#this has been one of the best live shows i’ve ever attended in my life

[badassnephilim]

Daniel Howell, Berlin, 2023. 🤍🏳️‍🌈

[elucienweekofficial]

Elucien Fanfic Crossword Answer Key- Smut Day One

How did you do? It's our hope through this week of puzzles that folks are able to find an existing fanfiction that speaks to them! Consider these a small masterlist filled with recommendations from the community itself. Below you'll find every fanfiction recommended attached to the author who created it, added in the order they were submitted! Fics were also categorized to their best of our ability. Check them out below!

[Please check all tags before engaging!]

You Look Like Bad News by @the-lonelybarricade

I gotta have you, I gotta have you - Elain hated living next to Lucien Vanserra. Almost as much as she hated the girl he was fucking.

When You Move, I'm Moved by @ataraxiasflame

When Elain Archeron flees Nesta and Cassian's Mating Ceremony for a moment alone after an emotional experience, her mate follows her out of concern for what he feels through their bond, resulting in an evening neither had planned, but both had been wanting for ages.

I've been lost to you, sunlight (flew like a moth to you, sunlight) by @whatishowedyouinthedark

In all of her dreams, there is sunlight. That is the one constant in every single one Elain remembers after waking. And if there is no sunlight, she can still feel it beating against her skin in time with the heartbeat that has become a steady, comforting song in her mind. Sometimes it feels as if, when she dreams, she has woken from the sadness that is her reality into what should be her life.

-

or, the elucien breeding kink one :)

What We Wanted by @valamerys

Lucien’s first Fire Night as High Lord of the Spring Court puts he and Elain’s fledgling relationship in an awkward position.

The Fires Of Eventide by @animezinglife

A quiet evening. A secluded cottage in Spring.

Beasts Inside Us by @crazy-ache

“If you so much as spill a drop of her blood, I will gladly show you just what kind of beast I am. And you will find, once I’ve ripped your throat out with my bare hands, and burnt this manor and everyone inside to ash and bone, that I am something far, far worse than just a beast.”

While staying in the mortal lands with the Band of Exiles, Elain Archeron stumbles across a familiar face from her past. Only Graysen wants revenge. Her only hope is that her mate, Lucien Vanserra, can save her—in more ways than one.

About Damn Time by @strawbrerian-writes

Elain planned to have a quiet, cool day off. The universe took one look at her plans and said "bet."

They Say I Did Something Bad by @separatist-apologist

Then why's it feel so good?

Elain Archeron's fiance is a total stranger to her, though his family's reputation for cruelty and avarice is not. Dreading a lifetime with a cruel, cold man, Elain decides to have one last night of freedom. Attending an infamous masquerade ball, Elain meets a stranger who offers to show her pleasure beyond her wildest dreams. It's just one night of debauchery. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, Lord Save Me by @separatist-apologist

“How come I never see you at confession?” he pressed. Elain almost screamed.

Lucien never saw her at confession because the phrase "forgive me father, for I have sinned," was the start of every filthy fantasy she’d ever had about him.

I'm Going Out Tonight by @separatist-apologist

He rolled his neck and Elain paused, drinking him in. Even with his red hair plastered to his face, sweat soaking through his thin band t-shirt, Lucien Vanserra was the hottest man she’d ever seen.

And bass players were so her type.

“What did you say?”

He grinned, resting a broad hand over his muscular chest. “I asked if you had a man.”

Her mind flashed an image of Graysen. Too busy with work and the woman he was sleeping with on the side. She was there to pretend she didn’t know about that, wasn’t she? Did Graysen ever answer that question honestly, besides?

Holding up her drink, Elain ran her tongue suggestively over the straw. Lucien’s smile sharpened, those russet eyes darkening with obvious want.

“I don’t remember.”

Sharp as Glass and Twice as Bright by @valamerys

When he speaks again, it’s a low rumble in his chest. “If you keep doing that, dove, neither of us is going to get any sleep.”

Heat coils in Elain’s stomach. “I’m not tired.”

[Elucien + classic THERE IS ONLY ONE BED WHAT DO.] [yes i just did one for each of my ships dont look at me im a monster]

End Game by @separatist-apologist

Lucien Vanserra has been in love with Elain Archeron for as long as he's known her. With time ticking down before her inevitable engagement to Graysen, Lucien only has one goal: convince her to be his

But Only If You Dare by @kingofsummer93

It all started innocently enough. A silly game, a drunken dare.

Except now Elain can't sleep.

And it's all because of him.

I'm Damned If I Do by @separatist-apologist

“Get it off your chest,” he told her dismissively, returning to his work.

Let her scream and yell. It would change nothing given Rhysand and Feyre were doing this purposefully to push them together. Had Elain guessed that, too? Had she decided he was the safer person to vent her rage into?

She strode into his office and, like a petulant brat, swept everything off his desk. Lucien glared, irritated with the mess she’d made—she’d inadvertently shattered a rather nice crystal vase he’d gotten from Dawn, wrecking the little blue plant within in her recklessness.

“By all means, get it off my desk as well,” he told her dryly. Her chest heaved in the pretty silver dress she wore, pressing her breasts up against the neckline. Lucien had to look at his hands to stop looking at her body, though she was closer than she'd ever been

Our Hearts Still Beat The Same by @zenkindoflove

"She stood on the bridge for a few minutes, hoping that the rain might wash away the seething anger and bottomless anguish that crackled under her skin. More, more, more, repeated again and again to a steady beat. His heart beat."

Elucien, Two-shot, Post-ACOSF. Part One is Cozy Tension. Part Two is all smut.

Can read this fic independent of the series. They are separate stories but connected by song inspirations.

Both Forever and Rather Die by @foundress0fnothing

Elain runs a sex cult. She’s looking for something new. Lucien is new.

save the date by @thelovelymadone

Elain Archeron has had a perfect life.

Prettiest girl in her grade, first sibling to be engaged and living thousands of miles away from home. But then, her then fiancé cheats on her at their engagement party after she cajoled her entire family to come thousand of miles for her engagement.

Now, after four years, she’s going to be brave. She’s going to go to her eldest sister’s wedding as the maid of honor and bring … a paid actor to be her boyfriend.

Despite the lingering trauma of her ex-boyfriend posting her phone number on Internet forums and refusal to share how her childhood crush broke her confidence at her engagement party—what could possibly go wrong?

Call Me Selfish, Call Me Wrecked by @crazy-ache

Like countless times before, they’re dangling Elain in front of him without a mention of her name. And for once, Lucien decides to selfishly take it. “I’ll marry her,” he pretends to investigate his nails, even if his heart is about to burst from his chest. “But only if she agrees to it as well. That’s my only condition.”

Elain agrees. Lucien learns the consequences of not shutting up.

A Dance In Winter by @animezinglife

While visiting the Winter Court leading up to Solstice, Elain and Lucien find some time alone.

talk refined by @temperedink

Newly mated Elain has pretty much adjusted to being fae after all this time. What she’s still hung up on? Being able to express things in the bedroom. Luckily, Lucien is totally willing to let her try that out on him.

[stcverogers]

MARCH FIC RECS!

fics that i’ve been reading and obsessing with over the month of march

this is extremely important and i take this very seriously out of respect for the community. please do remember to read the rules for the respective blogs before interacting with or reading them.

F: fluff A: angst S: smut

𖥻 - series /multi part

masterlist

BUCKY BARNES

F + A: a date by @delaber you get asked out on a date. as your best friend, bucky should be happy for you, right?

F: gift for you by @sstan-hoe it's valentine's day and you have a special gift for bucky

F + A: ignite your bones by @sunriserose1023 you and bucky barnes did not get along, why then did he care for you so much?

F + A: lost and found by @dolcezzasfantasy 𖥻 you're arrested for disrupting the sacred timeline.

F + A: mr hollywood by @buckybabybaby 𖥻 bucky, you closest friend and teaching assistant, finally gets his big break and given the oppurtunity of pursuing his dreams. sadly, hollywood changes people and your friendship is on the rocks.

F + A: i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) by @lunarbuck 𖥻 as a princess, it is your duty to pursure the best interests of your kingdom. even if it meant being arranged to men you cannot love, not when your heart belongs to another.

F + A: assured by dreams by @sergeantxrogers 𖥻 a knight should not ever fall in love with a princess, especially not one who he has been given the honour to protect.

F + A: i want to hold your hand by @thismustbefakeme 𖥻 if sam had to sit and watch you and bucky pine over each other for one more moment, he just might lose it.

A: don't say anything by @cumonbucky 𖥻 you're done hiding your feelings and ready to confess them to bucky. your heart is broken when you accidentally walk in on him and natasha.

F + A: perfectly, incandescently by @tikus-library you misinterpret a conversation bucky has with steve and same, leaving you disheartened and hurt.

F + A: fear of falling + taxi + reunited by @onceuponastory you're in love with bucky, a pilot working in the same airline as you. why did loving someone hurt this much?

F + A: the forever third wheels by @witchywithwhiskey with you and bucky being the only single ones in your friend group, the two of you were stuck being the forever third wheels. abandoned at the fair by your friends, you and bucky are left to yourselves.

F + A: bad match by @justreadingfics you finally relent to sharon's persisting and go on a date she's set you up with. the date ends up terrible and you're heartbroken after it.

F + A: accidentally by @pomelo-villano bucky overhears a conversation you have with you daughter and misinterprets your words, thinking you don't love him anymore.

F: little things by @sunshine-on-my-mind it's the little things bucky does that makes life worth living

F + A: warrior/worrier by @delaber bucky returns from a mission, broken and bruised beyond compare, seeking you out for comfort.

F + A: so this is love by @ofstarsandvibranium 𖥻 bucky's known for being kind of a slut but since becoming his roommate, you've accustomed to his conquests.

F + A: the sleepover by @littleredwolf thought you and have bucky have been together for a while, he has yet to spend the night at your place. he's an empty shell of a man that he once was and you're willing to show him the comfort he deserves.

S: see you both next shift + part 2 bucky grows jealous when he sees another customer flirting with you

F: drabble by @itzmich03 baby anthony and bucky argue about who is your favourite

F + A: 27 dresses by @beccaanne814 𖥻 you've been to numerous weddings, 27 to be exact, ranging from crazy to extravagent. when will you finally get to attend your own?

F + A: all this love by @onceuponastory john walker has some choice words to say about bucky and you'll not allow someone to disrespect your boyfriend like that

F + A: you fracture light again by @divine-mistake you have ruined bucky. for he will never love someone else as much as he does you.

F + S: a million summers by @intrepidacious bucky returns home from college and your dyanmic shifts

F: comfort hug by @lives-in-midgard a hug from bucky is enough for you to forget all your stress from the day

F: save me darling, for you are my salvation by @rxgerthatt as bucky learns to grow into the person he can be after the winter soldier, he meets you. you and all your cafe-owning glory.

F: it's been a long, long, time by @dolcezzasfantasy bucky returns the pym particles, rightfully staying in the century he belongs in.

F: two syllables by @coffee-with-bucky bucky's moved to tears when baby ben says his first words

F: happily ever after by @redhoodssweetheart as king, bucky rules with an iron fist. for you, he's different.

F + A: why can't i say that i'm in love? by @buckthegrump princesses don't belong with commoners, let alone the son of a baker

F + A: spilled wine by @sunmoonandeddie you 're nothing more than a woman who warms the king's bed, at least, that's what you felt like you were

F: valentine's day by @classylo it's valentine's day and you're hopelessly in love with bucky

F + A: listen to me, not just my words by @lilacletter stranded in the midst of a storm after a failed mission, you and bucky are left to seek shelter in a safe house. with your friendship already handing by a thread, tension arises.

F + A: drifting by @real-jane 𖥻 in a cabin in the middle of the snow, bucky hides from the demons from his past. he saves an injured woman and struggles to keep her alive while hiding who he is and was from her.

F: there is no right way by @mysecretlittlelibrary 𖥻 lily barnes is a matchmaker first and troublemaker second

F: come home by @sinner-as-saint after a tiring day at work, bucky comes home to his beautiful family

SAM WILSON

F + A: lover by @roger-that-cap sam wilson is a certified lover boy

AARON HOTCHNER

F: realizations by @writtenbysprout aaron wakes up in the middle of the night to you being gone from the bed. he goes and investigates and comes to a realisation that you are the only one for him.

F: tiebreaker by @persephonewritessometimes you teach aaron a card game you like to play and of course he wins first try.

[louisupdates]

YOUR SUPPORT IS MORE THAN ENOUGH - Louis Tomlinson

Wyss [Stefan Wyss at Gadget ABC Entertainment] adds, “He’s kept the ticket prices reasonable – and he never wants to do any gold circle or VIP tickets. I think that’s why he’s so close to his fans, because it’s not about maximising profits. Another reason for his success is that in addition to attracting a mainstream audience, he’s also getting the music lovers because he’s just a very good songwriter and has brilliant songs.”

“In terms of the show growing, our biggest challenge is keeping costs down, because we’re extremely cautious on ticket pricing,” says Vines [Matt Vines, Louis’ manager]. “We don’t do dynamic pricing, we don’t do platinum ticketing, we don’t do paid VIPs, we don’t increase ticket prices on aisle seats – all those tricks that everyone does that most fans don’t know about: we don’t do any of those.”

Rowland [Holly Rowland, Louis’ touring agent] reveals that, at the artist’s insistence, a safety team has been added to the tour to ensure everyone that attends his shows is looked after. “They manage all the safety within the shows for the fans,” she explains. “They came in for the Wembley show last year and have been with us ever since - they’ve been beneficial to the running of the tour.

Dowling [Jack Dowling at SJM] adds, “Louis really looks after his fans. On the last tour, they did a deal with Greggs to give free food to the people waiting in line, as some of them camped out for days in advance.”

With Tomlinson determined to meet a duty of care toward his fans, Vines says that the team now sends a “considerable advance package” to promoters ahead of their tour dates. “Our safety team goes into venues in the morning, and basically ensures that a number of different things are in place – making sure that water is given to the fans, where the water comes from, and at what points in the show it happens.”

- IQ 123, 8.11.2023

Louis via Twitter, 6.2.20, 14.1.20

The festival is being held in celebration of the return of live music this summer following more than 16 months of Covid 19 restrictions. As his own world tour is completely sold out, Tomlinson wanted to make tickets for this event completely free for fans via a prize draw.

Louis Tomlinson said: "I’ve been sat on this idea for the last 12 months at least and now to see it come to life makes me very excited. Personally, playing live shows is the best part of what I do and it’s been far too long since I've seen my fans, so I wanted to put this festival on to say thank you for all the support and celebrate the return of live music. I’ve got a really good feeling it’s going to be a really special night. We all deserve that!"

- Music Week, 30.7.2021

Whoa, whoa, wait. There's one last thing. Listen, arguably the most important thank you, and I do this every night, but let me do this in a special kind of way. Anyone who's been to any of these shows on this year. Anyone who's supported any of the shows online and maybe couldn't make it to a show. I feel your fucking support every single day and let me say how grateful I am. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This year has been incredibly special. I hope it's been alright for you too.

- Louis Tomlinson, FITFWT23: Birmingham [18.11.2023] video harrystyles.k on TikTok

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Which members promotions were your favorite so far? Hobi might win for me because that listening party was super fun and Lollapalooza was crazy. Also More sits at the same table as SMFpt2 for me as far as being really shocking and exciting when it dropped!

***

Hi Anon!

Nothing beats Yoongi’s D-DAY tour for me. My god what an experience. I was fortunate to attend multiple stops and I still have fever dreams in the middle of the day remembering how hard I was screaming along to Burn It and Huh, how my friend burst into tears during Snooze, how I choked up a bit during Life Goes On and finally lost it on The Last. The encore tours gave me the emotional equivalent of a blood transfusion. Seeing Jimin, Namjoon, and Jungkook on stage in a proper concert setting for the first time in almost a year, was really the best parting gift and I’ll always be grateful to Yoongi for it. I love that man very, very much.

That cute practice session Yoongi did for the ‘I’m so cute’ or whatever challenge with Jimin too, subbing ARMYs with screaming plushies and the live he did reading fan messages teasing us about his seven tattoo… and then that cheeky reveal after the tour ended…

Yoongi gave me everything and more with his album and the tour.

Other members too:

- SeokJin going to Argentina to promote The Astronaut with Coldplay was incredible. The planning and organizing behind that feat couldn’t have been easy but somehow they made it work and LatAm ARMYs were finally able to see at least one Tannie for the first time in a long while. That really was amazing.

- Taehyung’s Tiny Desk performances are 🤌🏽

- I loved how Jimin really thought outside the box with his promotions, choosing to go on many really fun Korean variety shows. These are shows BTS either hadn’t done ever or in something like 5 years. A lot of my K-ARMY friends loved how Jimin seemed to prioritize them fully in ways that hadn’t been done for a while.

- I tried hard to attend Joon’s small concert but work commitments didn’t allow that possibility, but I also really love his promotion choices. My partner (surprisingly) has become a tiny bit obsessed with Joon’s Tiny Desk performance lol, so I suspect Joon has gained a new fan.

- Think I’ve already talked about how Hobipalooza was the concert highlight of 2022 for me. Hobi had such a short time to put everything together, and I’m proud of him for going out of his comfort zone a bit sending out invites and throwing the launch party. I loved seeing him just celebrate his success, seeing the other members chill out and have a good time.

- It was nice seeing that at least one member did not forget Europe exists with their promotions (😭), so I’m glad Jungkook could make the trip over to promote Seven in the UK.

The rapline’s album projects are easily some of the best releases this year in any genre for me. And I’m not even trying to be biased. Corroborated by critics reviews, each album is a solid, cohesive, and cerebrally stimulating piece of art and I’m so proud of them for putting it together. It’s easy to see how BTS has become the biggest band in the world when you have these three men who can stand as respected artists in their own right, being the bedrock of the music created by BTS for the last 10 years.

Jimin’s debut with FACE ended k-pop in 2023. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the industry as we know it, life as we know it, Jimin as we knew him, ended in March 2023. What Jimin did with Set Me Free Pt 2 still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. That song was a warning shot, a small mercy to the industry to warn them in advance of who Jimin is prepared to become as a solo artist and as Jimin of BTS, and I cannot overstate how excited I am for his next project. FACE as an album is the complete package. His songs are just good. Like, actually good. Good enough to play anywhere and any time. That’s the kind of music Jimin makes. Imagine hearing Face-off in a concert arena… imagine hearing the intro play before he comes on stage. Can you even imagine….

Lol I’m starting to hurt myself with these imagines.

Taehyung’s album too is very good (though these days it only gets plays from me in the evenings). And while Seven isn’t my favorite release, it’s still a well made song that Jungkook of course has done a phenomenal job with. Twice now he’s had to promote it outdoors in very bad weather and he’s kept his vocals stable and well projected. He’s working hard and I’m hoping it translates well into work done for his solo album debut later this year.

I have almost no complaints in the debut solo showcases from all the members, in their promotion styles, and in the overall presentation. These albums were all very decent and respectable first showings from the members of the biggest group in the world. The response from the general public and professional critics has been very favourable, and the fandom has supported each member to be as successful as one would expect for anyone from BTS.

I’m a very happy ARMY in Chapter 2 ^_^

[popcornforone]

The Winners Circle

A Dieter Bravo Fan Fic

This was in draft form a while, not completed. I’ve always wanted to write Dieter during award season & with Pedro being nominated so much this year it was fitting. Also a huge shout out to @salgal78 she said ahhh I have an idea for a fic for you to write or incorporate & part of it appears in this so thanks my love.

Synopsis: It’s the TV BAFTAS & both you & Dieter are up for awards. Everyone thinks you’re just friends, let’s see if you can convince everyone that’s still the case & not something more.

Word Count: 5800

Warnings: DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER 18! PIV (passionate & kinda getting near rough) sex, oral male receiving, established relationship, cream pie, swearing, alcohol, mentions of party & Dieters previous life style, previously friends to lovers, secret relationships, teasing. Public sex, bribery.

Thanks as always for the read peoples it’s really appreciated. All feedback is welcome. I hope you enjoy.

Your silver heels sit in the corner of the hotel bathroom ready to head to the BAFTA’s. Tonight you are certain will be your night. You are up technically for 5 awards.

Best comedy show

Tv moment of the year

Best comedy actor (twice for your co stars)

& best comedy actress for you

You & your long time writing parter & first love came from nothing & wrote a hit sketch comedy show which has now reached its natural conclusion. You are both finally getting recognition for this & tonight as you walk the red carpet at the Baftas you will be validated. You strap your heels on & make sure your purple dress shimmers & makes you look fantastic. You leave the bathroom of the suite & see your husband sorting out his purple tie in the mirror. His eyes catch you in the reflection, & the (for once) smart Dieter Bravo turns around. His lips part as he sees you.

“Bloody hell” he says looking you up & down. “What happened to my wife & the comfortable leggins & hoddies she wears?”

“Oooh she’s here baby, don’t worry” you walk up to him & sort out his cufflinks for him. His pocket square as well matches the material on your dress. He is also up for two BAFTAS . For best performance In an international tv show & also for tv moment of the year. His death in the crime drama he was in last year got rave reviews & became an instant meme. It’s almost as iconic as Hans Gruber falling from the nakatomi plaza. “You do need to remember though Dieter, that no one even knows we are dating & just assumes we are friends” after confessing your mutual feelings for each other a few weeks ago, you decided not to waste any time & got married 8 weeks later. Only your immediate families & 2 friends each in attendance for the most romantic evening of your lives. You are meant to actually right now be on your honeymoon, but when you both got your award nominations 3 day’s before your nuptials, you postponed it by a few days.

“I will baby, don’t worry, remember I’m good at keeping these kinda secrets” he says with a wink & gets his phone out to take a selfie of you both before you head off to the BAFTAS. separate cars are coming to get you, as you are travelling with the people from your show who are in the rest of the rooms on this floor.

“I know you are, I mean people have seen us on the red carpet together before as friends…” you look longingly into his big brown eyes & this scruffy hair which you insisted he kept for tonight. It means if you can sneak a few minutes with him & you run your hands through it, it won’t look like you have done that. You do also prefer him scruffy. “But your mine now baby”

“& so are you my wife” he kisses you.

“I’m never going to get tired of hearing that husband”

“& I’ll never stop saying it” he smiles back. Click goes his camera as you both hold each other & take a romantic selfie. For your eyes only.

*

“To the left”

“Looking fabulous”

“Smile”

“How does it feel to be the toast of the awards?”

This is the craziest red carpet you’ve ever been on. There have been some properly famous people walk this in front of you tonight. But you seem to be the person everyone wants to talk to, have a selfie with, be interviewed by. It’s suddenly dawned on you that tonight will change your life. You are being taken seriously & as you pose you get more comfortable & confident in yourself.

“Dieter” a member of the press shouts. Because you’ve been doing so much fan service, interviews & stuff with your colleagues on your show, Dieter has now caught you up on the red carpet. “Pose with her” is shouted & that’s all it takes. Dieter stops his solo geeky pose he’s famous for & because you’ve always posed at events together, it’s not weird to anyone when he pulls you in close around the waist.

“Smile baby” he says as he kisses your hand & smoulders to you & then turns to the world’s photographers.

“I always smile Dieter” you beam at the press. Your hand is squeezing his bum, the cheek nearest to you. He winks at you & leans into your ear.

“Keep doing that…” he whispers seductively “… & you’ll remember tonight for more than the accolades you receive”

“Dieter” you say loudly in shock & suddenly realise people heard you outloud. “Oooh you know how he gets” you play it off & Dieter rolls his eyes. The press know Dieter is know for his slightly risky comments, that’s why he’s celebrity gold for the tabloids. He plays up to his perceived image, but that was just for your ears.

You continue to work the red carpet & eventually make your way into the auditorium & are handed a complimentary glass of champagne & then someone comes to take Dieter to his seat. You knew you weren’t sitting together but right now you wish he was sitting next to you for today. He wasn’t given a plus one & you gave yours to another member of your cast so they could come to this as well.

“Good luck beautiful” he kisses your cheek & is walked into the theatre. It’s only when you walk in that you realise how near the front you & your show are. You also see Dieter sitting about 8 rows back talking to an usher. You sit down next to your Co writer & ex Ciaran.

“So what are you predicting?” He says.

“Two, comedy show & best actor for either you or Pete” you reply.

“Ha” his wife Jess says “you’re always so modest, we all know full well you’re gonna pick up best comedy actress. If you don’t we all boycott the BAFTAs going forward”

“Jess!” You exclaim “you can’t say that while we are actually at the BAFTAs” you tut & roll your eyes & then you & Ciaran say the exact same thing in unisons. “Wait til we’ve at least won one bloody thing” the whole group of you laugh. It’s one of the lines from the show when you talk to others about how inappropriate they are but to do it once that person has left of the thing is over. If you get no other wins tonight this has all made you have a collective laugh.

*

“To present our first award…” the host goes on, you haven’t checked the program to see what order things are in, you were going to do that during the first award, but then you stop & put the list down & applaud as the words”… Dieter Bravo” are said. The room cheers. Obviously to you & your colleagues & friends they knew he was going to be here, they know your a couple probably the only people in the room that do, but the rest of the room is really enthusiastic too. It’s always good when a big megastar turns up for uk award shows. Out he walks in his charcoal suit, pocket square & tie that highlights the outfit, & he’s got his glasses on. That’s your man right there. He’s yours & you wish he was now sitting next to you to keep you calm tonight.

“Comedy is all about timing, something that’s not my strongest attribute, just ask my friends & how I almost didn’t get to my limo in time.”

“Well we’re a shoe in…”Ciaran whispers to you.

“What?”

“The opening award is for comedy show, Dieters presenting, the world knows your friends, they are doing this for a nice little on stage reunion” Your eyes pop open.

“Ooooh fuck” your hand trembles & Ciaran grabs it like he used to when you were a couple but it doesn’t calm you as it shakes anymore. Proving you work better as writers & friends.

“Breathe, it will be okay” Jess whispers, she has known you both long enough to know that there’s nothing going on between you.

After the little highlight package Dieter announces your tv show the winner & you all cheer & slowly make your way up to the stage. You’ve already made the group decision that the two people who will do this acceptance speech will be Ciaran (because you & Ciarán both know Pete is winning comedy actor) & James the next person with the most input. They all are congratulated by Dieter as they go up to the stage & you are last, & you hug him in a friendly way. You then with the other 4 cast members step back & let James & Ciaran talk& accept the award. You slowly feel Dieters hand go around your waist. You’re still listening to what your friends have to say, but you are suddenly much calmer now that you’re next to your husband.

“Congrats baby” he whispers “my little bafta winner”

“Thanks Dieter, the night is still young.” You’re trying to be professional but the way he just poked his glasses back up his nose has got you desiring him. You then slowly leave Dieters side & quickly leap into the microphone to do one last thank you.

“I know it’s a long night so I’ll be quick but I just want to say James & Ciaran are the reason we are here winning this, because let’s be honest they make us all look funny & you were never going to thank yourselves we’re you.” The room erupts into chuckles & you all leave the stage to do a few small interviews with the press back stage, before returning to watch the awards.

*

As you predicted earlier Pete wins best comedy actor. His performance as Grumpy Grandpa is going to be remembered long after any of you are relevant anymore. It is harsh on Ciaran & his characters he created. He is the better performer but Grumpy Grandpa is marvellous, mainly because of the way you & Ciaran wrote it. You sit there as the nominees for comedy actress are read out. You hate being recognised, you’re bad at self praise, but this was always a definite nomination as you missed out on a supporting actress bafta for something else last year because it didn’t meet the bbfc guide lines for international work. This year that rules has now been changed due to people protesting towards Bafta.

“& the bafta goes to…” says Nathan who is a tv show judge & currently flavour of the month looks wise in the British press.

He says your name.

You freeze.

You thought this might happen. But that still doesn’t mean it’s a shock to the system to hear your name be read out loud. The room erupts in noise & cheers & you sit there as Ciaran hugs you.

“Oh my fucking god” the room is filled with noise & people congratulating you but it’s all silent as your head trys to process what has just happened. You have a solo bafta. The room is a blur as you make your way to the steps to go & accept the award. But as you reach the stage & Nathan comes to hug you, you just catch a sight out the corner of your eye. Dieter is wiping a tear away a few rows further back. He’s standing up & applauding like everyone else but his eyes are glazed. He’s proud. He’s proud of his wife.

You are brought to an even more surreal reality of winning by a hug from Nathan. He tall dark & handsome even more so in person, smells divine & he gives you a hug.

“Congratulations” he says his eyes dancing “finally” he says & he hands you the BAFTA. Your BAFTA. You don’t need to share this one. It’s just where you’re gonna put it. You almost drop it. It’s so heavy. It doesn’t look it but it really is a weight. You get to the podium & put it on the stand & take a deep breathe.

“Well ladies & gents,I can confirm that Nathan does smell as good as he looks” the room laughs. You’ve broken the ice at the start of your speech. You have a rough idea about who you need to thank but you’ve not written it down. You’re going to speak from the heart & then you properly begin.

“Thank you Bafta. This is incredible. As are my 4 other nominees in this category. It’s hard enough to be a woman in this world anyhow let alone showbiz, but comedy is the hardest job of all so I want to say thank you to my fellow nominees & the women who came before us for giving us this opportunity.” You point & look at the rest of the friends from the show.

“I need to thank my guys & gals from the show, mainly Ciaran for being an amazing writing partner for over a decade & to his amazing wife Jess who let him just after they got married to go spend 10 weeks in a room with his ex & trust us.”more people laugh. “I also want to thank my parents, my brother & his wife & all the friends from the beginning who let me tell them bad jokes for years you are always my inspiration & to my new friends that I have now I’m a big shot apparently” you do quotation marks as you say that. A member of the press who doesn’t write fairly about women when they are successful said that you’d soon be a big shot & it would be the end of your tv show. You’ve waited 3 years to own them back.

“I also want to thank the viewers for sharing our show over the years, you watching meant we could do wilder crazier things, so thanks for the support, but the person I really want to thank is whoever it is who’s listening me right now. Be it a girl a guy a they or an I. I never thought I’d be here, I have always been told nah not today or well try this or be this. I may have changed a little recently but I’m am most me in front of my lap top typing. I may now be a comedian & actress but I am a writer, & my dream was to be recognised for that. So whoever you are out there, keep striving for the dream, be it you want to be a doctor or you want to complete the ironing tonight you’ve got this & I believe in you.” The room applauds & you smile & then you raise your BAFTA in the air & finish your speech. “Thank you so much BAFTA & D I adore you” you make eye contact with Dieter as you say that. You always say to each other that you adore him in public instead of saying you love him & he does the same. It does mean I love you to each other though. The room gives you a standing ovation & you walk off back stage to speak to the press about your well deserved win.

*

That’s it for your shows win for the night & Dieter doesn’t win either but next comes the after party & dinner. You are nowhere near Dieter for dinner, but you can now text him & you make a point to walk past his table & he does the same to you. Dinner is finished & the party really gets going. A world famous dj is mcing & the music is banging. You’re stood there chatting to Nathan who presented your award earlier, your bafta has been taken to be engraved & will already be at your hotel room when you get there later. It’s been replaced with a glass of champagne.

“Sorry about the comment about how you smelt Nathan, but you always look phenomenal”

“I mean I do judge a beauty show, I have a reputation to live up to”

“As do I with my comedy & ad libs” you both laugh. “But you do smell good” you then smile. Nathan assumes it’s for him but it’s not. Dieter is walking your way behind Nathan with the other judge from Nathan’s Tv show.

“Ahhh Nathan I thought you should meet the rather Dashing Dieter Bravo, he’s interested in having a new suit” Violet says. Nathan turns & sees the look on Dieters face & looks him up & down every detail taken in. Nathan shakes his hand.

“I know me needing a suit? Ironic” Dieter giggles sipping his whiskey, trying to to keep smiling at you. Violet then interjects.

“& congratulations to you, lots of wins today, you created such a wonderful show… have you watched it Dieter?” He almost chokes on his whiskey. He came to set a few days before you were a couple to watch how your show is made. He knows all too well the effort you put into making it.

“Oooh yes I have, I love it, she’s very talented with her hands…” he lingers & then shouts”… at typing” he’s blushing & you just stand there smiling, knowing exactly what he meant.

“I’m sure she is” Nathan winks “Violet let’s go mingle & Dieter you can get my information & I’ll do you a suit fitting” Nathan then shakes his hand again & then hugs you goodbye “I’ll leave you & your other half alone” your face looks a bit shocked as you pull away & look at him. “His face, your eyes & the similar styles & colours on your outfit plus that new glistening ring, I’d say you want some alone time”

“Wow Nathan no one else has clocked”

“Well they are all idiots” & he leaves & Dieter smiles at you before putting his glass down & flinging his arms around you, lifting you up & spinning you around in the air. You do a small scream. People don’t take notice this is what Dieter does to all people, he’s friends with. When your back in your feet he whispers softly.

“Congratulations to my my little miss double bafta winner” he kisses your cheek & you wish you didn’t have to hide your relationship at the moment. You would love the world to know that you are Mrs Bravo.

“Thanks Dieter, sorry you didn’t win”

“Oh but I did, the world wants to speak & be with you but only I get to do that.”

*

After dancing & networking, you leave the party. Both you & Dieter are now a little bit tipsy & not drunk. A line of limos are waiting outside, so you hold his hand & March him into the back of one of them & ask the drive to go the long way to your hotel.

“Have you had an amazing night my love?” Dieter asks as he tucks your hair behind your ear that’s come down slightly & kisses your neck. Your hand goes straight to his thigh.

“Yes Dieter, one of the best nights of my life”

“Well you deserve it”

“So do youuuuhooooo oooh Dieter” his teeth graze down your neck making you shudder with excitement.”im sorry you didn’t win though”

“Oh no I won, the world wants you for 5minutes ,i have you all to myself” you plunge one of your hands into his whispy hair before he hold you in place & you make out in the back of the limo. You know from experience that these driver keep thing’s professional & don’t over step the mark. But as you stroke his length from above his trousers, you can feel his anticipation building. He’s getting hard with each touch stroke & kiss. He wants you & the way he is sighing means he might cum in his trousers soon, if you don’t help him out.

You grab the intercom & buzz it to the driver.

“Complete disgression which will come with a very generous tip?”

“Of course just let me know when your done, traffic is a nightmare tonight so it might take a…”

“Thank you” Dieter announces & slams the intercom off as he unbuckles his belt.

“Dieter?! That was rude!” You scoff at him he likes it when you a bit moody, it’s a turn on but what’s not a turn on for Dieter. “Sorry he’s drunk” you apologise & then really turn the intercom off.

“I’m not that drunk my love, I’m at the right level” he says “& I hope you give me more than the tip”. He winks & he unzips his toruses & from the inside of his boxers out flops his massive erect penis. You lick your lips in excitement. For years you had heard girls & guys talk about how good Dieters cock was for blow jobs & he’d always said they’d been alright but the first time you took his length inside your mouth he came in seconds. Maybe it was just the idea or desperation for him to claim your mouth but he always repays the favour.

“Oooh my mouth likes to go all in baby.” You kneel on the limo floor & push your hair from your face. You spit on his leaking head. It’s angry & waiting to be welcomed for relief. You look up at him & smile. “All the way?” He stares in disbelief you’ve only done that when you were both high on lsd but you enjoyed it.

“You… you…sss…. You’re sure” he man spreads fully.

“Totally ” you’ve been stroking him for the last few exchanges & know it’s time. Down you go. Not all the way starting with the tip you want to go further down with each bob. You want him to get even more lost in desire the further you go.

“Oooh yesss, oooh fuck baby yes” he loves how your small little mouth which always is so polite, accommodates him. Your tongue lapping around it, how the saliva costs him. He grips the seat in the limo looking down as you take him further inside you.

“Fuck, I have won, you’ve not sucked anyone else tonight off” one hand has moved to his thigh, stroking it. Adding extra tension to him. His hips can’t be constrained as they start to gyrate. You know this is your cue to go deeper.

When he fills your cunt with his penis you wonder how it fits. Therefore you’re always shocked that when it hits the back of your throat that you don’t run out of air. It’s always a mess when you’re finished with him, but damn he always feels so good when you give him oral.

“Oooh baby, more, more, can you go further?” You flutter your eyes at him & nod & his hands go into your hair to encourage your bobbing. “good girl, my fucking good fucking slutty wife” he moans & his hips move & his hands go into your head too. The teasing blow job is now a face fuck. & he is grinding his teeth & snarling in desire. He holds your hair keeping you in place so you don’t Bob & he fucks further down your throat. “Eye contact baby” you reconnect as you stare at your husband. “Fuck oooh fuck” each thrust harder. Your taste buds already tasting some of him. He grips your chin in place so it doesn’t budge. He’s going so hard you’re worried about the mess you will make soon.

You gagging around him. Your nose is in his pubic hair when you reach the base each time. There is no relenting. Dieter is getting everything out in this blow job & his shirt is starting to dampen from sweat from the excitement it’s building up inside him.

“Baby I’m gonna,… gonna cum… so…so…” he growls but due to the change in his rhythm you already knew this. You’d pulled back slightly. You didn’t want to choke when he came, that had happened before, it was not a nice feeling for either of you. So he’s not fully down your throat, as his hips shudder. “Fucking fuck oooh fuck” he screeches & Dieter spills into your mouth. Funky & salty, the ropes of his seed have your taste buds standing to attention. Swallowing every drop. His eyes are closed as his pleasure is complete. He leans back on the limo seat, as you slowly let his penis go & give it a few last licks before taking a napkin to wipe it clean.

“Still tastes like a winner to me baby” you eventually state, swiping your thumb to wipe up a small bit of cum on your lips before softly & seductively licking it clean. You wait til his eyes are open before you do this. He lets out a soft giggle & sigh.

“I’ve slept with countless people who have performed oral on me & yet there’s something about your reflex & the way you slurp that always turns me on more than anyone else.” He helps you back onto the seat of the limo & redresses him bottom half.

“Before or after….”

“Oooh the first time you sucked my cock I was like oooh this, this here is next level.” He smirks rubbing your hair in a hazy state. “Everyone before me must have been idiots…”

“Actually Diets…” you interrupt “you are the only man I’ve ever performed oral on”

“What!?” He’s shocked “this is a joke right” you shake your head.

“On mine & yours life…”

“Then why me… why no other guy before me”

“Because i knew you liked it, expected it & I wanted to return the favour, knowing how legendary the rumours were about your own mouth is at pleasuring cunts”

“Wow” Dieter leans in & deeply kisses you. “Well I appreciate it every time, & I will return the favour of making your clit quiver…” his hand goes under your dress & you feel his hand reach for your knickers, but the limo then stops.

“We’re here” the intercom voice announces.

“Probably best to do this in our hotel room actually, much more room” Dieter then leave a £250 in the back of the limo. “For your discression” he says & he then drag the two of you out of the limo.

*

You are woken the next morning by a knock at your door. You ignore it at first but then the phone in the room rings. You unhappily wriggle free of Dieters grip, those long muscular arms wrapped around you, not wanting to let go. Eventually you get the phone & gasp, grabbing Dieters Jacket from last night to put on & answer the door, you don’t want to answer it naked. Your face is full of joy as you sign the security forms & take the large black & gold box back into your room. Dieter has stirred at the commotion, your excitement & you slowly pulling yourself away from him.

“Babe?” He asks half asleep as you stand at the table & open the box. His eyes light up when he can see your bum cheeks popping out the bottom of his jacket. You turn your head & smile.

“Morning sexy”

“No your the sexy one in my jacket” Dieter replys with a big stretch before his hand goes under the bed sheet to try & calm his morning erection, but with the way you look that’s not going to happen, it’s just going to have to wait a few minutes.

You stand there & lift up your 2 Baftas which are now engraved with your name show & date.

“They are here,” you put one back in the box as they are both heavy & slide onto the end of the bed & do the thing you’ve always wanted to do if you ever got your hand on one, use it as a face mask. Both you & Dieter laugh at this. Dieter leans to his bedside table & takes a snap of you on his phone.

“For insta later baby”he says with a wink.

“But I’m all but naked Dieter?”

“You don’t need to hide your body beautiful” he’s taken the bafta from you to look at it but he’s clearly distracted. “What time is your tv show press shoot this afternoon?” He asks as he tussles his hair.

“4pm why?”

“Good” he kicks off the bed sheet showing he’s completely naked & aroused, & put the bafta on the bedside table. “We didn’t celebrate enough last night” he pulls you fully onto the bed so that you’re on top of him.

“Who ever said we did?” You smirk leaning your head to his for a sensual kiss. Your hands running through that crazy untamed fluffy hair.

“Oooh sweetheart” the words escape his lips as both your eyes close as the intense kiss continues. His hands go under the jacket caressing your body, making sure you’re in the right place for pleasure to begin. “My winner, my winner at everything” he slowly puts his hand on your behind & lowers you onto his meaty length, the stretch as always extraordinary. He’s so big & you gasp. He lightly pushes his hands into your bum so you start to rock down onto him, pleasure already spreading through your veins, pumping your blood. His hands after a few motions move to help you undo the few jacket buttons you have as he looks up at you as you both slide it from your body, tossing it off the bed.

“You’re so beautiful baby” he moans, his hips already at a good rhythm. He looks up at you as you ride him. Your pelvis rolling to meet his thrusts, as that special place is starting to be hit. His hands grip your hips. Finger marks will be there for a while after this is over. You trail your hand down your body, eventually stopping at your clit, stroking starts slowly but then gets more vigorous. Dieter would usually do this by he’s in a trace as you make oooh fuck noises, & your spare hand squeeze a nipple.

“Fuck Dieter oooh fuck”

“Yea baby like that, I like that, so fucking good” he pants back. “Why is your cunt so addictive?” He’s moving faster you know what he wants.

“Because your the one fucking it” you whine back your hands now on his chest, those hairs so fine but so nice to run your hands through. It gives you both goosebumps.

You then hoover over him & spread your legs a little more knowing full well what will happen when you kiss him next. He slows slightly his body knows it too.

“Fuck my pussy baby” you hold his face & lick it & he grabs your bum firmly. Your lips connect for a really exceptional kiss full of lust, tongues dancing together, faces almost melting into each other. But that’s all he needs. He thrusts, & pumps & is relentless. Hitting the spot every thrust, the motion of him pounding your cunt, has you screeching quickly.

“Oooohhhh fuck fuck fuck oooh yes yes yesssss fuck oooh fuck” are the only words you can say, as your body shakes as you approach your orgasm.

“Best cunt, my cunt” he crys as he bites your bottom lip not wanting your lips to be apart. “Fucking this tight little pussy til you can’t take me baby”

Your sweating & moaning & the blood inside you is boiling with this feverish sex you are having. You grip the pillow as he gently puts his hand around your throat.

“Dont cum yet baby” he asks but you can tell from the creaking bed & the sloppy sensation as he keeps sliding within you, that he knows you can’t hold it for too long. “Tell me baby, what are you”

“A winner”

“No”

“A slut”

“No”

“The best sex of your life”

“Erm… I was after something else”

“Your cum hungry wife” you whine & then open your eyes as his grip around your neck gets tighter.

“That’s it baby, now you can cum mrs Bravo”

“Dieter!!!!!! Ooooh fuck” you clamp the hardest you ever had, your release sends shives to all your never endings as you cum & your body stutters.

“Damn oooh fuck oooh shit ooooh fuckkkkk” Dieter follows suit, filling you up. Your walls coated in his seed a few thrusts later. Satisfying you both. Your sweat drips onto him as you lay on top of him as your softly take him out of you & you hold each other close. You can feel everything drip out of you onto him but neither of you care about the mess after that incredible spontaneous session.

“So” you eventually whisper when you can make a noise, & lift your head. “I’m the best sex of your life?” Dieter blushes.

“Well when you make me lose control, yes you are” he smirks & boops your nose.

“Hmmm it’s a shame you’re not mine…” you say with a pause waiting for a reaction, you both no that no man has got you off as many times as Dieter in the few months you’ve had sex. But he doesn’t for one instant believe you, his happy little face gives you some side eye. “Of course you’re the best sex of my life Diets & you know I am a very good wife”

“Do you think bafta would hand out an award for best sex?” he asks

“No they aren’t coming to watch us”

You say sternly, Dieters had several sex tapes leak.

“Of course not but we’d win hands down baby” he jokes & you rest your head on him again.

“Do you think that’s the only way you’d win a bafta?” You ask

“Nah I’ve got everything I could ever want to win, right here & turns out I didn’t need a prize to validate how much I’m in love with you” his kiss is soft & he rolls on top of you for a much more sensual round, before you have to come to the realisation that your world has changed so much in not just the last 24 hours but the last few weeks & months since you finally got your amazing husband.

[kylieswift31]

Lucky

Beginning to think it’s time to branch out from listening to just Taylor Swift because I just listened to ‘lucky’ by Halsey for the first time and I’ve never heard anything so incredibly validating.

I've been chronically ill for over six years now with ME/CFS and I had settled into a state of plateau where my symptoms were fairly manageable. Earlier this year with a few big live events outside of my control, I entered into my biggest relapse since 2021 and became bed bound again. Listening to Taylor Swift became my lifeline and the online community that came with that has helped ease some of the isolation that comes with being too unwell to leave the house.

Here's a glimpse into why Halsey's song 'lucky' has resonated with my experience with a chronic illness.

"I am so lucky"

Variants of this comment are so often thrown around by friends and family when they hear that I stay at home all day. It's something they would love to be able to do, but show no consideration for the chronic pain and fatigue I experience while staying home that takes up most of my day.

"Everybody, get in line to meet the girl who flew too high. Who does it all just to be liked by strangers that she met online."

I had my first big relapse during the Victorian lockdowns when everyone was home at the same time. This time around it feels like everyone's moved on and I'm stuck here all alone. When I felt completely isolated from the outside world I began watching the eras tour on grainy live streams, and then joining this online community and contributing my own thoughts became integral to feeling like I was a little less alone.

"Did it all to be included, my self-loathing so deep-rooted. Inner child that's unrecruited, truth is I'm not suited for it."

I spent years trying to push through the pain to attend events in an attempt to fit in, just to end up worse off and in more pain than ever. Having to choose between what's best for my physical health and mental health is an impossible decision. Being able to leave the house once a week was the most I could manage without overdoing it.

"When I die, I won't have time to spend my money. But I hope that you still love me."

Everyone has an opinion when you get sick. And then everyone has an opinion when you don't get better. They're also going to have an opinion when you die. It's hard to believe the positive opinions when the negative ones are so loud.

"'Cause I'm so lucky, I'm a star. But I cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart, thinkin' "If there's nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?""

The references to the early 2000's in this song add a layer of familiarity to the present day. I feel like I'm sitting on my bedroom floor listening to Britney Spears again and wondering what the future holds. Who will I be when I grow up? When the nostalgic memories begin to fade and the pain of the present day begins to seep back in.

"Why they come? Why they come? Why they come? Why they come?"

If you don't see how much pain I'm in, then why do I still feel it? If I'm in chronic pain and no one acknowledges it, then why does it hurt so much?

"And why she losing so much weight? I heard it's from the drugs she ate."

When pain and fatigue take over your life, just being able to eat is a feat in itself. All the "but have you tried..." comments don't take into account how little you have left to invest time, money and energy into the latest craze promising a (snake oil) cure.

"And I feel her, but I can't relate. 'Cause I'd never end up in that state."

When you get sick you go to the doctor and they make you better, right? It doesn't always work out that way, especially for women. Often just getting a diagnosis is a challenge. It's taken a lot of strength to acknowledge that I'm unlikely to recover. For the people in my life to acknowledge that too would require them recognising that the doctors don't have the answers for everything.

"A girl like that is a mother, must be tough. A problem child, I was rough."

Not being able to keep up with the typical activities other families participate in outside of school affects my ability to relate to the experiences of parenthood when I'm confronted with hearing about how much I'm missing out on. The gap between my lifestyle and theirs is too immense to feel anything other than jealousy right now.

"But what do you do with a difficult grownup?"

Ugh. Most of the time coping mechanisms are a necessity. I'm sure I don't have to remind you what the alternative is? It's incredibly invalidating when the majority of the judgemental comments I hear are a criticism of the small things I choose to do on my good days.

"When I die, I won't have time to spend my money. But I hope that you still love me."

At some point we need to take a step back and let other people make their own mistakes. On the worst days it feels like I'm one more bad day away from giving up. Having something positive to focus on (like the eras tour) gives me something to look forward to each week.

"'Cause I'm so lucky, I'm a star. But I cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart, thinkin' "If there's nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?"

When you get sick and don't get better it feels like everyone's comparing your condition to the worst case scenario. Exclaiming that "at least it's not cancer!" and how you're so lucky because you're not going to die from it, while ignoring how the alternative path to death has alarmingly high rates within the community.

"I shaved my head four times because I wanted to, and then I did it one more time ‘cause i got sick."

I shaved my hair off a few years ago because I'd always wanted to try it, but I shaved it off again when I relapsed because I needed to. Last time I was bed bound I struggled to wash my hair. This time I was proactive and shaved it off so it was one less hurdle to deal with. Making choices like this proactively was empowering.

"And I thought I changed so much, nobody would notice it, and no one did."

Having to stay home and not leave the house at all has been a mammoth change for me, but to everyone else nothing has changed. When nobody sees me on my worst days, they assume my good days are the norm and not the exception.

"And I left the doctor’s office full of tears"

I stopped going to the doctors because I was crying in the car on the way home after every single appointment. After struggling to even get a diagnosis they say there's nothing else they can do to help, when they didn't do anything to help in the first place. Having a condition with no approved treatment doesn’t help. Slowly I managed on my own and made progress without the extra stress.

"Became a single mom at my premiere, and I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year, and that’s the biggest lie of my career."

It feels like all I do is deflect questions about my life to avoid the negative comments and mask the pain. When I do try and share my experiences I'm met with pity or told to try harder. No wonder the challenges I face feel invisible.

"But I’m so lucky, I’m a star, and I cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart, thinkin’, if there’s nothin’ missin’ in my life, then why do these tears come at night."

What most people don't understand is that ME/CFS is ranked as having one of the lowest quality of life scores. Even the milder categories are incredibly debilitating. If I'm so lucky, why does it feel like the world has moved on without me and I'm left behind?

"I’m so lucky, I’m a star, but I cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart, thinkin’, if there’s nothin’ missin’ in my life, then why do these tears come at night."

Going to be listening to this song on repeat for a while. Art like this is integral to counter the negativity and make the hard days a little less invisible.

"She’s so lucky, she’s so lucky, she’s so lucky, she’s so, haven’t you heard."

Everyone has their own battles to face. You never know when you’re interacting with someone who’s trying to hold it together while hanging on by a thread.

To conclude I’ll leave you with my favourite quote from the folklore long pond studio session x

"No one pats them on the back, but every day they are actively fighting something. But there are so many days that nobody gives them credit for that. And so how often must someone who's in that sort of internal struggle must want to say to everyone in the room, you have no idea how close I am to going back to a dark place. Or you have no idea how hard it is to get to the point where you guys think is still shitty."

-Taylor Swift and Jack Antanoff

[oldbutnotyetwise]

Everyday Heroes

       

     So I’ve been thinking of Everyday Heroes a bit lately.  Not the heroes who are awarded medals, or get public recognition for whatever they did, or my least favourite of all, the Social Media Hero more interested in posting their good deeds to satisfy their own demented need for attention.  I’m talking about the heroes among us, the everyday people that we might not give a second glance to in passing.  People we might see everyday but have no idea about their lives as unrecognized heroes.  Think about that for a moment, can you think of anyone who might be like that in your life?  While you are pondering that, let me tell you that I have many heroes in my life, I would like to tell you about a few of them.  

     I have always been rather introverted, in fact I often refer to myself as an outgoing introvert, which I suppose sounds strange but in my case is accurate.  I had always wanted to work at my skills as a wordsmith, but on my own I was floundering.  One day I saw that the Powassan Library had a Writing Group and so I thought I would stretch my comfort zone and attend their next meeting.  Although I found it intimidating and stressful, I recognized that I needed this push to get me to write.  So every other Saturday at 10:00 I showed up, in time I got comfortable and tried my best to assemble my random thoughts into some kind of order that might be tolerable to read and just maybe give people a few things to ponder.  We are an eclectic group of people who support, encourage and help each other do something we all love.  Although we would all probably write without the group, for myself it is belonging to this group that pushes me to write, that helped me revive a blog that had long ago grown stagnant.  Even after I was forced to move away they still let me attend via Zoom.  This group was started by Faye, she is the glue that holds us together.  Now I know she would brush it off suggesting it’s no big deal, but it is a big deal to me.  If she had not started this group I would have missed out on an incredible gift, a gift that has given me purpose and so much joy as my world collapsed around me.  Faye is one of my Everyday Heroes.

     When Robin and I made our first visit to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, it was a pretty overwhelming day.  First they did a bunch of tests to confirm the diagnosis before sending us to the far end of the hospital where the ALS Clinic is located.  We sat there in the hallway looking at the club I have just joined, the one no one wants to join.  Looking around at the others waiting, knowing this is a preview of what is ahead for us, these broken people and their exhausted caretakers, and my head was just spinning.  We eventually are placed in a room where a stream of doctors, specialists and research people come and go, the day was all such a blur.  On that first day, and every visit we made to Sunnybrook there was this one person who stood out, far above the rest.  Brianna couldn’t make me better, no one could, but Brianna could help make life more bearable, and she repeatedly did.  She is my Occupational Therapist.   She was the one who in the coming months would repeatedly help me get the equipment I needed to survive and adapt to the steady decline.  It’s not just that she is so incredible at what she does, or that she is so efficient at managing so many different things at the same time, it was her compassion and empathy.  Of all the people at that ALS Clinic, she was the one that calmed our frayed nerves, she was the one who we knew cared, was truly on our side, the one we could laugh and joke with despite the dire situation.  I haven’t seen her for months, and I won’t ever see her again, but I hope she knows that she made a difference, that she had an impact on my life, and that she is one of my everyday heroes.

     Robin and I were doing our best to navigate a complicated system involving our ALS Clinic, numerous different doctors and specialists, drug companies, Insurance companies, medical equipment supply companies, Community Care with all their services, ALS Society, and numerous other organizations.  It was hard to keep track and just generally overwhelming.  Then one day we met my Killer Blonde, she was one of the two Assessors I needed to be approved by for MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying). Although she certainly didn’t have to, she agreed to take me on as a patient in her Palliative Care Practice.  She is a kind gentle soul who immediately put us at ease, despite the nature of our first meeting.  She visits with us every two weeks for an hour, actually listens to our challenges and helps us to overcome whatever we are struggling with.  She doesn’t claim to know everything but if she doesn’t know, she does find out the answer and gets back to us.  She has laughed with us, and she has cried with us. We know without a doubt that she genuinely cares and you can’t imagine the amount of comfort that brings to us as we struggle through each day.  I’m not sure how she does the work she does, caring as much as she does while caring for the dying.  There are no happy outcomes in her work,  but she can help people to a kinder, gentler death, and that is a pretty noble profession.  Dr. Celine is one of my Everyday Heroes.

     When you are diagnosed with ALS you are given exclusive membership in this elite club, a club no one wants to join, but once in, you find yourself surrounded by others in similar circumstances who understand like others not afflicted with this disease can not.  You will see people who fight this disease by advocating for the rest of us, by fundraising millions of dollars hoping to find a cure, or maybe by just offering that helping hand to others.  Some of my ALS friends have helped, guided, supported, listened, inspired and just made this intolerable journey a little more tolerable.  My fellow ALS People, you are my Everyday Heroes, thank you for helping me make it through the dark days.

     Families that include someone with ALS, well… they know things other families don’t know.  Things they can only learn through walking through the hell that ALS brings when it moves in with you.  They watch as their PALS (Person with ALS) dies bit by bit.  They watch their dreams disappear, sometimes they watch their career suddenly end as they stay home to care for their loved one.  Their once carefree life full of possibilities is now just full of medical equipment, medication, expensive bills and lost hope.  It’s hard watching the person you love die.  The caretakers are so completely exhausted struggling to go on, longing for peace and rest but knowing that only comes after their loved one dies, and that’s a high price for peace and rest.  The family members who care for their loved ones, they are my Everyday Heroes.

     I would like you to think about what that would be like to have strangers in your home, helping you get dressed, bathed and toileted.  ALS, besides robbing you of a functioning body, also steals every shred of dignity you have.  We presently accept 3 hours a week of help from a PSW, that lets Robin get out and have lunch with a friend, or maybe grab some groceries.  We are entitled to ninety hours a month of care.  Due to the many little crises that now come up every day Robin can no longer leave me on my own for very long, too many things can go wrong.  The reason I mention this is because my sweet Robin continues to do everything, the work of so many.  I assure you she has never worked so hard in her life, and that is saying a lot considering she was once the mother of four children under six years old.  She does this because she loves me, she does this to spare me having all these indignities to me being done by strangers.  What does Love look like?  Love looks like my precious Robin.  She is my very favourite Everyday Hero.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

In the Anglophone world, the intertwined issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism are connected in public memory obsessively, and almost solely, to the Holocaust. Occasionally, perhaps, people also mention the blood libels of the Middle Ages, or the pogroms of Eastern Europe.

The Dreyfus Affair, however, is almost entirely forgotten. It is not a moment revisited in movies or television shows. Politicians do not reference it; there are no public museums in its memory; it is not a part of school curriculum. Even Jewish people hardly discuss it. I doubt one in ten Americans, of any ethnicity or religion, could even tell you vaguely who Alfred Dreyfus was. The disappearance of Dreyfus memory is a real loss. That’s not because we need to remember antisemitism. We do, as I’ve mentioned, remember the Holocaust. The Dreyfus Affair, though, was a victory over antisemitism, and a victory particularly for the diaspora, in a way that World War II was not. The Holocaust has largely been interpreted as an object lesson in the untenability of the diaspora, and the necessity of a Zionist Jewish ethnonationalism. The outcome of Dreyfus’ story is considerably more ambivalent. As such, it is worth revisiting at a moment when Zionism is busily and horrifically delegitimizing itself.

The Affair

Since, the outlines of the Dreyfus Affair are probably little known to readers, it’s worth covering them briefly. My discussion here, and throughout the essay, is mostly based on Maurice Samuels new excellent biography/history, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man At the Center of the Affair, part of the Jewish Lives series. During the French Revolution, France put into practice its new ideals of liberty and equality by, among other things, making Jewish people full citizens of the republic. After legislation in 1791, Jews were suddenly—for the first time in any European country—able to live where they wished, attend the best schools, and work in every profession. The results were immediate and dramatic. Jews made rapid gains in political and economic life; some became quite wealthy and influential.

Among those wealthy Jews was the Dreyfus family. Alfred Dreyfus, born 1859, grew up, like most French Jews, with a passionate commitment to the French nation and to the principles of equality which had liberated them. Determined to serve his country, Dreyfus attended the French military academy. He excelled and became arguably the first Jewish officer ever on the General Staff. His future seemed bright. And then, it all fell apart. In 1894, the French army discovered that there was a traitor on the General Staff who had been passing top secret information to the Germans. Dreyfus was accused of treason. The evidence against him was weak to nonexistent; his handwriting was said to match that on the recovered documents, even though it obviously did not. Nonetheless, he was arrested, tried in a sham military trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was sent to the horrific penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He endured tortures almost certainly intended to kill him. His wife, contrary to law, was not allowed to accompany him.   Dreyfus was singled out because he was Jewish. The generals, once they had begun down the path of antisemitism, decided they could not turn back without undermining respect for the military. They forged more evidence, and stonewalled investigations as long as possible.

The Affair polarized sentiment in France, both on Dreyfus and on the place of Jews in French society. Liberal intellectuals like Émile Zola who believed in the Republic and a forward-looking, cosmopolitan, free and equal France sided with Dreyfus and demanded a new trial. The Catholic Church, the military, antisemites, and proto-Vichyites insisted that Dreyfus was guilty and should be punished—or, really, insisted that as a Jew he should be punished whether he was guilty or not. The hatred of Jews erupted into antisemitic riots throughout the country; Jews were beaten, their homes burned, their businesses destroyed. Several Jewish people were killed in Algiers, where there were violence against Jews occurred almost daily in 1898.   Dreyfus was brought back for a new trial in 1899; he was convicted again despite overwhelming evidence in his favor, and eventually exonerated completely in 1906. He was restored to the rank of Major, and served with distinction in World War I. He died in 1935. Jewish people in France still leave stones on his grave.

[...] It wasn’t just Dreyfus and Jewish people who fought for Dreyfus though. The Affair energized every corner of the left, calling them almost uniformly to their best selves. Zola, for example, believed in a number of antisemitic stereotypes at the beginning of the Affair; his first article on the case argued that Jewish people had an innate talent for making money. From that inauspicious beginning he quickly became one of the most passionate gentile opponents of antisemitism in history; his famous 1898 pamphlet J’accuse was a devastating denunciation of the military coverup intended to force a number of generals to sue for libel. They did, and Zola was forced to flee the country—but not before opening the case again and ensuring Dreyfus’ retrial.

The political left in France was also, initially, wary of standing with Dreyfus because of antisemitism. For many socialists, Jewish people symbolized the banking industry and the upper class. Dreyfus, a wealthy Jew serving in the military, seemed the wrong man to rally working class parties. But eventually Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, and others in his party, recognized that Dreyfus had become the man, and the issue, on which Catholic monarchist and capitalist forces had decided to fight for France’s soul. In 1898 Jaurès gave a speech in which he denounced antisemitism as a threat to France; shortly thereafter he published a book defending Dreyfus and presenting the Affair as a matter of socialist solidarity. Some on the left refused to join Jaurès, and the Socialists split. But as Samuels’ biography of Dreyfus notes, “Jaurès helped ensure that a large part of the political left in France would align itself with republican values and against antisemitism for decades to come.”

Noah Berlatsky wrote in his Everything Is Horrible Substack about how the Dreyfus Affair served as a victory against fascism and antisemitism, and how it gave the left a tool to fight back against oppression.

[paimonial-rage]

follow the wind ii- kazuha

ship: kazuha x reader

synopsis: in which he finally relents

notes: sequel to follow the wind i; please read the prequel before this fic

Hey First!

It’s been a while! I’m not sure if you remember me, but I’m the one that visited with Kazu that one time, Tomo! I was the one that suggested to auntie that she start roasting her seaweed as a snack. Kazu told me you have a penchant for glaring, but man, I thought you were going to burn a hole through me when we first met! I was so sure you hated me that I really didn’t expect you to cry the day we left! Oh, I mean, that something would “fly into your eye” the exact moment we headed out.

Before you start worrying, Kazu is alright. While the Vision Hunt Decree caught us all by surprise, we both have found places to shelter us for the time being. Kazu has been worried about you two, though he’s trying his best not to show it. I kept telling him to visit, but he doesn’t want to put you both at risk.

Speaking of which, can I be honest with you a bit? Back on that trip I first met you on the night Kazu turned in early, you mentioned you didn’t think he cared much about you. That he still saw you as an annoying kid that attended his family’s dojo. I think deep down you know that isn’t true. Kazu may keep his distance (which I told him is stupid), but he cares about you more than you’ll ever know. Everyone in his life comes and goes, but he keeps returning to you. Just think a bit about what that means, okay?

Anyway, how has it been in the city? I’ve heard there’s been much unrest. A few people even lost their lives trying to protect their visions. Are you able to get food? The Tenryou Commission thugs aren’t making things difficult for you two, right? If things get too bad, visit the Yashiro Commission. Give them my name and they’ll take care of you both.

Now you must be wondering why I’ve written you. Well, I may have challenged someone to a foolish duel. If things go south, I will need you to do something for me. If I lose, Kazuha will be in danger. He will be deep within enemy territory. I need someone to lead him out. However, if you help me, you and your mother will be put in danger as well. If that’s too much of a risk, burn this letter now. If not, here’s what I need you to do…

—-

The severed blade clattered to the stone floor of Tenshukaku as the dimming vision of his dear friend rolled to a stop a few feet away. He was too late. The duel was over and the divine punishment was dutifully executed. He should feel fine with it. This is what Tomo wanted. One does not question where the wind leads, but accepts its will with grace. And yet… why did it feel so wrong?

His body reacted before his mind did, and before he knew it, he was fleeing with his friend’s dull vision in hand. Rain whipped through his hair as he raced down the hills surrounding Inazuma City. He had no clue what exactly he was doing or where he was going, though in the back of his mind, he was thankful for the archon’s blessing of an anemo vision. The Shogunate soldiers were at least twenty paces behind him, and if he kept it up, it wouldn’t be long until he was in the clear.

At least that’s what he thought until the thundering boom of the taiko drums reverberated from behind. Each strike was like a heartbeat counting down to his demise. And only to solidify that premonition was the sight of quickly gathering soldiers at the entrance of the city. But when he leapt over the water wheel in an attempt to change course, something rammed him and backwards he fell into the water.

Panic overtook him when arms pulled him under the walkway. His flailing and desperation to reach for his sword only made the culprit’s grip tighter. It was only when the soft shushing over the howling of the wind met his ears. Then came his name once, then twice. The familiarity within it willed his muscles to still before his mind could, and the grip holding him relaxed. But just as he began to calm, another emotion took its place.

He spun around in your grasp to clamp his hands around your shoulders. Your eyes widened in shock at the abruptness of his movements and you looked different than usual, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about those things.

“First, why– what in the world are you doing here!?” He hissed. “How did you even– do you realize how dangerous this is!?”

He couldn’t blame you for simply gaping at him for a few moments. Never before had he snapped at you like this, but it didn’t take you long to push him back, hands shaking in fury.

“Do you!?” You growled back, your hands gripping his collar tightly. “Why did you come back here? Who cares if your friend made some stupid duel before the Shogun, don’t you realize how dangerous Inazuma City is right now? Do you want to be killed too, Kazuha!?”

Your voice cracked as your last sentence left your lips. You turned away, gritting your teeth. So you knew. You knew what happened to Tomo.

“You’re so stupid, the both of you.”

He reached out to you before he could stop himself and drew you close. You were always such a crybaby. You were the only person that would shed tears over someone you only met once.

“I’m sorry,” he replied.

Though you stiffened at his admittance, you soon melted against him as a sob tore itself from your lips. How many times did he do this to you, he wondered. Made you cry? All you ever wanted was to keep the things and people you loved safe, but he couldn’t do that for you. How hard you tried chasing after him, but he refused to let you stay by his side. It was a wonder why you kept trying even after all of these years.

“Did you see where he went? Scope the area!”

You both froze at the sound of voices and footsteps overhead. Pressed against each other, you both didn’t even dare so as to breathe until they left.

You pulled back and clasped your hands over his shoulders.

“You must stay here, okay? Only leave when night falls. Head to the beach outside of Kondo Village. Someone will be waiting for you there.”

He frowned.

“What do you–”

Then he finally noticed it. It wasn’t the reflection of the water, your hair was dyed white. And your clothes. Were they the set of his your mother always kept on hand? But you pulled back before he could think anymore.

“Remember, Kondo Village tonight. They’ll keep you safe.”

With each word, you backed out a step into the opening. But his hand took yours.

“What are you talking about!? You can’t. It’s dangerous.”

But you smiled.

“It’ll be okay. Tomo planned this out. I’ll be fine.”

He shook his head.

“No, I can’t. I can’t let you–”

But you pulled your hand from his.

“No. I will do this for you. You can’t stop me.”

Your fiery eyes pierced through him, freezing him still. He hated them in that moment. You were right. Your heart was set. If he stopped you now, he would dishonor your resolve. He’d ruin any last shred of loyalty you had for him. But…

He looked away, gritting his teeth at the bitter distaste upon his tongue. How long had he tried stopping you from following in his footsteps? How long had he tried to keep you safe? You were the only thing in his life that stayed the same. You were the only thing he could come home to. But the control he had over you held no longer. You were to be risking your life for him whether he wanted you to or not.

Whether he may lose two friends within a single day or not.

He didn’t want to say it.

“Be safe.”

But he had to.

“Please.”

Guilt crawled in his chest at the way your eyes blown wide toward his willingness to relent. How many times did he say no to you that you had it set in your mind his answer would be the same? But the expression that took hold next wasn’t resentment, nor bitterness as he expected. No, for what seemed like the first time in his life, you were smiling.

He saw it in your eyes—the relief, the joy, the giddiness. For the first time in your life, he accepted you to stand at his side. For the first time in your life, he let you be his equal. He wasn’t rejecting you, but relying on you to keep him safe. And your heart couldn’t take it. He always knew it. You loved him so much.

So he couldn’t stop it, not when you stepped close, not when you wrapped your arms around his neck, not when you kissed him so sweetly. You couldn’t get enough, and neither could he. But you both knew you couldn’t delay any longer. So when you finally pulled back and rested your forehead against his, you hugged him close.

“Be safe, okay? I’ll see you again, I promise.”

And then you pulled away and ran off, for the first time, from him.

[frogtossing]

i had such an amazing time in Cologne yesterday… i feel extremely hungover but it’s was so worth it.

it was so so nice to hang out with @echoes-of-mia again, you’re literally the chillest person ever irl and it was so fun to experience the concert with you :D 🫶

i met so many cool people while queueing (like the lovely @mogoce-nocoj who i got to talk with some more after the concert :D (even if i might have been a bit quiet, i was still processing the concert :P)), literally the best queue experience i’ve had compared to the other concerts i’ve been to (which were also nice!!! but i was a bit too shy to engage with people so i missed out a bit on the community aspect of queueing :<). i got so many cute bracelets and in turn got to give out a couple of mine :3. and i got some fucking beautiful stickers!!! the insanely pretty Kris sticker by the talented @autoantonyms and the stunning ASTP + Joker Out Köln stickers by @/vem.da.kris on Instagram!!!! so sad that the Dopamin fan project didn’t work out :( i really hoped they’d played it!!!

the concert itself was so so fun. before the show started, someone handed me those slay pose glasses and they’re so fucking cool??? and i also hastily traded some more bracelets inbetween the openers :D

also, wow, the stage design by @as-artrat-racik was so fucking beautiful in real life. i was genuinely floored by it!!!! and once the concert started, he first thing i noticed was everybody’s hair???? a bit random but Bojan’s hair looked super nice (like the length it’s at atm???) and omg, Nace mullet real????? + it’s impressive how long Kris’ hair has gotten again, compared to the last time i saw him on stage :0.

and i’m so glad i decided to abstain from listening to any recordings of any of the new songs because let me tell you, experiencing Šta Bih Ja live for the first time was a fucking religious experience. that song fucks so hard i need it injected into my veins IMMEDIATELY. and i love how they were peer pressured by the crowd to play Schlager even if it wasn’t planned LMAO. and it was such a pleasant surprise too! such a fun song which really reminded me a lot of some of Arctic Monkey’s calmer songs (like Mad Sounds). showed my recording of it to my mom earlier today and she said it might be her new favorite of theirs and that i should tell her once it’s out haha.

i love the incorporation of a keyboard in their shows now!!! Metulji with Jan on the keyboard was so nice, as was Everybody’s Waiting!! and i gotta say, i’m not a fan of EW but hearing it live was so so nice. i loved the staging of it all so much??? with it starting off by Bojan being all alone on stage, playing the keyboard and then slowly the others join him.. it was so awesome!!! never thought it would hit so differently live :0

the UM karaoke was so much fun and i heard so many lovely voices but i lost complete track of Bojan at some point 😭 he just vanished lmao.. also Sector 5 walked right past me??? i didn’t realize who they were at first and i just went ‘wait a sec those people look familiar’, so that was fun HAHA.

i got some merch after the concert and whew, that was maybe the most stressful part of the concert. poor Vita was the only one working at the merch stand and it was obvious that she was a bit stressed by the masses of people flocking to it :(. i love the shirt i got, even if i wanted to by the black tour shirt at first :D

i wish i could have given Nace the bracelet i made for him all the way back in June/July of last year (when i wasn’t even sure if id ever get to see JO live :’3) but it’s okay, ill be taking it as in excuse to see them live once again if i get the chance to 💪 (ill be earning my own money soon so that means i might be able to attend international gigs as well :D!) who knows what the future holds!

TLDR; I had an extremely fun time, Joker Out are so worth it to see live and there are so many amazing and talented fans out there, it blows me away every time. i’m really happy to be a part of this fandom <3

[theonethatyaks93]

Hi everyone!! I’m not dead, I’m back!! I apologize for the lack of posts recently; I was taking a break. But now, I’m ready to make regular posts again. But before we get back to our regularly scheduled programming, I have some exciting news! Last night, I attended both performances of Animaniacs in Concert!!! I finally got the opportunity to see this after two years of wanting and wishing. I was so excited!! Both shows were absolutely amazing and there were so many incredible songs, both recognizable and unreleased. I also laughed so hard that I got a minor headache. But it was worth it! I had the time of my life and it was so cool to see the number of fans who also love this show. So many people were wearing t-shirts or carrying the Animaniacs Loungefly backpack around. There were even some younger fans there and that was so awesome. I, of course, went all out, wearing an Animaniacs t-shirt, Pinky and The Brain leggings, a Pinky and The Brain sweatshirt, Pinky and Brain socks, my own Animaniacs backpack, and my cool Nike Air Force Ones which I’ve christened my “space shoes.” I got to sit in the third and second row at the venue (which I’ve been to many times) and I cheered and clapped as loud as I could. The talent here was unbelievable. Rob was incredible and I can’t believe he can sing this good. He is truly my inspiration. Randy was amazingly talented and it was great to finally see him. I was ecstatic when Maurice came on stage since I’ve never seen him in person before. The real Pinky and Brain were right in front of me!!! Ahhhhhh!!! This show was not only entertaining and hilarious, but I also learned a few new things and got to hear a few songs I’ve never heard before (I can’t get that song about things getting smaller out of my head!). Even my parents, who aren’t as into the show as I am, had a great time. Seriously, whenever they come back, I’m buying tickets pronto! This was incredible and I loved it so much. However, the best part of this experience would come before and after each show.

(This is kind of a real name reveal so surprise!!)

I met both Rob and Maurice not just once, but twice!!! OMG!! This has been a dream of mine for a long time and it’s come true. I hope I can meet them again soon! So, I’m going to get into a little story about what happened and what has happened in the past few months. Back in June of 2022, I got a surprise Cameo message from Rob, which made my entire summer! I actually started crying when I got the surprise and I thought that my dream of meeting him would never come true. I mean, he did respond to a few of my questions on Instagram Live back in October of 2022 (I stayed on for four hours!) but I really wanted to meet him. Thankfully, I got my wish when for an early Christmas present from my parents, I got to meet and talk to Rob for over an hour on Cameo. It was a great experience and my parents enjoyed it, too. I still wanted to meet him in-person, but this was close enough. And then, Animaniacs in Concert came around. I got tickets to both shows as a Christmas present back in December and I expected just to have a fun time. I did not expect to meet both Rob and Maurice twice! I met Rob before the first show. My mom pointed him out just walking into the lobby and I, of course, rushed over to him. It took a minute, but he did remember me and my family from the Cameo. We took some pictures and he was just the sweetest person you’ll ever meet. We even hugged! I was so excited and I was even shaking a little. After my family went home for an hour after the first show, we came back and though I’d seen it before, I was still excited. And then, when we were pulling into the parking lot, we saw Maurice walking down the street!!! We rushed to park and we got to meet him! I was so ecstatic! He was really nice and I got some pictures with him. It was an honor!! After the second show, my family waited so we could maybe meet Rob and Maurice and get them to sign my book (Which was in fact Rob’s book, Voice Lessons). We were about to leave when my mom said that they were just hanging out in the auditorium. We rushed in there and waited a few minutes. Rob even remembered my name! Eeeeeeeeeeeee! We got to meet him again and the Maurice showed up and joined us! They both were the sweetest things and they both signed my book! We got some pictures and I even got to show some of my impressions to them. They liked my voices especially when I did both Yakko and Pinky. Some people were even surprised! I told them how much Pinky and Brain meant to me and it was so cool of them. They were so sweet and nice. I was so excited and I didn’t want to leave. It was a true honor and of course, I hugged Rob goodbye. I hope I can see them again, maybe for a convention. It was a dream come true and I’ll never forget it.

So, yeah. All that happened in the span of about 8 hours. It was crazy and I’m actually still processing it currently. My dream came true and I had so much fun! I hope to see both Rob and Maurice again and maybe, Animaniacs in Concert will come around. Alright, that was my experience! It was so amazing and I couldn’t recommend it more. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to regular posting either tomorrow or the next day! Thank you guys for sticking with me!!

[joels6string]

More Than My Father's Son

Joel Miller x f!OC

Chapter 12 - My Brother Joel

Summary: Tommy and Joel head on the road for a doomed mission to find you in the Utah wilderness, dead, alive, or infected.

Rating: E

Word Count: 3.6k

Content: NSFW, high levels of violence normal to the TLOU world, angst, fluff, miscommunication trope (it’s Joel Miller…), slow burn, Joel’s traumatic childhood, getting together, smut, canon divergence after SLC, fix it fic

“Maybe you should have told her! Maybe if you didn’t fuckin’ lie to her she never woulda left! You ever imagine that, Joel? What your life could be like if you were honest for once? You’d be wakin’ up to her in your damn bed instead of being out here in mourning!”

Chapter 11 || Series Masterlist

My brother is many things. 

He’s played as many roles as there is, taking each one onto a pair of shoulders that should have buckled from the pressure years ago. I’ve seen him through the hardest days of his life. The high school graduation pop couldn’t be bothered to attend. The day he found out he was gonna be a daddy before he could legally drink a beer. He called me when Rebecca left him with nothing but a note, Sarah still tucked up in a crib alone in that shit-hole apartment he scrounged over three jobs to keep. He was crying that day, not for the loss of the woman he’d made his wife outta nothing but obligation,  but for the little blonde-haired girl nestled fast asleep against his chest. See, he didn’t think he could raise her. Said he wasn’t fit for it. But I knew better. He raised me, and I think I turned out all right. 

And raise her he did. That girl lived the best life he could give her, he didn’t care what it cost. He built a business, bought a house, nurtured a daughter that he swore could save the world one day, and I bet she would have. He never complained. Sure, about not having money sometimes, or losing jobs to the bigger guys, but he never wanted anything different, he didn’t wish for something else. 

When Sarah died, so did he. Who could blame him? I carried the guilt of leaving him in Boston from the moment I stepped outta that apartment. I just couldn’t watch him waste away. It was selfish, I know that. But seeing my brother–my goddamn hero–turn into everything he stood against wasn’t something I could do. I tried to pull him back, but the man’s more stubborn than a mule. So I just prayed he’d find his way back, not for me, but for himself. For Sarah. For the man I always knew he was and the one he deserved to be.

Then he shows up some decade and a half later, gray hair, wrinkles around his eyes, scarred like you wouldn’t believe. And damn if he didn’t feel like he’d taken some of himself back. He had Ellie, who I owe my life for what she did for him. I don’t think she knows the extent of that gratitude and I don’t plan to tell her, she don’t need that burden. He loves that girl like his own and so do I. That’s all that matters.

But then there’s her. Millie. All fire and sheer will, if she wasn’t on our side I’d be terrified of her. And god damn does he love that woman. He thinks I can’t tell, but I’ve been watching him practically my whole life, hell, tryin’ to be him, I know. Joel’s a man that would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it, but he aint’ one to share what goes on his head. That’s for him to deal with and no one else. He’s a locked box, walled up behind heavily guarded gates, always has been, but with her? It’s all right there on his sleeve for the world to see. Something tells me she knows more about him than most, and I don’t think he needed to speak a damn word for her to figure it out neither.

I don’t know what happened that night of the storm. At this point, I don’t know if I ever will. But something changed. 

I knew about Millie, what happened to her. Maria and I...we’d made the call to keep it from him as long as we could. He’d have run off, never to be seen again, I ain’t stupid. I didn’t know what to do. How do you tell someone who's been through hell enough times it shoulda killed him that his one good thing was gone? I couldn’t do it. Not after I’d seen him for the first time in over 20 years. He was smiling again. Strumming on a guitar. Writing songs. Hell, I had him sketching blueprints; he was Joel again. Maybe it was selfish. I wanted to prolong it, keep him around for as long as I could before the inevitable. 

And here we are. At the inevitable.

I might as well be riding through these trails alone. He’s silent, it’s like a god damn funeral march. But in reality I guess it is. I’ve contemplated turnin’ around, forcing him back to the life he’s gonna have to face living here eventually. But I can’t. See, the thing is that through all he’s lost, he’s never once gotten the chance to mourn. There was always something else. I think maybe he needs these quiet weeks on the road, and I’ll keep him alive while he’s out here, going through whatever it is he needs to go through. 

There’s no way we find her. It’s too much land, too many possibilities, it’s been too long; seven weeks by the time we get to the last place she was seen. For her sake I hope it was quick, and for his I hope it ain’t like Eugene said. If he’s gotta put a bullet in her head, even like that, I don’t see a path back. 

We’ve come across a few straggler infected, and his face breaks my heart every time. The fear he’ll see her snarling and deformed, I can’t take it anymore. The way his eyes beg for recognition to end the ache in his chest and for the chance to keep hope alive all the same. 

The way he kills them is damn near barbaric. Every swing of that blade an attempt to collect the debt he feels he’s owed. He’s still swinging long after they’re dead and gone, thankfully he’s smart enough to not waste our ammo. I pray we don’t come across any hunters on this trip. The runners I can watch be torn to shreds, I ain’t so sure I can watch him do that to a man again. I’ve had more than my share of that.

Everyday he’s closer to the god damn edge and I’m just waiting for him to fall. It’s bound to happen. Every night he sits by the fire sharpening that damn machete, sometimes gone dull from whatever poor unfortunate soul we encountered, other times he takes it out on a tree, an old rundown house, whatever he can find. I let him have at it, keeping an eye that the desperate crying he does when he thinks he’s alone doesn’t attract anyone or anything. It did once, shot it right between the eyes. I was proud of that one. 

We’re set to reach the last place she was seen today, I’m mentally gearing up. Reckon it won’t be pretty. I don’t know where it goes from there. I don’t know if I want to either. 

********

“I’m goin’ to look around,” Joel announced before his boots even hit the cement of the old garage, the first words he’d spoken since a grunt of acknowledgement that morning.

“Joel,” Tommy called quickly, “I should come with you.”

“Stay with the horses.”

“Joel!”

But he was already gone. It was a calm, February night, the sky clear as the setting sun cast a hazy, gray light over the untouched snow. Untouched. Not a print in sight, not even a damn rabbit. He should have checked the houses, but something had told him it was useless. You weren’t here. You hadn’t been here in months. Months. The time that had lapsed between you vanishing without a trace and his arrival made him sick to his stomach. He should have been here. He should have stopped you from leaving. He should have fought. 

The sound of the rushing river marked the spot where your tracks had stopped. This was the last place you were known to have been. It felt like a fucking burial site. He couldn’t do anything in the dark, so he stood and watched the water run by, the force of it surprising for its lack of depth. Jagged rocks jut out of the white capping current, the barren skeletons of the trees reaching up to the heavens he could no longer believe in. 

As the sound lulled him into whatever semblance of tranquility he could find, he wondered how you made it across. It was too wide to jump and too fast to bridge with something as simple as a log, but the rocks could provide a path if traveled carefully. But you were sick. Coughing, a fever seizing up your already ice-cold body, you wouldn’t have the dexterity…

He took off in a sprint back to the house, slamming open the front door hard enough it had Tommy reaching for his gun from where he sat on the floor. 

“Jesus Christ. Joel!” Tommy scolded, throwing the shotgun back down with a heavy thud, “I coulda shot you.”

“Down the river,” Joel panted, lungs and throat burning, “Tracks stopped at the bank. It’s too fast. Down the river…”

With numb fingers, Tommy pulled out the map, tracing north until the river opened to a lake. It was miles away, but not more than a day's travel. 

“Tell me what you wanna do,” Tommy offered, “Straight shot to where it dumps off?”

“Yeah…” Joel muttered, his mind racing against the light of optimism threatening to banish the darkness of reality. 

“Alright then, first light. Sit and eat.”

It would be a miracle if you survived that trip, but it wasn’t impossible. He’d done it, sort of, and that was the catch. He’d had Henry to pull him out, you were alone. But maybe you’d maneuvered well enough to avoid crashing into a rock head first. Or maybe this was all just fucking delusion.

There was no chance of sleep, he just paced, muttering incoherently under his breath about the chance this worked. It was low, and he hated how hard it was to convince himself of that. Back in Jackson as he and Tommy had readied to leave, he saddled up your horse. At the time he’d said in case they found you, you’d be thrilled, you loved that damn animal. But in reality it was just one of the few pieces of you he had left. Bill would be his from now on, maybe he’d even try and replicate those ridiculous biscuits you insisted on making for him. 

“You sleep at all?” Tommy asked, still groggy as he lifted himself onto his elbows with a groan.

“A bit,” Joel lied, the barrel of his shotgun shining after two hours of polishing. 

“When’d you become so shit at lyin’?”

Probably when he lost it all because of it. 

“Let’s go,” Joel snapped, leaping to his feet and grabbing his pack already ready by the door, “Eat on the way.”

Hours turned into days, and on day three of ice cold conditions, searching through trees and caves, and too many close calls with frostbite, Tommy stepped in. An arm across Joel’s chest kept him upright as Tommy pinned him against an oak, his head shaking in denial and defiance as he deflected the reality staring him in the face. You were gone. There was no finding you, there was no closure, no last chance to count the freckles on your face or memorize the warm shade of your hair. There was nothing. Just snow and haunting silence beneath his brother’s sympathetic gaze.

“I know you loved her,” Tommy finally found the opening to say it, “And maybe if you admitted that it would help you…move on.”

“Move on!?” Joel roared, finding the strength to shove his brother off of him, “Move on from what? What the hell do I have to move on from? Huh? I got nothin’! Cause you sent her away!”

“I ain’t doin’ this again…”

“You let your wife send her away–”

“Maybe you should have told her! Maybe if you didn’t fuckin’ lie to her she never woulda left! You ever imagine that, Joel? What your life could be like if you were honest for once? You’d be wakin’ up to her in your damn bed instead of being out here in mourning!”

The snow softened Tommy’s landing as Joel’s shoulder slammed into his stomach and sent him flying to the ground, a lucky knee to Joel’s stomach giving Tommy enough time to scramble back and right himself with enough distance to avoid another attack. 

“You think about Ellie waitin’ for you to come home,” Tommy cautioned, “Before you do something stupid. You got amends to make with her before this happens all over again.”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth.” This was not the time for principled speeches.

“Have you learned nothin’?!”

“I said shut your god damn mouth, boy!”

“Go take a walk! You need one. Then we’re fuckin’ leaving, and goin’ home.”

Once he was out of Tommy’s line of sight, he collapsed. The sun was going down, the distorted orb reflecting on the surface like flames, no doubt Tommy would be bringing them back to that house tonight for rest indoors before the long journey home. Maybe the ghost of you walked inbetween the walls, or were you out wandering this barren wasteland always trying to find your way home. He’d done this. The knowledge of that fact had been there all along, but it had taken Tommy screaming it at him for it to batter against the forefront of his mind. He did this. If he hadn’t lied to you it was unlikely you’d have volunteered. After you’d confronted him he should have fought, he should have been slamming his fist against your door begging for you to forgive him, unleashing every single one of his ugly truths when you let him inside to beg for one last chance. But he hadn’t. And now you were gone.

“Hey there, stranger,” a strange voice greeted that had the hair prickling on the back of Joel’s neck, “Haven’t seen you around here before.”

Joel remained silent, wracking his brain for a way to pull the revolver from the waist of jeans without being seen.

“What brings you out this way?” the voice continued, it was too friendly, too decent…

“Sightseein’,” Joel finally lied, keeping his eyes straight forward.

“Don’t see many people doing that these days.”

He didn’t need to see it to know it was there, the rifle pointed right at the back of his head. This wasn’t a bad view if were the last thing he would see.��

“Why don’t you just get on with it?” Joel finally asked, resigning to his fate with almost a sense of relief.

“Hey!” Tommy was yelling, Joel could see him sprinting over, shotgun raised. It was like he didn’t know that thing was shit at a distance and his brain would be sprayed across the snow faster than Tommy could load another set of shells, “Put the fuckin’ gun down!”

“You boys from Texas?” the stranger asked, Joel sighing in frustration at the game this man was playing, remaining silent as he gnashed his teeth together.

“Way back when,” Tommy answered, earning a stony look from his brother. He never knew when to keep his mouth shut.

“So, which one of you is Joel?”

“Who the hell are you?”

Ice ran through Joel’s veins at the sound of his name. He wasn’t unaware of where he was; at the present he was closer to Salt Lake City than home, a city that had his stomach churning. For as many as he’d slaughtered, he knew some got away with full knowledge of who he was and what he’d smuggled out of that hospital. One wrong move and Ellie’s location was no longer safe, one slip of the tongue, one wrong look.

He’d destroyed the Fireflies, singlehandedly. There were a few small factions scattered about, but their cause was all but destroyed thanks to him. Without a cure on the horizon, they had nothing left to hope for, nothing to work towards. They could join the rest of what was left of society, hopeless and dejected. 

“You let my brother go,” Joel finally bargained, “And I’ll go with you.”

“Joel what the hell is goin’ on?” Tommy was panicking now, “You ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“Let him go.”

Now he was turning, finding a man in his 70s holding the rifle he’d already known was there. Suddenly this became less urgent, he could see the man’s hands trembling and a flicker of fear in his eye. At least Joel’s reputation was still intact. With one quick lunge he could have him round the knees, the rifle loosening enough from those gnarled fingers that Joel could add it to his own arsenal. 

“I don’t want any trouble,” the man finally surrendered, “Just heard a lot about you.”

“From?” Joel growled, uncaring now of what might happen as he snuck his hand to the small of his back, finding the trusty weapon its usual spot.

“People passing through. I wasn’t expecting you, but my wife has a way of knowing things. She thought you’d turn up. And here you are.”

Tommy and Joel shared a look, had this man encountered Eugene and Paulie at some point? It was far off their course, there was no way they’d stumbled into him. There was something else he knew, something that had Joel’s heart thudding in his chest.

“Why don’t you come back with me, get a hot meal and good night’s sleep,” the man offered, “We don’t have much in the way of beds, but it’s warm and you look like you haven’t felt a fire in days.”

“You got a name?” Joel inquired, still wary, but the sirens in his head had stopped blaring.

“Oh. Where are my manners? Corbin. Nice to meet you Joel and…” he dragged out, looking over at Tommy.

“Tommy,” the younger Miller introduced, holding his hand out first for a shake, a silent promise that all that was said was true, both men nodding at the implications as they gripped the other.

It was a short ride, about an hour, back to Corbin’s, the property evident from a distance as the smoke from the chimney plumed up into the dusk sky. Joel’s despair had returned, the knowledge that in the morning he and Tommy would be on their way back to Wyoming alone and without closure. Where did he go from here? 

“Joel,” Tommy sounded from beside him, “I didn’t mean what I said. This ain’t your fault. None of it. I shoulda fought harder–”

“It is my fault.” Saying it hurt. Saying it opened up the mouth of the beast waiting to swallow him. 

“It’s just up ahead,” Corbin interrupted, the small farmhouse coming into view, heavily fenced and secure.

“Quite the place you got here,” Joel admired, a fond smile settling on his face as he recalled a man with similar barriers, and for a second he wondered just how old Bill was doing. It had crossed his mind to head back out East and get him, bring him to the safe haven of Jackson, but something told him Bill liked the fight and would prefer to go down swinging anyway.

“Horses can go in the barn,” their host instructed as he hopped down to open the gate, “I’m sure some dinner is already going.”

“Appreciate it.”

The house was warm, a fire roaring in the hearth as the three men stepped inside, Corbin calling for his wife, Lee, who rounded into the room in an apron. It felt almost dystopian. 

“Oh!” She exclaimed, the sitcom feel of this moment had Joel’s eyebrows furrowing, “More stragglers, Cor?”

“Yeah,” Corbin replied, smiling, “We got Tommy, and that one there, is Joel.”

“Oh… Joel.”

“Mhmm.”

“Why do you all act like you know me?” Joel snapped, now it was grating, now he was panicking, this felt off. He knew what kind of people lurked about, cannibals and religious zealots, he cursed himself for leaving his weapons with the horse. 

“Easy now,” Tommy warned, ticking his head down for Joel to see that Tommy hadn’t been as foolish as he had, his pistol still tucked into the holster at his hip, “Ma’am, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you for…your hospitality.”

“Well, I’m just glad you’re here,” Lee replied, “I’ll go throw a little bit more into the stew. Take a seat.”

Neither man obliged, even as Corbin rounded the old blue couch and collapsed. The house was like a relic of the 80s, gaudy florals in bold colors, angels and religious statues on the shelves surrounded by bibles and books. Even an old box TV still sat in the corner despite the lack of electricity. As Joel looked around, he saw the a medical degree hanging in a frame, Corbin’s, and family photos of who he assumed were their two hosts and their children. He hated how much of it reminded him of the house he and Tommy had grown up in, even down to the wood paneling on the walls. 

Muffled talking could be heard in the kitchen, a door to what must have been a basement slamming shut. A third? Now Joel wanted that gun, it was just out of reach but Corbin was already half asleep on the couch. The footsteps grew closer, he could see the shadow against the floor approaching, his senses blaring as he took a small step in front of Tommy, his arm lifting slightly to shield him from whoever it was about to make face.

“Corbin, did you–” 

“Well I’ll be damned,” Tommy whispered under his breath as the unidentified person rounded into the room.

“Joel?” 

Chapter 13 (There's a tag list now if you prefer that!)

Art as always by @natendo-art 😭🩵

[thehummingbirdpost]

Jewish Voice for Peace Advocates for Palestinian Rights

Dale Colleen Hamilton

edendale24@gmail.com

April 2024

My friend Esther Farmer has lived in Brooklyn her whole life. Her parents, Palestinian Jews, immigrated there in the 1920s. Her father, a politically progressive activist, was labelled a communist and black-listed, making it difficult for him to find work. Her mother was way ahead of her times and her support for the Palestinian cause was loud and often fierce and she battled sexism fearlessly.

Esther calls herself culturally Jewish, religiously atheist, politically non-Zionist and passionately pro-Palestinian. She’s been involved with Palestinian rights organizations for decades and is on the leadership committee of Jewish Voice for Peace, whose membership has exploded since the war on Palestine began. Their protests have attracted thousands of people and have included shutting down Grand Central Station and the Manhattan Bridge.

On my recent visit to New York City, I went with Esther to several pro-Palestinian anti-war demonstrations. She says there’s some form of pro-Palestinian protest almost every day, so there were plenty of choices. While I was there, she did a reading from a book she co-edited, A Land with People as well as several zoom presentations. She lives and breathes Palestinian rights these days. One of the most moving things I’ve heard her say is that her grandmother told her that Palestinians, Jews and Arabs used to live just fine together in Palestine, until in 1917 the British decided, in their imperial “wisdom,” to "declare" that Palestine should be a Jewish state through the Balfour Declaration.

The first protest we went to was intended to take place in front of the Brooklyn home of Chuck Schumer (Democratic Senate Majority Leader) but police in riot gear blocked his street. Schumer is being targeted, in part, because he was given over $100,000 in campaign contributions by pro-Zionist AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee). In response to the police blockade, the effigies of dead swaddled children being carried by the protesters were laid at the feet of the police. And the protesters read aloud a list of 64 names of dead Palestinian children. These names represented one tenth of one percent of the children killed since Oct 7th. It would have taken 24/7 for 2 days to have read all the names. As the names were spoken, I found myself watching the faces of the police officers for any glimmer of support or remorse, but they were well-trained to show no emotion. However, as the procession wound through the Saturday farmers’ market, many people stopped and quietened respectfully.

Another protest we attended was staged in front of the United Nations in Manhattan. Again, riot police were in full force. Although no arrests were made, Jewish Voice for Peace always has a lawyer present and a team of members ready to support anyone who does get arrested, as was the case during the Grand Central Station action, where over 300 people were arrested. To me as a Canadian gentile outsider, the most striking element of this protest was the range of participants, including Armenian and Kurdish rights activists, an Iranian Feminist group and about a dozen Orthodox Hasidic Jews, who have been demonstrating for Palestinian rights and denouncing Zionism and the Jewish state for years. It was the Sabbath so they aren’t allowed to take public transit or drive, so they had walked from Williamsburg, over 6 kms each way. Although Hasidic Jews are sometimes criticized for sexist practises, I couldn’t help but admire their dedication to the Palestinian cause.

In between demonstrations, we had the best Middle Eastern food I’ve ever experienced at a Palestinian restaurant called Ayat on Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. Their menu includes a call for an end to the occupation and asks diners to “pray for peace for all”. The meal we had there felt sombre, but it also felt like a celebration of the swell of awareness and support for Palestinians and a rethinking of what it means to be Jewish and Israeli and the role US-made armaments play in the genocide.

By a stroke of dumb luck, I got the last rush ticket to see a sold-out play called The Ally, at the Public Theatre in Greenwich Village. In keeping with the apparent theme of my trip, it was a play about the Palestinian Israeli conflict. It presented all sides of the issue, which left my head spinning. In the lobby after the performance, a man who sounded like he knew what he was talking about said he thinks it will be remounted, which makes sense, seeing as it’s such a timely and important topic.

And oh yes, by way of contrast, while in New York I also experienced cherry trees in bloom (eerily early), an earthquake (4.8 magnitude centered in New Jersey) and the solar eclipse, which we watched grow to 90% totality in Prospect Park. And after the intensity of the protests, back at Esther’s each evening, we’d sit on the couch and watch Democracy Now and Aljazeera, trying to make sense of a world apparently on a collision course with itself.

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

what was your college experience like in terms of academics? becoming a doctor?

Hmmm, that’s a rather broad question. If we’re talking about undergrad, those were four amazing years, particularly from an academic standpoint. I was very fortunate in that my parents were paying for my education and I was attending an enormous land-grant university at in-state rates, which meant I was able to take full advantage of opportunities not available to a lot of students. Mostly in terms of taking extra classes every term and participating in three different study abroad programs. I started off double-majoring in English and History, and ended up with a triple-major in English, French, and Medieval & Renaissance Studies (which, until I started undergrad, I had no idea was even a field of study).

I knew I wanted to go into academia so I did what people were supposed to do in those circumstances, namely apply to graduate school. I applied to 9 programs the first time round and only got into one, so that choice was comparatively easy. It was a one-year M.Phil. in European Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge, and while I was there, I determined that I wanted to stay on and do my PhD on the French Romantics and their relationships with and reworkings of English Renaissance drama. Alas, the two examiners on my master’s thesis had a disagreement, and my thesis did not received the necessary marks, so I ended up having to go home, get a retail job, and reapply to graduate schools for the following academic year.

When I reapplied with an M.Phil. to my name, I got into three graduate programs. I made the deeply questionable financial decision to take an unfunded place in Oxford because it had been my dream since I was a kid to study there. But also this was in 2006 and things were very different. I was told by plenty of people, including my academic advisors, that it was worth the risk to have a PhD from Oxford behind my name.

From a financial standpoint, it was probably the worst decision of my life. However, the three years I spent in Oxford were probably amongst the most intellectually fulfilling I’ve ever had. It’s probably all for the best that I was still at a point in my life where I was capable of ignoring racist microaggressions, and that I was in a stable and committed long-term relationship notwithstanding the three thousand miles of ocean between us, because aside from the intellectual fulfillment, those were rough years. I took out a mountain of student loans and I lived like a hermit, working up to three jobs at a time to afford my monthly rent. My department put me through the wringer, and I nearly quit at one point because they’d almost convinced me I wasn’t good enough.

To some extent, I finished out of spite, to show everyone who’d doubted me that I could actually do it. I then turned my D.Phil. thesis into a book in less than two years because I was convinced it would get me a job.

Narrator: It did not get her a job.

I am now 14 years out from my PhD. I have worked for everything from Ivy-League-adjacent private colleges to a rather notorious for-profit university that happened to be located ten minutes away from where I was living at the time. And the entire structure of academia has changed--or, at the very least, stratified to a point where it is practically impossible to get any job at all, let alone one with a decent salary and benefits. So if this question was posed with the intention of finding out how to succeed, I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong person.

This is not to say that I don’t recommend that people go to graduate school if they want to and have the resources to do it. Especially if you come from a minority or marginalized group, because academia desperately needs those important voices. But if you do, know that the system is rigged and that it takes an enormous amount of resources, effort, and struggle for comparatively little reward. Know that if it doesn’t work out, it is not your fault. And always--always--have a backup plan.

[jgroffdaily]

An old blog from 5 September 2008 which describes the writer meeting Jonathan at a performance of ‘Hair’ after he had left the show to film ‘Taking Woodstock’, including:

The show I usher for was originally set to close mid-August but it has already been extended twice. Which works out well for me and the hazard of unemployment. It also means that the lead (now that I no longer work there I can tell you I’m talking about Jonathan Groff**) had to leave the show to go film an Ang Lee movie and his replacement isn’t quite as charming.

He had the day off from filming yesterday. How do I know this, you ask? Because he came to see the show and of course he sat in my section, because awesome/famous people always sit in my section (I really lucked out with that assignment at the beginning of the summer). I didn’t notice him until intermission when I saw him sitting all by himself and realized he had been the annoying guy sitting next to the show’s costume designer whispering and laughing uproariously at everything the whole first act. Wow, good thing I hadn’t shot him a nasty “shut up!” look!

Well there he was, in all his adorable splendor, sitting alone as the costume designer had left to attend to things…

But he’s not heading for the exit. No, no. Johnathan Groff is walking straight towards me.

“Hi! How are you? It’s so good to see you,” he says and then gives me a hug. Like we bonded during the show. Like we’re old friends. Like he’s at least talked to me once before in our lives.

Planning my line? Fuck that! Not even my imagination considered this!

From where I stood there were two choices: play along or let the truth- that I’ve never talked to him before ever and think he’s very talented, not to mention the fact he’s already achieved most of my life goals- take over. No contest.

For the entirety of intermission me and this Tony-nominated, the next hot thing, golden boy of Broadway are bffs. We talk about the show, how it’s been since he left, how filming’s been, laugh when some guy comes over to talk to him and ends his “I saw you in this show, you were so great” spiel with: “My friend sitting up over there. It’s her birthday. She wants your dong.” The guy quickly leaves and my new bff laughs and confides in me, “That’s one I’ve never heard before- ‘She wants your dong.’ And did you see how fast he went back to his seat? I bet that was a dare.” …

It’s a good thing I’m 97% sure he’s gay. (It’s a vibe, a chemistry maybe… But in this show it made his character much stronger. His connection to Will Swenson’s Berger is awesome. Which I didn’t appreciate fully until he left. Sigh. If he is not gay, he is a truly brilliant actor for creating that. His replacement doesn’t have the same vibe and it makes the whole show a little weaker, in my opinion.) [He actually came out a year after I wrote this.**] Otherwise I would be head over heals in love. Such a sweet, modest, respectful, awesome person.