America. You’re sweet to worry, though. Just keep listening, that’s all I ask right now.

I had dinner with Becca last night. I hope that’s okay, I don’t want to cross any kind of boundary that would make you uncomfortable. We had such a pleasant time, though. I feel like we are both so very similar, having overcome a lot of the same struggles. We bonded over our parents worrying about us ending up as old maids and the trouble they had with us working rather than homemaking. Your mom sent cookies with Becca. To be fully transparent, I definitely ate the entire sack that night. Think Winnifred will teach me her ways? Also, I had no idea how interesting being a telephone operator is - the stories Becca had to tell about the people she interacts with! She’s a saint and hilarious and I adore her. She also had some incredibly interesting stories about you. . . we should discuss how angry Monopoly makes you. . . I’m tempted to play a game with you, Steve, and Peggy - I’m aware that could rocket us into another world war, but it’d be fun to watch, no? 

I don’t have the words to describe how proud of you I am. I know it hasn’t been easy, I know change can be hard. I know you have doubts. But you are so close to finishing, to reaching a major milestone in your career. I have full faith in you - you can do this. Me, Harvey, Becca, Steve, and everyone else is rooting for you. And if it doesn’t work out, so what? You tried something, you put in work and effort. Finding something you don’t like is just as helpful as finding something you do. You have other options, you always do. I mean, we know you are an impeccable window washer, so. . . Whichever way you decide to go, I’m with you for the ride. 

Only 9 days left. I can’t wait to see you at the train station.

Affectionately yours,

Sixth Floor

August 6, 1946

Darling Sixth Floor,

The more I think about it, the more I realize that being here has been helpful in a lot of ways I didn’t expect. I’ve bounced from being surrounded by family, then an army, the Commandos, and back to family, I haven’t really had space to figure out who I am away from all of that. I’m still working on finding that out, but the breathing room has been. . . enlightening. Is that word too hoity-toity? Probably. Oh well, you can make fun of me for it in a few days. As nice as it’s been to get away from the city, my fingers are itching for New York. Doesn’t hurt that you’re there.

You having dinner with Bec doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m a little worried you’ll like her more than you like me, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Whatever she told you about Monopoly is a lie - I did not throw anything, she is the agressive board game addict. Unfortunately as per the Howlies, Peggy and Steve are not allowed to play Monopoly together. We tried when we were snowed in to camp one winter and I’m not exaggerating when I say they almost killed each other. Well, Peggy almost killed Steve. Those nails of hers are lethal, you know.

Ma would be thrilled if you asked her to help you bake, although you will be in danger of her never letting you leave the kitchen ever again. The woman has a lot of wisdom to impart and all the time in the world. This may sound weird but. . . I like you getting along with my family. Not sure why. But it feels nice, having you fit in so seamlessly.

One of the guys recently asked how long we’d been together and I really had to think about it for a second before answering. Not to wax poetic, but it’s strange to me that we’ve only known each other since April. Four months of knowing you and continuing to know you every day. You’re so familiar to my life now, I can hardly imagine a time when you weren’t in it.

Thank you for having faith in me. Thank you for being an encourager. Thank you for opening up this new life to me. The world has only gotten brighter since you walked into that skyscraper all those months ago.

By the time you get this, I’ll probably be within a few hours of home. But as of this moment, I’ll see you in 4 days. I can’t wait.

See you soon,

Your Window Washer

Chapter Fourteen

TAGS:

@moderapoppins @lookwhatyoumademequeue @crazinessgraveyardsandcartoons @thinkwritexpress-official @fearless2tobeme @laneygthememequeen @past-perfect-future-tense @drhughgrection @promarvelfangirl @connorshero @anditwasjustus @p3nny4urth0ught5 @usernamemingmei @the-canary @thorfanficwriter @blueskiesbleakeyes @silverwing2522 @satansmushroom @nerd-without-a-cause @firewolf-marvels @reginaphlanageadams @kiliakit @forsaken-letters @bouquet-o-undercaffeinated-roses @part-time-patronus @biavastarr @ellaenchanted91 @ihopeyousteponarosepetal @bloatedandlonly @barnestruck @itsbuckysworld @captainsbuck @writemarvelousthings @havanaangel @animeflower26 @igotkatiepowers @clockworkherondale @mcueveryday @buckybarneshairpullingkink @cassianpeia @ladylizzieofdarbyshire @russian-romanova @yknott81 @bellamys @xmarveled @barnesrogersvstheworld @abovethesmokestacks @ursulaismymiddlename @sarcasm-ing @hiddles-rose @thisismysecrethappyplace @palaiasaurus64 @fanfic-diaries @fangirlfictionmain @majesticavenger @creideamhgradochas @lucyyannabel 

[drmedicsgamesurgery]

Danganronpa Togami Volume 3 Part 7 (Summary)

Sorry for the short summary after 2 weeks, i have been very busy and this part required a lot of hard reading and research to translate. Good news is I will be much more free soon, so if you are lucky you might get 2 summaries a week.

Thanks to @enoshima-pyon @shockersalvage​ @jinjojess​ @hopeymchope​ for helping out!

One more thing:

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ KIRIGIRI SOU, DO SO NOW OR YOU WILL BE SUPER CONFUSED AS TO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. LINK HERE.

5.

This feeling. 

Why, why is it that when I learn more about the K2K system in this place, I feel completely confused? 

This may all be fake. Maybe, I already knew that things would be like this? From the time when Borges’ anomalies became more and more obvious, I had begun to have already noticed it within my own heart.

My own story. 

Originally, I was just an item belonging to Byakuya. 

However, I also had my own story and I was destined to confront it at some point. 

And that is now.

I drank cold coffee and K did the same. The old man just talked about the tragedy of Don Quixote. [1] He said that the scene in which all the main characters had arrived into an inn had become unreadable due to the language. He said even Kafka and Sōseki [2] still resisted like this.

Speaking of which, there are also very exaggerated incidents in the books of authors like Banana Yoshimoto [3] and Haruki Murakami. [4] People feel like these can be too coincidental or contrived. Is that also a kind of resistance? Or is it that an exaggerated incident is an indispensable element for an interesting story?

Anyway, the old man who was drinking coffee in front of me, by pure chance was also something of a long shot. I just so happened to meet him and just so happened to listen to him. He just so happened to be an alumnus of Hope Peak Academy. He just so happened to be related to the Bible Plan. He just so happened to have participated in the development of Borges. It's almost like just one big joke.

I don't know if K knows my inner monologue. He has been talking in the calmest tone since then.

"It was not long after the end of the 'The Worst Incident in the History of the Togami Family. A person who claimed to be an insider of the Togami Family found me. Presumably, the superiors had already learned of the 'Bible Plan' to some extent. The insider was begging me: 'Can you write a dictionary for us?' What a charming invention!’ Still, I wanted to find a safe place to hide Borges. The Togami’s wanted to learn the techniques behind the 'Bible Plan'. Although I don't like the phrase very much, it was a win-win relationship for both parties."

Shinobu, naturally, has grown quite distrustful from these explanations but K assures her that he only provided the dictionary aspects of Borges, and points out that while any ‘missing pages’ were on the publishers fault, it was on the ‘reader’ in how they used the dictionary. When K was called on by the Togami’s, Borges hardware was already complete and he had installed the K2K system in it. However, complications arose because instead of using Borges as just a dictionary Shinobu used it as a way that K describes best as someone “watching the Raiders [5] while playing the game at the same time.”

That was a very modern metaphor, but thanks to it, things have become easier to understand. Indeed, I have always been obsessed with “Journey Under The Midnight Sun". Writing "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" is my only value in life.

Since Shinobu kept using Borges to search things related to Byakuya in order to write his biography, the K2K System inside it became specialized in Byakuya. And just like it led a person into committing murder by showing him a particular book, it started showing to Shinobu a book recommended to her. It started showing only the reality she wanted to see.

Shinobu responds that she had no chance to learn about the Hasegawa Research Institute or the Ketouin Conglomerate but K compares it to that of the ‘Anna Karenina’ [6] translations and how Nabokov [7] commented on how many times the word ‘home’ appeared throughout them all compared to the original text. Eight in the English version, once in French and no more than twice in the Czech version. He ponders how many times the word appears in the Japanese iteration before saying that reading those translations can be touching, but there will always be an inability to grasp what the original was. This causes Shinobu to think about her conversation with Hiroyuki on the talk of translations and he encouraged her to read the original.

It’s like singing karaoke without seeing the lyrics. It should be alright, but it seems that there is something wrong with it, which makes people feel uneasy and fearful.

K sums it up with this: “In a nutshell, no matter how many correct explanations I make, your dictionary will not translate them accurately to you.”

Shinobu demands to be told what the actual names of the Ketouin Conglomerate and the Hasegawa Institute...only to become exasperated when she thinks K is joking when he says they are the SkinSkin Conglomerate and Clark Kent Research Institute. K points out as long she had Borges, what she said and hears really can’t be guaranteed. It has mostly to do with the dictionary installed in it. Because the multiple editors are different, the content is different as well. Like how the concept of love varies between definition and cultures and philosophy.

“Just like an analogy. In addition, because of their different levels of knowledge, their understanding ability is different. After reviewing the dictionary, different users will have a considerable degree of understanding of the meaning of a word. The dictionary thinks that it understands 'A', but it may be misunderstood to understand 'B', and when it is described in language, it is 'C', and this may happen."

Shinbu comments she doesn’t want to misunderstand the world, though K points out people are misunderstanding everything throughout their lifetime, like how someone made Gulas by following a curry recipe or how people have turned to terrorism because of watching “Island of the Evil Spirits”[8]. Shinobu, horrified, wonders how she has been talking to people. However, K explains it that as long as people get the gist of her actions, communicating with others should be fine. Even though her reality is twisted in distorted, her unreality is still set within the bounds of reality.

Yet, even still...

"I just want to see the real thing."

"This feeling is actually normal, but it’s impossible. Borges is like a mother who overprotects her child, hides everything that is not good for you, and only provides you with what you want to see."

"I don't have Borges in my right eye, so why is it impossible? Haven't I gotten rid of its influence?"

"Even if the child is independent, it is impossible to get rid of the influence of the parents immediately. A person who has necrosis of the right side of the brain due to cerebral infarction will replace the right side with the function that has been lost. The same is true for you as well. Now all the organs in your body are running at full speed, instead of Borges continuing its work."

"How hopelessly despairing."

"Don't say that. If it lets you see the truth all at once, you will certainly collapse. It’s because this work is still in progress. It’s so you can still see the world you want to see.”

The world I want to see?

Shinobu soaks this in and starts to lose it, repeating her belief that Byakuya Togami is God. K tries to snap her back to reality by reminding her that Byakuya is human and is destined to grow old and die. Shinobu, however, still continues her silent freak out as she comes to grip with this information.

With or without Borges. I am still myself. 

This is irrelevant! Byakuya is God! It’s not that I put a sparkling aura on him or anything, but he is just is so shining! He was born to be the North Star! That old man doesn't really know what he is talking about when it comes to such a God! Byakuya is unbeaten, and Byakuya is invincible! 

At this time, he still plays the world in the palm of his hand. Since then, the world has always belonged to Byakuya. This fact will not change, even if the sun expands and swallows the Earth. The universe is coming to an end, yet Byakuya is still God! I wrote "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" to let this truth pass on to the future, and wrote a completely true biography with Borges... 

Ah, but Borges has been full of lies...hey? The reason why Borges lies is because I want to see such a world, right!? What I want to see is Byakuya as the world's God? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! 

I need to drink Bufferin.

I seem to be in a mess and I can prove that this is why K that was so eloquent before. However, he did not say a word, but was quietly watching me. I don't know if what he is thinking is either "this would be the crash after a person knows the truth" or "it’s hard to keep faith now". Regardless of the case, all this really teaches people how to be angry... 

No, actually, I’m not. This feeling...this is not how I actually feel! Honestly, I would like to use Borges to search for vocabulary related to feelings.

In fact, I want to let Borges manage me, just like before!  Ah, no, that’s not right! Because I have neither hope nor despair. Since Otsuki was present as my brother. Since Kazuya became my younger brother. Since the day I was born into the house of the Togami family.

That’s when that moment started. 

Hope won't make me feel splendid. 

Despair won't make me depressed. 

I don't need to use these things to spur myself!  

Yes, I will get the approval of Byakuya Togami and I will get to work on writing the biography given by him!

...But if these memories are also just illusions that Borges have been showing me...things are going to get quite confusing.

6.

"The picture."

After a while, K whispered. I stared at the painting hanging on the wall with my left eye, the weird creature that stood on the ground with a big nose.

"It's scientific name is the “Hopsorrhinus aureus”. This creature uses a jointed nose to jump like a kangaroo," K explained. "In 1941, this creature was found on the island of Hy-yi-yi in the South Pacific. This is a special sub-type of mammalian animal called the Rhinogradentia. [9] So far, 14 subjects have been discovered.”

K lists off the types of Rhinogradentia that have been discovered, including the species that has tentacles coming out of its nose that they use to walk with.

"How is it possible for there to be such creatures?”

“BAU UND LEBEN DER RHINOGRADENTIA was published in 1961 by Professor Harald Stümpke. [10]”

“Is there a book about them?”

“Yes, and it was translated to all over the world, causing there is a huge response. There should also be a Japanese version. You can check it out after you return to Japan."

"Then, what kind of book is it? Is it like a fake book?"

"The Foreword and Afterword are actually written by a real and famous zoologist. A review of this book was even published in scientific journals, and there are many related books too. How would you doubt an academic book on all the issues that modern zoology deals with from Morphology, anatomy, ontogeny, physiology, actions, diets, and phylogenetic evolution? With such an academically sound book, do you think you are qualified to doubt it?"

"There is no more direct evidence than images."

"I don’t have any."

"Why?"

"This creature is extinct."

"Extinction?"

"In 1957, due to a nuclear test conducted nearby, the islands where the Rhinogradentia flourished sank."

“It's a super-perfunctory ending.”

"Don't say what the ending is."

"So there are no photos? Since it was in the 1950s, there should be photos, right?"

"All the information sank with the island."

"I’m really speechless. There are no photos, anymore? If you can't investigate on the spot, there is no way to prove that this creature actually exists. This is really not credible."

"Do you know the Dodo?"

"A bird that is already extinct?"

"Because of that, do you think ‘Did this bird really exist?’"

"Of course it did."

"How can you be so convinced? The Dodo did not have any photos survive. The Dodo had once thrived on the island of Mauritius. This is only the testimony of the sailors at the time that can be proved without any other reliable information. Dodo, like the Rhinogradentia, are impossible to verify what kind of creature it was and what kind of life it lived."

"I remember seeing specimens..."

"There is a sample of a Dodo stored in a monastery in the Czech Republic. However, there is no evidence to prove that the terrible thing that is covered with charcoal is the real thing.”

“Therefore, the Dodo is a bird like a dove and a seagull, but the creature walking on the nose is looking for it. There is no such thing in the world, that is to say, common sense can prove that it is contrary to common sense, is false, can be judged by common sense."

"No, believe that the Dodo is real, but doubt the authenticity of the Rhinogradentia. This is not based on common sense judgment made, simply because you lack the logic to accept the existence of a real Rhinograde.

“You mean to say my lack of knowledge?"

"Reality and unreality are indistinguishable from the experiencer. I believe that a real person can see the existence of the Rhinogradentia it even if it is fantasy, and will also write an article to prove its existence. If a third party believes in the article, then the fantasy will be shared by them and become their common fantasy. By the way, when the book was published, most readers completely believed that the Rhinogradentia existed."

Shinobu cant laugh even if she thinks its too stupid. These people at the time had no real way of knowing the Rhinogrades were made up. Shinobu thinks about the Kudan, and thinks to herself that the Kudan definitely exists, like the Dodo. 

People who don't believe that the "Kudan" exists makes me laugh.

“People are only willing to see the reality they want to see,” K said calmly "No matter how convincing a certain argument is, as long as people are unwilling to accept it, they can't understand the meaning of it. This pathology is similar to the story in Don Quixote.”

K then gives another example similar to the previous one before continuing.

“No matter how much we experience, how much knowledge we learn, it is impossible to have the same sense of reading as the readers at the time. That is absolute.”

“Absolute...” murmurs Shinobu.

K says as long as Shinobu believes that Byakuya Togami is a God, Borges would do everything it could to strengthen that position, even if what is happening is different. To sum it up, “The sacredness of Byakuya Togami, if you couldn’t find it, you would make it.”

What?

I...understand.

Now I understand. If Byakuya Togami is not God, then my world will end.

The only purpose of my existence is to write "Journey Under The Midnight Sun", and I couldn’t let that weakness and fragility of Byakuya be exposed to my eyes.

So I made up and fabricated the storyline.

I built the story I wanted to see for myself. Not on purpose, but because of Borges's interference. In order to make Byakuya Togami become God, I have created a lot of lies so far. I made people who didn't exist, created a group organization that didn't exist, and looking back I think I even falsified the past. 

I now understood all of this and was mentally prepared. Although I can't say that I was awake...I have accepted the uncertainty of my brain.

I have accepted the fact that life has only just begun today.

With this realization, Shinobu stares at the painting and asks for the name of this animal and finds them cute. The Snout Leaper is what it’s called. Shinobu says that it would be nice if the Snout Leaper really existed, but believing in something and it actually being true are two different things. K says that belief is just enough.

“I still want to hear the truth, I want to know the truth."

"Although I don't know if I can't do it, it's worth a try."

"I didn't expect you to say that too."

"I didn't mean to tease you," K said shrugging. "At present, there is no Borges in your right eye. Then you have to look at the real things with your own eyes and update your reality. Although the information falsified by Borges will not disappear easily, but since you have found a path that convinced you, no matter how difficult it is, you should follow that path."

"I think so too."

"Then I’ll tell you something, maybe it can help you. Although it's just a hypothesis, the Despair Disease is more than likely a lie made up by Borges” he begins...only to be cut off by a piercing sound.

Just then, countless bullets penetrated the window and the kettle in the kitchen was riddled with holes.

 Translation Notes: (I highly recommend reading these this time if you don’t normally.)

[1] Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled "the first modern novel" and is sometimes considered the best literary work ever written.

[2] Natsume Sōseki was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since. 

[3] Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto says that her two main themes are “the exhaustion of young Japanese in contemporary Japan” and “the way in which terrible experiences shape a person’s life”. Her works describe the problems faced by youth, urban existentialism, and teenagers trapped between imagination and reality. Her works are targeted not only to the young and rebellious, but also to grown-ups who are still young at heart. Yoshimoto's characters, settings, and titles have a modern and American approach, but the core is Japanese. She addresses readers in a personal and friendly way, with warmth and outright innocence, writing about the simple things such as the squeaking of wooden floors or the pleasant smell of food. Food and dreams are recurring themes in her work which are often associated with memories and emotions. Yoshimoto admits that most of her artistic inspiration derives from her own dreams and that she’d like to always be sleeping and living a life full of dreams.

[4] Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country. His work has received numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize (yes really), and the Jerusalem Prize. Another notable feature of Murakami's stories are the comments that come from the main characters as to how strange the story presents itself. Murakami explains that his characters experience what he experiences as he writes, which could be compared to a movie set where the walls and props are all fake.

[5] The Raiders can refer to either The Los Angeles Raiders or the Canberra Raiders. Both are sports teams.

[6] Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in book form in 1878. Many writers consider Anna Karenina the greatest work of literature ever, and Tolstoy himself called it his first true novel. It was initially released in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger.

[7] Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were written in Russian (1926–38), but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945. It should be noted that a novel of his titled “Despair” (Novel), is about a man who meets a homeless man in the city of Prague, whom he believes is his doppelgänger. You can't make this stuff up, I’m serious.

[8] Island of the Evil Spirits is a film directed by Masahiro Shinoda. I honestly can’t find much about it.

[9] Yep, you Kirigiri Sou fans should be very blissful now. Interesting how K explains the non-canon routes of Kirigiri Sou to be based in “unreality”.

[10] Gerolf Steiner was a German zoologist. Steiner is best known for a 1961 book authored pseudonymously as Harald Stümpke on the anatomy and habits of the rhinogradentia, a fictitious order of extinct mammals whose nose evolved in unusual ways.

To Be Continued

https://drmedicsgamesurgery.tumblr.com/GameSurgeryDRTranslations

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2019 (In No Real Order)

We’re here. The end of the decade. 2019 was a weird, turbulent year for me. Despite my cross-country move already being a year behind me somehow, nothing’s really settled yet. Living situation is still weird, still separated from most of my belongings, I left my full-time QA job for a contractor position at a mobile game advertising company that may or may not convert into a full-time position... everything about what’s going on with me still just feels like I’m completely winging it, and while that’s not a position I’m really comfortable being in for such an extended amount of time, everything seems to be working out okay enough despite it. All this is probably why I spent most of my time playing the shit out of a handful of games rather than playing a bunch of different games this year! Needed some sort of stability. Also when I did manage to pull myself away from the timesink games and play something else, a lot of them ranged from “okay” to “real bad”. But I still managed to play just enough stuff that I liked to where I can put out yet another one of these.  Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2019.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC, 2005)

I haven’t bothered to do two thirds of the story quests yet and have barely touched any Episode 4 content so this game technically doesn’t count for this list, but if I left it off I would be neglecting to mention an extremely large portion of my video game playing time this year. I fell back into PSO preeeettty hard this year after the surprise announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 finally coming to the US. Guess what: game still rules. It feels stiff to play and it’s obviously far less expansive than it seemed back in 2000, but the core of Phantasy Star Online is still as fun as it ever was and the aesthetics are still entirely my shit. I love everything about the way this game looks and sounds, I love stumbling on a weird new weapon, I love participating in the custom seasonal events the server I’m on runs, and I love how oddly relaxing the experience of playing this game and taking it all in is. I will probably continue to play Phantasy Star Online into 2020. I will probably still dip back into it after PSO2 US servers finally launch. If I know you and you want to join my Discord server for PSO get at me. PSO forever.

Cookie’s Bustle (PC, 1999)

You ever play a game that just speaks to you? Even through a language barrier? A game so incredibly out there and bizarre in the exact way you love that you can’t help but adore it despite barely understanding it? Holy moly did I ever find that game. I learned about Cookie’s Bustle through a news story last year about some rare games leaking from a Japanese collector’s stash. Didn’t manage to get it to run back then, but my off and on attempts to get it working finally paid off in March of this year and I’m so glad I kept trying. I knew nothing of this game other than it had a weird name and was about a bear doing sports, and it turned out to be a fully voice-acted and mostly unsubtitled adventure game starring Cookie Blair, a 5 year old girl from New Jersey who sees herself as a teddy bear and has traveled to Bombo World, an island nation once visited by aliens and currently in the middle of a civil war, to participate in the Bombo Sports Tournament. Dead level, I probably shouldn’t have been able to genuinely love Cookie’s Bustle as much as I did. The only context I had for what was happening and what I was supposed to do was provided by a 20-year-old Google translated walkthrough with broken images, the game’s slightly higher than usual reliance on English loan words, and 30-ish years of video games and anime allowing me to halfway pick up on a handful of Japanese words. However, Cookie’s Bustle is dripping with an undeniable and off-beat charm that genuinely transcends language. Even if you can’t understand the words and specifics, you can understand the basic plot, characterizations, and emotions they’re going for. Cookie’s Bustle manages to both be completely off-the-wall bizarre and feel totally genuine and heartfelt at the same time, a balance very few games manage to successfully hit but many of my favorites do. One could say that’s why it seems to have resonated with a decent amount of other people this year, too. Games rarely make me feel sad that they’re over. but when they do that’s how I know they’re one of the good ones. Seriously, go look up a longplay or stream of Cookie’s Bustle if you (understandably) don’t want to go through the hassle of setting it up and figuring out how to play it, it’s impossible not to love.

Devil May Cry 5 (PlayStation 4, 2019)

Here’s something crazy to think about: Devil May Cry 4 came out 11 years ago. Aside from being a potent reminder that time is moving too fast and we’re all going to die soon, that means that there hasn’t been a DMC for over a decade. Devil May Cry 5 does not bare this fact even a little bit. Not only did they pick up right where they left off and manage to make another Devil May Cry game without missing a beat, they made arguably the best Devil May Cry game. I mean I still like the story and single-character focus of DMC3 the best, but DMC5 is the best playing game in the series without a doubt. Nero finally feels like he has a complete and complex toolset, Dante is the most mechanically dense and fun to play he’s ever been, and they even added a new guy that’s... neat to play as, until you start trying to S-rank the harder difficulties. Then he’s kind of annoying to play as. But it’s still cool that they tried something totally different and mostly got it to work! They also did something very stupid that I love and used this game as an excuse to make literally every single piece of Devil May Cry media canon. Like, characters exclusively from the anime and the books show up and act like they’re someone you already know and love? And they go out of their way to explain the most esoteric lore shit possible?? And despite it all they still intentionally give DMC2 as short a shrift as they can??? It’s so dumb, it rules. It’s just one of the many things about the game that show that even with so long of a gap between entries, no love for the series was lost by the people that make it. I don’t think the suits at Capcom expected this game to hit as hard as it did though, because despite there being clear areas where the game could be expanded on with DLC there still hasn’t been anything announced. I hope they’re maybe saving it for some sort of DMC3-esque special edition, or maybe just already working on DMC6, because even after getting all S-ranks I still wanted to play more. The game’s just that damn good.

Hypnospace Outlaw (PC, 2019)

I expected very little from Hypnospace Outlaw. I backed the game on Kickstarter solely because it looked cool and I thought a game about fake GeoCities was neat, and then I immediately forgot about it until it released. Admittedly my lack of expectations stemmed mostly from the fact that it’s kind of hard to set expectations for a game you never really thought too hard about, but even in the brief period of time where I considered it enough to give it money, I never expected it to be much more than a pretty-looking 101 Great GeoCities Jokez delivery vehicle. Boy was I wrong. I mean, it is incredibly good at that, but Hypnospace Outlaw is so much more than a funny period piece. The basic premise is that you’re in alternate universe 1999 and have just become a community moderator for an Internet service provider that allows people to connect to the Internet while they sleep. You’re tasked with browsing the game’s weird fake Internet and issuing demerits to users who violate the five basic Hypnospace rules, but it quickly evolves into something way bigger. Hypnospace Outlaw’s greatest strength is its exceptional ability at weaving together subtle world building, small and engaging character arcs, esoteric microjokes, and a genuine sense of mystery and discovery into an incredibly cohesive and engaging package. It’s as much a game about the people that use and run its weird fake Internet as it is about that weird fake Internet itself. And a lot of the problems both face echo the problems we face with our real world Internet today. When I was mapping out writing this article like a month or two ago I was prepared to go on about how at its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is an incredibly poignant story about how uncaring tech corporations actively harm their users and always have, but then a couple of days ago I read Colin Spacetwinks’ game of the year list and his #1 entry put most everything I would have said about that topic down in a way more eloquent and well-written way than I ever could have. And then I remembered that Friend Of The Site Heidi Kemps covered some of the same angle but from the perspective of the early Internet in an article earlier this year, again way better than I could have. So I highly recommend you read those when you’re done here. What I wanna bring up instead is just how effortlessly surprising and interconnected a lot of stuff in Hypnospace feels, using a mildly spoiler-ish late game example. Two of the first “zones” you’re allowed to moderate when you start Hypnospace Outlaw are Teentopia and Goodtime Valley, which are essentially alternate universe Yahooligans and a little slice of Hypnospace just for Boomers respectively. On Teentopia you’ll see a bunch of kids that are wild for Squisherz, Hypnospace’s alternate universe version of Pokémon, and over in Goodtime Valley you’ll see (much like there was back in real world 1999) a few pages made by religious fundamentalists convinced that everything the kids like these days is the work of Satan. This of course includes Squisherz, and you can find a page by one organization full of crackpot conspiracy theories with flimsy evidence that TOTALLY DEFINITELY backs up their claim. Squisherz contains a wolf, which the Bible warns about many times! This giraffe monster CLEARLY has a pentagram in its design!! And the eye of this snake-like Squisherz is the eye of Horus, an Egyptian occult symbol and NEED I REMIND YOU that Lucifer took the form of a snake in the Garden of Eden!!! It is very clear what this page is goofing on and throughout the course of the game it doesn’t get updated at all, so it’s very easy to laugh at it and forget about it. Very late into the game, you get an optional sidequest. Adrian Merchant, one of the CEOs of Merchantsoft, the company that created Hypnospace, was found out to have logged traffic indicating he was a frequent visitor of a website called Children of HORUS, and a call is put out to investigate what that even is. You can easily find the website, but it asks you for a password if you click the Enter button. Adrian Merchant is consistently portrayed throughout the game as a complete idiot, and the solution to this puzzle has you capitalize on that. Another early game objective ended up with you finding a list of cracked passwords, and one of those passwords happens to be for the instant messenger account of Adrian Merchant. If you can remember that he was even in that text file from forever ago, and then put two and two together that of COURSE that dumbass would use the same password for everything, you just punch in his messenger password and you’re granted access to the Children of HORUS page. It turns out that HORUS is an acronym that stands for Hiding Occult References in Utmost Secrecy, and the page itself is a basic leaderboard with a list of names and two numbered columns reading “Hidden” and “Found”. In that list of names you’ll find A. Merchant, along with the names of various other CEOs and celebrities you might have read about elsewhere in Hypnospace. One of the other names on this list is F. Kazuma, the CEO of Monarch, creators of Squisherz. The funny conspiracy theory website from the beginning of the game that you most likely forgot about was, about this one specific thing, correct. There was an eye of Horus hidden on the snake from Squisherz. Not as any sort of Satanic plot, mind you, but only as part of some weird millionaire dickwaving contest. This dumb tiny revelation is not called out by the game at all and nothing comes of it, it’s just there for you to notice if you’ve been paying enough attention. Hypnospace Outlaw is LITTERED with stuff like this. Weird small interconnected things you wouldn’t expect to be interconnected. Little dumb things you wouldn’t expect to have any sort of payoff but somehow do. And it’s also just as chock full of big things. Having all the pieces fall into place at once to where I was able to access Hypnospace’s equivalent of the dark web was the best sequence in a game this year for me, even beating out the outlandish shit in DMC5. Getting and solving the final case was a rush. Hypnospace Outlaw is full of incredible moments big and small. It’s genuinely engaging and affecting, which is so much more than I was expecting from a game that was pitched to me as “Funny GeoCities Cop”. It almost has no right being so good. But it is. Hell, even the music rules! I didnt even get into that! I don't have enough time or space to get into that now! The music is so goddamn good! I know I started these lists because I had no interest in ranking games, but every year I sort of jokingly-but-not-jokingly say “haha this game sure would be my number one if I did that!” for at least one game. It’s time to fully lean into it. I don’t gotta rank ‘em all, but I can pick a favorite. Hypnospace Outlaw is my favorite game of 2019 with a goddamn bullet.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Etrian Odyssey (Nintendo DS, 2007): Man, this series just started out good, huh? I dabbled with the first two games in college when I got a DS flashcart but never really dug in until EO4, and the first game is enjoyable in just about every way the modern ones are. Definitely more barebones and punishing though. Kero Blaster (PlayStation 4, 2017): This is a game by the creator of Cave Story that does not aim to be Cave Story, and that’s fine! A fun little shooter in its own right, though I do think the shooting in Cave Story felt a little better than it does here. Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS, 2008): I played the shit out of this game in college thanks to that flashcart I mentioned before, but I never finished a playthrough in full until this year for some reason. Still way stylish and way fun! I need to get a copy of the second one... CROSSNIQ+ (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Incredibly chill puzzle game that can be as hard or easy as you want it to be. Almost uncanny in how well it emulates the style of late PS1/Dreamcast games. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Mario Maker 2 is kind of weird for me. It’s a solid improvement in a lot of aspects, but a clear regression in a lot of others. Also the online multiplayer is the second least amount of fun I’ve had with a video game this year (Secret of Mana swooped in and stole the number one slot near the end). Still, I had a lot of fun with it and I’ll probably end up going back to it eventually. Katamari Damacy Reroll (Nintendo Switch, 2018): The original Katamari Damacy is still every bit as fun and charming as it was upon its original release. This port is weirdly based on the Japanese version with the English text inserted, which means no English voice acting and Wanda Wanda only plays in the multiplayer mode. The Joycon sticks also aren’t the greatest for doing charge rolls. But none of these faults detract too much from the game. Bring on We Love Katamari Reroll! Earth Defense Force 5 (PlayStation 4, 2018): Sandlot somehow keeps finding ways to make each new EDF bigger and explodier, and EDF5 is the biggest and explodiest yet. I think the mission design in 4.1 was more solid overall, but 5 feels the best to play and has the most fun tools. Also the dialogue is the most absurd its ever been, and the final boss goes for it way harder than the series ever has. Pokémon Shield (Nintendo Switch, 2019): This game is honestly just okay, but leaving it off would again be neglecting a game I put a ton of time into this year. Pokémon Sword is fun in the way most Pokémon games usually are, and extremely half-baked in basically every other aspect. I’m still having a good time putting together teams and finding shinies and doing The Pokémon Thing regardless.

And that’s 2019 (and this decade) in the bag! I don’t know where anything’s going from here, but I’m going to ride it out as best as I can! I hope you do too! As always, thank you so much for getting to the bottom of all these words. I’m hoping to be in a more stable place mid-2020, and then I want to get back to all the things I haven’t had time to do. I want to get back to streaming, I want to write more dumb articles like The Best Babies, I want to do it all! I hope I will be able to do it all. Until then!

[woodrokiro]

Flowers/Meanings (Fic)

Fandom: Bleach

Pairing: IchiRuki

Summary: Ichigo doesn’t really care about flowers, but he needs a job and this lady cares way too much about them but he needs the money. He guesses. Florist AU for IchiRuki Month.

"Are you looking for a bouquet for someone in particular?"

He startles, drops the flower he was idly inspecting on the ground. A woman not much older than him arches an eyebrow, arms crossed over a petite frame. He resists a strange, innate instinct to do the same.

"Oh... No. Well, maybe my little sister for later--"

"Then I wouldn't pick white lilies. They represent virginity... Unless you have a strange relationship with your sister."

He clenches his teeth. He needs to get this one, short women be damned. "Right. Cool, thanks. Actually I was hoping--there's a notice on your window saying you're hiring--"

"So you were lying about shopping for your incestual relationship."

"No, I was and that's a really weird joke to make can you just--" he stops. Breathes. Grinds said clenched teeth. "I'd really like to give you my resume and ask for an interview."

She looks him up and down with a murderously skeptical eye. "You know about flowers? The guy who was eyeing white lilies--"

"Get off of that! No, look I guess I don't. But flowers are... I mean they're pretty and I work hard and learn fast--"

"They're pretty?"

That's what I just said, he thinks, but instead he says: "Yeah, that's kind of the point, right?"

She purses her lips, scuffs her little shoe into the ground repeatedly and it's sunny but Ichigo feels a storm coming. "No. No that's not the point. Flowers aren't just pretty, they've been used for humanity for hundreds of years. Most are the few plants that haven't been used for sole survival needs--dietary or medical--but just for the simple joy of looking at them. And we've assigned meaning to each of them: joy, loss, love. Doesn't that mean something to you? Is that incredible or are you just another man thinking he can shove a bundle of flowers under a woman's nose to make her forgive all the wrongs he has done? That this traditionally feminine work is something 'easy' for you and so therefore, why not? Please. I don't have time for lying children." She eyes him for what feels like a stony eternity before turning her heel and scoffing and he just thinks fuck this.

"You know what? I don't know shit about flowers. Frankly, I don't know that I care, yet." She doesn't turn to meet his eyes, but she does stop and really  heats him up more, the deigning to not even look him in the eye while he's talking. "I just know that my family has a small town clinic, they're doing okay but my dad's getting older and he's trying to afford my college and I know he can barely do that and my sisters are about to enter university too and I know for a fact he can't handle three tuitions and I've looked all over the goddamn town for a job and none of them want me because of my hair which is stupid because its genetic but whatever bigots are bigots and I need a job and frankly I don't care for that 'flowers are girly shit' because they're just plants and the patriarchy is a pile of shit and I'll kick anyone's ass who makes fun of you for hiring me and--"

"What's your major?"

He blinks, notices in his rant that she's turned her head to look at him, how intensely violet her eyes are.

"Uh... What?"

"You're going to college. What are you studying there, fool?"

He debates for a moment whether he really wants to tell her, now that he's nearly positive he's not getting the job and also who uses the word "fool" anymore? "Um. Language. I'm a creative writing emphasis."

"Then you should be able to learn metaphors. Good enough. Be here to start at 8 am Monday."

Before he can dazedly ask what the hell metaphors she's talking about, she walks away to the back of the shop and Ichigo suddenly understands he has a job.

--- "So... Freesia means 'innocence' and 'thoughtfulness.'”

"That's what the book I gave you says, right?"

".... Yeah..."

"Then that's what it means, fool."

"Yeah okay Miranda Priestly, calm down. I'm just not really understanding what the difference between that and like--" he wets his fingers, flips the pages of her flower bible rapidly and resists the urge to grin at her disgusted expression. "Here! Like, a daisy, which 'symbolizes innocence and purity' and ‘conveys loyal love.'"

"And?"

"Well, they're both innocence--"

"Do 'loyal love' and 'thoughtfulness' sound anything alike to you?"

He tries not to let it show he's working his brain. "In a way--."

"Fool. You don't understand and I won't elaborate until you do. You can work bows in the back again."

The joke's really on her, he internally grumbles as he throws down another red ribbon onto the work table, because if all else fails he is the goddamn king of making bows.

-- Rumor has it around town she graduated from some big league art school at the top of her class.

Then again, it came from Keigo, and Keigo gossips about everyone so Ichigo can take it or leave it.

He wants to leave it, but the way her hands delicately brushes dirt from petals, how she'll arrange flowers in such a fashion that is none other than stunning, how her hands will fold the parchment oh so delicately, oh so gently over her work like some kind of prayer for their long lasting--

It isn't really hard to imagine.

-- "So... Do you have a favorite flower?"

Her hands--always working, always fluttering--still for a moment before she scoffs, continuing to trim stems by his side. The new shipment came in today, and after talking quietly for what seemed like forever with the tattooed, red headed vendor rep (so it really isn't all that much of a woman's industry, after all), she had seemed rather distracted all day.

"All flowers have their own spirit, what makes them unique--"

"You've said that a hundred times over, Kuchiki. I'm asking a simple question: what's your favorite?"

"I don't have one, honestly." He thinks he hears a small chuckle after he rolls his eyes. They work in silence for a moment before she speaks again.

"How about this. Let's make this a lesson for you: what flower would represent me--"

"Iris," he says without much thought, thinking really of her eyes but the more he considers it the more he knows it to be true. "Purple," he adds as an unnecessary afterthought. Eloquence. Wisdom and Complimentary.

She doesn't respond, but he can tell she's secretly pleased.

-- The first time he sees her deal with flowers for a remembrance occasion is Inoue.

She comes in, bubbly as ever and he kisses her quickly on the lips in the front and really hopes the two women won't meet for some odd reason he can't pinpoint but no shit here she comes waltzing from the back and Inoue sticks out her arm pleased as punch, says I'm Ichigo's girlfriend nice to meet you and Ichigo winces but Rukia is?? Pleasant???

Not that she isn't ever unpleasant with any other person but him-- just remarkably professional that comes off as a bit arrogant. She will almost always make a sale, but Ichigo has noticed a sort of grimace on men's faces as they walk away with bouquets in their hand--as if they had hoped to just flirt with the pretty ()but icy flower lady and not at all purchase actual flowers.

But he breathes a little easier when he sees Rukia smile back, even laugh at Inoue's latest quirky dream story. She eventually asks if Inoue would be interested in taking home some flowers today and suddenly the mood changes as Inoue stalls with an "Actually..."

Ichigo doesn't know how he had dated this girl for six months and not known about Inoue's brother.

Suddenly she is unfurling her story like a napkin, fiddling with her hands as she tries to nonchalantly mention it's the anniversary of her brother's passing, and she's just been so busy with work and school and friends that she hasn't... Well. She hasn't been to his grave since last year, which is so embarrassing because he was really just the kindest and most caring person she knew, in fact he was the reason she was who she was and she hopes he doesn't think she forgot about him--

Rukia squeezes her hand before going to the back, leaving Ichigo alone with this girl he realizes he's never known.

When she comes back after what seems like forever, she's got a bouquet in her hand.

"I think your brother might really enjoy these," she says softly, laying it gently into Orihime's arms like an infant. "I put some hydrangea in it, for gratitude and heartfelt emotions. Sunflower, for adoration and dedication. And finally.. A stalk of statice. For remembrance, but it also signifies 'success.' You're doing okay, Miss Inoue, and I'm sure your brother is so proud of you."

After a refusal to accept payment and a receival of infinite thanks, Orihime is gone and Rukia moves wordlessly past Ichigo.

-- "You didn't have to do that." They're trimming stalks later that day: what seems to be their special time to talk like normal people, and Ichigo admits that for some reason, he kind of relishes it. "Refuse the payment, I mean. I can just pay for it tonight after close, if you'd like--"

"Not at all. I usually give reduced prices for funeral flowers anyway. Since this was for a significant other of an employee.... I was happy to give it." She pauses in her work. "Orihime is a kind girl."

"...Yeah," is all he can think to say, and they work in more silence before he suddenly realizes something. "Wait... What do you mean you give reduced prices for funerals? I hate to... Like, it's horrible, but isn't that where you make most of your business?"

"It could be, but I don't want it to. When you've lost someone... The last thing that should come with a heavy price tag is something beautiful, don't you think?"

Ichigo thinks of golden hair and sun dresses and being scooped up into thin, warm arms and all he can do is nod.

"So... I mean. Have you struggled with the business before then, or...?"

"If you're worried about your job, don't. I have my resources."

"I'm not worried about the job, Rukia, I just--why then? Why do you do this? You can like flowers, you can like giving flowers to people but you don't have to make a business out of it--"

"Do you expect to make much money writing?" The question isn't harsh, per se, just direct--but it catches Ichigo off guard.

"What...?"

"You may be a fool sometimes, but it seems you know enough about the world to realize potential consequences for your dreams. That you may have to take on another job you don't like. That you may continue to struggle with bills, maybe eat beans and rice every other week for awhile. But that's the thing, isn't it? It's for your dreams, your goals--what life is screaming at you to keep doing because otherwise: what are you doing here in the first place?" She stops her work to pick up a peony (happy life, good health, prosperity. Compassion.) and does something uncharacteristic: she puts it to her nose and smells it. After a moment, she continues: "This isn't the only thing I do, it isn't my only dream. I paint, I sketch sometimes. I have as equal a love for both. But that... Traditional visual art is a little more selfish, its for my own self expression. And for some--maybe many--they'll understand it and like it and that's wonderful. I'm humbled. But some may not and that's all right too. This is what I can contribute in a smaller way, to a singular person instead of a group or myself as a whole. I am allowed to express myself, to create poetry and meaning through natural, breathing things. And, better yet... I get to give them to people. To say, 'here you are, I made this just for you--'"

He kisses her, suddenly (wonderfully) and there's no thought involved and he should be embarrassed but he's not and all he can think is there's some floral smell to her but what flower what is the flower that clings to her like she was the hand to create it? He doesn't know quite yet he needs to kiss her some more to find out--

She releases herself from him gently and looks at him with something in her eyes like sadness or pity or whatever it is he doesn't want to tell because ah. There it is.

His embarrassment.

He shirks off his apron, grunts out a "sorry" before leaving.

-- He breaks up with Orihime about a week later.

It's amicable: she is visibly disappointed but they both agree they would love to stay friends, hoping to go out to breakfast once in awhile to get to know each other as buddies better.

He hasn't returned to work since though. -- He's awoken at nine in the morning by the doorbell.

It's been a month since he's even been within a half mile radius of the shop, and he knows it's probably for the best but he's been dreaming a lot about sharp words and fluttering hands and flowers and he's just starting to think fuck flowers--

The guy with the red hair and tattoos is on his doorstep holding a bundle and Ichigo's not sure whether he wants to laugh or cry.

"Yo. This weird, since we've never talked but, uh--" He lifts the bundle in one hand. "Rukia wanted me to give this to you. Said you'd get what it's for? Or should? I don't know. Just giving this as a favor for a friend."

"...Thanks?" Ichigo signs the package, waves an awkward goodbye to the guy and peeks into the wrapping and of course.

He doesn't understand how, but of course she knew what day it was.

A simple bouquet of Queen Anne's lace and a white stargazer lily: for sanctuary and sympathetic remembrance. A condolence card attached reads: For your dearest remembrance.--Rukia and Ichigo's heart hits the floor of his stomach with a thud.

Still, he continues on the day as he usually does: puts on a nice shirt, buys his mother's favorite chocolates and a contribution to family picnic, kisses his sisters and allows his dad one hug. The only difference is he leaves the grave early, asking his family (and mother) to forgive him because he's got to do something early the next morning.

-- When Rukia unlocks the front door to the shop the next morning, an alert Ichigo standing in the middle of it is not what she expects.

"Yo. Good morning."

He shoves a bundle into her arms, and she looks down. A haphazard bouquet droops in her arms and she raises her eyebrows inquisitively at him. "Ichigo..."

"First of all: I quit."

She blinks. "Yes, I gathered that when you hadn't shown to work in a month."

"Cool. Glad we got that covered. Because I kind of suck at this job--"

"A tad, yes."

"Rukia, shut up for one moment and let me talk, okay? I kind of suck at this job and flowers are cool and can be manly as hell if you dismantle society's preconceptions of what manly means... But they're not my thing. Writing is. But I like that thing you said about making poetry with living things and I kind of tried to do that with that bouquet in your hands but the flowers are older because you haven't received a new shipment yet and I had to break in here earlier than that with my employee keys which I hope you overlook because I'm trying to be romantic and also the fact that you knew about my mom's death without me telling you is also kind of creepy so we're both kind of creepy so there. Now. What do you think?"

She inspects it, and Ichigo tries not to wait on bated breath. "A rose, an iris, a gardenia, and a bird of paradise..." She looks up at him with a challenge in her eyes. "Why?"

He sucks in: he'd been ready for this. "So I picked the red rose because... I don't know. We all know what it means and it's kind of cliche. But it's classic, it's universal and something we all can recognize. I thought it fitting. I told you you were like an iris, once, and I think that may still be true--but honestly you're... A lot of different flowers. Maybe all of them, in a way. I think I really get it now when you said you didn't have a favorite, because really they're all your favorite. Or something. And the gardenia is an admission that the receiver is lovely, and. Um? The bird of paradise." He pauses. "The bird of paradise indicates exciting anticipation. Which is where I kind of am right now."

A beat passes. She eyes him with an unreadable expression, and he thinks shit shit this was so fucking cheesy, what if she's with the guy at his doorstep yesterday, what if she really did just mean her condolences--

"There is no cohesion at all with any of these flowers. They look awful together."

His heart sinks. "Uh... Yeah okay I know and I wanted to come in earlier to see what you had but my alarm didn't go off in time so I was scrambling to get here and--"

"You really made for a terrible employee," she murmers, and all in ten seconds she's put the flowers gently down on the counter and taken the three steps toward him and turned his face in her hands down to hers and he feels those lips again and there.

Iris.

He was right.

[pickupthepen]

Little Demon

Hi there.

I want to tell you a story. A few years ago, back when I was consulting for 21st Century Fox, I found myself wandering in an airport market at LaGuardia, in search of my usual Diet Coke and, as always, perusing the book selection. As my eyes glazed over the occasional best sellers that were faced forward so shoppers could see the covers and make impulse choices on pretty colors and a couple of words printed in script typeface, my eyes locked on the name “Anne Lamott” on a little orange paperback. My mind clapped- “ha!” Not long before that, I was floating in her pool in Marin as she asked me how my relationship was going. She always had a handful of wonderfully eloquent words of wisdom to offer in moments like those, and I let her in on my heartache. I always forget what she does to afford a mission-style mansion and a gorgeous pool like that, and I’m always still a little surprised to see her name in bookstores. I wouldn’t say I’m a loyal fan of her work, but I bought the book- “Hallelujah Anyway”- and left it under a pillow in my NY boutique hotel room. That relationship ended, and I haven’t seen Anne in longer than I would like to admit.

Years later, this past weekend in particular, I sat in my neighborhood bookstore in a chair, staring down the Religion/Spirituality section. I may have been there for hours- I’m not sure. I read every book title, every back. I imprinted every cover into my mind’s eye. If you want to know the truth, I was hoping there’d be something there, something to take my mind off of what I was feeling, something that’d give me the secret to figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing with my hands and my heart, or some place to travel far away from this seat. Maybe my name would be up there one day after I find what is that I think I need. I’m always hoping that something as simple as a book can fix what feels broken, or maybe to find some way to keep what I fear losing. That’s why there are so many of these books to read, right?

But a question really worth asking myself, which I did, in fact, come around to asking- how many books would it take for me to get there? Could I find the right one, the key? How many “Hallelujahs Anyway” or hours floating in a pool with Anne is it going to take for me to figure it all out? What is “it”? How many books about travel, food and adventure will it take for me to have the courage to leave corporate life? How many tarot readings, meditation sessions, long conversations with friends, buddhist teachers, Tolle and Watts tapes, or “spiritual” instagram posts do I have to scroll through before I can be my authentic self, whatever the hell that means? How much studying will I have to do in order to feel the freedom of the wind blowing through my hair? Do you see what I mean?

Okay, take a step back. 

I want to paint a picture of my morning. Let me tell you about a girl named Sally. We have a unique friendship- our circles never really overlap, but every once in a while, we stay up late together. We cook, we talk about who we’ve loved and what we’ve lost, the things we battle in our hearts, what it means to be women of dignity and grace in the workplace, and that not all is as it seems. On occasion, we play a game where we ask questions in rapid succession to see if we can tap into what our intuition knows to be true, and we laugh at our answers. This weekend I asked her, “Do you think I’m psychic?”, and she quickly replied, “Yes!” Sally and I have built our friendship upon the foundation of honesty, and no one really knows how deep our commitment to one another goes. I kind of like that you don’t get to see everything about who we are as two people whose paths have crossed- it’s for us. I will say that she is an irreplaceable part of my life, that I’ve walked the beach in her hometown under a moonlit sky, and that I adore her mother. I’ve looked out at the stars above the San Francisco skyline from the windows of her Castro lair. I’ve heard her cry. She’s heard me cry. She’s my friend- a very important one.

This morning, after having cursed Anne for writing books that never fixed me, and that I never even gave a chance, I opened Instagram and one of her posts was at the top.

“What if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn’t go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you have a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.” -Anne Lamott

Trust me, I immediately realized the irony of having condemned Instagram to be a worthless wasteland with no real influence or value and to have my morning turned around by Anne’s post of text on a purple background (she’s a writer, not a designer). I thought about how Anne, although so far from me in this moment, was so close. She whispered to me, not knowing that I’d read what she had written, another one of her eloquent words of wisdom. What I would give to go back to her pool that sunny afternoon and listen once more to her words. What did she tell me way back then? What was she trying to tell me? I remember her seeming a bit ambivalent, as if my relationship wasn’t what I really needed to examine. I can almost see her watch me miss the point, thinking “this girl will understand one day, but not today.”

I thought, “I should tell Sally about this.” I thought of all those daydreams that I carry with me when I walk around the city, and I wrote them to her in a list. I told her about how I did want to learn how to land that big jump at Breckinridge, even though I never have. I told her about my daydreams of sitting on Edmond’s sailboat with him in the Aegean Sea, eating and singing together. I mentioned learning a new language, not to be a pretty girl who speaks in pretty tongues, but because I love learning, I find language fascinating (obviously), and fuck y’all, I want to! I told her about how I want to write a book, but every time the thought of what you might think of me crosses my mind, I stop. I told her about my imaginations of a blues band with my father- he’d play guitar, and I'd sing. I think about that a lot, but perhaps that’s the only daydream that can never come to life. I want to drive around the vast wastelands of Alaska, and sit under the stars. I want to climb mountains. I want to dance until I can’t walk with Allison in Berlin. I want to redesign a kitchen and prepare recipes in a workshop of my making. I want all of it. 

Amidst my daydreams, pontifications over Anne’s words, and texts to Sally, I received a message from my best friend. She had slept through her final exam for an important class. Minutes later, another came through- she talked to her professor, she’s going to take the test tomorrow, so now she has more time to study and to sleep. Hah, opportunity. Her dad always says, “when the garbage truck comes by, fill it up!” Then, suddenly, it popped in my mind that I hadn’t checked my mail in weeks, and my heart sank. I jetted up, set the pile on my desk, and sorted through each envelope. I always fear having missed something- I normally keep a watchful eye over my finances and commitments, but sometimes things slip through. I thought about my best friend and how I could channel her experience from this morning in embracing failure, and if there were some error that I had fallen blind to, I could fix it. But, I found no such ominous piece of mail in that pile, only a couple fliers, a beautifully designed AirBnB magazine, and a postcard with an image of ice and a man in a red jacket that read- 

“Hello from afar, you little demon. It’s cold and absolutely beautiful here, may it give you some inspiration, because all I can say to you is to live your life for you, to the fullest, and joyously each and every day. Until March, from Antarctica. 

-Edmond” 

Life’s gorgeous gems always have a magical way of landing where they began, don’t they? I seem to have a magical way of finding great joy in being wrong. Maybe the universe wants me to see that not every moment is a triumph over an obstacle- sometimes I’m allowed to simply relish in happiness. What might I miss when I’m strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing? What might I miss when I obsess over answers, and perhaps more accurately, a way to change how I feel?

I began writing you this letter in a moment of fear. I was hoping to convey some sort of message that there aren’t any real answers to feeling better, to being better, to having better. I was hoping I could find melancholic and meaningful wisdom within my soul about the realities of life- I wanted to say that there are no secrets messages in books, that the words that I choose don’t really matter, that we have so very little in life that we can control, and only a bit that we really know. I thought I had a really good idea about there not being a way to untangle yourself from confusion and uncertainty, so you might as well give up and stop buying those god damned books. But Anne’s words have changed the way I look through my lens out at the world in a number of ways. My best friend’s words change my perspective (and make me laugh) every single day. Sally’s words inspire me, and bring me home. This morning, Edmond’s words reminded me of who I am, what I believe in, and where I want to go. There still isn’t much I have control over, but I have more choices in this life than I sometimes admit, and I often pretend that I am completely powerless for fear that if my life were in my own hands in any way, I’d fuck it up. That being said, I know that I always choose my words methodically and with intention, and with that, I have the power to be radically honest. I can tell you what I desire, what has broken me, and stories of my past that have shaped the woman that I am growing into. When I release these words, out unto the stars, the earth begins to shift.

So, as always in my letters for you, my dear friend, I will say something honest: Sometimes I’m fucking terrified of life. Uh, redact that- I am often terrified of life. I want every item on that list of daydreams that I sent Sally, but I fear what I might lose when I walk away from certainty and the things that I rely upon. I fear deeply that I will never be loved or understood- that is a fear that I know very well, and that I’m not alone in carrying with me. I’m scared that I might lose my whole life to complacency, to playing it safe. I’m terrified that I am going to wake up at 75 and I will never have told anyone that I was deeply, madly in love with them because I was so fearful that I didn’t deserve to hear it back. I’m scared that I will have forgotten how to dance with freedom and power, that I'll have never left the safety of carefully curated sentences, paid bills, aced exams, tennis opponents that I can easily beat, jobs that I know how to do without flexing my mind, practical homes, acceptable relationships, inexpensive sheets, reasonable methods of transportation, and a blog that no one fucking reads because I refuse to be vulnerable (ok I'm getting a little dramatic). I’m just saying- I’m scared of settling, whatever that means, and not having at least tried to leap for something higher.

I think about climbing- I’m scared of what will happen when I jump for the next hold on a bouldering problem that is just out of reach. I think, “when I hit the ground, will I be ok?” But what if I never leapt? Would I be able tell you about that second when I jump, how my stomach drops, my hand slaps the rock, and to my surprise I find myself hanging on, lifting myself to stand on top of that boulder? I wouldn’t even know how to begin to describe a moment like that, had I never experienced it, and that’s mine to keep. I also wouldn’t be able to tell you that I have missed those holds more often than I have landed them, and I’ve always been okay. That’s really worth saying. 

If I never finished anything I started writing, would these words sit inside of me for the rest of eternity, would I lay to rest wishing someone had come here and finally felt as though they had a companion in grief, joy and downright lunacy? What if I played by the rules, and never wrote in a fucking curse word? What if I played by the rules? If I were never honest about what’s really inside of my heart, I wouldn’t have the friendships with Sally and Edmond that I do. If were never candid about having made friends with dishonesty, I wouldn’t have Caroline Godfrey. If I never told anyone about my love for women, I wouldn’t be able to tell my mother about how my heart sometimes hurts in romance, and to be held by her words of encouragement and love. I might have missed out on sharing myself with my own mother, and I might have missed out on hearing the hilarious words “that lesbian conference that you go to” come out of her mouth. If I hadn’t admitted to myself that I had become a prisoner of alcohol, I might not even have my life. Actually, I know for certain that I wouldn’t have my life, because every moment worth remembering came after the first time I muttered the words, “I’m Casey, and I'm an alcoholic.” I have a list of a million beautiful things which I have earned from honesty and trust in myself and others, but I will save them for another rainy day (it didn’t rain today but you know what I mean). To make this list complete: If I didn't know any of these lovely human beings, I wouldn’t have mornings like this morning, where everything seemed to make sense again, and I finally felt woven right back into our web of diamonds and silk.

I know I need to end somewhere, and I feel compelled to leave you with an idea. What if you did have some sort of control over how your life unfolds? What if Tolle isn’t exactly right when he says that you’re just being thrashed around by circumstance as the universe reveals itself as you, and that the only choice you have is to either wake up or stay asleep? I challenge you to consider that every move you make pushes your needle toward either courage or fear, freedom or complacency, love or isolation, inspiration or apathy. Every choice and every word matters, and you can choose. You can choose. And if you need a place to begin, you can start by taking a moment to ask yourself what is true for you, finding wonder in those with whom you share your life, and by going out into the world, because all of it is yours. If you don’t, like Anne said, it might break your heart. Leap, my darling friend, courageous human, and say something honest.

Best wishes.

[rimalupin]

50 More Interesting Questions

Rules: fill this out and tag at least one person you’d like to know more about! Or just fill it out! Or don’t! Answer only some of them! Make up your own questions! “What kind of requirement is that”, you ask? A reasonable one! Who am I to tell you what to do? Anything goes!

Thank you for tagging me @theempresskaizer & @kakihoden! :D <3

1. What kind of food can’t you stand?: Anything fermented. Like, ew. Also brussel sprouts (Then again, I have yet find someone who can cook brussel sprouts “well.” :b)

2. If you could choose one minor inconvenience to never have to deal with again, what would you pick?: Public transit schedules. They’re so darn inconvenient (And yet I’m commuting for the remainder of my uni career. At least I’m saving money..?). -.-’

3. Have you got any useless talents?: I try to make use of my talents, so I’m gonna say no. :b

4. If you could be really really good at one thing, what would it be?: Taking (good & worthwhile) risks because I’m always so darn careful so I end up not trying new things sometimes.

5. Name a few people you think are extremely good-looking: ALL THE FRIENDS AND FAMILY I KNOW AND LOVE. <3 Oh, also Emma Watson, Gal Gadot, Shawn Mendes, Tom Holland, and all the other celebs I tend to fangirl about (I can’t name them all rn, haha sorry~. :P).

6. What was your favorite way to pass the time as a kid?: Singing all the Disney songs (Which I still do nowadays, haha~.). I would also read books, write my own stories, and act as if I was on a Disney Channel show (I was quite the Disney fangirl back in the day. xD)

7. What is something you’re proud of?: My friends who are just starting college/uni this year. Most of them are already setting up their dorms and getting ready for classes. They’re growing up so fast! :’)

8. What’s one character flaw in people that you just can’t tolerate?: Dishonesty. I don’t associate with phonies.

9. Do you consider yourself to be more of a leader or a follower?: I’m a bit of both. Then again, being a follower makes you a kind of leader: you essentially lead people to follow your leader, if that makes sense Okay I’ll shut up about leadership theory sorry y’all. :P

10. What kind of student are/were you?: The diligent one (but people often claim I’m the overachiever even tho I’m not always a straight A student lololol).

11. Butterfly effect question! Has there ever been a seemingly minor decision you’ve made (at the time) that ended up having a profound influence on your life?: Ohhhhh yes. This kind of thing has happened to me many times (In like the best ways possible, thankfully.).

12. Name your most irrational fear/aversion: Being alone/left out (Even though “I’m never really alone” ((Which I know I’m not. Hence the “irrational” part of this particular fear/aversion.)).)

13. Are there any fictional characters you find especially relatable?: Yup. Plenty of ‘em.

14. If you drink, what kind of drunk are you? Alternatively, what sort of person are you at parties?: I don’t drink... Yet. My Canadian friends are trying to get me to drink with them since I’m now legal in Canada but I’m scared heeeeeelp. :b I’m usually the wallflower if I don’t know anybody too well at a party. However, if I find people I’m comfortable hanging out with, I’ll stick with their squad throughout the event, talking, eating, dancing and taking pictures/SnapChats to our hearts’ desires~. ^-^

15. Do you fall in love easily? Or does it usually take a long time for you to trust someone?: Nope. I have to get to know the person before I “fall in love” with them, let alone having a crush on them. Which is why the biggest crushes I’ve had were on some of my closest friends. But I’ve never told them because I didn’t want to risk our friendships IDK I’M A NOOB WHEN IT COMES TO LOVEY-DOVEY THINGS. :b

16. Would you rather have one close friend or 100 casual friends?: One close friend. <3

17. Do you consider yourself to be more of a slob or a neat-freak?: Neat-freak. Definitely a neat-freak. xD

18. Describe a place (imaginary or real) that you would find incredibly cozy: 

Both of these locations are places where I’d have more than enough room to move or think. ^-^

Outdoors: Somewhere near the sea, where I could feel the sand on my toes, hear the waves splashing onto the shore, smell the ocean breeze, and watch the orange sunset glowing along the horizon.

Indoors: An empty practice room. Wooden floors, large mirrors in front of the room, dance barres along the side walls, a few windows displaying the outside world, and a speaker/stereo system perfect for blasting the music around the room.

19. Do you have kids? If not, do you want them someday?: No kids atm, but I love working with them! Yes, I’d like kids someday~.

20. What was your favorite book as a child?: I read many books as a wee child. But one book I can clearly remember is Stellaluna. It’s an adorable story about a bat who discovers who she truly is thanks to both her adoptive and biological families (The former being a family of birds and the latter being a family of bats.).

21. Name one thing you just don’t get what all the hype is about: Fidget spinners. I’m still seeing people freak out about those things. Didn’t the trend die a month or two ago?

22. Name one thing that you think is tragically underrated: Myspace. *evil laughs despite the fact that I never had a Myspace account* :P Sorry I couldn’t think of anything else bahaha~

23. If you had to be glued to a person for a month, real or fictional (who you have never met), who would you choose?: I mean, I’ve never met MYSME’s 707 IRL, so I’ll stick with him And we can visit his space station, haha~ ^-^

24. What’s something you’d like the chance to do someday?: Act in a theatrical production. I haven’t done theatre in a year and I already miss it. T.T

25. Do you typically speak your mind when you have a controversial opinion? Or do generally prefer to not rock the boat?: I’ll definitely speak my mind if I’m well-versed in the topic and if I’m passionate about it. If I want to present a controversial opinion, I have to be sure that I can articulate my POV eloquently and professionally. I’m also more than willing to listen to the other side, as long as they fully know what they’re talking about (Frankly, I will not take any B.S. if I suspect B.S.).

26. What’s the dumbest fad you’ve been caught up in?: I’m blanking... Yeah, IDK, but I’m pretty sure I got caught up in some kind of dumb fad back in middle school. *shivers b/c I don’t want to relive those years*

27. What’s something you thought was cool as a kid/adolescent, but now cringe at yourself for?: When I was younger (like elementary/middle school-age), I dreamed of becoming a singer. In order to accomplish that dream, I joined my school and church choirs: however, that turned out to be a pretty toxic experience since almost everyone I was singing with treated every single practice and performance as a singing competition. Like, c’mon you guys: we aren’t on Glee. -.-’

28. What’s a trait you consider to be very admirable?: Honesty: I admire people who are genuine and true.

29. Is there a particular kind of item people always tend to give you as gifts? (For instance, people always get you things with ducks on them because you like ducks, etc.): Books (people know I’m a huge bookworm), clothes (b/c I’m usually too lazy/don’t have time to shop for my own clothes, LOLOL), stuffed animals (I’m a child at heart and I love cuddly & cute things), sweets (especially chocolate).

30. Do you speak multiple languages? Which ones?: 

English is my mother tongue.

I apparently used to speak Tagalog fluently when I was very young, but then I stopped speaking that language once I started preschool; however, I’ve picked up some terms over the years, so I can sort of dissect my parents’ conversations w/ the other adults (”Yes, Mom, I knew that you were talking about my uni stuff with Tita *insert name here*.” :P), plus I’m going to take a Tagalog 101 class in Autumn Quarter, so I’ll (hopefully) learn how to say complete sentences instead of just the names of foods, holidays, and Filipino Folk Dances. xD

I learned Spanish throughout my high school career, so I’m okay in that department even though I haven’t practiced speaking/listening/writing in that language recently. I’m still fluent enough to help my sisters with their Spanish homework, so that’s something. :P

I tried learning some French, Japanese, and Korean through various language learning apps, but to no avail.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

31. Would you rather live in the big city or the countryside?: Can I choose like a little town instead? Big city: the countryside would be MUCH too quiet for me (Plus I’d be much too tempted to run atop every hill Sound of Music style and start singing at the top of my lungs - which would probably annoy a lot of people, myself included. :P).

32. Has there ever been something you were certain you’d hate, but ended up loving?: Giles Christophe a.k.a my Midnight Cinderella bias. Ironic, huh? xD <3 Also Jumin Han from MYSME. :P

33. Do you mind being the center of attention, or do you prefer the spotlight to be on someone else?: I will hide from the spotlight like I’m a friggin vampire unless there’s a damn good reason for me to be under it.

34. Favorite holiday?: CHRISTMAS!!!

35. Are you a more go-with-the-flow type of person, or do you need to have things planned meticulously?: If I’m in charge of scheduling something, then I MUST have everything carefully planned. If I’m leaving the scheduling to someone else, then I’ll just go with the flow~.

36. Is there something you loved so much you wish you could forget it and experience it all over again? (A tv show, book, series–anything.): My first trip to Hawaii: I’d love to explore the islands and swim in its oceans again.

37. What hobbies do you have?: Reading, writing, singing, dancing, listening to music, playing the guitar or ukulele, checking social media (JKJK :P), drawing/arts & crafts (If I’m EXTREMELY bored), playing video games, watching TV/YouTube, exploring places both old and new Yeah, I do too many things, haha~

38. If you could have a superpower, but it was only mildly useful, what ability would you want to have?: “Mildly useful?” (O.o) I guess the ability to learn things VERY quickly - like, master an activity on the first try. I actually have a friend with that ability, which has allowed him to almost effortlessly master almost every sport he’s ever learned: he’s basically a superhuman and I admire and envy him for his “superpower.” :P <3

39. Something people are always surprised to learn about you: My age: people think that I’m much younger than I actually am, mostly because of my shorter-than-average height and my baby face. I’m basically an adult stuck in a teenager’s body. xD

40. Something that took you way too long to figure out: How to apply the Unit Circle to various math problems eff you precalculus and calculus never again ugggghhhhh.

41. Worst injury you’ve had?: My broken heart (JKJK, sort of. :P) I got burned by the metal tip of a very hot glue gun. Thanks to that, I have a tiny scar on my upper right arm.

42. Any morbid fascinations?: Does watching playthroughs of horror games through YouTube count?

43. Describe your sense of humor: Clever/witty, sarcastic, sassy. Oftentimes unintentional: jokes will usually come to me naturally through conversation. If we’re close, plenty of embarrassing stories, inside jokes, and horrible puns will be part of our daily doses of humor.

44. If you had to be born in another era/place, which would you choose?: I’d want to be born in Canada, mostly because I’ve got a lot of family living up there, plus I’d love to live in a place that isn’t completely messed up rn. #SorryNotSorryAmerica *crosses to the Canadian border like a badass*

45. Something you are irredeemably bad at: LOL, WHAT’S A SPORT? :b

46. Something that sucked but you’re glad you went through: Freshman year of high school. I first moved to my new home that year, so being the new kid sucked for a while, but I eventually made some friends and found more opportunities to grow as a person (through writing and theatre).

47. Would you rather have a really godawful ugly tattoo in a place that is only slightly inconvenient to conceal with clothing (upper arm, thigh, etc.), or the coolest, most beautiful tattoo ever in the middle of your face? (Neither tattoo can be removed or concealed with makeup, and the ugly tattoo will deeply offend anyone who sees it.): Ugly tat. At least I’d have a place to hide it. xD

48. Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist?: Realist. Leaning on the pessimist side. However, I do try to believe that things will get better, that there’ll be more bigger and better opportunities out there, etc. etc.

49. What would be the most flattering compliment someone could give you?: That I’m a hardworking and genuine person. Then again, I don’t do well compliments anyway: I’ll definitely blush and stutter and try to hide behind some kind of an object while complimenting you back. xD <3

50. Something you feel people often misunderstand about you: I’m often quiet and reserved when I’m meeting new people. Some may think I’m naturally calm and composed, others take it as slightly intimidating. But I’m just quiet because I’m awkward, plus I don’t usually start conversations. :b

Tagging: @princessofwysteria, @sukio-sakamaki, @allforthecrown, @o0w0o, @widzzicles, @rizosrojizos, and anyone who wants to do this! (I would’ve tagged more peeps, but I didn’t know if they had been tagged already. So please join in if you haven’t done this already~.). ^-^ <3

[sableaire]

What's wrong with Eleanor and Park?

I can see why it’s an enjoyable enough story, but my discomfort comes with the portrayal of Park. There aren’t too many Korean or even half-Korean characters in popular American fiction, so the main reason I read the book was for him in the first place.

Unfortunately, a major element of the book surrounds Park hating being half-Korean and associating being Asian with weakness. Which, considering the setting, is understandable, but there are three things about Eleanor & Park that grate at me, which I have elaborated on below the cut:

1) There is limited Korean-American representation in America, and this is the one that’s prevalent, the one about the kid who hates himself and looks down on his Korean mother, who only comes to be somewhat okay with being Korean when his girlfriend tells him that she thinks he’s cute - not sure if it’s because he’s Korean, but not in spite of it - and later comments that maybe she has a thing for Korean guys and she just didn’t know it.

*Hissing intake of breath* Yes, for the character of Park, maybe that was what he needed? But as a character whom the author herself stated was meant to be Asian representation? It makes me uncomfortable that his his self-esteem, tied to his half-Korean heritage, pretty much always comes down to appearances. I mean, that’s often the case in YA novels, sure, but Park is more than a YA novel protagonist, he’s an attempt at representation for an underrepresented demographic that has long dealt with fetishization on one hand, demasculization on the other, and is currently dealing with post kpop-boom fetishization (which is a whole other issue). It makes me uncomfortable.

Also, Park has green eyes. This is a smaller detail, and not one that’s impossible, but it’s a trope where major Asian characters are often given different eye colors because brown isn’t ‘unique’ enough, or because the protagonist needs to be ‘visually distinct’ from the rest of the Asians. Either that, or it exoticizes them further.  There are other ways to do it than eye color.

Ultimately, Park was meant to be Asian representation, Korean representation, but Park’s Korean nature starts and stops at his appearance. And taekwondo, which his American father made him go to and he’s not too fond of. It’s also spelled “taekwando” throughout my copy, which also kills me, but regardless.

There are kids like Park, I’m sure, who are disconnected from Korean culture, who don’t speak Korean, etc. But if one of your parents were born and raised in Korea and came over, and they’re raising you, there are some things that stick. None of those little details are there. If Park’s mother was more than just a background character, even, those little details would be there. 

The only time rice is ever mentioned in the book is in Eleanor’s narrative. I honestly cannot conceive of a Korean person born and raised in Korea who wouldn’t complain about America’s lack of sticky white rice, even once. If not Park’s mother, he could have complained about his mother complaining about America’s lack of rice, and that slightest, smallest detail would have made everything feel a little bit better for me. But Rowell probably didn’t know that, is the thing.

2) Rainbow Rowell is woman who is inexperienced with the Asian-American experience. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing - I’m not the type of person that thinks that people of one race, ethnicity, or nationality should never write protagonists from another. However, when it comes to writing a character about hating their own heritage, in a time where there is not too much representation, it needs to be delicately handled, and someone without direct experience might not know how much thought needs to be put into it.

There are a lot of microaggressions in Eleanor & Park, some intentional, and some… probably not. Or, if it’s intentional, as a YA novel, I feel like they should have been better clarified as negative thoughts so that readers know this kind of thinking, these kind of comments, are not okay.

Throughout the book, Eleanor is pretty racist, but the story fails to condemn this behavior, especially since she never says it out loud - it’s mostly in her own head. Examples that linger in my head are ones that other people have talked about before,such as when Eleanor has the joking thought that Park paralyzed her with his “ninja magic”, or when she meets Park’s mother and waxes eloquent thinking of her as a Dainty China doll from The Wizard of Oz.

“Eleanor imagined Park’s dad, Tom Selleck, tucking his Dainty China person into his flak jacket and sneaking her out of Korea.“

First of all, comparing Asian women to dolls in this day and age - not cool. Even if it’s true to setting, not cool, since kids reading will learn that and think that’s okay when it’s not. When will we escape the objectification of Asian women, not 2012.

Further, Rowell’s father served in Korea in the 70s. She cites that as part of the reason she felt compelled to write Park as Korean, beyond her initial sense of “he just was Korean from the start,” which I do understand. The problem is, if her view of the American soldiers in Korea comes solely from her father’s military time there, she’s got a pretty biased view.

Park and Eleanor frame the white soldier whisking a Korean woman out of the country to America as something romantic, due to Rowell’s own life experience where her father carried a photo of a Korean girl on his person for years after returning from Korea. I can understand why she would want to explore that story, what a romance like that might have been. I genuinely wish that the current publishing climate would allow for her to explore that story and that I would be able to enjoy it. Unfortunately, current climate does not, and I cannot enjoy it.

The problem is, the story of American soldiers whisking Korean women out of the country has been told before. It has been a reality before, and considering it romantic?  A lot of Koreans would disagree. A lot of Korean-Americans would disagree. A lot. 

The American military’s presence in South Korea post-Korean War is one plagued with politics, and a time during which the sex industry was encouraged by the government to generate revenue from American soldiers. Many young Korean girls were forced or tricked into sex work, specifically for American soldiers. The Wikipedia page is here for an overview, and here’s something from Yale if that wasn’t scholarly enough. That’s left a lot of hard feelings.

I’m not saying there couldn’t have been great romances between American soldiers and Korean women at the time, but those are pretty much the only stories that have been told about the time (in English media), often told by said American soldiers themselves. As a society, it just might be time to recognize that with biased narrators, a language barrier, and cultural miscommunication, what might be a great romance to one man might have been a matter of fear and survival to another woman.

Then there’s Park’s name. I would also like a little backstory to Park’s name. His name is Park, which is a Korean family name. There was such a good opening there. The story could have made it clear that his mother wanted Park to have some kind of connection to his Korean culture, so they made his first name her maiden name. That would have been great.

But there’s no such explanation, and instead readers are left with a Korean kid named Park. The ordering of Korean names have been confusing to Americans for a long time, especially to children, so this really isn’t going to help with that. Next time they meet a Korean kid who introduces himself surname first, they might assume Park’s just his name. I’ve seen it happen before, and it’s always a little exasperating.

There’s more, but it all comes down to one point:

3) This is not a book I can recommend to Korean-Americans. Isn’t that the purpose of representation? So that the represented demographic can relate to the character? But the fact of the matter is, this is a YA Romance with a half-Korean kid that I would never recommend to a young Korean or half-Korean kid. Heck, I wouldn’t recommend it to any young Asian kid.

Why would I want them to read a book in which the half-Korean kid hates being any part Korean? One in which Korean women are framed as slight and weak? One in which Park feels that being Asian makes him less masculine, in which characters spend chapters trying to name one sexy Asian actor and they come up with Bruce Lee? One that has basically no actual reference to Korean culture?

Throughout the entire book, Park being half-Korean just serves as justification for his self-loathing / insecurity, his parents’ love story, and his striking appearance. Except he doesn’t think it striking. His girlfriend does, and that makes it better. To reiterate, Park being Korean basically comes down to his appearance. There’s nothing in there that a Korean-American can positively relate to. What good does that kind of representation do?

Yes, there are people like Park, who know nothing of Korean culture, whose Asian-American experience comes down to their experience of racism. However, Eleanor & Park is arguably worse for these individuals, because the book doesn’t teach Park to love himself or his heritage or his mother.

This book doesn’t have a message that I would want young Asian kids or young half-Asian kids to be reading. And it kills me because the author specifically stated that she did this for representation.

It kills me because I was hopeful, and I read it with a lot of hope for its content, but instead I was left with dread that this was the representation that was so highly acclaimed.

And it kills me further because there was a way to tell this story right, but Rowell just didn’t have the knowledge. I feel bad for her, because she failed to accomplish what she set out to do. I feel angry because she’ll probably never realize since the book was so widely praised. I feel tired because the average reader won’t notice all these little things that grated on me. To them, it was just a bittersweet romance, an enjoyable book. 

And every time someone around me mentions how much they loved the book, I have to consider whether or not I want to go through explaining all of the above yet again.

[thisguyfred-blog1]

PHYSICAL !!

1. Describe the character’s height and build. Is he heavyset, thin, short, rangy? He’s about 6 feet. Fit or athletic, I guess. 2. How old is he? Nineteen. 3. Describe his posture. Does he carry himself well or does he slouch? He carries himself decently. 4. How is his health? Is he fit or out of shape? Any illnesses or conditions? Any physical disabilities? You tell me.* 5. How does he move? Is he clumsy, graceful, tense, fluid? He’s actually pretty graceful/fluid, believe it or not. 6. How attractive is this character physically? How does he perceive himself in the mirror? How attractive is he to me or to himself? Because he’s a looker. But he doesn’t put much thought or effort into his appearance. It doesn’t matter to him. 7. Describe his complexion. Dark, light, clear, scarred? Light and clear. 8. Describe his hair: color, texture, style. Dirty blond, long, wavy and soft.*** 9. What color are his eyes? Blue. 10. Does the character have any other noteworthy features? His hair. But we’ve covered that. 11. What are his chief tension centers? Shoulders. 12. What is the character’s wardrobe like? Casual, dressy, utilitarian? Bright colors, pastels, neutrals? Is it varied, or does he have six of the same suit? Beanies and t-shirts. The occasional fanboy collector’s item. It’s pretty casual. 13. Do his clothes fit well? Does he seem comfortable in them? Yes and yes. 14. Does he dress the same on the job as he does in his free time? If not, what are the differences? Fred is going to dress how Fred wants to dress, any place, any time. 15. You knew it was coming: Boxers, briefs or commando? Briefs and occasionally commando.

SPEECH !!

1. What does this character’s voice sound like? High-pitched, deep, hoarse? Basically Fred from the movie. So he sounds like TJ Miller. Very recognizable. (Though I do imagine him saying some words like Alex Saxon. I can’t help it.) 2. How does he normally speak? Loud, soft, fast, evenly? Does he talk easily, or does he hesitate? He has a habit of talking both too fast and too loud. His excitement gets the better of him. 3. Does the character have a distinct accent or dialect? Any individual quirks of pronunciation? Any, like, you know, verbal tics? None that I can think of off the top of my head. 4. What languages does he speak, and with how much fluency? He likes to think he can speak some French, Spanish and Japanese if he tries but… he can’t. 5. Does he switch languages or dialects in certain situations? He shouldn’t. 6. Is he a good impromptu speaker, or does he have to think about his words? I don’t know if he’s a good impromptu speaker, but that’s what he is.   7. Is he eloquent or inarticulate? Under what circumstances might this change? Eloquent unless he’s caught off guard or emotional or something.

MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL !!

1. How intelligent is this character? Is he book-smart or street-smart? He is surprisingly intelligent. I’d say a good mixture of both. Most people don’t know it though. 2. Does he think on his feet, or does he need time to deliberate? He’s usually thinking on his feet. 3. Describe the character’s thought process. Is he more logical, or more intuitive? Idealistic or practical? A bit of all I think. His imagination clouds his judgement but he doesn’t have bad ideas. 4. What kind of education has the character had? After high school, which he barely got through, he became a student of San Fransokyo Institute of Technology and was then transferred to Walt Academy. 5. What are his areas of expertise? What, if anything, is he interested in learning more about? Writing and mascotting. 6. Is he an introvert or an extrovert? He is as extroverted as they come. 7. Describe the character’s temperament. Is he even-tempered or does he have mood swings? Cheerful or melancholy? Laid-back or driven? Even-tempered, cheerful and laid-back. 8. How does he respond to new people or situations? Is he suspicious, relaxed, timid, enthusiastic? Enthusiastic. He just wants to be friends. 10. Which is his default: fight or flight? This is hard to answer because it totally depends on the situation. He’s the kind of guy to turn the other cheek – but if something really serious is going on, he isn’t afraid to fight. 11. Describe the character’s sense of humor. Does he appreciate jokes? Puns? Gallows humor? Bathroom humor? Pranks? He’ll laugh at anything. 12. Does the character have any diagnosable mental disorders? If yes, how does he deal with them? No. 13. What moments in this character’s life have defined him as a person? Losing his friend was hard. He’s lowkey still struggling with that. Otherwise, he’s had it pretty good. Nothing has impacted him hard one way or another. 14. What does he fear? Losing anyone else. 15. What are his hopes or aspirations? To be happy and make others happy. That’s it. 16. What is something he doesn’t want anyone to find out about him? It isn’t that he doesn’t want people to find out, but he doesn’t like people knowing or acknowledging his sadness. He would rather keep it to himself, ignore it, put on a smile and worry about someone else’s feelings.

RELATIONSHIPS !!

1. Describe this character’s relationship with his parents. It’s alright. He’s fairly close to his dad, as close as he can be to someone he hardly ever sees. He loves his parents. It would be nice to see them more often, but he doesn’t hold their constant traveling and neglect of their own son against them. You’ve gotta love people for who they are. 2. Does the character have any siblings? What is/was their relationship like? No. 3. Are there other blood relatives to whom he is close? Are there ones he can’t stand?He’s not super close to anyone in his family but he doesn’t hate anyone in it either. 4. Are there other, unrelated people whom he considers part of his family? What are his relationships with them? Baymax, Honey Lemon, GoGo, Hiro and Wasabi. He would do anything for them. He would have for Tadashi too. Fred loves people unconditionally and they became the family he never had. 5. Who is the character’s best friend? How did they meet? Wasabi. They met at school. Though really, all of his friends are his best friends if you ask him. 6. Does he have other close friends? Baymax, Honey Lemon, GoGo and Hiro. 7. Does he make friends easily, or does he have trouble getting along with people? He makes friends easily. 8. Which does he consider more important: family or friends? Family, because he figures if your friends are close enough, they are family. 9. Is the character single, married, divorced, widowed? Has he been married more than once? He’s single. 10. Is he currently in a romantic relationship with someone other than a spouse? He would never even think of juggling two relationships. He would never cheat. 11. Who was his first crush? Who is his latest? I’m not sure that Fred has ever had a real crush. Mostly just infatuation on people that were nice and cute. They never lasted more than a week. 12. What does he look for in a romantic partner? Common interests. Mutual love and respect. The basics of a good relationship. 13. Does the character have children? Grandchildren? If yes, how does he relate to them? If no, does he want any? He doesn’t, but he would love to be a dad one day. 14. Does he have any rivals or enemies? If he does, he doesn’t know it. 15. What is the character’s sexual orientation? Where does he fall on the Kinsey scale? It is hard to put a label on Fred because he simply doesn’t do labels. Love is love and gender means absolutely nothing when it comes to that. I guess you could say he’s panromantic/pansexual, a three on the scale, but again -- it’s hard to put a label on him. 16. How does he feel about sex? How important is it to him? He appreciates it but he could be in a relationship without sex. Love is what’s important to him. 17. What are his turn-ons? Turn-offs? Weird bedroom habits? He isn’t very kinky. He might be into costumes or something. Who knows?

BELIEFS !!

1. Do you know your character’s astrological (zodiac of choice) sign? How well does he fit type? Born on August 15th (yes, I gave him my birthday so I won’t forget it) he’s a Leo. Parts of it fit, parts of it don’t. 2. Is this character religious, spiritual, both, or neither? How important are these elements in his life? He believes that everything happens for a reason. He believes in good things. He believes there is an afterlife and a God of some sort. He just doesn’t have all the answers. And he doesn’t need to. 3. Does this character have a personal code of morals or ethics? If so, how did that begin? What would it take to compromise it? Be loyal and be kind. That’s just who he is as a person. I don’t think anything could compromise it. 4. How does he regard beliefs that differ from his? Is he tolerant, intolerant, curious, indifferent? He is curious but completely tolerant. 5. What prejudices does he hold? Are they irrational or does he have a good reason for them? Fred doesn’t hold prejudices.

DAILY LIFE !!

1. What is the character’s financial situation? Is he rich, poor, comfortable, in debt? Rich. 2. What is his social status? Has this changed over time, and if so, how has the change affected him? Uh, it’s hard to say, honestly. He thinks everyone is his friend. 3. Where does he live? House, apartment, trailer? Is his home his castle or just a place to crash? What condition is it in? Does he share it with others? He lived in a very big house before coming to Walt and he loved it. Now he’s in a dorm which he shares with Penelope, bless her soul, and he loves it too. He isn’t hard to please if you haven’t noticed. He keeps his side fairly neat and tidy, but there is an overwhelming amount of comic books, plush Japanese monsters and other questionable objects stored everywhere. 4. Besides the basic necessities, what does he spend his money on? Collector items, comic books, foreign knick knacks. A bunch of nerdy stuff. 5. What does he do for a living? Is he good at it? Does he enjoy it, or would he rather be doing something else? He’s a student and he’s doing his best. He’s happy with it. 6. What are his interests or hobbies? How does he spend his free time? Reading comics, writing, watching cartoons. He’s never bored. There’s always something to do. 7. What are his eating habits? Does he skip meals, eat out, drink alcohol, avoid certain foods? He eats like an average person. He isn’t a health nut or a foodie. He just eats what he wants when he wants it. So far it’s worked out okay.

ASSOCIATIONS !!

1. Color? His favorite color can change daily. He has issues with picking one favorite of anything because he just loves so much all the time. I would say blue or orange would be his go-to though. 2. Smell? Freshly cut grass. 3. Time of day? Noon. 4. Season? Spring. It’s so cheerful. 5. Book? He’s more of a comic book kind of guy than a novel kind of guy. 6. Music? Pop punk. 7. Place? Japan or wherever his friends are. 8. Substance? None. 9. Plant? Cherry blossoms. 10. Animal? Kaiju Dragon. Dogs, cats, ferrets, lizards -- he genuinely loves them all.

EVERY * LEADS TO A PICTURE !!

[thejoonmoon]

Honestly, one of the things that I hate most is having to see things like “ENGLISH PLEASE I DON’T UNDERSTAND :(” or “I don’t know what you’re saying but I agree” or “HAHAHAHAHAHA” or “COME TO____” whenever members of bts (or any kpop group for that matter) posts something in Korean.

I remember when Yoongi fell ill and couldn’t perform at the HYYH concert in Kobe. Shortly afterwards, he tweeted a long sequence of messages about how he couldn’t sleep because he felt so guilty, how he used his vacation time to try to experience what the fans felt on that day, and how sorry he was to armys.   Half of the responses were things like “eng pls idk what you’re saying” and it’s just??? Do you think he has a google translate app installed in his brain or something??? It doesn’t work like that?? How can you expect someone to be able to talk about their emotions, their guilt and most suffocating thoughts in a language that they don’t even know how to speak in? It’s so unbelievably rude of you to be so lazy as to not even take the time to idk search for translations before putting your fingers on the keyboard. Yoongi was talking about something that had burdened him for a long time and was opening up to us and you just ignored it completely. Like okay, how would you feel if, say, you were going on a tangent about your stress and how hard your week was and I just barged in and yelled “KOREAN PLEASE I DON’T KNOW ENGLISH” ????? Would you be able to convey your same exact thoughts, your same exact spectrum of feelings in Korean? No, right? You’re too lazy to even attempt to look for translations, so how can I expect you to know Korean. And me just barging in on you, asking for something as unreasonable as speaking in a language you don’t know how to speak puts you in a bad mood right? It makes you feel dumb and frustrated right? How about if I were to barge in and just say “HAHAHAHAHA WHAT A FUNNY JOKE” It makes you angry, right? How I just completely ignored you talking about how stressed you were?

So stop doing the same thing to idols.

It’s honestly not that hard to wait for translations to come out before you say anything. 

BTS are a special group in the sense that they are very open about their feelings and thoughts. They often post long messages on twitter or their fancafe about whatever has been troubling them or even just short sentimental stuff. For example, Hoseok once posted a photo of his bare feet with the caption “these days I’ve been continuously practicing with bare feet. I feel sorry for my feet but it feels nice. black dust is sticking to my feet but I feel that skills are also sticking to me .. I don’t doubt that these feet will make me the best!” (trans cr; Ellie @ bts-trans) but you know what happened? Nobody cared to read the translations and instead, the top replies were things like “ew why would I want to see your feet” and just people complaining about the automatic Bing translations. Early in debut, Hoseok used to talk about how he loved to read all of the comments/replies to his posts. How do you think he must’ve felt when he saw comments making fun of something that was supposed to be meaningful and encouraging?

How do you think Namjoon, the member who is most apt in English, who posts about his fight with depression and his mental health often, must feel when he sees such messages? Let’s talk about Namjoon for a moment now. I think there’s a lot of confusion surrounding this issue especially when it comes to him. A lot of times, when I confront people who reply with such things to his posts, I get “But Namjoon knows how to speak English??”

Okay, but Korean is his mother tongue? People are most fluid in the language that they are born with. They are able to get the FULL range of their thoughts, the eloquence that they desire when they speak in their mother tongue. Namjoon is, again, able to reach the highest level of his intelligence, able to convey the exact thoughts he wants to give IN KOREAN- HIS FIRST LANGUAGE. BECAUSE AGAIN, THAT IS THE LANGUAGE HE IS THE MOST UNDERSTANDING OF. He reads Korean books and converses in Korean on a day to day basis in multiple situations. Keep in mind that Namjoon, taught himself English, He never lived in an English-speaking country before.

Take me for example. I have learned French for almost 7 years now and I consider myself pretty capable in understanding the language. But there’s still so many words I have yet to learn, so many contexts I have yet to experience. When I’m writing an essay for school, I get really frustrated because I know that there’s so much I can say about the topic given, and if I could write it in English I could definitely express my ideas better or more in depth, but I just can’t because I don’t know French with that fluidity yet. 

Take my mother for example, she moved to America when she was 16 years old and is fluent in both English and Korean. But when she prays, she prays in Korean- why? Because again, that is the language in which she is able to converse in without having to second guess herself and hesitate.

So please please please please please stop expecting him and all of BTS to be able to magically speak your mother tongue. You try explaining yourself in Korean, try to see how easy it is to actually speak a language you have had little experience with. There’s a reason as to why member of bts choose to speak in Korean and are waiting until they have a better grasp of other languages.

You just ignoring their thoughts and not even attempting to read the translations (that are again, AVAILABLE) before saying anything is extremely rude and will make BTS reluctant to open up to us.

[ascendingdevillived456-blog]

Am I pessimistic or just real?

Most of the time I feel like I'm accidentally surviving my own life. Not to sound like I'm bitching, but I don't have any idea why I'm alive. I've been trying to keep my life simple, but found out that is a very complicated and arduous task. I, physically, am 30some years old, and deeply know my spirit or soul or life force or whatever you want to label it as is old as fuck. I'm a little odd, I've been told, but when you realize early in life that nobody anywhere knows what in the bluest bowels of Hell they are doing, you start making decisions that TRULY matter on a high, VERY HIGH, level of deep understanding. Not to sound like a preachy zealous god-freak, but preeeeetty fucking sure we live in and on the garden of eden as mentioned in that book written 2000ish years ago. You know the one, oh... it has that bearded guy in the middle east who was the Christian God's son, but was a Jewish king, a rabbi, a carpenter, and who led a gang of misfit trouble making hooligans that wanted to make life better for everyone and ended up dead and martyred for it and is currently the nearly-nude mascot for countless kitchens and bedrooms in thousands of American homes. Jesus, what is that guy's name.... anyways... that book. I'm not great with names, nor hiding sarcastic remarks or, OR blatant disregard for that which really does not matter.... uh, uh, uh, oh well. Back on topic now. Ready? On this "bestowed paradise" of Ours, there are a few shitty things that I just WILL NOT turn a blind eye to. I got this list, you see, that has the WORST possible inventions on it that the world could have done without. Number 1 is people... People are needy, greedy, dumb, panicky, self-centered, talking alien-ape hybrids that ruin and destroy almost every thing they put their grubby little peter-beaters on. We kill for thrill and pleasure alone or in packs and have this problem understanding what compassion and sharing equally are. I did two years of kindergarten, consecutively I will add, I know you are supposed to share and be nice or something like, oh I don't know, your behavior is checked, and you learn to play with others. And now number 2 (insert low-brow sophomoric butt-mud poop-shit-fart he he he coment here. I did, but think up your own.) my list. Borders. "We look different in skin color or you talk funny, uh oh, I no longer have trust other human being, stay away from my personal comfort zone. We'll be fair though and draw a line in the dirt in case you get the same vibe from me. Ok?" "Ok, good idea. Me and my family will kill you otherwise maybe, yeah, no, yeah. Stay away. Good job." Are you shitting literally me out of your dumb asses? Where is the logic and practicality in that. We let famine happen daily because, what? Noone knows what to do? Help your fucking human brothers and sisters, and the little ones if your heart has room, you apathy ridden bag of severed dicks. This is everyone's home right now, teach people who have no knowledge. There is no such thing as unteachable. Read between the lines here guys and dolls. Break time. Let me tell you that I'm not being a rude loud obnoxious Internet troll here, some of my rants and tangent ramblings have a twisted sense of humor and are meant to make you take a minute and chuckle at its finest absurdities. Oh my, but we can also be multitasking manimals and take some inventory of ourselves and the other manimals in our lives and have conversations with each other like we're meant to. Anyone over 27 will remember a time before everyone had a fucking idiot screen in their face at all times. (Heh, jokes to come.) What separated us from beasts is our ability to develope and utilize language. To any younger folks reading this: we used to sit at the same parties you all do now, and used our minds and speaking abilities to have a blast. I'm talking some wicked-awesome fucking ideas and fun times were had before the wedding of man and technology. Put the phone down, and step away from the screens. Please. Number thwee, sorry had, food in my...nevermind. money is next on my little list of things I see as wrong. If a person has a lot of money, they generally have a lot of stuff to make sure they're happy beyond worry. On the other end of the spectrum you have... anybody? Class! goddamn kids pay a-fucking-tention! You have a person with little to no money. I will spell this out for you and you know who: that person can't be happy beyond worry because, huh? Some people have been going ape shit on their own happy. Hmmm. Opposite of happy? Right, thanks Julien, smart guy you are, UNhappy. I hope I just made a Julien's mind blow apart. Lol. Now, monetary wealth is referred to as worth. If you gots like soooooo much worth like it's bananas and stuff, then your like totally worthwhile or worthy. Julien, let someone else try now, get your tongue out of my ass you brown-noser. If you ever want to be heart broken ask the poor kid at an elementary school how he feels after the first recess after Christmas break. I bet the word worthless crosses both your minds and you purse your lips and them real big empathy tears well up in your eyes. That kid is programed to think money and worth are the same thing, and will do what he or she can to make sure they ALWAYS HAVE money when they grow up otherwise everyone else will know they are worthless. Made myself cry a little bit there. Guns guns guns are 4 on this list which may make you laugh or at best pissed. In case you missed I'd be remissed if I didn't say you need to come up with your own rhymes and eloquence. Guns though are made for one thing; ending lives. Plain and simple, keep reading you left wingers and right wingers both. The eagle that is the U.S. of A needs you both to work together in order to soar. I have really upset myself with saying that, but it's out there now, ain't it? I feel everyone should have gun training and own a minimum of three guns open carry on a daily basis (we've already got them and they've seemed to dug their heels in so we might as well adapt with the fucking things.) A semi-auto rifle for hunting food, a shotgun for food/eminent defenses, and a pistol for protection of family and home. Common knowledge for everyone should be stated from an early age: IF YOU DRAW A FIREARM ON A FELLOW HUMAN BEING, BE SURE THAT YOU CAN MAKE THE CONCESSION THAT YOUR LIFE HOLDS MORE VALUE THAN THEIR'S THEIR POSSIBLE DEPENDENTS. DO NOT SHOOT TO MAIM. IF YOU DRAW, SHOOT, AND SHOOT TO KILL. REMEMBER THAT THEY ARE AWARE OF THIS TOO, AND IF YOU KILL THEM. YOU MUST LIVE WITH THE MEMORY OF YOU NEEDLESSLY TAKING A HUMAN LIFE BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT YOUR LIFE IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN THEIR'S. guns huh? 5. Prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are not your friends. Especially in the world of psychological medication and pain management. I take aspirin on occasion, in my younger days I was always told I "needed something to help me." Help me do what? From the age of 11 until I was into my mid twenties I've been on damn near everything besides Haledol and Geodon. Thanks for being good dealers...I mean doctors and pharmacists. If you want to ask my diagnosis I will share, but let me say that I haven't taken nor would I recommend any person to give a child DRUGS. They are not safe because they are prescribed. Ritalin is molecularly identical to cocaine. No bullshit. They are training kids to be druggies later in life and parents and insurance companies pay for it. Act now and for $799.00 a month you won't k ow who you are, have bleeding of the teeth, lazy finger syndrome, backward stools, brain bleeding episodes, coma and death, but wait there's more. If that pill doesn't work simply tell us and we will give you some other stuff that will make sure your little boy grows tits like a woman and may have a compulsive gambling and or masturbatory addiction with possible suicidal ideation. At least he'll do better on his homework. Fast forward to early adulthood... "oh mummsy? Daddykins? Whatever do you mean I'm no longer on your insurance plans? I simply must have all these pills to be completely the best I can be." "Gee you can just acquisition the local the scumbags who clandestinely make and distribute the bad version of the same drug you've been on for your whole life, my golden child." And don't forget the ssri's. Google this shit kids: ssri's long-term effects on the mind and body. And finally number 6. Social networking. I've never had a Facebook, MySpace, twitter, or anything else. This site I found accidentally while bored and this is my first time posting anything anywhere. The negatively charged part of social media is shit like; omg I 8 a waffle cone with chokl8 chip cookie dough ice cream scoops. Kill yourself you fat cow. Oh boo hoo sad face.... So long cruelty of this place, I have been wearing my life inappropriately I've been informed. Good bye 14 years. Wrapping up at this point as I've said enough for now. I'll be that eccentric and hilariously unfiltered buddy of you get my styles here. Just need to vent sometimes. Help me with Tumblr if you're interested in that... I guess. Looking forward to seeing responses. It should be noted that I have the utmost respect for any religion but abhor the use of faith as a means to control and not gain a better relationship with divinity. I'm not a doctor or political ass hat. I'm a song writing free-spirited music loving real deal motherfucker. "And I didn't even graduate FROM fucking highschool." I.Q. is up a bit above above average. No, that is not a typo.

[wendyimmiller]

A Desperate Grasp at Redemption From One Struck Down by the Wrath of Marianne Wilburn’s Poison Pen

“There are peaches to be eaten warm from the brick of the wall they are grown against, peas picked off the tendrily plant and shucked straight from pod to mouth…tomatoes waiting to release their own musty muskiness as teeth break their skin.”

This, I was informed by my friend Marianne Wilburn in her brutal rebuttal to my good-natured, innocent, lighthearted, little column, Time for a Grexit, (published in the July/August issue of Horticulture Magazine)[i], is the high prose of English garden writer, Monty Don. It is her first of many examples of English garden writing superiority over that roughshod American lot. A citation so lovely, she more or less admits, that it compels her (and, apparently, a clique of Facebook Friends and other supporters) to sigh, swoon, and otherwise behave in a manner that works best in a room in a house down a long lane that offers plenty of privacy. Despite trying hard not to “go there,” given this reaction to “peas shucked straight from pod to mouth,” I couldn’t help but wonder how over the top her pleasure would be if Mr. Monty Don were to, oh I don’t know, perhaps eat an apple on the other end of a telephone call? Assuming, of course, that the call came from England. Conceivably from the Walled Garden at Wisely. Monty Don wearing wellies. Monty Don perhaps wearing only wellies.[ii] Eating an apple. Again, trying hard not to “go there” mainly because it might be a sin, but I can’t help but imagine something along the lines of Jamie Lee Curtis responding to John Cleese barking Russian at her in A Fish Called Wanda.

The offending column. My happy go lucky Deep Roots piece in the July/August 2019 issue of Horticulture Magazine.

The rebuttal that broke me. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+gulf+stream&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwil7p2q9IDkAhUbCM0KHUj3CYQQ_AUIESgB&biw=1006&bih=563#imgrc=zk5ACnjGVOKjYM:

I must admit I was rocked by Marianne’s withering rebuttal, Dismiss British Garden Writers? Absurd. (Guest Rant, July 18, 2019, https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/07/dismiss-british-garden-writers-absurd.html). Came out of nowhere, appearing, even, right here on Garden Rant, my home turf. For I, too, had enjoyed our visits, including a lovely dinner (thankfully one without peaches or peas), and delighted in good-natured repartee at a speaking engagement. But her piece landed some pretty heavy punches and, sadly, derailed whatever confidence and momentum I had managed to patch together since being bullied in my childhood. Oh, and after the loss of our beloved little black dog, Basil.[iii] Oh, and since surviving cancer.[iv]

Best little black dog ever!

I suppose, as my therapist pointed out, I should take some solace in the fact that my 500 word column inspired such a heartfelt, well-documented,[v] erudite (“Lloyd was as caustic and clever as Dorothy Parker, but as loveable as Ogden Nash.”), revealing (“When he starts undressing figs with his fingers, I need a moment to compose myself.”), occasionally pretentious (“went to university there”) sometimes profane (“he has his head right up his smart ass”), opportunistic (stealthily inserted plug for her British garden tour business), and masterfully scathing 5000 word screed.

Frankly, dammit, I’ve been outclassed. Forced to admit I’ve never heard of Ogden Nash. Nor Monty Don. Whatever I thought I had become, I was again reminded that I’m just another troglodyte American from the hinterlands, bumbling along, thinking most of the time only about my next Big Gulp. Worse, post-rebuttal, I’m too afraid to even Google “Monty Don.” From Marianne’s drooling description, I fear one mistaken click and, damn, I’ve downloaded one of those nasty Ukrainian viruses again. Or, even worse, my dear wife, Michele, will see “Monty Don” in my search history, click out of curiosity, and scarper off on the first aeroplane to London. You see, like Marianne, she too is an Anglophile. Always watching English dramas, documentaries on the Queen’s corgis, and other crap like that, and, therefore, vulnerable to suave, sophisticated, Monty Don-like, Englishmen.

My Anglophile Wife, Michele (right) and her twin sinister, Kathy, at a Jane Austen festival. All dressed up and ready to be married off (to men of good fortune).

But I have heard of Christopher Lloyd. In fact, I’ve got a few of his books. But somehow in the busy life I live, I managed to miss this brilliant bit of prose, gleefully quoted by Marianne, in which Lloyd calls out snobs:

“There are some gardeners in whose company I feel vulgar. They will expect you to fall on your knees with a magnifying glass to worship before the shrine of a spikelet of tiny green flowers… yet will themselves turn away disgusted from a huge, opulent quilt of hortensia hydrangeas.”

Huh. Interesting. So Christopher Lloyd was no fan of snobs.

I wonder what his opinion would be, then, of the dogged American writer dutifully putting out relevant, applicable information fully capable of making American gardens better even if, let’s surmise, that writer happened to be some clause-mauling, clod-hopping, t-shirt wearing, Big Gulp slurping, overworked, underpaid, privately insured, American public garden worker who finds his will to live sustained only by the slim hope of a Timber Press contract.[vi] Yeah, I wonder.

Likewise, I wonder what his opinion would be of the reader who goes all a quiver, requiring a coterie of handmaids to scurry hither and thither until full consciousness is restored, simply because Penelope Hobhouse articulated a description of a white garden that included no less than three particularly clever turns of phrase?

I don’t know much about Christopher Lloyd, but I’m just going to guess that it would be more likely he’d be found in a pub with the former than seen sipping tea with the latter.

I react to irony about the same way Marianne reacts to Monty Don undressing figs with his fingers, so I’m very glad no one is here right now. But I don’t expect that recognizing such irony is the forte of one who writes, “The best British garden writers have honed the ability to inflict dagger-sized wounds with the prick of a pin.” Can we pause it right here? Can we think about that for just a minute? Can you all just humour me while I ask, “What kind of she-devil admires such a thing?” Maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe I’m too kind. Maybe I’ve got a little attitude, being as I am, one who has spent the month since Marianne’s rebuttal struggling to keep my internal organs from slithering out of just such a wound, but does such a sentiment really exemplify an ideal we all really should want in good garden writing?

Later in her piece, Marianne goes on to argue that British garden writers are at an advantage because they ride upon the tide of a long gardening culture. She states, “They [the Brits] have simply been doing it longer. Their gardens are indeed older. Their tools are better oiled.” [citation needed] “There is nothing television worthy,” she continues, “about a rumpled and grubby Monty Don; except, there is.”[vii] All this, in my jaded opinion, is simply an eloquent way of offering a dismissive, backhanded excuse to American writers who are, apparently, hamstrung by a coast to coast populace of hopelessly un-horticultural hominids who need any narrative that might be gaining momentum to be repeatedly interrupted so they can be reminded of which part of a plant is supposed to be pretty and which part goes in the ground.

Sold only in the United States.

To this, I again raise the main point from my Horticulture Magazine column. Is the gulf between English gardening success and ours the fault of inarticulate American garden writers woefully trying to counsel a dismally ignorant American gardening public? Or is it because American gardeners, so easily impressed by Victorian language, vainly and stubbornly continue to force square, gulf stream-buffered English style gardens and the favourite garden plants of spoilt English garden writing prats into bitterly continental, round, American planting holes?

The Gulf Stream. America’s gift to British gardeners.

There is only so much time in a day. There is only so much room on a shelf. How many fresh, exciting, informed books that could lead to more and better American gardens go unpublished and therefore unread because so many seek the entertaining flourish of Lloyd dissecting snobs with the prick of his pin and because Beth Chatto’s Damp Garden continues to sell so well? Despite Chatto suggesting readers plant Meconopsis (the cause of all my frustrations), Heracleum mantegazzianum (a wickedly invasive weed), and Houttuynia cordata (the leading cause of American gardener suicides).

So, in the end, Marianne, you brought me to my knees, but you didn’t change my mind. On some things, as friends, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

That said, we do share a common fondness for Hugh Johnson, and I recommend The Principles of Gardening to anyone who will listen.[viii] No better guide to the full glorious spectrum of gardening exists anywhere. I’m not sure if it’s still in print, but it is available on Amazon, and everyone reading this (you are getting sleepy…sleepy) must go buy it (when you awake). I need to also mention John Seymour, author of the Self-Sufficient Gardener, whose infectious enthusiasm hooked me to the point where, for an anachronistic period of time, we just about went off the grid.[ix] Never did, though, develop a taste for parsnips.

So, time to let bygones be bygones. I’ll recover. Don’t worry about me. And I look forward to the next time our paths cross. I just learned I’ll be speaking in Waynesboro, Virginia next March. Somewhere near you, Marianne? Maybe Michele and I can swing by and enjoy “the wine that flows softly and smoothly.” We’ll laugh at the best barbs from your rebuttal, and at my floundering efforts here. I’ll try to live up to my attributes, which you were so kind to ascribe, and do my best to entertain, be clever, and self-deprecate. And, you and Michele can both enjoy uproarious conversation about Shakespeare, corgis, Prince Harry, Shepherd’s pie, and Monty Don long into the night. I’ll just good-naturedly smile and nod, struggle to follow, flail to “get” the constant stream of witticisms, and stand flabbergasted by minds that can retain something they read only once and then quote off into the future, seemingly at will. I wish I was like that, but I’m just not. Not even close. But, in the end, I’m okay with being a passionate advocate for more and better American gardens and any writing that pushes that forward, whether such writing inflicts dagger sized wounds or not.

[i] Horticulture Magazine, July/August 2019 issue, Deep Roots column, Scott Beuerlein

[ii] Fully Monty?

[iii] Named for Basil Fawlty, the John Cleese character in British sitcom, Fawlty Towers. 

[iv] If one is dealt the cancer card, it is considered poor form to not use it. I once avoided getting beat up by saying, “Don’t. Stop, I’ve got cancer.” BTW, free and clear now. Thankfully.

[v] Marianne had five, count ‘em, five endnote references.

[vi] Timber Press? Call me.

[vii] What does Marianne’s husband know of this Monty Don?

[viii] Oddly, I’m not so fond of Johnson’s book on wine I bought, which bogged down in wineries, regions, varietals and offered few opinions on good wines and values that could guide my wine-drinking journey. Which, come to think of it, is why I like the American garden writer Michael Dirr over, say, Hillier. You might not always agree with his opinions, but Dirr at least puts them out there, and doesn’t phone it in by simply describing the leaves in botanical language.

[ix] Include the 1970s BBC program, The Good Life as also partly responsible for this madness.

    A Desperate Grasp at Redemption From One Struck Down by the Wrath of Marianne Wilburn’s Poison Pen originally appeared on GardenRant on August 21, 2019.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/08/a-death-rattle-response-from-a-mortally-wounded-blogger-to-marianne-wilburns-brutal-rebuttal.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[turfandlawncare]

A Desperate Grasp at Redemption From One Struck Down by the Wrath of Marianne Wilburn’s Poison Pen

“There are peaches to be eaten warm from the brick of the wall they are grown against, peas picked off the tendrily plant and shucked straight from pod to mouth…tomatoes waiting to release their own musty muskiness as teeth break their skin.”

This, I was informed by my friend Marianne Wilburn in her brutal rebuttal to my good-natured, innocent, lighthearted, little column, Time for a Grexit, (published in the July/August issue of Horticulture Magazine)[i], is the high prose of English garden writer, Monty Don. It is her first of many examples of English garden writing superiority over that roughshod American lot. A citation so lovely, she more or less admits, that it compels her (and, apparently, a clique of Facebook Friends and other supporters) to sigh, swoon, and otherwise behave in a manner that works best in a room in a house down a long lane that offers plenty of privacy. Despite trying hard not to “go there,” given this reaction to “peas shucked straight from pod to mouth,” I couldn’t help but wonder how over the top her pleasure would be if Mr. Monty Don were to, oh I don’t know, perhaps eat an apple on the other end of a telephone call? Assuming, of course, that the call came from England. Conceivably from the Walled Garden at Wisely. Monty Don wearing wellies. Monty Don perhaps wearing only wellies.[ii] Eating an apple. Again, trying hard not to “go there” mainly because it might be a sin, but I can’t help but imagine something along the lines of Jamie Lee Curtis responding to John Cleese barking Russian at her in A Fish Called Wanda.

The offending column. My Deep Roots piece in the July/August 2019 issue of Horticulture Magazine.

The rebuttal that broke me. https://ift.tt/2ZiubVC

I must admit I was rocked by Marianne’s withering rebuttal, Dismiss British Garden Writers? Absurd. (Guest Rant, July 18, 2019, https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/07/dismiss-british-garden-writers-absurd.html). Came out of nowhere, appearing, even, right here on Garden Rant, my home turf. For I, too, had enjoyed our visits, including a lovely dinner (thankfully one without peaches or peas), and delighted in good-natured repartee at a speaking engagement. But her piece landed some pretty heavy punches and, sadly, derailed whatever confidence and momentum I had managed to patch together since being bullied in my childhood. Oh, and after the loss of our beloved little black dog, Basil.[iii] Oh, and since surviving cancer.[iv]

Best little black dog ever!

I suppose, as my therapist pointed out, I should take some solace in the fact that my 500 word column inspired such a heartfelt, well-documented,[v] erudite (“Lloyd was as caustic and clever as Dorothy Parker, but as loveable as Ogden Nash.”), revealing (“When he starts undressing figs with his fingers, I need a moment to compose myself.”), occasionally pretentious (“went to university there”) sometimes profane (“he has his head right up his smart ass”), opportunistic (stealthily inserted plug for her British garden tour business), and masterfully scathing 5000 word screed.

Frankly, dammit, I’ve been outclassed. Forced to admit I’ve never heard of Ogden Nash. Nor Monty Don. Whatever I thought I had become, I was again reminded that I’m just another troglodyte American from the hinterlands, bumbling along, thinking most of the time only about my next Big Gulp. Worse, post-rebuttal, I’m too afraid to even Google “Monty Don.” From Marianne’s drooling description, I fear one mistaken click and, damn, I’ve downloaded one of those nasty Ukrainian viruses again. Or, even worse, my dear wife, Michele, will see “Monty Don” in my search history, click out of curiosity, and scarper off on the first aeroplane to London. You see, like Marianne, she too is an Anglophile. Always watching English dramas, documentaries on the Queen’s corgis, and other crap like that, and, therefore, vulnerable to suave, sophisticated, Monty Don-like, Englishmen.

My Anglophile Wife, Michele (right) and her twin sinister, Kathy, at a Jane Austen festival. All dressed up and ready to be married off (to men of good fortune).

But I have heard of Christopher Lloyd. In fact, I’ve got a few of his books. But somehow in the busy life I live, I managed to miss this brilliant bit of prose, gleefully quoted by Marianne, in which Lloyd calls out snobs:

“There are some gardeners in whose company I feel vulgar. They will expect you to fall on your knees with a magnifying glass to worship before the shrine of a spikelet of tiny green flowers… yet will themselves turn away disgusted from a huge, opulent quilt of hortensia hydrangeas.”

Huh. Interesting. So Christopher Lloyd was no fan of snobs.

I wonder what his opinion would be, then, of the dogged American writer dutifully putting out relevant, applicable information fully capable of making American gardens better even if, let’s surmise, that writer happened to be some clause-mauling, clod-hopping, t-shirt wearing, Big Gulp slurping, overworked, underpaid, privately insured, American public garden worker who finds his will to live sustained only by the slim hope of a Timber Press contract.[vi] Yeah, I wonder.

Likewise, I wonder what his opinion would be of the reader who goes all a quiver, requiring a coterie of handmaids to scurry hither and thither until full consciousness is restored, simply because Penelope Hobhouse articulated a description of a white garden that included no less than three particularly clever turns of phrase?

I don’t know much about Christopher Lloyd, but I’m just going to guess that it would be more likely he’d be found in a pub with the former than seen sipping tea with the latter.

I react to irony about the same way Marianne reacts to Monty Don undressing figs with his fingers, so I’m very glad no one is here right now. But I don’t expect that recognizing such irony is the forte of one who writes, “The best British garden writers have honed the ability to inflict dagger-sized wounds with the prick of a pin.” Can we pause it right here? Can we think about that for just a minute? Can you all just humour me while I ask, “What kind of she-devil admires such a thing?” Maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe I’m too kind. Maybe I’ve got a little attitude, being as I am, one who has spent the month since Marianne’s rebuttal struggling to keep my internal organs from slithering out of just such a wound, but does such a sentiment really exemplify an ideal we all really should want in good garden writing?

Later in her piece, Marianne goes on to argue that British garden writers are at an advantage because they ride upon the tide of a long gardening culture. She states, “They [the Brits] have simply been doing it longer. Their gardens are indeed older. Their tools are better oiled.” [citation needed] “There is nothing television worthy,” she continues, “about a rumpled and grubby Monty Don; except, there is.”[vii] All this, in my jaded opinion, is simply an eloquent way of offering a dismissive, backhanded excuse to American writers who are, apparently, hamstrung by a coast to coast populace of hopelessly un-horticultural hominids who need any narrative that might be gaining momentum to be repeatedly interrupted so they can be reminded of which part of a plant is supposed to be pretty and which part goes in the ground.

Sold only in the United States.

To this, I again raise the main point from my Horticulture Magazine column. Is the gulf between English gardening success and ours the fault of inarticulate American garden writers woefully trying to counsel a dismally ignorant American gardening public? Or is it because American gardeners, so easily impressed by Victorian language, vainly and stubbornly continue to force square, gulf stream-buffered English style gardens and the favourite garden plants of spoilt English garden writing prats into bitterly continental, round, American planting holes?

The Gulf Stream. America’s gift to British gardeners.

There is only so much time in a day. There is only so much room on a shelf. How many fresh, exciting, informed books that could lead to more and better American gardens go unpublished and therefore unread because so many seek the entertaining flourish of Lloyd dissecting snobs with the prick of his pin and because Beth Chatto’s Damp Garden continues to sell so well? Despite Chatto suggesting readers plant Meconopsis (the cause of all my frustrations), Heracleum mantegazzianum (a wickedly invasive weed), and Houttuynia cordata (the leading cause of American gardener suicides).

So, in the end, Marianne, you brought me to my knees, but you didn’t change my mind. On some things, as friends, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

That said, we do share a common fondness for Hugh Johnson, and I recommend The Principles of Gardening to anyone who will listen.[viii] No better guide to the full glorious spectrum of gardening exists anywhere. I’m not sure if it’s still in print, but it is available on Amazon, and everyone reading this (you are getting sleepy…sleepy) must go buy it (when you awake). I need to also mention John Seymour, author of the Self-Sufficient Gardener, whose infectious enthusiasm hooked me to the point where, for an anachronistic period of time, we just about went off the grid.[ix] Never did, though, develop a taste for parsnips.

So, time to let bygones be bygones. I’ll recover. Don’t worry about me. And I look forward to the next time our paths cross. I just learned I’ll be speaking in Waynesboro, Virginia next March. Somewhere near you, Marianne? Maybe Michele and I can swing by and enjoy “the wine that flows softly and smoothly.” We’ll laugh at the best barbs from your rebuttal, and at my floundering efforts here. I’ll try to live up to my attributes, which you were so kind to ascribe, and do my best to entertain, be clever, and self-deprecate. And, you and Michele can both enjoy uproarious conversation about Shakespeare, corgis, Prince Harry, Shepherd’s pie, and Monty Don long into the night. I’ll just good-naturedly smile and nod, struggle to follow, flail to “get” the constant stream of witticisms, and stand flabbergasted by minds that can retain something they read only once and then quote off into the future, seemingly at will. I wish I was like that, but I’m just not. Not even close. But, in the end, I’m okay with being a passionate advocate for more and better American gardens and any writing that pushes that forward, whether such writing inflicts dagger sized wounds or not.

[i] Horticulture Magazine, July/August 2019 issue, Deep Roots column, Scott Beuerlein

[ii] Fully Monty?

[iii] Named for Basil Fawlty, the John Cleese character in British sitcom, Fawlty Towers. 

[iv] If one is dealt the cancer card, it is considered poor form to not use it. I once avoided getting beat up by saying, “Don’t. Stop, I’ve got cancer.” BTW, free and clear now. Thankfully.

[v] Marianne had five, count ‘em, five endnote references.

[vi] Timber Press? Call me.

[vii] What does Marianne’s husband know of this Monty Don?

[viii] Oddly, I’m not so fond of Johnson’s book on wine I bought, which bogged down in wineries, regions, varietals and offered few opinions on good wines and values that could guide my wine-drinking journey. Which, come to think of it, is why I like the American garden writer Michael Dirr over, say, Hillier. You might not always agree with his opinions, but Dirr at least puts them out there, and doesn’t phone it in by simply describing the leaves in botanical language.

[ix] Include the 1970s BBC program, The Good Life as also partly responsible for this madness.

    A Desperate Grasp at Redemption From One Struck Down by the Wrath of Marianne Wilburn’s Poison Pen originally appeared on GardenRant on August 21, 2019.

from GardenRant https://ift.tt/2HjzBJW

[allmymisters]

For the Love of 2018 - GOOOOOAAAAALS!

I didn’t get the black stallion I was hoping for this year. I tend to have high expectations I suppose. 2018 had its splashes of cherished moments in addition to downright depressing hidden gems. The sudden losses of very dear friends for one. Those were blows I was not prepared to experience and, screw you 2018 for giving me those moments. I’m no stranger to tragedy (have you read this site?), but this year’s tragedies were a vast array of empathetic reassurances that there is no explanation for the sheer magnitude of such occurrences nor through any fault of their own. It just sucks to have to go through it and you’ll be struggling with it for the rest of your life.

I think everyone was stressed the hell out this year. Frustrated and angry, there were a lot of opinions and entertaining thoughts on where we should or should not be, as a society and as a nation. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the weight of the world as I did this year. I didn’t like people before, but 2018 proved how much my contradictory persona could take. Humanity is a raw and evil sort of thing letting way to bursts of sunlight at any given moment which results in confusion and downright rage. I was deleted, blocked, called names, and asked to duel a few times this year, all for, having a valid belief that my truth is not your truth. On the other hand I learned some people I’ve known a majority of my life have some really skewed views of what they support. Speaking of ending relationships…my friend of 15+ years decided that she could no longer remain in our relationship and instead broke up with me on the grounds of…This is unknown at this time as to why our oh so dear friendship came to an abrupt end and was not worthy of any explanation whatsoever. Marriage, babies, narcissism…you know, the silent killers of friendships. It seems pointless to say, but it did open my eyes to how I expect to be treated in life. So, first there was the lack of closure that came with my ex husband and now once again, another uncommunicated shut down. Hmmm…is it me? Did I not give enough? I give too much, more than I should in a lot of instances. People are just weird.

For the first time in a really, wait, ever, I felt like I accomplished something. This little project being one of them. Nobody cares what I write or do or say or feel. I know this. The difference is, I don’t care anymore, it is my therapy, my cathartic medium to deal with my life that will hopefully help others in a relatable and true sense. It truly is the first time I’ve consistently followed through with my own idea, not someone else’s, but mine. What made my year was receiving some very heartfelt thanks yous and that was enough for me. To make another feel better or to move someone with words, that is my art. For the first time in my life I am proud. All the work I’ve done this year, I am proud of, and worked hard for, and it felt like I had just finished a marathon. A marathon I’ve been running for 45 years. What a fulfilling thing, right?

I promise to get to the good parts soon, but not yet, I have to finish through the hard layer first before I get to the chewy center where rainbows shoot out of the asses of babes. Reaching 45 was difficult. Harder than anything I’ve ever done, and with that came a dreadful revelation. I came to terms that my physical self is no longer twe—, I mean, thirty-five. No longer do I feel I can climb fences, dance the night away or have a slap boxing match without being completely winded in ten minutes. The white hair that has accompanied my raven locks is disorienting, and the extra pounds which make me cry on most days because what women doesn’t want to look hot in her skinny jeans, but instead replaces her lacy unmentionables with…COTTON!? It has affected me profoundly. One thing they don’t tell us women getting older is how terrifying it is, physically and mentally. How we don’t feel attractive, how I cannot look anyone remotely attractive in the eye, and how the thought of donning a bathing suit would suddenly feel absolutely horrifying. They don’t tell you of the anxiety, the insomnia, and what the discovery of cellulite does to a woman or that missing a period will make you feel absolutely regretful and sad. How forgetful one becomes as she frantically tries to locate the cell phone she is currently speaking on or wishing for her tiny boobs of 34Bs again instead of this, what is this blob coming out of the side of my bra. I know, I really shouldn’t care. I have a mister who loves me as I am, but ladies as we know they can tell us we are gorgeous all day long but in the end it only matters is we feel uncomfortable, and I know, boo hoo right? Get over it and be stronger right? I will eventually, I just don’t like it.

I suffered my first panic attack and god forbid, my last. I had no idea. For all those who suffer this on a constant basis, I am so very sorry. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced, to be in small out of town diner, while you sit across from your loved one. A regular morning waiting for a server who doesn’t come while you are reminiscing about the spectacular night you’ve had together, and then for no reason at all, it happens. As I sat there with cold hands and irregular heart beating, body feeling disconnected, I imagined how awful it is that I, ME, was going to die in this amazingly terrible diner amongst strangers. For about 30 minutes, I concluded that it would be as easy as that and I looked at him and thought, at least I was loved and had loved again.

It’s a odd spectrum of emotions when you lie in bed at night and what used to be something so easily attainable becomes a labyrinth of questionable moments in life.

Why did I have chocolate tonight? Why did that person not text me back? Am I ever in my life going to fucking be appreciated for the work I do? Why am I so very broke and why did I just spend $14.99 on an Adobe app? Does he still find me attractive? Why didn’t I have children? Was i supposed to have children? Do people think I’m stupid? Did I go over 1200 calories today? How could there have not been one single carton of 2% milk!? Shit, I forgot to buy saline solution again! I hope my parents don’t die soon, what if I die before them…

And it goes on and on throughout the night. So yeah, lots of things occurred in 2018 I’ve never experienced before. Thanks for the new adventures! I found very little to say in 2018, not in person at least. I’ve embraced my Aquarian aloofness this year. I disconnected like I’ve never done before and found myself in very little meaningful conversations in the outside world. It baffled me really. For the first time in my life verbal exchanges were challenging. I just couldn’t connect. It was as though someone had taken my speech and turned it into a whole new non-language causing me tongue tied instances of pure lack of eloquence and articulation…embarrassing. Are you wondering about the good parts?

2018 was transitional to say the least. We got out of a very small apartment with a devil of a landlady into a very beautiful house in a new neighborhood. I really fell in love with being home. This place feels like a haven and despite still looking at unpacked boxes and unfinished furniture, it has become a place to relax and entertain at my whim. I am now the proud owner of a fire pit and a grill! Who knew such small domestic luxuries could bring about such sweet comfort! I tried to buy a house this year which didn’t pan out as I wanted it, but sometimes there’s a bigger plan. In turn, I sold my first house as a real estate agent this year which brought me a feeling of accomplishment. I can do it! Yes I can! A motto that held little weight before. Small, but an endeavor I never thought I’d ever add to my repertoire. I often wonder if I’m just real comfortable doing then jobs at once.

Karaoke. The activity that I refused to do in any public place became commonplace in 2018. Somehow singing Concrete Blonde and Leslie Gore brought a silent release for me and just the sheer gathering of friends in these instances made me genuinely joyous. The fact that people wanted to spend time with me, strange as that may be, was the one thing I felt humanly connected to. I felt strangely isolated most days. I attended a wedding, reconnected with family, and watched a lot of soccer. Simple joys. I was involved in a study about race and gender, wrote about people I admire, and received notes of praise. I read stories at night, saw tons of music, and dreamt of distant lands. I ate delicious meals, watched tons of film, and dove into photography. I wrote words. I said goodbye to the past. I made amends. I attoned and forgave. I laughed harder than ever and I cried seldomly. I felt loved. It went quickly and I suppose as we age it goes by at lightning speed. I long for the days of long summers and spontaneous trips.

What will 2019 be? I can only hope for less death, less loneliness, less heaviness. I am wondering if I too have become nothing but 1s and 0s and perfectly angled moments. Who will reach out, if anyone, to say hello that isn’t summed up in an abbreviated expression. Will the “We need to hang out” become an actual instance of beverages and exchanges of laughable tales or will it be the continuous cycle of empty efforts spread across another year. There are no resolutions for me, there is just a continuous wanting to better the briefness of existence. I want to read more books, see more music, cry at art, take better pictures, write more stories, take more trips, share more experiences, find inspiration, and motivate to healthier habits and less sour cream and onion chips at midnight. I want to shoot bows and arrows, play more pool, and swim in the ocean. I want to see my nieces and nephew, take my mom someplace new, and visit my dad. We always have such high hopes in the beginning don’t we? The ending of one cycle, packed with memories in our virtual treasure box, and the rebirth and renewal of new ones. Isn’t that the beauty of it all? What will this new skin look like? What stories will I tell next…

[writingsblog]

On Hot Russian Composers and A Questionable Self Identity

I’m not proud to make this declaration by any means; I’m actually quite devastated that this has become a facet of my being, but holy fuck do I detest reading. I’m not talking about the day-to-day casual Reddit browsing, Facebook lurking stuff, or the kind that is fundamental. I’m talking like the big-ass textbooks, fucking “War and Peace” type of reading expected of me from a bunch of classes I’ve taken. Every Facebook meme ever created that pokes fun at not doing the reading can have my name found tagged somewhere in the comments section. And before you say anything, yes, I see the irony in me writing this for people to read while simultaneously dispelling my unfavorable feelings toward the practice. The title says it all, but bear with me.

I have this inclination to test the patience of authority; I love erring on the side of mischief. I’m honestly a little shit, and this display of little shittiness can best be shown through my inability to tell you about the plot of a single novel the average high schooler should have read in any of their English classes. I mean, I didn’t even check out the last book I was required to read for my AP Lit class senior year, like I was that done with reading by then. Jay Gatsby? I don���t know her. Hamlet? Couldn’t say that I am familiar with that queen. Mrs. Dalloway? Which school did she teach at? Because I can’t say I’ve ever met her. I’m not even telling you all of this to, like, brag, either — like, it’s actually something real embarrassing and shameful to admit, but this primer on my propensity toward not reading becomes relevant soon, I swear.

Reading is hard. Reading is really fucking hard and I relished in the glory of my simple acts of disobedience by just … not doing it. My attention span is essentially the Planck-length equivalent of time, which could perhaps explain my habit of becoming engrossed in the lives and times of the authors of books I should’ve been reading instead of reading the actual books themselves. I mean, I told you it’s not that I hate literature or anything. It most likely was because I couldn’t be bothered to read anything expected of me out of both laziness and adolescent mischief. This habit would manifest itself throughout various classes, in different forms, but nonetheless with the same result. Physics lessons on Einstein’s theories of relativity led me to instead learn about his hobbies as an amateur violinist while calculus lectures on Newton’s creation of an entirely new branch of mathematics led me to follow this tangent about his religious fervor and penchant for being weird as hell.

Toward the end of middle school, I had to learn this Tchaikovsky piece for a symphony audition. It was his “Serenade for Strings,” the 48th opus, which was this orchestral masterpiece written in the absolute most horrific time signature ever. The technical demands of the piece alongside the massive Romantic-era middle finger that was the time signature drove me to, of course, not read through the piece at all. I want to make a brief mention that my habit of disregarding readings did not simply end at the written text; rather, it indiscriminately dismantled any drive I would have to begin reading anything that was required of me, and that included this daunting six-page shitstorm of a serenade. During the free periods I should have spent rehearsing the serenade’s dreaded triple piano “pianississimo” measures, I instead, surprisingly, read this book about the composer himself. It was in “The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky” that I read this quote from him that would resonate with me well into the current day. Tchaikovsky described himself as “Russian in the fullest sense of the word,” to which I thought: “How incredible. Not just a veritable sense, but the fullest sense. How affirming it must be to be able to fully identify with a culture.” I think the reason as to why his words connected with me to such an extent is because they made me aware of this hollow cavity inside me that housed my cultural identity. It led to the realization that I couldn’t truly say that I fully identify as anything.

I was born on the first of November in Cần Thơ, a large port village that skims the Mekong Delta along the southern fringes of Vietnam. I couldn’t really tell you anything about what life was like there besides the fact that it’s just really fucking hot. I was really young when I left Vietnam with my parents to pursue the prospect of a better life here in the States. The first four years of my life I recall entirely in Vietnamese. My clearest memory from this time in my life was a very specific moment where my mother was sitting at the kitchen table eating. I asked her why she made so much noise while she ate, to which she laughed and asked me if I would like to eat with her. I sat there with her and we just had this casual and carefree conversation in the kitchen. I don’t know why this one specific memory is so clearly branded frame for frame in my mind, but it, like other memories of my early childhood, was narrated back to me entirely in my mother tongue. I think the closest I’ve ever felt to Tchaikovsky’s cultural “fullness” was at this point in my life.

I started school at 4 years old. I never realized that the children in my class had the privilege of growing up in homes where English was regularly spoken. I remember crying so hard on the first day of preschool that I fucking puked a storm on my teacher. It was such a mess; there were all of these people around me mouthing these weird sounds and reacting with confusion when I couldn’t understand them and then the puke being everywhere — like it really was just not cute. I didn’t pick up English as quickly as my teachers would have liked during early elementary school. I swear to God I was about a hair away from repeating the first grade because of my inability to properly speak the language or make any progress in those little English workbooks where you fill in a letter to make words and phrases. In the end, I couldn’t tell you what made it all click, but I would eventually pick up English incredibly fast. Like, scary fast; scary like the reading teachers had to constantly tell me to slow down with my reading, essentially putting a harness on my reading skills so that the other kids could “catch up.” This was pretty much how the rest of my schooling went with regard to English. I honestly did pretty well in my English classes. Like I’m not even trying to gas myself up here or anything, but my essays were usually pretty fucking lit despite my never doing the required readings for any of those classes. I don’t even know, like I went from this scared and confused child who couldn’t understand what anyone around him was saying to someone who would be asked to proofread college and scholarship essays for friends. English was no longer a burden on me. I learned to use it well enough that I began to identify as somebody who had a pretty lit command of the language, but this achievement came at a cost. What I hadn’t noticed was that during the years I spent developing my English, my ability to speak Vietnamese suffered. I began to realize that I couldn’t speak Vietnamese like I used to. I would stutter, mumble and replace various words with their English equivalent. As much as I tried to communicate with my parents, the words just couldn’t come out with the clarity and eloquence I was so familiar with when speaking English. I knew that I knew these words. Spoken to me, I’d understand almost every Vietnamese word my parents would speak, but as I sorted through the linguistic rolodex in my brain to try to hunt for the right string of words or phrases to respond back to them, nothing came out. I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s like getting into a really fucked up accident and having to learn how to walk again. Like you knew that at some point in the past you could do it, and that you did it pretty well, but here you are, trying to pick up these pieces of your past so that you can put together at least a semblance of who you once were. With language having had such a profound impact on me, I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I more or less lost my ability to proudly communicate in my mother tongue. I was even having trouble calling it that. Like aren’t you supposed to know your mother tongue better than anything else? By technicality English is my second language, so I just felt so distraught realizing that my ability to speak it had so greatly surpassed the language I was basically born speaking. In a way it felt like language, something I had learned to confide in for so long and something that helped me form my identity, betrayed me in some type of way? I can’t really think of another word for it. Honestly, I was just about 50 shades of shook over the whole situation if you really want to know the truth.

This whole story brings me back to what I was talking about earlier, the whole discussion on “fullness.” I guess a kind of end goal for me in terms of culture and identity would be to connect to something remotely similar to Tchaikovsky’s cultural “fullness,” and I don’t mean end goal like it’s something I want to do before I die or anything. I just mean it in the sense like, “Damn, wouldn’t it be really fucking incredible to feel the way Tchaikovsky felt about his own identity?” I think why this whole ordeal hit me so hard is because I feel like language is one of the most important facets of a culture. Like, beyond anything else, language connects you with others in such a personal way, so I kept asking myself, like, if I can’t speak the language of a particular culture, can I even fully identify with it? I’m just very preoccupied with the word “fully,” but how, like, many things can I even fully identify as? It just brings up a shit ton of questions, like, “Can I fully identify as a given ethnicity if I wasn’t born in a certain place?” or “Can I fully be an ethnicity if I don’t necessarily look like a person who belongs to it?” Perhaps such an inability to fully identify as anything nowadays is something symptomatic of the modern age. Like, it could just be something that accompanies the common practice of compartmentalizing every aspect of our being into these new and labeled divisions. Maybe in some ways this Tchaikovskic fullness isn’t realistic. Like, I could just one day come to the realization that I will never be able to, in any manner, replicate even the modicum of the fullness Tchaikovsky wrote about, but even if that were the case, I don’t think there are any real detriments toward the pursuit of such a feeling. Some might call it myopic, like somehow having this focus on a singular aspect of culture in the hopes of attaining some abstract fulfillment isn’t sensible. I mean, I can definitely see how people would believe that, seeing it as being vapid and shallow, but I think we have to keep in mind that we all currently live in this era where we ourselves have the ability, now more than ever, to form our own identities. We can choose to append or remove certain facets and aspects of ourselves to grow closer to our ideal self, and I think that’s a very freeing aspect of it all, despite claims that it can be seen as being inauthentic or full of shit. I guess the hyper-idealized millennial sense of self is the result of a fluid amalgamation of various different things. Maybe this fluidity is a completely different sense of self than Tchaikovsky’s original interpretation of fullness, or perhaps the result of this amalgamation is exactly how he may have felt. I mean, as much as I’d like to, I can’t really slide into his DMs to ask him how he personally defines fullness, so I guess a lot of it is up in the air. The fact of the matter is, I’m still trying to figure out my own sense of self and how it relates in the context of the world around me. And maybe I won’t ever be able to say that I am Vietnamese in the fullest sense of the word and feel the satisfaction Tchaikovsky felt. I guess I can be fine with that and just do my best to work toward a sense of fullness and fulfillment that reflects what it means to be fully myself, whatever the hell that may even mean.