#I am very bad at trivia nights for this exact reason

[rimouskis]

honestly the gaps in my cultural lexicon because of my complete and utter inability to watch television are so vast as to be impressive

#yes sid talking about watching TV in his free time got me thinking about this #I have not meaningfully watching a TV show since 2015 and YOU KNOW WHAT I DON'T THINK I EVER WILL AGAIN #I am very bad at trivia nights for this exact reason

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Cats Historical Hypothesis

So, who wants to hear about the potential history of a few seconds of the 1998 version?

Too bad. This is my channel and I can do what I want.

So, I’m gonna talk about a brief moment that occurs in the 1998 version, as well as a few others and guess about its origins. Why do some productions have it and some don’t? Where did it come from? This is speculation based on comparing 14 different versions (Broadway Revival, Buenos Aires, 1998, German Tent Tour, Hamburg, London circa 2002, Madrid, Mexico 1991, Moscow, Paris, UK Tour 2013, US Tour V, Vienna, and Zurich), and whatever historical trivia I can find on the wiki. This is called a hypothesis for a reason. It’s not proven fact. It’s an educated guess.

Anyway, here’s a screenshot of the thing this essay/tangent will be about:

I’m too lazy to get a version I didn’t type on.

I’m adding a cut for people who don’t care to more easily scroll by this thing.

So, some productions have a joke at the beginning of Gumbie Cat where Misto strikes a pose or otherwise attracts attention to himself, assuming that Munk will sing about him before anyone else, only to quickly realize that that isn’t the case and react accordingly. The exact way this plays out varies between production.

Out of the 14 productions I’ve compared, this gag appears in: Buenos Aires, 1998, Paris, US Tour V, Vienna, and Zurich (where it’s actually more sad than funny).

The fact that all three Vienna-based productions I have access to used it makes it highly likely that it originated there. If it came from Broadway, more of the other Broadway-based, but not Vienna-based productions would have it. But, Buenos Aires and US Tour V are Broadway-based. Where did they get it from? And what about 1998, which is primarily London-based?

So, if you’re looking for something, it helps to look at where it’s not. Buenos Aires was mainly based of the 1991 Mexican Tour, which didn’t include this gag. Hamburg is based on the 1985 Sydney production, which was Broadway-based, and also didn’t include this gag. The London version didn’t include the gag on its closing night (from what I can tell. The bootleg isn’t good quality.)

So, this gag probably originated into Vienna and was then inherited by Paris and Zurich. Zurich, Zurich’s Misto in particular, has a connection to Broadway. Most likely, the Broadway production didn’t include this gag at first, but when Lindsay Chambers, a Zurich Misto, moved on to play the role on Broadway, he brought the gag with him.

This would explain who Buenos Aires includes the gag when Mexico doesn’t. In 1991, Chambers hadn’t yet been cast as Mistoffelees anywhere. But, by 1993, when the Buenos Aires production started, Chambers was playing Misto on Broadway. Though Buenos Aires was mainly following Mexico, changing Broadway trends might’ve led to some changes being made to Misto’s character to match. Buenos Aires Misto does seem to be played a bit younger than his Mexican counterpart, which was another Zurich element Chambers probably brought to Broadway.

As for 1998, Jacob Brent, who played Misto there, was Chambers’ understudy and his version of the character is similar to Chambers’ because of that. Brent probably brought the gag to 1998, and since the gag works well on film, where Misto’s facial expressions can be in close-up, the team decided to add that in.

Then there’s the US Tour. US Tour V started after the Broadway version ended and mostly stuck to whatever the Broadway production was like when it closed. The Chambers/Brent version of Misto was probably kept to the end of that production, and the tour kept that characterization. It was basically the Official Broadway Misto Characterization by that point. And the gag in Gumbie Cat was part of that.

No purely London-based show used this gag. Brent played Misto in London after 1998, but there’s no surviving footage of this. If that gag ever was included in London, it most likely didn’t stick. Even if I’m wrong in my interpretation of the 2002 footage, later London-based productions (UK Tour, German Tent Tour, Moscow) don’t use this gag. Misto’s role in Gumbie Cat is a bit different in those productions and the gag doesn’t fit there.

So, how did all of this happen in the first place? Where did Vienna get this from?

Well, Vienna was in many ways a compromise between London and Broadway, which were both very early in their runs. Vienna’s Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer put the Broadway melody into London’s context, for example. In London, at first, Misto sang lead in Gumbie Cat. This wasn’t changed until over a decade later. On Broadway, that singing role was given to Munkustrap. Vienna went in this direction, but a gag about Misto being the center of attention at the beginning of the number might’ve been a nod to the London version. Vienna was the third replica production, which means that before they came in, the number of replicas where Misto sang Gumbie cat and replicas where Munk sang it was a 50/50 split. It took a minute for Munk and Misto to figure out which one of the them would be singing this time.

Another factor is that Vienna Misto is completely mute. Up until this point, both London and Broadway had large singing roles for Misto, so this was a major change. One of the things that changed was how Misto was introduced to the audience. Singing Mistos usually sing The Invitation to the Jellicle Ball. This calls attention to Misto. He’ll be important later, so we want the audience to pay attention to him. This also served as an Establishing Character Moment. In London, it showed that Misto and Munk were both the narrators. Each one took half of the number. On Broadway, this was Misto being theatrical and putting himself in the spotlight, because he’s Like That.

But, Mute Misto needs a different Establishing Character Moment. In Vienna, this gag showed that, though he didn’t sing, Misto lived for the spotlight just like earlier versions did. When Paris aged the character down, it became more about Misto wanting to prove himself or trying to help, though different versions imply different motivations.

Singing has something to do with this. When Misto is mute, he has fewer opportunities to blatantly attract the spotlight. This element of his character has to be downplayed. It often seems like the Mute Mistos of Paris and Zurich want to be Singing Mistos but can’t. They try to get into the spotlight, but have no idea what to do when they get there.

From the way Zurich Misto responds to realizing that Munk isn’t singing about him, he seems like he just got confused. Though he didn’t sing the Invitation, he still danced with Victoria and was part of this opening act. He helped Munkustrap and now he’s right by his side, looking for acknowledgement. It’s not his turn, so he doesn’t get that acknowledgement. He thought this would go differently and his response is confusion rather than embarrassment. Instead of living for the spotlight, Zurich Misto wants to help and he wants the important people in the tribe to acknowledge him.

1998 Misto sings the Invitation. He’s been established as enjoying the spotlight. So, at the beginning of Gumbie Cat, he tries to stay in the spotlight. While Zurich Misto assumed Munk would acknowledge him for being a helper, 1998 Misto, according to Jacob Brent, who has described this bit in detail, assumed that because he’s a magical prodigy, it was only natural that he’d become the center of attention immediately.

Basically:

Mute Misto + Gumbie Gag= “Didn’t I do a good job? Why are you ignoring me?”

Singing Misto + Gumbie Gag= “Bitch I’m fabulous! Now you’re gonna sing about how great I am, right?”

So, though the gag was made as an Establishing Character Moment for Mute Misto, a Singing Misto version was created. The implication is that Mute Misto has low self-esteem and seeks validation, while Singing Misto aware of how special he is, proud of it, and wants others to acknowledge it.

So, there’s a lot to be said about a few seconds of content.

#mr mistoffelees #special magic boy #cats buenos aires #cats 1998 #cats london #cats paris 1990 #cats us tour 5 #cats vienna #cats zurich #lindsay chambers #jacob brent

[thesaltyace]

big rant/ramble below, you can safely ignore and move on to the next post in your feed.

Urgh

I shared the results of that autism screener with a quasi-friend who I thought would be "safe" (we used to work together and we connected over his being gay and me being visibly queer) but his response was blergh

Everyone has hints of autism.

okay yeah but this isn't just *hints* of autism. I'm answered yes to symptoms I've had since I was a kid that I've learned to mask or work around as an adult. But I still struggle with them.

He pointed out that he sees me as more ADHD than ASD.

Yeah, fair, and I'd need to see a professional to try to distinguish if my symptoms are ADHD, ASD, or both.

You don't hit the three prongs needed for a diagnosis.

But.... but I do. And the stuff I dealt with as a kid is still stuff I deal with today. I just mask it better. A short and not exhaustive list:

As I kid I had trouble interacting with peers. I didn't have friends, really. I didn't know how to make friends and I didn't try terribly hard to. I acquire friends when someone else "adopts" me and decides that we are friends. And once I became an adult, I have almost never had friends of my own - I share a friend group with my spouse who we're primary connected to through him. I'm okay with that. Maintaining a friendship entirely on my own power sounds impossible and exhausting.

I was okay with not having friends, I liked being alone, but my mom insisted on me being social. She made me join things so that I would have a list of people to invite to parties. I'd honestly have preferred a day of doing stuff I like or just a couple friends. As an adult, I want to be alone on my birthday. I will celebrate with certain friends, separately, usually over a quiet meal. That's it.

I had trouble understanding sarcasm and figurative speech. Like, I understand it now but I still think most figurative speech is annoying. I've been told the way I deliver sarcasm is weird, too.

I liked memorizing movies and quoting them start to finish, I thought it was fun but everyone else thought it was weird. I continued to do this into adulthood but I only quote aloud when I'm alone. Alamo Drafthouse quote-alongs are the BEST. I don't do this with every movie, either, just ones I really like.

Okay actually I also liked to listen to the same album or, in some cases, the same song over and over until I was sick of it (and sometimes even after that point). I mean, just endlessly looping on repeat. Not interspersed with other songs. I do this as an adult a LOT because it's easier with headphones to do this without annoying everyone else around you. Like, often it's fine for me to just put a playlist on shuffle, but I get into Moods where I just want the one album/song over and over. Yesterday I listened to Wellerman about 50 times in a row and only stopped because I had to get up and do something else and that song wasn't "good" for whatever I got up to do.

My special interest as a kid was cats. Literally everything cats, all the time - I sought out obscure facts and could tell you the difference between similar species, and wanted cats involved in literally everything I did. Adults laughed it off as childhood obsession. I was also pretty obsessed with the solar system. I thought asking my peers, as a trivia question, which of Jupiter's moons had its own asteroid (Io, in case you were wondering) was appropriate and interesting and was confused that they didn't know that. That was in fifth grade.

I watched the weather channel for fun. I would watch it for hours and absorb the weekly forecast info just... for fun? I never used it, could never tell you if you should dress a certain way or bring an umbrella or whatever. Everyone thought it was weird.

I was a know-it-all and literally could not stop myself from bluntly correcting people who were wrong. Didn't know or care that it was "rude". I'm still that way but I've learned how to sometimes swallow the urge long enough to find a more tactful way to point it out (but often fail).

I could read on my own before kindergarten, used vocabulary beyond what one would expect for my age, and had a special interest in spelling and grammar throughout my school years. I did not understand how other people weren't interested in learning about it and getting it right. I read at an undergrad level by 4th grade.

I hated loud noises and often covered my ears to block out irritating sounds. I could also hear high pitched noises that even other kids didn't seem to hear (or at least weren't bothered by them). Too much noise sent me into an internal meltdown, I'd just kinda shut down because I couldn't deal with it.

Textures and pressure on my skin bothered the absolute fuck out of me - sock seams, certain fabric materials, socks that weren't equally elastic, one shoe tighter than the other, tags.... all of that. (Also, fun anecdote I just unlocked - when I was 4 or 5 my grandmother started letting me use the soft silk sleep shirt she had as a young woman because I preferred it to anything else. Soft, smooth, no irritating qualities. Bliss. I wanted to wear it all the time.)

Don't get me started on food. Until I was in COLLEGE I mostly subsisted on pasta with either butter or alfredo sauce and chicken. I would eat other things, but pasta and/or chicken was (and still is) my biggest safe/comfort food. I'd eat other stuff mostly if I could control the balance of ingredients, get it made plain, or could confirm the texture wouldn't be offensive (so, like... plain burgers, plain cheese pizza, grilled cheese, mashed potatoes, etc.) I cannot stress this enough - from childhood through COLLEGE I did this. As a kid my mom had to make me a completely separate dish most nights to get me to eat something. My spouse was horrified at what little variety I ate. The only reason I eat so much variety now is that he knows what I do/don't like and tells me in advance if I'll find a texture or taste offensive. Of course, rather than wanting consistent texture like I did when I was younger, I now seek as much texture as possible (so long as they aren't Bad textures) so.... that's fun. But yeah most of my objections to Yucky foods is due to T E X T U R E. Even if I like the taste, the texture overrides it all.

I prefer animals to people. I will seek out animals and interact with them instead of people in the same room. And will pointedly focus on the animal to avoid interacting with people.

I'm perfectly happy with only myself for company. Being with just my spouse counts as me being "alone" though. Always has. I just realized last night that it's because I do minimal to no masking around him because he's a safe person to unmask with and always has been. Never batted an eye at the weird shit I do beyond asking questions about what I was doing or why. And then just "Okay."

Okay honestly just the fact that I want to vent into the void of tumblr instead of actually discussing this with a person - even my spouse! - pretty effectively shows how little it occurs to me to interact with other people directly. o_0

And there are so many more things that I won't list here because I could just go on and on. And like, sure, some of this may certainly overlap with ADHD but my point is that I have enough to point to ASD that it doesn't feel like having a "hint" of autism. And who knows - maybe it is mostly just ADHD and CPTSD stuff interacting in weird ways. Could be!

But just because I can make small talk and make eye contact and do the "normal" shit and I can interact "normally" doesn't mean I LIKE it. I had to LEARN to do those things to avoid having bad social interactions. When I'm by myself or with my spouse, I behave very differently than I do around anyone else. ANYONE. It's not just slightly changing my behavior depending on who I'm with - it's completely suppressing how I naturally would do things if left to my own devices.

Like, the things we recommended to our autistic students who wanted to know how to interact in ways that would help them blend in/be accepted by others ARE THE EXACT THINGS I ALREADY DO. Like, it did not occur to me at the time that neurotypicals literally do not have to think about doing those things. I thought, ah, these students just need to be told what the tricks are. Other people figure these tricks out on their own. It did not occur to me that other people, in fact, do not learn these tricks because they naturally do that behavior. They do not have to actively think about learning the trick, period. I literally thought other people also have to think as hard as I do about interactions. Evidently not.

So yeah, I'm feeling a little upset about the reaction I got from him because I'm like.... honestly, a diagnosis of ASD wouldn't change a lot about how I do things or think of things. But it would make me feel better about interacting with and participating in autism-related stuff if I am actually autistic. I realize I can use the resources and supports meant for ASD regardless, and for formal supports anything I can access due to my ADHD diagnosis likely covers anything I'd need for ASD. But having a diagnosis opens up more community. Right now I'm like yeah I'm ADHD but I totally relate to this ASD content. But I'm not going to interact much because I feel like I don't have the right to join in since idk if I do have ASD.

idk I have a lot of feelings. I had a bad email about the trans insurance coverage thing yesterday and I'm not in a great headspace, but finding out me and my spouse both scored very high on the autism screening stuff was honestly a high point because we ended up sharing a lot of how we view and interact with the world that was very eye-opening about why we interact the way we do, how we relate to others (and how other people think we're weird for how we relate to others), and just...everything. And having someone be skeptical after I've spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that I DON'T have ASD only to conclude that at the very least, I should probably be evaluated because I can't reasonably rule it out. Like, most people do not wonder if they have autism. The fact that I am spending this much time looking into it and trying to find examples to disprove it only to find I overwhelmingly can't in virtually every single diagnostic category.... just..... dismissing it outright is kinda hurtful.

Like, I recognize that ADHD symptoms overlap a fair bit, but seriously. My spouse (who definitively does not have ADHD) scored almost identically to me and we vibed on almost everything when we compared answers. We see most things similarly. We have similar areas of confusion about other people and for fundamentally similar reasons. I can't imagine all of the stuff that points to ASD for me is just ADHD in disguise, not when I vibe THAT HARD with someone else. Spouse does not vibe with me on ADHD content. At all. He can appreciate it since he does live with me, after all, and observes whatever's being discussed. But he doesn't vibe with it. He vibes with autism content, though. And I vibe with both.

idk this rant ended in rambling and I'm just going to go listen to Inside on repeat for a couple hours while I try to calm down a bit. o_0

#rant over #for now #I've actually been listening to Inside for the last twenty minutes already lol #maybe I'll try to nap #idk #blergh #yay Shit is playing now and I'm like LOL cause I did wake up at 11:30 feeling like shit #woot #what a bop #I'm like hell yeah you get it #let's vibe

[jswdmb1]

In A Daydream

“The sky is calling,

Calling out my name.

Telling me just to stay,

Stay and don't go away.”

- Freddy Jones Band

I have never been a creative person. Even though I love music, I can’t sing or dance and have never shown any natural talent at the musical instruments I have tried. I have no ability to paint, draw or create art of any kind and a trip to the Art Institute is wasted on me as the only difference between Monet and Manet to me is one letter. I have very little appreciation for literature and don’t read many books unless they are non-fiction. If it doesn’t involve a fact or figures, it is unlikely I will be much help to you, and I have been okay with that. We are often told that our brains work either one way or another and I was satisfied that I had at least a half of one functioning.

But a few years ago, I started to rethink that whole notion that creativity was only for those that didn’t succumb to the life of a left-brained numbers geek. There are plenty of artists and entertainers with a sharp business sense (well, at least a few), so why can’t it turn the other way as well? And why does creativity have to be limited to the traditional arts?  Can’t it be also used in unconventional ways that harness the analytical ability of a buttoned-down mind? Isn’t that the definition of creativity in it of itself?

I decided to put this to the test by even challenging the traditional constraints of what is considered creative, which is usually limited to artists or actors, singers and dancers, novelists and the sort.  But it is an oxymoron to think that way about creativity, and I began to search for other ways to find an outlet.  I started with writing and hosting trivia nights for charity.  They are crude productions, but all of the content is my own and those in attendance generally seem to have a good time (including me).  That modest success gave me some thought that maybe there could be other outlets for me.

I started doing some writing and posting to social media but it didn’t seem right.  I had toyed with starting a blog but I was intimidated.  That was something for people much more creative than me.  But, I thought what will it cost me and I stopped worrying about doing it for any other reason than to create an outlet for what I thought might be brewing inside.  Like my trivia nights, the initial efforts were spotty but I sensed maybe there was something I could build on there.  I kept going throughout that summer and then things came to a halt, which ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me.

That’s when I ended up taking a break from not just writing, but from life, to get myself back on track.  I have referenced this event in the past, but not shared a lot of details about it.  It was about eight months after I quit my job to start my own business and about four months after my dad died after a four-year battle with cancer.  I wasn’t exactly on stable mental ground going into this period, having spent literally decades on various medications and in and out of therapy, so it wouldn’t take much more to push me over the edge.  It was at this point that my wife’s mother’s health took a sharp turn for the worse and the pressure built from there.

It would be more stylish to say that my breakdown occurred in a dramatic event like you see on TV, but it was quite unexciting.  As the summer wore on, I withdrew from my business, upped my already prodigious use of booze and meds to self-medicate, and spent more-and-more time doing a whole lot of nothing.  When I stopped going through even the motions of participating in daily life, those close to me finally stepped in and gave my psychiatrist a call.  Turns out he was on vacation (no joke) but his colleague suggested a trip to the outpatient psychiatric center of Hinsdale Hospital for an assessment.  Within 24 hours of that assessment I found myself in a full-time out-patient program to treat my main problems of severe depression and general anxiety disorder.

I don’t deviate into this story for any other reason than it is directly responsible for what got me back into writing.  One of our big things there was journaling.  More specifically, writing honestly about ourselves and then sharing them to the group.  I wrote some things in those sessions that shocked me, but that shock didn’t really hit home until I read them aloud to people I just met.  I was even more shocked to find out that the world didn’t end because I was finally honest about who I was and my feelings about that.  It was even more surprising to find a lot of people felt the same way and that we could maybe help each other if we talked a bit more about it.

Three days after I was released (I asked for a certificate that said “SANE” but no dice), my mother-in-law died.  I had been writing again on this blog, but I wrote a post quitting it after deciding I couldn’t spend time so frivolously when so much bad was going on around me (the post, “Here’s Where The Story Ends” is still on here if you want to look it up).  But fortunately (for me at least, can’t speak for the rest of you who have to read this stuff), my break was short-lived.  I got back into it and slowly started to develop an embrace of the notion that I might, at times, have something useful to say.  

That finally brings us to today and the point of this particular post.  Tumblr keeps track of the number of posts you have in your profile and after I hit send on the last one, I saw that I had hit post #99.  While I generally think milestone anniversary numbers are a bit silly, it did give me a bit of pause to think about what I would write next for #100.  It made me take a quick look back over the past three years about what I have documented.  Most of it is pretty amateurish, and nothing is spectacular, but there is an occasional good thought that seems to pop out every once in a while.  That’s not really important, though.  What matters to me is that I managed to create 100 of anything.  Good, bad, or indifferent, this production suggests that some creativity exists within me.  That is not something I was sure about before post #1 came along.

What does this all mean?  I don’t know.  Sure, it’s tooting my horn a bit, but really what is wrong with that?  I mean, what is the point of creating anything that you don’t share?  And, just because you share something, it doesn’t mean that everyone has to like it.  I get that a lot of what I say is a bit off the wall and maybe too esoteric for general consumption, but at least it’s genuine.  And every time I finish one of these, I can say in no uncertain terms that I have been honest with myself and I’m comfortable with who I am no matter how imperfect that may be (insert joke here).

And that is how I am going to celebrate this 100th post.  By acknowledging that it may be poorly written and lacking a coherent theme, but understanding it is who I am and how I feel at this moment and I have documented that truthfully and without spin.  And I’ll take credit for that as my true gift of creativity and I’m happy to share it with you.  And I’m grateful that I have been able to do it a hundred times and I’ll be just as grateful for the next one and any more I can do after that.  And I’ll take none of it for granted because life is too short to take anything for granted.  And I’ll reread this at some point, and realize that I have used far too many cliches in sentences that start with “And”.  And that’s okay, because that’s who I am.

Thanks for reading whether this is your first time, 100th time, or maybe your last time.  I hope whatever creativity exists in me has been properly channeled into this vessel and I hope it adds something to your day time you read it.  And if it doesn’t, that’s okay too because that is better than if I hadn’t tried.  100 times to be exact.

Peace, Jim

[mittensmorgul]

not a strictly spn question, but, as someone who wants to start writing, how the ever-loving fuck do you pump out so many fics so fast?? i’ve been working on outlining the same three stories for like a year (not really) ((but kinda))

Hi there, and congrats on that much outlining! I… don’t outline that much, ever, for anything. But I also don’t think I crank out fics all that fast. It might seem that way sometimes, but the Pinefest fic I posted in February has actually been drafted (and through several rounds of editing) since last August. I only just posted it for Pinefest. So it might seem there was only a month and a half between me writing that and the thing I posted last night, I’ve actually been working on THAT since January… three and a half months for 30k isn’t very fast. :P

I’m putting this under a cut because it’s kinda long, and possibly boring or irrelevant in the big scheme of things…

(I once wrote a 105k word original novel in 15 days, and a friend of mine wrote a 130k novel in just over three days on a deadline, but heck that is atypically fast… and nearly killed them… no really they developed shingles from the stress of it, do not recommend)

So I might be slightly biased here, but at some point you gotta stop outlining and start writing. That’s the secret. You can’t crank out stories unless you actually start writing them.

That said, when I say I don’t outline, I mean I have notes for fic that range from this, for my 8k short:

*soulmate situation described here: http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/173681098950/i-saw-a-writing-prompt-that-went-like-this-you Officially written and posted on 11/14/18 as Lost Time.

that’s just a link to a post that inspired the thing, to this, for a 65k fic: 

*NAILED IT! How could I fanfic my way through this baking show? or maybe I should just… write fanfic of this… (notes document: Cakepocalypse notes) (in process as of 4/1/18 as a potential dcbb as Cakepocalypse) (posted 6/23/18)https://archiveofourown.org/works/15017792

(sorry, I removed the link to my notes doc, but what I am willing to show of that:

wherein a lot of those 15 pages consists of images of the cakes in each challenge for my own personal reference while writing.)

Basically the ONLY two fics I’ve ever written an outline for structurally required it:

Cakepocalypse and Around the World in 24 Days, both fics based off “reality show” formats– Cakepocalypse was basically Nailed It!, and AtWi24D is the Amazing Race (and over 101k, based on about 5k worth of very detailed notes I’d be happy to show you if you come off anon). There was no way I could keep track of that many “contestants” and all their challenges, travel, baking, guests, etc. without keeping these sorts of detailed notes.

My previous pinefest fic, Winchester 275, was a 57k AU based on a two sentence thing that had been sitting on my to be written list for YEARS:

*(writing for pinefest, working title of Winchester 275 as of 8/29/17, draft finished 11/29/17, posted 3/6/18 http://archiveofourown.org/works/13788693) astronomy night at a dude ranch in arizona, Cas brings the telescope, dean only sees the stars in his eyes oh god did i actually write that down? yes. yes i did.

And my first DCBB, Revenge of the Subtext, was 80k based on a one sentence prompt: http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/130269813965/meangreenlimabean-mittensmorgul.

So if your fic doesn’t NEED you to make such detailed notes, just start writing already. :D

When I first started writing (loooong before I ever started writing fic), some of my encouraging friends told me some interesting stories. We got to talking about how annoying it was that so many people respond to someone saying they write with, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about writing a novel for years,” or something else along those lines. My friend told me she knew a guy who had been outlining his novel for more than a decade, but never seemed to be able to get it quite right so that he felt he could start writing. With that sort of attitude, he probably never will, you know?

You will never have a “perfect” outline. Just like you’ll never have a “perfect first draft.” You have to have a draft to be able to edit it, you know? Can’t edit a blank page, and an outline can only take you so far before it becomes so fleshed out that it ceases to be an outline and looks more like a first draft.

So set a writing goal for yourself. Shoot for easy to start with, and then you can tweak the goal as you fall into the habit. Say, 200 words a day. Or 1000 words a week (because in all honesty you might miss a day here and there, and you shouldn’t get down on yourself for that, either). I personally shoot for 1000 words on days when I write, but I’ve been doing this for more than a decade now. I don’t always make it, but sometimes I double that, or quintuple it, or more. And I have scheduled days off (Supernatural nights when new episodes air, and usually the day after, and Monday night when I play pub trivia and it’s Mr. Mittens’ night off work). But outside of those days, barring extreme exhaustion or illness, I try to write at least 1000 words a night.

Being that I’m not an outliner, I feel I need to say that I always know the whole story before I start writing. It’s all up inside my head, running like a film that I “transcribe” into a fic. So even if I don’t have a written, bullet-pointed list of plot points and emotional beats, I do have the “finished product” looping through my head continuously until I transcribe it all. I know that’s not actually useful writing advice for most people, and I have no idea if this is how anyone else approaches writing, but it’s how it works for me. Minor details may only show up while I’m writing, but the whole story is already there.

This is why I never, ever post incomplete, wip fic. I am a compulsive editor, mostly because I don’t create detailed outlines before I start, and for the sake of continuity, editing is my friend. Can’t go back to insert a reference into chapter 3 that will become important by chapter 14 if you posted chapter 3 half a year ago, you know? Your readers are not gonna go back and reread your updates when you remember that Important Detail never actually made it onto the page in the exact way you needed it to way back when. :P

Now, an outliner MAY have picked that detail up and inserted it before they ever started writing, but one thing folks might not understand until they actually start writing: Actually writing the thing out, making it flesh and letting it breathe, will inherently change your two-dimensional outline. I’m not saying that your plot will derail itself, but only once you begin bringing the story to life, begin living on the page through the characters, will you begin to feel them as living beings, and can really begin to understand them and make them feel real to readers. No outline can do this, and will always fall short of feeling “good enough” for this reason.

(sorry, a lot of how I feel about writing sounds slightly unhinged when I try to talk about it, so please remember that the first original novel I wrote was based on a recurring nightmare I had after a psychotic break, which I literally wrote as therapy to banish the Bad Thoughts. Yes, it worked. Yes, that’s why I still write this way more than a decade later.)

But this is where you’ll begin to fill in the “gaps” inherent in any outline. Personality quirks, inside jokes between characters, feeling their feelings and translating that to the page. But also picking up all the dangling threads like repeating themes and emotional triggers.

I think I’ve gone way far off the path here…

Basically, pick one of your outlines. Decide you’re gonna start writing it. Then start writing it. It’s that simple, and that seemingly impossible. Write one sentence. Then write another. Then write lots more.

Good luck! I know it’s terrifying. I’m terrified every time I pick a new fic idea to write and stare at that blank document. But I stare it down, give a hearty pterodactyl screech, and dive bomb the keyboard. It’s really the only way to do it.

It’s worked pretty well for me so far. :P

#writing is hard #this is some wildly rambling writing 'advice' so remember the first rule of writing advice: #never pay attention to writing advice #well unless you feel it's actually helpful #everyone's different after all and nothing works for everyone #but the first rule of writing is that you have to actually write #and outlining is great and all but it's not the same as writing... #Anonymous

[shinee-freefalling]

BTS World Tour: Love Yourself - fan account

I saw BTS perform at the O2 arena in London on Tuesday 9th October 2018, and it was simply amazing. I’ll do my best to tell you all about it.

Before the show (the boring bit in which I try not to misrepresent the realities of the standing experience - potentially useful if you’ll be attending a show with standing tickets)

The truth is that the day of the show… had its challenges. My group of friends and I had standing tickets and we chose to commit ourselves to getting to the O2 by 5 am (which involved waking up at 2.30 am lol - it was like getting up to go to the airport) to be in with a chance of being somewhere near the front of the pit. Queuing had its ups and downs (trying to avoid giving too much detail on this as I don’t want to give room for negativity), but ultimately, for me, a lot of excitement built up and it was an opportunity to practise our fan chants, even if it was a pretty tiring experience.

Once the doors opened at 5 pm and we were admitted into the arena, we were over the moon at managing to get a spot in the fourth row from the front, right near the middle stage (diamond-shaped), which is pretty much exactly where we’d hoped to end up. Unfortunately, although perhaps inevitably, it did later become clear that there was going to be a lot of pushing from the back of the pit. One of my friends sadly got completely separated from the rest of us for the duration of the concert, ending up in about the tenth row back. The rest of us got separated from one another too, though we were lucky enough to be able to somewhat maintain our position nearer the front.

I’ve got to admit that in spite of the level of pushing (and, at times, elbowing) that occurred, there maybe actually was something to be gained from the intensity and vigour of the crowd. It was at least made clear that Bangtan are incredibly loved, that all of UK ARMY want to be close with them, and there was something unifying in that.

Showtime

I’ve wasted time making excuses when all I really want to say is that I had the best time of my life and loved every second of the concert from the moment it started to the moment BTS left the stage.

I’d seen Bangtan before (at KCON Paris in 2016), but had kinda forgotten what it’s like to be there in the same room with them, to look at them and see them with your own two eyes, no cameras or computer screens intervening. As one of my friends said to me on the tube home, they look exactly as they do in their pictures and videos, completely beautiful, but the difference is that they became real. All of that masculinity, attitude and (forgive me) sex appeal that gets dampened by the process of recording and broadcasting became tangible, and it was kinda electrifying.

Songs (with commentary)

The setlist for the night was setlist B, so the songs were:

Idol (The first song!!!! They launched straight into it and did their introductions afterwards.)

Save Me (It became apparent that people really know the words of their songs, and there was even fan chanting going on, not even just singing along. It was so fun to be part of the ARMY ocean with everybody. Namjoon’s part was super popular.)

I’m Fine (I was NOT fine.)

Magic Shop (JK introduced his song for ARMY, giving me the chance to tell BTS that I promise to give me the best of me. Thank you BTS. Such a beautiful moment of my life.)

Trivia: Just Dance (Solo stages!!!! And Hobi, you sexy. How can you go from ‘I’m your hope, you’re my hope’ to this??? That elevated stage dance though - you must’ve been scared… and you didn’t lose your footing or get out of breathe? Wizard)

Euphoria (JK sang from his chair, which probably killed him inside but it was just very moving and somehow didn’t detract from the performance at all, such is the level of his vocals. Being with JK together in that song, well, for me, it was utopia.)

I Need U (I think this is when I almost fainted lol)

Run (Yeah still fainting - oh dear)

Serendipity (‘GEUNYANG GEUNYANG!!!!!’ HOLY SHIT JIMINNNNNNNNN. He freakin played us ALL. Like I was never a fan of excessive floor humping dance moves until this day. Now I am, like 3000% a fan.)

Trivia: Love (So this is one of my favourite of their new songs and I’d heard it wasn’t that popular in concert but our crowd went wild for it. We were all right there with the PQRST, it was mad. I hope Namjoon felt our love.)

DNA (Yoongi’s part and then V’s made us lose our shit.)

Boyz with Fun (Medley time! And I mean, who can resist a bit of ‘heungtan sonyeondan’? Such a lovely throwback to Paris, I was filled with memories of me and my bestie. Love this song so much because of that.)

Attack on Bangtan (A lot of water was being handed out at this point to keep us hydrated. My memories are blurry.)

Fire (They didn’t do the choreo until 3.33, then they hella did the choreo.)

Silver Spoon (THEY DID BAEPSAE!!! Weren’t we lucky?! Namjoon came right up to the edge of the stage and attacked with some… select parts of the choreo 😂 - I was LIVING.)

Dope (This was so clearly an audience favourite. I think maybe because a lot of people got into Bangtan for the first time because of this song? At least that was the case for me. ‘Eoseo wa bangtaneun cheoeumiji?’ NEEEEEEE)

Airplane Pt. 2 (Finally, BTS can say ‘London to Paris’ and really mean it. JK sitting in his chair actually worked well for this one, he did a lot of upper body wiggling and it was great.)

Singularity (V was a solo artist with this - unreal levels of artistry, individuality and professionalism.)

Fake Love (I had the realisation that this is like my favourite BTS stage ever. The choreo in real life was just mind-blowing, the movements were so unbelievable and fluid. It was only just really sad that Jungkookie couldn’t be a part of it, I’m sure he wanted to. The fan chants were mad with this one btw - I think there are ‘FAKE LOVE’-shaped holes in my eardrums.)

Trivia: Seesaw (Aren’t we all Yoongi stans when this song plays? That voice was pure velvet. Yoongi, we all know it now - you can really sing.)

Epiphany (Okay, I’ll admit something I’m slightly ashamed of, which is that i didn’t known Jin could be this good. And I feel bad for not expecting it to the extent I did, but he ruled the stage so hard, it was beyond expectation, definitely one of the best stages of the night. Madhyung’s voice was so strong and beautiful. What a singer.)

The Truth Untold (There was a moment of such utterly perfect harmony between JiKook, the crowd loved it.)

Outro: Tear (Yoongi loves his job, he was just so very clearly so happy to be there and was loving every second of it. The amount of stage presence and… sheer happiness that radiated rom him, it was so so lovely to see.)

Mic Drop (This was mad, we were singing along like it was the last thing we’d do, even the raps, even though it was the Korean version. And freakin ‘mic mic bungee’ was everything.)

Part of me had hoped for setlist C as Boy in Luv is one of my favourites, and there was a moment when Jimin (or was it V?) said ‘make some noise’ in the exact same way that I’ve seen them sometimes doing right before launching into ‘doegopa / neoui oppa,’ and so my heart completely leapt out of my chest. But honestly, no regrets. All the setlists are amazing and I feel SO lucky to have seen Baepsae!!

For the encore, we had the standard:

So What (‘I don’t wanna die right now, I don’t wanna fight right now, I don’t like worries, Life is long… I wanna live right now’ - thank you Namjoon 💖.)

Anpanman (Of course the crowd loved it, though I found out after the show that Jungkook apparently broke down in tears at this point. He must have been so frustrated not to be able to give it his all. ☹️)

Answer: Love Myself (‘You’ve shown me, I have reasons, I should love myself’ - the perfect ending, resolution.)

Jimin

Jimin, my bias. Thank you, Jimin. He spent so much time on our part of the stage, I was immensely grateful, especially as I’d been sad that he hadn’t seemed to come over to our part of the stage so much in Paris. Beautiful, blonde, with a such a pretty tummy (we saw flashes during Baepsae). Charismatic but rude, he was giving all kinds of eye contact to the crowd, so much fan service, in fact they all made a point of doing this and it was so kind, the way they made sure to make us feel seen and heard. Though their gazes (mostly) weren’t soft at all, so hard and piercing. I feel blessed but also somehow humiliated by having been present in their line of sight.

Jimin maintained a cool facade for much of the concert (I mean, he is the coolest after all), but occasionally that true, sweet smile would break through (like at the end of Serendipity, probs cause he knew we needed something to recover) or when speaking to the members (playing with / comforting Jungkook, bothering Namjoon).

Not meaning to be rude or anything, because it’s something I totally love about him, but Jimin is massively attention hogging on stage and you can totally see why the other members like to (semi-pretend) complain about him, yet admire him so much for his stage presence and performance ability. He was always present just seemingly everywhere on stage, and so commanding. Born to perform, I swear. And stealing everyone else’s moments too, especially Namjoon, whose choreographed high kicks he matched at one point, before adding one extra (extra high) kick of his own, then going on to pinch Namjoon’s cheeks and poke his dimples during Namjoon’s ment. At one point, he came up behind Namjoon so suddenly that Namjoon didn’t know he was there and accidentally hit him in the face. Jimin pretended to be stunned and touched his face as if to confirm it had happened before moving on - it was just so cuteee. 

Ending ments

BTS closed the show with their ending ments. The members taking the time to speak to us as individuals and at length was so special, it was maybe even my favourite part of the whole entire thing. To be able to experience Bangtan live, member by member, just as we know them to be, just as they are… it was just so special.

Something I haven’t mentioned yet (although I’m sure anybody reading this who cares to know will already know) is that Jungkook was injured. We got an announcement at about ten minutes before the concert was due to start explaining that Jungkook had collided with furniture while doing some light stretches not two hours before the show started, and so although it wasn’t a serious injury, he had been told that it would be against medical advice to perform choreography that night. Throughout the concert, he was therefore sat in a chair and not able to participate in the dances or come to the front of the stage. During his ending ment, Jungkookie explained (through the translator) that he had originally prepared something to say in English but chose to speak in Korean so that he could speak to us sincerely from his heart. He apologised for not being able to perform and promised that now he had experienced it, being here with us, he would make sure that it never happened again. Of course, we shouted that it wasn’t his fault, which Namjoon also told him (‘Jungkook, it’s not your fault,’ clear and simple), and we shouted that we loved him. A chant of Jeon Jungkook broke out and Jungkook just bent over with head down so that all we could see was the back of his neck growing red as he cried. Jimin in his ment teased that Jungkook would go back and cry all night after this, and counted us in to ‘tell Jungkook you love him.’ I’m sad he cried but I’m glad we managed to show him how much we love him, that our words reached him. In spite of being injured, Jungkookie was clearly just so done with sitting by the end and did get up and walk around a bit at the front of the stage to try and properly say goodbye (this was during Answer: Love Myself, I think). Jungkookie, I hope you won’t be hurt for long and that you will be back to doing what you love in no time. Get better soon and thank you for everything.

Jungkookie wasn’t the only member to cry. I’m pretty sure Jin and V also teared up at the end. So you know, they were feeling it too. And Jimin’s ment had me crying also, I literally took one look at him as his turn came to speak and started bawling. It was quite embarrassing having to shout ‘we love you’ and ‘you’re my hero’ with a voice full of tears but I did it anyway and I hope he realised how much we love him.

BTS in London

I never expected that they’d come here until they did. I didn’t think we’d be able to get tickets until we did. Namjoon said that London is a place they’ve always wanted to come to. Jimin said that it was his first time in London. Namjoon promised that they will come back next year, which was just the most wonderful thing to hear. Jimin said they were supposed to come last year but couldn’t. Someone, maybe Yoongi or maybe V, said that London was a beautiful place, but we (ARMY) were the most beautiful thing about it. It was definitely Yoongi who said, in classic Yoongi style, that they would need a bigger stadium next time. What a total burn to the O2 arena, clearly not big enough to accommodate the size of Yoongi’s ambition. 😂

Overall

Bangtan’s is a position of immense privilege, but they hold it with such grace. They demonstrate such professionalism and kindness, yet at the same time are goddam sexy and frankly brutal in their stage personas. I am so grateful to know them and to be their fan. We were so lucky to get tickets to see their show, to get the chance to say thank you and show them our love. Bangtan, you’re my inspiration; Jimin, you’re my hero. When I need to love myself, you take me there and show me how. When I need to work on myself, you show me how to do that too. Thank you for being together with me always in your music, and making an ‘us’ together with ARMY: ‘Thank you, uri ga dwae jwoseo.’

Moments

Yoongi sprayed water on us first, and rather aggressively too. Then J-Hope did it too. Thank you for showering me (with your love). 😂

Jimin pushed back V’s hair back when he was wearing his bandana during the encore. So cuteee

Jimin took out Jungkook’s earpiece and whispered into his ear, saying something that caused him to smile.

Taehyung did finger guns with that classic boxy smile face right near us - it’s seared into my memory.

#BTSinLondon #BTS #Bangtan Sonyeondan #Love Yourself #BTS World Tour #Jimin #fan acc

[authenticparanoidghosts]

here’s a very long d&d story about the time my party used volleyball skills to become a god.  for @komodoclassic, because she asked

this is a story in three parts

part i - a brief introduction of major characters and setting

okay so this was our big sophomore year campaign that lasted from first semester on over into part of second semester

really good campaign, our DM put a lot of work into it and we love him, but we had so many players that we had to split into two groups who both played the same world on the same timeline which was a huge fantastic mess

it ended bc the group I was in got a total party kill fighting a lizard with a magic eyeball (a totally different story - I was playing a hot tree and I might have killed him on my own after the rest of the party died if he hadn’t had that fucking entourage) and the other group killed the interdimensional asshole/refugee guy my party was actually trying to help

anyways, important characters in this story:

our DM, who I will not refer to by name even though I do tag him by name sometimes. I love to be inconsistent 

me, playing my first character for this campaign (who did survive! she had to be retired before the lizard TPK for other nonsense reasons), a dwarf paladin named Taxes

Taxes (real name: Ataxite Tellus) was from a family of swindlers and petty criminals and was forced to leave her life of burglary and scamming when her parents got paid off to have someone take the fall for murdering The Very Important Mayor Of The Big Island Of This Archipelago Country and decided to frame her for it

instead of going to jail like she was supposed to, she was like “fuck this” and fled to a different island where she dyed her hair and put on a bandana like an old west outlaw and spitefully decided to dedicate her life to Not Being A Huge Asshole 

obviously the way to do this is by taking some (k)night classes and becoming a paladin

Taxes is not a very good paladin

her god is Deimos, who does fire and war and justice and out of all the gods we met during the campaign (which was honestly a shocking amount) he was the nicest to us

our DM said he (Deimos) got briefly famous on the d&d reddit - partially because of this story and partially because of the stunts we were pulling immediately before it

anyways it’s important that you know that Taxes is from a family of criminals and just genuinely not very good at her job

one of my roommates, playing an elven wizard/lich whose name was Faenor but went exclusively by Gregg

good things to know about Gregg: she and Taxes had a classic straight man/banana man dynamic where she would try to do terrible ridiculous criminal things and Taxes would loudly protest but do very little to stop her

a friend, playing a dwarf paladin/cleric named Yule Marbles

Yule also followed Deimos and she and Taxes had an elaborate prayer handshake that they’d made up that gave them DM-sanctioned bonuses to religion checks

our party prayed basically exclusively to Deimos and eventually gained new player characters who ALSO followed him so after a point we just kind of paraded around the world as Deimos’ Favorite Idiots

part ii - volleyball

alright those are the people you need to know, let’s set the scene

our party needs to flee Dinosaur Hell Island where we have just solved the mystery we were summoned to help investigate and also accidentally started a war

quick trivia: Taxes (me) got mocked CONSTANTLY through the campaign bc she kept ACCIDENTALLY STARTING WARS

BAD PALADIN BEHAVIOR

but I did get a joke proficiency in starting wars which I later convinced the DM to let me use to benefit the party, so who’s laughing now, motherfucker

(the final count was that at LEAST three (3) legitimate, real-ass wars could be traced directly back to my actions as Taxes, as well as a couple other events that I would prefer to call “skirmishes” or “battles” that happened more indirectly.  I refuse to count Malcolm’s not-so-legal battle for the deed to hell because 1) I did NOT help that guy, I just said I would, and 2) that was his problem and he started it)

we are leaving without telling anyone what we’ve found out

because they’re going to kill us, probably

you know. because of the war. that we started. on their already incredibly politically fraught island

the point is that we solved the goddamn mystery despite being absolutely terrible detectives and we FINALLY get to leave

we’ve been playing this part of the campaign for weeks and we’re all very tired of it

also the player who was intended to take point on the investigation (her hot mentor/maybe boyfriend? was the one who had called us there) had died pretty early on doing a pretty risky stunt involving a shark and an underwater cave, so we were just muddling through it

and we kept “”accidentally”” insulting people by stealing things (dinosaurs) and getting caught trying to break into things (sacred temples) and just generally being rude (Yule REALLY didn’t like the fey and I was briefly cursed by a swamp hag)

and, again, we started that war

we really need to skip town

a very unfortunate ship had crashed on the island a couple days previously and some of the people on it are very powerful sorcerers who we (really just Xenon, the half-orc fighter and everyone’s very best friend) have convinced to teleport us off the island

we just need to hide out on their beach and kill some time until the teleportation circle is ready

“do you want to take a rest?” the DM asks

“we should play beach volleyball,” someone else says, at the exact same time

resting is for suckers who are afraid of the very angry lizard people who want to kill us

we vote unanimously to play beach volleyball

the DM graciously decides that, in the interest of comedy, we have all the materials we need and won’t have to, like, sit down and weave a net

we break into two teams of four. team names are quickly decided to be The Hotdogs vs. The Hamburglars 

after the party split our group retained “hamburglars” as our group chat name because our threshold for what entertains us is embarrassingly low

there are eight of us, so we’re playing four-on-four

the makeup of the teams isn’t important (and I can’t remember them), but know that we’re a half-orc, a tiefling, a middle-school-age human girl, an adult human man, two dwarves, an undead elf, and a fishperson

we spend a decent amount of time coming up with rules necessary to let us play volleyball

it’s mostly dexterity checks and rolling a d4 to see what quadrant of the court the ball lands in

some of our group doesn’t know the rules to actual volleyball and they have to be explained

listen. this is possibly the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done. I’m willing to acknowledge that, you don’t need to tell me.

anyways, ultimately the outcome of the game doesn’t matter (the Hamburglars won) and neither does how good or bad anyone was at rolling for imaginary volleyball (we fucking crushed the Hotdogs)

the point is that we played it and were so charmed by it that we would not forget about our new skills. we would remember them in our hour of need.

part iii - now I am (accidentally) become (NOT ACTUALLY A) god, destroyer of pirates

imagine there’s a timeskip

like, uh, two weeks later in game time at MOST

the group has split in real life, so my group is now Taxes, Yule, Gregg, Roswell (delightful fishperson), and another guy who stopped coming regularly and then was later replaced by another guy who doesn’t really become important until later, when we try to help a dimension-hopping dicklick by killing a lizard and stealing his eyeball

his character’s name was Yashirou and he’s not in this at all but it’s important that you know that by the time he died he had been partially transformed into so many different things that he was achingly close to being classified as an abomination and also was probably going to be fired from his job as a space cop

anyways, it’s a new day and a new session

actually, it’s probably like 11 pm. this will be relevant later

Taxes, Gregg, and Yule are the only player characters present because Roswell was busy or something

we’re on a new continent, hanging out with Taxes’ younger sister, Olivine

Olivine has also split from their parents and now runs an all-female gang of pirates who steal from the two much BIGGER gangs of pirates and also the trading federation and then sells whatever they’ve captured to the anti-government faction of the civil war that’s currently happening on the continent

this civil war is the only war currently going on/about to start where the root causes are NOT my fault in any way because when the thing that caused the circumstances that are creating unrest happened, Taxes had her hands over her ears and was humming loudly bc she knew she’d be morally obligated to do something if someone told her what was going on

right now, both major gangs of pirates and the trading federation are also all currently at war with each other

this is my fault

nobody but Gregg and Yule know it’s my fault, though, so I’m only in danger of being mocked for it

anyways we’re hanging out with my sister

doing crime

well, Gregg is doing crime.  Taxes and Yule are paladins so they’re just protecting their good friend Gregg from people who might try to do her harm.  it’s an airtight excuse, thank you

we’re actually on the continent because we’re traveling to visit Yule’s wife and son

so my sister and her gang (and us) have recently stolen a bunch of supplies from a guy named Scipio who is, we’ve been told, a Huge Asshole

Olivine’s gang is going to pay some local sailors to run the supplies up to the northern part of the continent which is both where the rebels are based and where Yule’s family lives

so ofc we’re on one boat (chock full of magical items we have recently lit a perfectly nice wizard on fire to steal) and two of the girl gang members are on the other (full of, like, food I think) providing security and acting as Olivine’s representatives for the deal they’re trying to make with the rebel camp

things are going well

we’re just sailing, no big deal

except, you know, like the first rule of d&d is Never Get On A Boat

and we are definitely on a boat

undeniably on a boat

on a boat full of MANY stolen goods

so ofc a couple hours into our trip, a bigger, faster ship sails up behind us. a bigger, faster ship with very official looking flags

it’s a gang of pirate enforcers (from one of the big two gangs) and they are presumably here to rob the shit out of us

“oh shit” we say, and look over at the other boat where the only NPCs who can help us also appear to be mouthing oh shit

“well,” someone says (me), “I think we can talk our way out of this”

I like to think I’m optimistic (and sometimes I find combat boring)

I prefer to try to lie my ass off to get us out of bad situations

we let the pirates board

things to know:

previous to this adventure on this continent, Taxes had gained the ability to see the names of everyone she meets, Death Note style

also she has a new helmet

more on the helmet later

Yule, who had been wearing Custom Order Rose Gold Plate Armor with the symbol of Deimos (god of LAW and JUSTICE) inscribed in the front and a cake recipe on the back, had been persuaded to take it off and hide it below decks so she looks less like the paladin/cleric she is

Gregg and Taxes look sketchy as hell all the time so they’re not worried

“hey, uh, what’s the plan?” someone asks, moments before the pirates climb onto our ship

“we are also pirates now,” Taxes says

“what”

“we are specifically the same sort of pirates they are because they’re not going to rob one of their own boats,” Taxes says, because she has the actor feat and is willing to use it

“alright, sounds good,” Gregg says, because she loves deception and can just blast the shit out of anyone with her wizard powers if things go south

so we let the pirates board

guy #1 (the only important pirate in this story) is obviously in charge and probably wearing an outfit that makes him look like a douche

he’s a huge douche which we find out immediately and also again later

you’ll see

he starts in on us, threatening everyone, asking our business and clearly winding up to start demanding that we put our hands on our heads and show him where our gold is

“Harrison,” Taxes says

she can see that his name is Harrison with her magic eyes

“Harrison, please, you’ve got the wrong boat”

Harrison - and everyone with him - about swallows his tongue in surprise that she’s addressing him by name

later we find out from the DM that at work he goes by something incredibly silly like Inflammis or Incindior or Combustus or something

none of the other pirates know his name is really Harrison

“who the fuck are you” the pirates, rather reasonably, want to know

“representatives of Lady Blackwing herself,” Gregg says, because we have a hold full of treasure we’ve literally just stolen from this exact group of pirates the day before and nothing to lose

Gregg is basically impossible to kill and should not be allowed to make decisions for the party, but we never learned

we attempt to convince Harrison that we are, in fact, pirates and that we do, actually, work for his boss (Lady Blackwing)

our story is that we’re secret profiteers who are selling things on the black market to both armies in order to fill Lady Blackwing’s pockets with gold

I’m sure you remember there’s a civil war about to get started

“what the fuck is a secret profiteer?” Harrison wants to know

“well,” we say, “we’d tell you, but how do we know you’re high enough up in the organization to have clearance for that information?” heavily implying that he’s a chump for not recognizing us

oooo, burn

Harrison is, of course, not fooled by this

so we send Yule down to the hold to get something to prove that we have our own cargo (that we definitely didn’t steal from them)

Yule comes back, arms full of Custom Order Rose Gold Plate Armor with the symbol of Deimos (god of LAW and JUSTICE) inscribed in the front and a cake recipe on the back, and we roll JUST barely high enough to convince him that we have our own goods and we might, in fact, be pirates who are on his team and he probably should try not to rob us 

so Harrison, a little dazed and definitely pissed off (we were not very polite to him), goes back to his ship

the pirates who have boarded the other vessel also go back to their ship

we start trying to sail the hell out of there as fast as possible

the other boat we’re traveling with sails up next to us and our NPC friends wave us over

“what the FUCK did you tell them?” hot girl gang member who can, like, literally smite things (she was clearly the muscle of the group) asks us 

“we convinced them we were also pirates,” we say

“oh shit” she says

their boat has convinced the pirates that they’re just merchants

turns out the pirates really are looking for the people who robbed them yesterday

for revenge

that’s us. they want revenge on us.

we decide to sail faster

it’s too late, though, because the pirate ship is sailing after us again and we already know they’re capable of catching us

“should we fire the canons?” someone asks, unsure if our boats even HAVE canons

“you should roll initiative,” the DM says, not at all like it’s a suggestion

we’re in combat

on Harrison’s first turn, he hits us with a level 7 fireball

turns out he’s a wizard and he’s very mad at us

Infernus, his work name was probably Infernus

we’re understandably furious about being on fire

there is some shouting that he probably cannot hear

now we get turns

two of us are paladins who don’t really have ranged attacks, and the other one of us is Gregg

the NPCs can do some cool shit but this has dragged on long enough so I will not mention them

“hm,” Gregg says, and tries to light them on fire back (it doesn’t work)

“oh dear,” Yule says, and attempts to fire a canon at them (turns out we do have them)

“I’d like to use my magic hat,” Taxes says, because she REALLY doesn’t want anymore 7th level spells being thrown around and now seems like a good a time as any to figure out what the hat does

“oh my god,” says the DM

“oh my god, really?” he looks delighted

this is the first inkling we get that Taxes’ magic hat is maybe more powerful than any item we ever should have been given

ABOUT THE HAT

previous to this adventure (after Dinosaur Hell Island), Gregg went house shopping and we ended up stealing a fortress carved into a meteor (located in a plane I think our DM might have made up that was basically space) from a Beholder 

after clearing the Beholder and most of its minions out from our future home, we went through it and found a whole bunch of loot.  most notably a rock with a weird marking on it, a shield, and a helmet

the rock went to Gregg who owned the house and when she picked it up the markings moved to her arm and gave her sort of a sick sleeve tattoo that I think boosted all her necrotic spells or something

goth as FUCK

Xenon, the fighter and our very good friend, got the shield and I honestly don’t think we ever figured out what it did

Taxes got the Helmet of War

she’s a paladin of the god of war (and justice and fire), so why not

it’s just a normal-looking helmet and it gave +1 to armor class and our DM had me roll a d4 to see how many charges it had

the helmet had 4 charges, and we did an arcana check but all we learned was that it would summon “an avatar of war”

cool, I thought, like a spirit or something that can fight with me in battle

well

we didn’t bother to investigate any further

“I’d like to use my magic hat,” Taxes says, thinking that an avatar of war might be able to fly and go attack Harrison from a distance

“oh my god,” says the DM, and from the light in his eyes you’d think one of us had just gotten down on one knee for him

“are you sure,” he asks in the DM Voice, and Taxes just shrugs because even if it doesn’t work, at least they’ll know what the hat does, right?

“yeah,” Taxes says, “I activate my magic hat”

“oh my god,” the DM says, and starts furiously writing something down

we wait with interest because we’re starting to get the feeling that the hat does something cool

who’d have thought

“okay,” he says, after a minute

“Taxes starts to glow and she steps off the ship,” he says

“what,” I say, because I’m wearing plate armor and don’t trust myself to roll high enough not to drown because of it

“a giant, 50 foot tall, glowing Taxes forms around her”

“what,” I say

“you’re standing on top of the water, piloting this giant spectral form from the inside”

“what,” I say

“your strength and dex are both 30 and you have 100 additional health,” he says.  “it’ll last for 10 minutes or until the 100 health are depleted”

“what,” we all say

“what would you like to do, avatar of war?” he asks

oh, I’M the avatar of war

THAT’S what the hat does

Taxes raises her arm and points at the pirate ship

HARRISON, she yells, in a voice that’s 50 feet tall and also glowing

the intimidation roll is a nat 20

Gregg does a perception check and the DM assures us that Harrison has peed himself

we all feel very smug

“I want that ship,” I say to the DM

“you- what?” he asks

“I want to have that ship. I’m going to pick up it up,” I say

“oh my god,” he says

“roll strength for it,” he says

Taxes rolls a nat 20 to pick up the ship

the second nat 20 in a row

all four of us are literally shaking with excitement

she scoops up the ship with one huge, glowing hand, and heaves it up to eye level

down on our boat, Gregg and Yule are going absolutely ape

Gregg is screaming encouragement, Yule is on the verge of ecstatic tears

this is also exactly how we feel in real life

“what do you want to do with the boat?” the DM says

“uhh,” I say, because I hadn’t thought that far ahead

we all contemplate the situation

“you could dropkick it,” someone says

“oh my god,” I say

we look at the DM

“roll something,” he says, because no one wants to see what’s about to happen more than he does

natural 20

the third one

in a row

this will probably never happen to me again, ever, in my life

all four of us are shouting at once, we’re on the verge of hysteria

I’m in tears

it’s nearly 1 am and we’re acting like we’ve won the superbowl 

this is the best possible outcome the magic hat could have had

“how do you want to do this?” the DM asks, which is his special ‘I’m going to give you gays everything you want’ phrase that usually means we get to decide the finishing blow for an enemy

“actually,” I say, “can I jump serve it?”

“oh my god,” someone says

that’s right.  beach volleyball, motherfuckers

“yes,” he says

50 foot Taxes tosses the boat into the air

takes a beautiful run-up

and spikes a boat full of pirates so hard that it soars over the coastline and crashes well inland

“wow,” the DM says.  “I’m gonna need some time to figure out how much experience this get you”

later, once he’s got it figured out, it will be enough to give Taxes two levels instantaneously as well as giving Gregg and Yule one each

Taxes goes back to the boats she’s been traveling with

EVERYONE on board is losing their goddamn minds

Yule and Taxes decide to ride the high and take a moment to make an extra big prayer to their god to thank him for the magic hat because it’s so incredibly baller

the roll is not a nat 20, but a holy fire descends upon Mega Taxes and the symbol of Deimos appears over her huge, spectral breastplate

Attack of the Fifty Foot Taxes decides to just pick up the ships she’s traveling with and carry them as far as her remaining 9 minutes of avatar time will get her

“what day is it,” I ask the DM as we’re doing this, because we’re tracking exactly what day it is in-game and it’s fun to know

“june 21st,” he says, after flipping through his notes

“huh,” someone says, “that’s the summer solstice”

“oh my god,” he says

you’ll never guess which patron deity’s major holiday is celebrated on the summer solstice

that’s a lie, you get one guess

it’s Deimos, god of fire and justice and war and being AWESOME as HELL

so

a giant, glowing figure of a dwarf in battered armor with the symbol of Deimos blazing on their chest was seen walking across the ocean just offshore of a major continent that is currently on the cusp of all-out civil war on the morning of Demios’ holy day

it’s just Taxes, who really only does these things on accident or on impulse in the heat of the moment

but the people of the continent don’t know that 

soon, after reaching our destination and starting off on foot towards the village where Yule’s wife lives, we start hearing rumors about the return of Deimos, the Real Ass God

this is what makes the third war my fault

the rumors are never disproven and people continue to believe that Deimos Really Did That until the day we called it quits

“oh my god,” Taxes, a very grudging paladin, says in horror, adjusting her bandana more firmly over her face

“oh my god,” says Gregg, who knows exactly how she’s going to be introducing her friend to the next person they meet

#this is the world's longest post #I'm so sorry #posts #also kinda #my writing #and I'd better tag this for #Taxes

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery after 5 episodes

(Spoilers for Discovery S01E05 and Orville S01E06)

Episode 5 of Star Trek Discovery aired last night in Canada (up here the network Space airs it, so we don’t need to rely on streaming to view it). “Choose Your Pain” was its title and it’s ironic that it aired a few days after The Orville’s surprisingly hard-hitting “Krill” because it actually allows for something very close to an apples-to-apples comparison.

I’m going to go into spoilers, plus this will be a very long post (apologies; this is Exhibit A to show why I’m not on Twitter), so I’ll put a break here. The tl;dr is that, although I’m still willing to give it a chance, I’m still not “feeling” Discovery, which after 5 episodes is a concern; whereas, I find The Orville not only captures the classic spirit of Trek better, it managed in one single episode to make its Klingon analogue more interesting than the real Klingons in their current incarnation.

Before I begin, I wanted to set the scene to explain where I’m coming from. There is a lot of Discovery-bashing going on, and I don’t support that and this essay isn’t intended to be a bash. Although I am very critical of the show and not 100% certain that I’m going to stick with it much longer (though I’ll probably stick with it till its midseason break, at least), it’s not my intent to become a basher because then I’d be a hypocrite. I was a defender of Star Trek Enterprise throughout its entire run, and was upset to see it bashed mercilessly, to the point where I divorced myself from Star Trek and Star Trek fandom after it ended in 2005. Fortunately, Doctor Who had just come back on TV so I switched my allegiances to Who (which I’d been a fan of since the early 80s, but it became more intense). Fast-forward to 2017, and due to a mix of disappointment over what the series has delivered since Christmas 2015, combined with decisions regarding the show moving forward, I'm now divorcing from Doctor Who (as anyone who follows my blog knows). So with Star Trek back on TV the opportunity to move my allegiances back to Trek exists ... but Discovery isn’t doing it for me. Not yet. Instead, The Orville, Seth MacFarlane’s underrated (in more ways than one) homage is the show that is earning my affection. I know I’m not alone in that.

But here’s the thing, and why I don’t really see the need to “bash” Discovery: because The Orville is so much like “proper” Star Trek - the optimism, the crew-as-family dynamic, the introspective and “ripped from the headlines”-inspired stories, and general sense of fun - this actually allows Discovery to seek its own path (even if that means delivering “improper” Trek), allowing both shows to co-exist (which they could regardless - it’s not as if they’re in direct competition).

But Discovery has problems. Before I get into that, though, some positive thoughts.

This week’s episode introduced Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, a character immortalized by Roger C. Carmel in the original series. And I thought he did a good job. I don’t have the same issues with recasting characters as some others do (I liked the guy they had playing Sarek earlier, too). My only complaint is they made him darker than Carmel’s version, which felt a bit inconsistent. But then again this is 10 years before Kirk encountered him and people change (it could be argued that Carmel’s version is more insane than Wilson’s, and maybe we’re seeing why in Discovery). I loved the reference to Stella, his wife, which was a great call-forward to the TOS episode “I, Mudd”. Trivia: Carmel was supposed to reprise Mudd for an episode of TNG, but the actor died before it was filmed; I believe some aspects of what was planned for Mudd - including a scene where he was supposed to actually pay tribute to his frenemy, Captain Kirk - were later reused when they brought Scotty forward into the TNG era in “Relics”. So having Mudd appear in a modern-day Trek is an idea that’s been kicking around for 30 years.

Obviously, Mudd will be back and I’m looking forward to it. I’d rather he be the recurring baddie than the new Klingons. More on that in a moment.

I also liked the on-screen reference to Jonathan Archer, Christopher Pike and Robert April early in the episode. Robert April was established in the animated series as the very first captain of the Enterprise, predating Pike. Since TAS is not considered canon (or at least it wasn’t considered canon during the pre-2005 era; it might have changed since), this is the first “canonical” acknowledgement of April in live action. I appreciated that.

I also liked Capt. Lorca in this episode. After two weeks of being just “there”, Lorca came into his own with this episode. And his backstory is interesting.

But I have criticisms of this episode, and of the show itself as we hit week 5. Starting with a minor point, after four weeks of keeping a lid on language, the swearing in this episode was awkward and clearly put in there “because we can” - there was nothing charming or cool about the first use of the F-word (twice in the same scene, yet) in the Trek franchise. I’m not one to go “oooh, swearing, bad” (The Thick of It is one of my favourite TV shows, for god’s sake), but there’s a time and place, and it just didn’t work - it came across as vulgar and awkward. If they’re going to have people swear in Discovery, fine, but don’t make it feel like “hey, we can swear now!” Torchwood ran into this same issue - and the swearing during Series 1 felt unnatural as a result. If they want Lorca and his crew to turn the air blue, they should get Armando Iannucci in to show them how it’s done.

What will be the deal-breaker for me is if this show continues to be populated with characters I don’t give a damn about. I like Michael (who was for the first time not the focus of an episode) and Lorca has potential - all the characters have potential - but 5 weeks in they should be further along than they are in terms of establishing them, even taking into account the two-episode prologue and the fact a core character only debuted this week.

Five weeks in, and without cheating online, I still don't remember the names of most of the main characters because they’ve made so little impression on me. Michael is fine, Lorca is fine, and I know the new guy is named Tyler (mainly because I’m curious as to whether he’s related to Jose Tyler of Christopher Pike’s Enterprise in “The Cage”), but the rest - by now they should have made enough of an impression for me to at least remember their names, not just call them “Michael’s roommate”, “the jerk who runs the spore drive and who might or might not be the chief engineer but we can’t tell”, “Odo 2.0”, “the doctor who lives with the spore drive guy and who I thought was the ship’s doctor until he mentioned that he answers to a chief medical officer who we’ve yet to see”, “the incompetent who got herself killed by the spore monster last week in a scene Seth MacFarlane would have rejected as too silly”, “the roboty woman on the bridge who kinda looks like Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “the woman whose head is half shaved”. In fact I think this was the first episode in which those last two individuals were actually identified by names on screen.

By comparison, I had not just the Orville character names but their functions nailed down by Episode 2 of that show. And I had much more invested in them as characters, even early on (and by “Krill” I find I want to know more about what’s happening with Borus and Klyden and their child, Alara’s love life, and whether Ed and Kelly are going to get back together or not). With Discovery it’s almost as if they’re all being set up to be redshirts. (As it is, I really don’t expect to Michael’s roommate - I looked it up; her name is Tilly - to survive the season. Too much telegraphing about her being naive and having dreams for the future.) Maybe they are if the show is taking the Game of Thrones “anyone can die” approach and if there is a reason why we’ve never heard of Spock having an adopted human sister before now.

When I started writing this very long (sorry!) blog entry, I mentioned an apples-to-apples comparison between Discovery and Orville. This week, “Choose Your Pain” and “Krill” both involved captains boarding enemy vessels and learning more about the bad guys. And it really drove home the fact that the new Klingons are rather boring. Never mind the different make-up and all that - I’m sure they’ll come up with a workaround to explain that the same way Enterprise did back in 2005 with the Augments story arc (and I didn’t miss the fact they name-dropped eugenics this week) - they just don’t have the spark of the Klingons of old, or even the Abramsverse versions. Not saying there aren‘t promising signs - I kind of like the fact the show is shipping cult leader Voq with the female officer L’Rell. Every episode so far has included focus on the Klingons. But in only one episode, The Orville managed to develop a very well-rounded picture of the Krill, making them relevant, interesting, sympathetic, and “villains” we want to see more of. The Klingons on Discovery? I want more Harry Mudd, fewer Klingons. Of course, a big difference between Orville and Discovery is the use of humour. Discovery pretty much has none, while Orville is a dramedy. Which was driven home during the climax of the Discovery episode when we were actually treated to an unexpected piece of Orville-like comedy when the female Klingon captain, who has the hots for Tyler. Encountering him trying to escape, she let off with something like “After all we mean to each other, you’re leaving?” (not an exact quote). It was a funny moment, but poorly timed. Seriously, we’re supposed to see her as a threat (and an ongoing one seeing as Lorca doesn’t finish her off as opposed to every other Klingon he encounters), and she spouts dialogue more appropriate for a spoof? Compare to The Orville, which usually knows when to be funny and when not to be. Having Ed Mercer and Gordon Molloy facing the possibility of having to kill a bunch of Krill children in order to save a human colony, and Mercer saying “If we kill those kids ... we have no souls” was a far more hard-hitting and dramatic moment than anything “Choose Your Pain” offered. And once things got serious, they got serious. The ending of “Krill” was chilling as Mercer realized that instead of saving a bunch of kids, he created a bunch of future enemies instead, instantly giving the series a long-term aspect as the potential is there for it to revisit this fact years from now, if it survives that long. The Avis rent-a-car jokes were funny, and the opening sequence where Bortus does his best Matter-Eater Lad impersonation (Google it) was cute, and I loved the gag where Ed starts talking before Alara can open a channel, but it was the serious moments that made “Krill” stand out. The next episode looks serious as well as it casts a long-overdue spotlight on Lt. LaMarr.So to sum up: I’m not ready yet to say “Discovery sucks” as some have. I don’t think it does, despite all I’ve written here. It has issues, yes, but every Trek series has issues and teething pains. I am concerned that the characters aren’t gelling for me and that’s what’s going to make me decide to keep watching in the long term. On the other hand, The Orville is proving to be a great show that also has had its rough patches and its teething pains, but it managed to hit the ground running a lot faster in terms of establishing characters and stories and tone. I am in the market for a sci-fi show to replace Doctor Who, and so far The Orville is winning the battle against Star Trek Discovery. But I’m not willing to write Discovery off ... yet.

#star trek discovery #the orville #calling it as i see it

[jeremystrele]

Comforting Words From Six Mums Who Know Best

Comforting Words From Six Mums Who Know Best

Mothers Day

by Sasha Aarons

Courtney Adamo and family, captured by Kara Rosenlund.

Courtney Adamo and family, captured by Kara Rosenlund.

Courtney adamo, bangalow, nsw

What have you learned from your Mum that remains with you today?

My Mum has never been a worrier. There has always been a lightness and a sense of optimism to the way she lives, which is something that has rubbed off on me. She’s also always been fastidious about good manners and good grammar. I know it seems silly, but I’m grateful for it now.

What is something you say to comfort your kids in tricky times?

There’s nothing specific I say. I think each kid and each circumstance calls for its own approach. Generally speaking though, I think it’s about being open to any of their questions, concerns or needs, then providing them with honesty, a sense of security, a familiar rhythm and a feeling of being held. We don’t have a TV and we don’t play live radio in the car, so they are spared the doom and gloom of the 24-hour news cycle. When times are tricky, we want to be their source of information, presenting it in a balanced way, with perspective, hope and positivity. I’m also a big believer in the restorative power of mother nature. Whenever we’re feeling down, whatever the reason, a trip to the beach or the woods brings us right back up.

What kind of world do you hope your children will inherit?

I hope our kids will inherit a world that is open and interconnected, with people and ideas moving freely for the benefit and equality of all. I hope for a world where we are conscious of our every imprint on the earth and we prioritise the planet’s need over our personal wants. And it would be awesome if self-driving electric cars were commonplace before they are old enough to drive!

What are you optimistic about right now?

My kids going back to school! Haha. Kidding (sort of). There’s a lot of bad happening in the world right now, and people are suffering in ways I can’t even comprehend, but I hope this collective pause has awakened in us a deeper sense of appreciation for what is most important. This is a historic event and unusual in that it is impacting virtually everyone on the planet in some way. I’m hopeful that moving forward, we will all be more conscious of how our actions, big and small, impact the planet and ourselves. I know we will not be returning to life as usual when it’s all over.

Is everything going to be okay?

I always like to think so! It is my personality (or perhaps a coping mechanism) to try to find the silver lining in every situation, even when things seem really challenging or depressing. I have five children — I have to think the future is bright!

Courtney Adamo is an author, entrepreneur and the co-founder of  Babyccino Kids. She is also the mother to five children! Following the release of her first wildly popular e-course, Courtney has just this week released ‘In The Loop : Blossom‘, a 3-week e-course on pregnancy, birth and the first year. Check it out here!

Melbourne textile designer Cassie Byrnes with her gorgeous bub Lottie. Photo by Annika Kafcaloudis.

Melbourne textile designer Cassie Byrnes with her gorgeous bub Lottie. Photo by Annika Kafcaloudis.

Cassie Byrnes, Melbourne, VIC

What’s something you learned from your Mum that remains with you today?

Definitely resilience. My Mum has had a pretty rough run in life, which is easy to forget because she is so warm and loving and just gets on with it (as Mums tend to do). In my older age (and since becoming a Mum) I now understand how difficult some of the setbacks must have been, and how she did totally amazing things while raising four kids.

What is something you tell your kids in tricky times?

Well, Lottie is only seven months old, so to her tricky times really just consist of trying to sit up in her sleeping bag or managing to grip on to her pear slices with her tiny slippery fingers…. so I just cheer her on like, ‘You can do it girl, get that pear!’.

What kind of world do you hope your children will inherit?

This is a very big question! For a couple of years I did have a few worries about bringing someone new into a world that I felt was changing for the worse in many ways. But, I was way too maternal to follow through with it, so I guess you win, hormones.

I think we also need to understand that while at this exact moment in time it might be hard to see through the gloom at big picture level, we are still in control of our well-being and destiny and have the chance to use this time to create the future we want.

Closer to home, I really just want her to feel like she can do and be anything she wants, and feel confident enough to find out what that is. If she can take on that spirit then I reckon she’s got a good shot at handling the world in whatever state it’s in when she grows up.

What are you optimistic about right now?

So much. That’s what the baby bubble will do to you! We have looked at this isolation time as something kind of special, one we will always look back on as a time when the three of us were home with each other 24/7, and Lottie has benefitted from so much attention from us! As I learn the ropes of Mum-hood I’m feeling more confident and nurturing than I’ve ever been, and a lot less stressed, because, well, who even has time to stress about anything anymore? If you put all the fears aside and just stop to look at this little human who is genuinely thrilled just to be a part of the world everyday, it’s hard not to feel the same way.

Is everything going to be okay?

One hundred percent. Yes there’s lots of people hurting now, and it’s sad to think there will be more of that to come. But you know, we owe it to them and ourselves to try and find the positivity in all this. I’ve seen neighbours and friends come together in amazing ways lately. My group chats, Mums groups, customers DMs and daggy Zoom trivia nights all help to remind me that it’s the people in your life that really make up your world, and as long as they’re still around of course everything is going to be ok. And if you ever feel like things won’t be, remember to reach out to someone.

Cassie Byrnes is a freelance textile + surface designer. You can shop her latest collection of designs here (and listen to Lucy’s chat with her on TDF Talks Podcast here!).

Curator and writer Hetti Kemerre Perkins with her daughter, actress Madeleine Madden. Photo – Alisha Gore.

Hetti Perkins, Sydney, nsw

What does Mother’s Day mean to you?

Mothering or being a mother or Mum means different things to different cultures and communities. For instance, in Arrernte ways you have a number of mothers, and the immediate responsibility to care for a child extends generationally to grandparents and others. Or there’s the ‘Paris is burning’ version of motherhood in the drag community epitomized by RuPaul Charles!

I have been called Mum ‘instinctively’ by some very young children who have come into my home just because they maybe needed a Band Aid and a hug, or were hungry and must have identified me as their best bet for getting those needs sorted! I am also called Mum by some adult kiddos who need the grown up version of a Band Aid or a hug!

As a parent and as a someone who is blessed to be called Mum by a number of people, it’s a day for being grateful for all my ‘children’ who trust me enough to love and be loved; and to be grateful to those people who have helped my kids grow up. So, it’s a day for taking time out to acknowledge all those people – regardless of their biological relationship or gender – who have grown you up.

What’s something you learned from your Mum that remains with you today?

My mum Eileen is awesome, and sometimes infuriating! Me and my kids call her Naughty Nanna and she still constantly surprises us with her tricks and unconventional ways! To this day, marrying my father was probably her best unconventional ‘trick’. My Arrernte and German grandmothers – who couldn’t have come from more ‘opposite’ sides of Australian society yet found common ground and an enduring respect and friendship – continue to inspire me. An early memory I have of my childhood in Alice Springs is Nanna Hetti’s fiercely loyal dog only deigning to also lay his head on Nanna Laura’s lap.

One thing that has stuck with me, was my Mum drilling me in the value of learning history to better understand our world and our place in it – and our responsibility to future generations.

What is something you tell your kids in times of hardship?

We’re all in this together and together we’ll get through it.

What are you optimistic about right now?

Last year we welcomed a little rescue kitten into our family on Mother’s Day. It’s been the gift that keeps on giving, watching Raven grow and flourish despite a hard start in life.

Otherwise it’s art, always! Artists of all genres and ages give me strength. Their creativity has a palpable effect on my mental and physical wellbeing. For instance, Hayley Mary’s brilliant EP ‘The Piss, the Perfume’ is on my high rotation playlist at the moment and I recommend it to any readers needing a dose of good medicine – or gift ideas!

What kind of world do you hope your children will inherit?

A common ground governed by the principle of the common good.

Is everything going to be okay?

It will be if we collectively keep our eye on the ball – and by ball I mean this big, beautiful globe we call home, Earth.

Hetti Kemerre Perkins is a curator and writer. Read our interview with her and her daughter, actress Madeleine Madden, here.

Designer Jenny Kee with her daughter, literary agent Grace Heifetz.  Photo – Courtesy of Mimco.

Jenny Kee, Blackheath, NSW

What’s something you learned from your Mum that remains with you today?

Mum was always so incredibly generous and was a true giver, and I never think of her without thinking of her generosity.  She was a fanatical cleaner and I have really inherited that trait – I loved this about her.  It goes without saying that she had amazing style and was a natural fashionista, and we shared this love of clothes, design and style.

What is something you tell your kids in tricky times?

All things will pass.

What kind of world do you hope your children will inherit?

The Coronavirus has taught us to think more about our world and our environment. I hope that our children will inherit a simpler world, where our focus will be on the abundance of nature, where animals are not extinct, where the sky is blue and we hear the birds sing and our oceans and rivers run clean.  A world where the environment is more important than the economy – a world where we live simply so others may simply live.

What are you optimistic about right now?

I am optimistic about my property that was ravaged by fires and the regeneration is glorious.

Is everything going to be okay?

While nature has the upper hand everything will be ok, as she is our Mother – the greatest Mother of all.

Jenny Kee is an artist, fashion designer and environmental activist. See her work and collections here. 

Julia Busuttil Nishimura with new baby boy Yukito! Photo – Eve Wilson for The Design Files.

Julia Busuttil Nishimura, Fitzroy, VIC

What have your learned from your mum that remains with you today?

The importance of showing kindness and having empathy for others.

What is something you say to comfort your kids in tricky times?

We like to keep it light at home but my eldest is 4 so sometimes he’s heard something at kinder or caught a snippet of a conversation. I listen to what his fears are and label them. I think it’s really important to reassure him that things are ok and that he’s safe, that it’s ok to feel sad or scared or whatever he is feeling, but that we’re here for him.

What kind of world do you hope your children will inherit?

I hope my children will inherit a kind world where people look out for each other. A world where the leaders care for ALL – people and nature.

What are you optimistic about right now?

Even though it can be overwhelming when people say the ‘new normal’ I am hopeful that we will return to travel, and family gatherings and hugging friends. I am optimistic that this time has helped many of us to slow down and appreciate the small joys we usually take for granted.

Is everything going to be okay?

It is sad that so much life has been lost and many have lost jobs and businesses and many of us are feeling lonely. It’s been a pretty hectic year. Between this and the bushfires, anxiety levels feel heightened all around, but I do think we will come out the other side stronger and more intertwined as a community.

Julia Busuttil Nishimura is a cook, author and beloved TDF Food columnist! 

Yumi Stynes with her partner Martin, and children ‘Man Baby’, Mercy, Dee Dee and Anouk. Photo – Katherine Millard for The Design Files.

Yumi Stynes, Sydney, NSW

What have your learned from your Mum that remains with you today?

My Mum used to say that your physical space is a reflection of your soul. So if your room is in utter disarray, there’s a strong chance your spirituality is, too.

What is something you say to comfort your kids in tricky times?

I used to sing the song “Go to sleep” with our own made-up lyrics – “Go to sleep, go to sleep, you are warm and protected, you are safe, you are loved, bed is soft so – nigh nigh!” Now they’re a bit bigger (4, 5, 15 and 18) so I’m not singing to them as much, but when one of them is having a freak out, the first thing I try to do is listen so they can tell me their fears or what’s going on, then in my own words I repeat what they’ve said back to them so they know I understand. To the little one I might say, “You’re scared – and fair enough! You’re safe. Come here. You’re safe. You’re going to be okay.” To the biggest one I might say, “You’re upset – and fair enough! You’re safe. You’re going to be okay.” It helps to remember that they don’t necessarily want advice, they just want to share.

What kind of world do you hope your children will inherit?

I hope the kids will inherit a world where there’s free universal healthcare and where nature hasn’t been completely destroyed. I really hope there’s an upcoming generation of girls, women and non-binary people out there who are inspired to enter politics because they’ve had a gutful of the monocultural vested-interest wankers we seem to keep putting in charge. I hope basics like bananas and bees don’t become extinct during their lifetimes. I hope they never experience war or famine. But at the moment I just hope they get a chance to live to old age.

What are you optimistic about right now?

I’m optimistic that people have seen that real, systemic and gigantic change is possible. I’m optimistic that when everything else is terrible, art and music still has the power to elevate the soul.

Is everything going to be okay?

One of the things I do for pleasure and relaxation is I cook and nut out new recipes. I do this so much that I tend to have a surplus of food and drop parcels of the latest yummy ridiculous thing to my friends. I have a loop of people I drive around to, dropping off food as gestures of love, solidarity and community. This week I pretty much worked out the most spectacularly perfect recipe for Creamy Chicken Soup. It’s been a work in progress for many years but I actually think I can stop trying to perfect it now because it is, in fact, perfect. So. I don’t know if everything is going to be okay but I do know that there can be comfort in sticking up for and showing kindness to people who need it, and sometimes that is the best that we can do. Until we burn the whole fucking thing down.

Yumi Stynes is an author, presenter and broadcaster. Her award-winning ABC podcast Ladies, We Need To Talk just launched their fourth season. The next episode is about women working at the front line of coronavirus, and is out on May 19th.

[gloriouslokius]

So, @itza322 and I went to Chris’ book event in Houston. What a gem. I’ve been to a few of his signings, but never got to see him do anything like this. I twas so worth the six hour drive. Lol He was sweet and funny and thankfully, there weren’t any awkward Klaine questions. Here’s what we can remember from last night!! See Maritza’s pictures here!

Under a read more because this got long. I transcribed his answers from my audio, so they are are exact quotes. Enjoy!

First thing he said is he feels like home because her grew up in Clovis, which he always says is the Texas of California. Nerd.

The school was on Merrill Street and while driving from the airport, he kept hearing the GPS say “You are now ten minutes away from Meryl Streep.” and his reaction was “What is she doing at the event!” It was adorable.

He “learned the hard way that the readers know more about the series than I do.”, so he gives people the chance to quiz him on the books.

He did a reading from TLOS6 World’s Collide. It was a great little excerpt. I could listen to him read all day long.

He had to step backstage for a minute for something and he said “It was Hillary” on the phone. He said that. In Texas. I looked at Martiza and said “Did he just say that in Texas?” and I saw Alla mouthing “Texas?” too. Lmao

He did trivia, where he asked questions about the books and all the kids were adorable who answered and they got TLOS hats for answering. 

He then took questions from the audience to test his knowledge on the series. The firs question was “When is the movie coming out?” “It wasn’t exactly the kind of question I was hoping for.” He said the questions stumped him, so she got a hat. Lol But his real answer was the more the readership grows and the books sells the studio will want to get it going.

Next question was “What does Conner say to Annie?” Chris said he doesn’t remember an Annie so he doesn’t know the answer and gave the kid a hat.

He had everyone in costume come up on stage, there were a few great costumes! One girl was dressed like the Galaxy queen and it was fantastic. She got runner up. There was a woman dressed dressed as Mother Goose and her daughter was her flask. (@itza322 posted pics here) It was perfect and Chris was completely in love with it. They won, naturally.

The first girl who went up on stage, when asked what her costume was said “NOthing, I just wanted to come up on stage.” Totally stumped Chris for a minute. There was another little boy that was dressed like “An innocent bystander from NY” Lol

Moving on to audience q&a. While waiting for the first question, he said “That would be really cool if the flask was full” Lol

The first person (she was 21 fyi, not a kid) asked if she could get a picture afterwards and Chris looked at Alla who just said no immediately. She then asked what his process was for writing. “I have less of a process and  more of a cry for help. I write at night because less people tend to bother me at night, that’s nice so I can focus. Um..I like to write in my spare bedroom that’s full of tacky nerd merchandise. That helps me be creative and I love listening to film scores while I write. That helps me inspire story more than anything.”

What inspired you to write about fairy tale characters? “When I was a kid, I loved fairy tales. My mom used to read fairy tales to me every night before I went to bed and I always had a million questions about all the characters and their motives. My mom finally got so tired of answering my questions she said “Christopher why don’t you just write your own fairytales?” And here we are!”

How did you get inspired to write your stories? “When I was about your age, I loved reading and I loved reading things like Harry Potter and books by [inaudible] I remember the last Harry Potter book emotionally scared me so much that I thought the only way I could fill the void was by emotionally scarring other people. So that’s why I like writing so much.”

What was your book inspiration? “Ooh good question. Really I think the Wizard of Oz was the biggest inspiration. If you look at the Land of Stories structure, it’s structured very simlar to Oz where they’re on a quest or they’re going through the parts of the world while the evil queen/wicked witch is the brooding in the foreground. So yeah, I’d say Wizard of Oz most.”

How is your favorite character and why? “Well I think my public answer is Conner. Well Conner and Alex. But I really Conner’s story in the series because he starts of as the kid who takes naps in class and by the end of the book he’s the kid you saves the world. So I think that’s a good story. But I do love Mother Goose because she’s such a bad influence. So yeah, I think those two are some of my favorites.”

What advice do you have for anyone who is looking to be a writer in the future? “I’d the best advice to give to aspiring writers is to not be intimidated by other writers. Because other writers get very, very competitive about writing. And some of the writers I got advice from are always very discouraging and say “just don’t do it.” And so I take it with a grain of salt. I think writer’s block is and I feel like as soon as you feel it coming on just get up and walk away from your computer or your pad or whatever. And I think the more you sit and fester the worse it’s gonna be. So as soon as you you feel it coming, just walk away and come back when you have an idea later.”

How do you get past your writer’s block? Besides walking away? “I listen to a lot of music. I think having other things in your life to focus on to kind of divert your attention is really good for that. But honestly I think that’s the only advice I can give is to not focus on the fact you have nothing to focus on. You know to throw some other things in there and to outside your house and walk around. Let the inspiration find you if you can’t find it.”

What made you think of making Conner the heir of telling stories and Alex the heir to magic? “Ooh good question. Um because their twins and that was wasn’t and idea I had until writing the second or third book. Um but I think because their twins they are single handedly responsible for continuing our story telling in our world and continuing magic in the other world. So it’s kind of a yin and yang situation.”

Do you still hate your grandmother for crumpling up your stories when they were bad? “Well it was very traumatic at the time. For people who don’t know, when I was a kid I tried writing stories when I was 7 or 8. It was very difficult because writing a novel was hard when you’re that young. I used to write down chapters, I’d take it to my grandma’s house and she’d grammar check it and spell check it and if she liked it, she’d keep it in a pile and if she didn’t like it, she’d crumple it up in front of me and throw it away. And I grew some character from that! But really she gave it to me honestly and I think that really helped me the most more than anything in the long run. So no, there’s no hard feelings. But she still gives me notes on the books. It’s a little annoying.”

What was your hardest book to write? “Probably the first one. Because up until the first book the longest thing I had ever written was an essay at school. And while I was writing the first book, I was also on a world tour with Glee so I had this crazy routine. I’d come in before the show, I’d go underneath the stage into the dressing rooms, I’d write a chapter, I’d go sing Don’t Stop Believing, come back I’d edit the chapter, I’d run out and sing I Wanna Hold Your Hand, come back, right some more, slap on a leotard and go do Single Ladies, come back. I did that for months and months and months and that’s the reason I am the way I am today.”

He then did the raffle for the meet and greets. He had a cute little girl come up and help him draw the tickets. He also had an additional winner because he drew a frog on a specific page of one book. Thought that was cute!

He then did a reading from Mother Goose Diaries. Again, it was an adorable snippet and I could listen to him read all day.

Overall, it was a great experience and I hope y’all enjoy this write up!

#chris colfer #the land of stories #tlos6 tour #houston signing #meeting chris

[loarlovestv-blog]

Sanvers Week Day 2 – Nerd Girlfriends

A/N: I almost didn't post anything today, but an idea popped last minute, so here it is. I didn't have time to edit much, English isn't my first language and I don't have a beta so all mistakes are mine. Maggie Sawyer is a sapiosexual. She's sexually attracted and aroused by intelligence. A fact she's well aware of, especially when it put her in embarassing situations. And it does, every day, since as she's working at NCPD Science Division, she hears quite a lot of science talk all day long. And listening to that cute lab worker, with the equally cute glasses and lab coat rambling about the details of the latest case's evidences does things to Maggie's body that are difficult to hide. She losted count of how many times she made her lips bleed by biting it too hard to keep from moaning out loud, how many ruined panties she had to throw away. But all things considered, she was handling it well enough. Until she met Alex Danvers. Because this woman? She was something else. She was from a whole other league completely and Maggie had to resort to her acting A game around this Science Goddess. At all time. Because the glint of intelligence in Alex's eyes was enough for Maggie's inside to coil in warm arousal. She definitively was a goner the moment Alex open her mouth to tell her about analysing thermal residue and electromagnetic component to alien weapons and creating countermesures. She somehow managed to laugh it off and call her a nerd without stuttering and she thanked her complexion for not revealing the blush warming her cheeks. The change of subject to her singlehood probably was the reason she didn't out herself as a kinky nerd. Though considering the turn of the conversation when she accidentally out Alex to herself, maybe that wouldn't have so bad after all. Somehow, though, in the weeks full of drama that followed, Alex picked on it. Maggie has no idea how or when she did, but that night when she finally kissed the girl she wanna kiss in the agent's appartment, after a long make out session, and after retiring on the couch where they cuddled and talked, Alex started dropping nerdy comments now and then, gently teasing her now-girlfriend's intelligence kink. Maggie didn't catch up immediately; it took he several hours of agony, trying and probably failing at hiding her arousal, to finally realise that this slow torture was intentional. She left the appartment not long after that, but not before kissing and nipping at Alex's throat, jaw and ear, letting her writhing, panting, moaning and thoroughly aroused as a revenge. Once in her own place, though, she had to take of her needs in the shower, but it was worth it. A few weeks later, they realised that they shared a favourite board game as kids, Leonardo & Co., a trivia game with questions about Exact Sciences, Biomedical Sciences and Social Sciences, which prompted Alex to bring it at Kara's Game Night, to Maggie's dismay. Winn and Lena were fine with it but Kara grumbled and ranted and pouted about it until she stuffed pizza into her mouth, and James just quietly sighed. Half-way through the game, she couldn't take it anymore. She got up suddenly and with a "A word Danvers?", she dragged her girlfriend to the bathroom. Once there, she quickly locked the door and throw Alex against it. "I'd say 'talk nerdy to me' but I think you did that enough already." She rasped in her ear. "Shoulda bet with you you wouldn't last the night. You too easy." Alex replied cockily. "Smart ass." "You love that about me." "Yeah I do." She tilted her head, starring intensely into those gorgeous chocolate eyes. "You know, I like it too. Being talked nerdy." Alex hinted. Maggie bristled at that. "I'm not a nerd, you're the nerd in this relationship." She refuted. "Oh please, I saw those forensics journal on you desk and you hide entomology books behind your lesbian erotica." "It's for work." She sweared. "The erotica? Or the entomology books?" Alex teased. "Pffft, you think your smart-" "I am." "Okay, okay you're right. I love bugs. Happy now?" "I am very pleased indeed." She smiled softly at her girfriend. "But we should get out of here before my sister lose patience." "Ugh, but can we at least change game. This one is a torture." "What about we go home and I show you my extanded knowledge of human anatomy?" Alex flirted and fluttered her lashes. "Are you sure? We hadn't yet-" "I'm sure if you are. It's been long enough, isn't it?" "Yeah, it's been too long." Maggie nodded enthuastically. "So your place or mine?" "Yours. I want you to read me those entomology books." "Lead the way."

#sanvers week #day 2 #nerd girlfriends #my fic

[youcanrantifyouwantto]

Delino DeShields and Falling In Love With Baseball Again.

I’m always down to celebrate whatever makes you happy. Do you love playing Dungeons & Dragons or LARP on the weekends? Do. Your. Thing. Are you into trivia nights? Enjoy your Tuesdays at the bar with tipsy friends. Do you enjoy cosplay and going to conventions? Live your life! For me, it’s always been baseball. After all, what is a sports fan other than a cosplayer dressing as their favorite player?

I’ve been a fan of baseball since I can remember life. Pudge Rodriguez started it all for me, and I’ve never really looked back. A few years ago, I even thought I got to live my dream come true and write about baseball for the D-FW sports world to enjoy. As it turns out, dreams change. Here’s how that stifled my love of baseball, and how I got it back largely because of one player.

Growing up, Pudge Rodriguez was my whole life. I wanted to be a pitcher so I could throw to him. I spent days outside playing catch with my dad, acting like I knew how to play baseball. As I grew up, I was becoming more interested in other things. I still watched baseball, but my interest began to vary (read: boys), and I didn’t always have the time to invest. The summer after my senior year of high school, a player by the name of Ian Kinsler was called up to the Texas Rangers, and I was back. Say whatever you want about why I liked him, but I did like him a lot. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He’d get angry, and he’d show it. When he’d pop up or fly out, you could always tell that he was not pleased with his own performance, and I loved that. His wiggly batting stance that should never work, his little hops at second when a batter is getting ready to swing. It just brought me all back in. Yeah, he wasn’t too bad on the eyes either. Sue me. Baseball is fun and quirky and a game. It helped to never take it too seriously

Then I took baseball way too seriously. So did the people around me. I was afforded the opportunity to write about the Texas Rangers on a public, unpaid forum. It felt like the best dream come true, and for most of the time I did it, it was. Since it was an unpaid position, I was able to keep some freedom of just being a fan. If I thought Craig Gentry had a nice face, I’d say so, but then I’d write about why Joe Nathan had been almost as good as Mariano Rivera. I tried to create a place for myself where I could have fun and still be a fan, but show some analysis about the sport I love. For me, I didn’t want it to be one or the other. ¿Porqué no los dos?

Don’t get me wrong, for the majority of the time I was writing, I loved it. I was able to meet a good set of people through the online sports world. The Dallas-Fort Worth sports community is really something special, and being able to live my life in it was a whirlwind at times. Events were frequent and usually so much fun, and I once embarrassed myself in front of Mark Followill by being way too excited to meet him. I was able to interview Don Welke, an MLB scout, for a podcast that was definitely my favorite part of the whole experience. The podcast, Girls of Summer, was a product of which I couldn’t be more proud. Creating something like that with another woman in sports was something I will never forget. Plus, my partner, Sarah, is a brilliant person who I am lucky to know.

However, I loved it until I didn’t. If you’ve followed me through my baseball experience, maybe you remember the “emotion is for women” debacle. Perhaps the first red flag, but it wasn’t enough to make me quit, even though I thought heavily about it. The website I was working for had a video podcast or discussion they’d do from time to time. Honestly, it was a really neat way to get writers together to talk through ideas and throw fun little arguments around, and I enjoyed doing them. During one episode, two of the men were discussing Mitch Moreland. His stats with the Texas Rangers were brought up to prove he had not been good so far. One of the men simply said he knew that, but he really liked watching Moreland play and wanted him to stay with the Rangers so he could root for him to be better. He truly just wanted this player to get better. Then a phrase was said that made my face hot. “Come on, man. That’s emotion. Emotion is for women.”

Maybe it’s just a joke. Maybe it seems harmless, but as a woman who was trying to change the way women are viewed especially in the world he was representing, it definitely didn’t sit well with me. Another man very clearly stated he had an emotional attachment to a player just because he did, and the response was that only women like players like that. Very heavily implied that women only like players for that reason.

Here are some basic problems with that statement, but I will reserve full discussion because that’s a whole separate conversation: 1. A man just admitted his emotional attachment, so already you are wrong. 2. Women have emotions, but men also have them. Men like to set things on fire when their sports team loses, but oftentimes we ignore anger in men as an emotion. 3. The website you represent has female staff members, and you used sexist language without apology or thought.

When I say “without apology,” I truly mean it. What happened after I called him out about it proved to me that women still have a long way to go in male-dominated spaces. It was abundantly clear that the only person who professionally had my back was me. The owner told me that I shouldn’t have publicly said anything about it and reprimanded me for starting an argument by tweeting how he shouldn’t have said it. And that was basically all he had to say. In all fairness, we were supposed to be on the same team, so I apologized for so publicly calling him out instead of coming to him first, but still not for actually calling him out. I asked that he address it, and he told me that I was proving his point by being so angry about the whole thing. Neither one ever publicly or privately apologized to me for the issue, and while it might seem like a small thing to some people, it felt alienating to me.

Eventually I let it go. The relationships between us definitely weren’t the same, but I continued writing for them because I loved baseball, and I love writing. Most other aspects were positive about the job, and I didn’t want them to get rid of me that easily. Although it never felt quite right after that moment.

It was a constant battle of why I liked Ian Kinsler so much, justified by all his stats because I couldn’t just like him because I did. Kinsler is a good baseball player, though, so I was happy to rattle off all his numbers and analyze his career. It was a constant battle of letting me be a fan and high-five players at appearances. Letting me appriciate the experience and get excited when I get to meet players, and how that somehow made me less of a writer. It was a constant battle of me making a very online social media joke about a player’s likeability, and people assuming I thought that player was good or better than everyone else. Trust me, I know Robbie Ross isn’t the best pitcher, but I want him to be because I like him as a person. Let me live my life.

Keep in mind this whole time I wasn’t getting paid, but none of my articles ever had anything to do with a player’s likeability or their face, for that matter. I kept my articles professional with a hint of funny and baseball wonder. It wasn’t until close to the end that I started feeling very unwelcome.

The website changed owners several times after the first year I wrote. Each one was seemingly worse than the last, and much of the structure got lost in the shuffle. There was one, in particular, who was not a fan of mine. To my face he was fine, but he thought I was too much of a fan-girl and couldn’t be taken seriously. In the interest of fairness, I am a fan-girl, but this wasn’t a real job. It was a hobby. A hobby I loved and wouldn’t be mad if it turned into a real job, but still a hobby.

There were new staff members, and people who took baseball way too seriously started popping up all over the sports community. Everything was persistently about which analytic was better and why each player was good or bad based on whatever obscure stat. I started to notice how everyone became exceedingly judgmental of everything and everyone. Baseball is truly unpredictable, but everyone kept insisting they were right. Who could talk louder? Who could laugh at someone else to make them feel dumb? The arrogance was suffocating. I enjoy analyzing players, but it’s nowhere near an exact science. People would scoff at the idea of a human element like each player was just a robot with consistent results with no life outside of the GAME they got to play for a living. If you weren’t always talking numbers, you weren’t good enough. If you didn’t listen to only this one radio station, you weren’t good enough. No one came out and said it, but the atmosphere had been created, not just for my website, but the whole sports world around me.

It wasn’t always that way, but on days when everyone was trying to talk over each other, it became exhausting. I lost most of my desire to write over this time. Taking on new positions at the job that actually paid me, and the pressures of keeping up appearances at the one that didn’t made me decide that I needed to stop. It was too draining to listen to men insist they were right at every turn without ever knowing if they were actually right. Too tedious to keep up with every opinion I was supposed to have. So I walked away.

I am in no way trying to say that I handled everything perfectly. I was young and stupid and abrasive at times. I made so many mistakes and did things the wrong way when trying to stand up for myself, but I needed my team around me to be supportive and constructive and a lot of the time, they weren’t. I could’ve done more to insert myself into the space or create my own lane, but I chose not to. I could’ve practiced more kindness and chose different words when I became defensive, but I didn’t. I don’t look back on any of it as a unfortunate experience, rather just something I tried to do but couldn’t quite figure out how to make it mine.

I’ve spent the last few years distancing myself. Mostly trying to find my way back to the comforts of baseball the way I once knew it. Game after game, I’d find players I wanted to root for, and I tried to go through the motions. Part of me still wanted to dive into the stats, but nothing ever really clicked the same way it had in the past. My favorite player had been traded from my favorite team, I’d stopped being so involved in the world I had once so desperately wanted to be in, and I started to feel left behind. Did I quit too soon? Should I have fought harder? Should I have just unapologetically created my own place? How did this fit into my life anymore?

Delino DeShields started playing for the Texas Rangers, and I took notice. I loved the energy he had as a young guy trying to make it. His speed was a great and unique asset, and made watching him a fun experience, whether it was a stolen base, a single stretched into a double, or a ball into the outfield he had to sprint to catch. He was an underdog, too. Not a minor league superstar everyone had been looking at for years, but I was pulling for him to be successful anyway. It started to remind me that everything in baseball doesn’t have to be so serious. Let them play.

I recently went to the Texas Rangers Fan Fest and had a moment of clarity. I love this sport. I love the superstars, but I love the underdogs, too. I love getting to know a team that I can root for professionally and personally. I’ve always enjoyed meeting players (and musicians) to be able to thank them for the small role they play in bringing joy to my life. I’m 31 years old, and it still makes me feel like that little kid looking at her heroes. I get nervous. I forget they’re just people trying to do their best, but I’m sure on some level, they still enjoy the fact that someone is rooting for them. I can’t speak for them, but I would hope it makes players happy to see fans invested in them.

Then I met Delino DeShields. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t think it was going to happen, so I didn’t have time to think about it. I was a complete mess. I shakily told him how happy I was for the opportunity to say hi. I explained through watery eyes that he was currently my favorite player to watch, and I’m thankful they (and he) let us interact. I word vomitted all over because my brain was working too quickly, and my mouth couldn’t keep up. I apologized for being a mess, thanked him too many times to count, and asked for a high-five as I always do. After all of that, he still smiled and thanked me multiple times for coming out. He laughed at me while I laughed at myself because we could both tell I was struggling to remember how to be a person. Later on he gave me an unprompted hug and thanked me again. He didn’t have to do anything, because he owes me nothing, but those small gestures solidified his place as my favorite. The loveable, underdog who I just want to succeed no matter what any stat could possibly tell me. It snapped me back. This is why I started.

I’m not saying the sport should never be analyzed. I always want the best version of the team I’m rooting for to take the field. I understand why it needs to be discussed, but I don’t personally put the team together. That has never been nor ever will be my job. I still want certain guys to succeed so they can earn that place on the field. Delino became my favorite because I want to see him win. He became a favorite because guys like him deserve it. He became a favorite because he resonated with me. It’s fun to root for people you like.

I’m unbelievably fortunate to experience baseball during the Mike Trout era. I’m lucky that I’ve gotten to see guys like Pudge, Josh Hamilton, Clayton Kershaw, and Adrián Beltré play incredible careers. Believe me, I’m always in awe of high-caliber talet—the ones who step on the field, and everyone knows who they are and exactly what they can do. It’s great to watch, but I’m also lucky to see the guys who fight and work and claw their way up to the Majors. The ones who are young guys with potential they just haven’t figured out yet. The ones who have spent years in the Minors just for their one shot, even if it is just one game like Guilder Rodriguez. It’s equally as fun for me to be invested in them. When they succeed, it makes the moment that much sweeter. I’m always rooting for them.

The whole experience reminded me why I love baseball. These players work hard their whole lives for one shot to play the game for a living. No matter what stats predict what play, they’re just trying to put their best effort out there, and maybe inspire the community around them to do some good. A sports community can be a positive thing for a city or metro area. It brings people together, it provides an escape, and it gives everyone common ground. If these players weren’t personable or ethical or hardworking or sometimes underdogs, I suspect it would just become boring and unrelatable. I like my baseball with rules and emotion. I like my baseball with exact stats and unpredictability. I like my baseball weird and exciting. I like my baseball with big homeruns and little ground balls with eyes. I like my baseball loud and quiet. I like baseball.

[shallwedancetogether]

July 27, 2018

Sometimes it’s so hard to know how you’re supposed to feel; what’s normal and what’s not; what’s temporary and what’s long term. Which is how I have found myself feeling lately.

To start off, there is some background information to me that I’ve always thought about. My grandmother had severe depression. I don’t know much about her specific condition nor have I ever met my grandma. All I really know is that she would stay in bed for days while my grandpa worked for the family and did other things around the house. I am unsure of her exact age when she passed, but when my dad was 17 years old, my grandmother committed suicide. So for the majority of my dad’s life, his mother was not around, and this can really take a toll on someone.

I have a specific memory of my mom being upset with me, probably school-related since it was in high school, and telling me that she thought I might have depression along with my dad. I remember her saying that she can see signs of it in both of us, and that is something that has always stuck with me. Sure, I’ve had my days where I don’t want to do anything, can’t motivate myself to do stuff, want to stay in bed and sleep all day, and just feel all around sad. But everybody has those days or periods in their lifetime, especially when things are not currently going so well in their life. But it becomes a problem when it sticks around for a long time.

Since that day, I have analyzed things that my father does that relates to depression over the years. He sleeps a lot. This can be a sign of depression, but I also have to keep in mind that my dad is a paramedic so he works several nights a week where he may be up all night because of runs. So on his days off he needs to catch up on sleep. He also has prostate cancer to which has resulted in chemo and radiation, both making him weaker and having decreased energy, another symptom of depression. With that, it also comes with appetite and/or weight changes, which is also a sign of depression. After chemotherapy three years ago, his weight and appetite was a direct change for him. He is very irritable and can have very quick mood changes, but that can also come from lack of sleep from the fire station and also with his cancer medications that mess with his sleeping habit. So he sleeps when he can, but when at home, it seems that is how he spends the majority of his day. He also moves more slowly than he used to, but within the past four years, he has been diagnosed with cancer, pulled a muscle in his leg and back from playing hockey, and taken cancer medications that have made it hurt to walk for long periods of time. So while I have noticed some signs my entire life, some are more recent, and some have only increased because of other circumstances.

Jumping forward to myself, I have looked around and somewhat educated myself on depression and compared my findings to myself. I have always had difficulties concentrating, remembering, and occasionally making decisions. I get irritable easily and have mood swings. I get anxious and overwhelmed very easily which causes me overthink a lot. I have also had nights where I have difficulty sleeping. I have feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and helplessness. I am consistently anxious and have an “empty mood.” So I want to go more in depth with these.

I have only begun to seriously think that I may have depression within the past year or so. I mentioned before that I have difficulty concentrating, remembering, and making decisions. While this is a symptom of depression, I also have ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 12 and have been taking medicine for it ever since, so around 10 years now. I can physically feel a difference when I take medicine for my ADHD. I feel the need to do stuff and not waste away my day, and I can actually hold my concentration on things for long periods.

I get irritable very easily and have mood swings. I have noticed that I tend to be more irritable towards my family, and I think that somewhat stems from the environment I grew up in. I do have mood swings. Just last night I really noticed it. I was out with my boyfriend and his old college roommates to hangout and play trivia at a bar by my house. This was a playoff round of trivia for my friends’ team, and for whatever reason, my friend, let’s call him Ed, wanted everyone to sit in very specific seats at the table. While I am friends with my boyfriend’s roommates, I don’t know them as well as he does, along with Ed’s family who was there. The one thing I wanted most was to sit next to my boyfriend; he is my comfort when I am uncomfortable. But Ed forced my boyfriend to sit across from me instead, since we were on a separate team from everyone else. As soon as that happened, after I tried questioning it, I immediately felt like crying. It literally came out of nowhere. For the rest of the night, I felt my mood go from having a good time to being the complete opposite within seconds of something happening that I didn’t like. After trivia, my boyfriend came over to hangout for a half hour. When he got up to leave, my mood immediately switch over, and I cried out of nowhere. A similar thing happened after I got out of the shower the other day, and I was just thinking about things. I got out, and tears just fell from my eyes. I couldn’t stop it. All the things I have been feeling recently made me overwhelmed, and everything I was holding back came out. It seems I cannot control it at all lately.

These past few months I have had difficulty sleeping. I can’t fall asleep early enough, and my body wakes up around 6am a lot these days. I know part of it stems from my work schedule, too. The moment I realize I am awake it seems as if I can’t go back to sleep because my thoughts immediately start circling. Yes, sometimes I wake up because my dog sleeps with me and wakes me early for she has been fed between 6 and 7am her whole life. I normally can fall right back to sleep after things like this, even if it’s 20 minutes before I have to get ready for work, but as of late, that is not the case in the slightest bit.

I have feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness. My family has always had a tendency to have high expectations of each other and to put you down if you are not reaching those expectations. My grandpa is the worst at it, and he remembers every little wrong thing you could ever do. This trait has been passed down to my dad and his two brothers. While I do not want to fail anybody, I always seem to. It has gotten to the point where my grandpa barely speaks to me because he is not happy with how I have ever done in school, and when he does speak to me, it only relates to school. I used to talk to him several days a week. I have always fallen under the pressure that has been put on me, and as the years have gone on, I have felt less of myself because I always seem to be disappointing someone. My entire life I have been compared someone. There’s my cousin, who is the same age as me and has always succeeded academically. More recently, I get compared to my younger cousins because they all have gone to major universities and have full scholarships to play sports years before they have even finished high school. I go to an OK school where I live, but my grandpa has even told me that he doesn’t think I’ll get a job with a degree from my university to the point where he has offered me $1,000 if I am actually able to land a job after graduation.

My junior year of college was my worst academically, to the point where my grandpa threatened to stop paying for my schooling and to pull me out. I made some changes, and even went to see a therapist for a few months where I learned cognitive behavior therapy for my anxiety and ADHD. I’m glad I made these changes and realized things that are going on with me, but I still struggle with them a lot. I still feel helpless when it comes to my schoolwork. I get stuck sometimes and don’t want to ask for help; the thought barely even comes to mind for me. With that, I feel hopeless that no one can help me so I will just be on a downward spiral forever.

Last but not least, I have a lot of anxiety. Anxiety can get bad enough to where people have difficulty leaving their house. I do not believe that my anxiety is that bad, but I overthink many things. My head goes in circles to the worst possible scenarios and prevents me from doing things. For example, for my e-board position for my fraternity, I am required to send out emails to set up meetings with companies to come talk about what their company does and positions they have to offer. I will put off doing these emails until the last possible minute because I get afraid I will somehow mess up a simple email that I have a sample to base it off. I have been in the library doing homework when I suddenly feel overwhelmed and tear up because I don’t think I can finish the homework because of how lost I am. It has happened while I’m with my boyfriend in his room when I get stuck on a homework problem and have broken down in tears because I think that if I can’t finish this assignment, I’m going to fail the class and eventually get pulled out of school because I have yet again disappointed my family with my grades.  

All of that with some research has led me to believe that I have some form of depression. It also comes from papers I was mailed from a new doctor. I have to have these papers filled out by the time of my appointment in two weeks, and the first page asks you how you have been feeling over the past two weeks. You fill it out and total your points to see if you have a form of depression, and I have fallen in the “moderate depression” category. It’s all I can seem to think about for the past several days, and I can’t shake it. Or if I do “shake it,” I’m ignoring my feelings, which is bad for my anxiety.

While the future of what may come of this scares me, my boyfriend and I texted about it all, and I thought it’d be best to not hold back what I was feeling. Luckily I have a great support system from my boyfriend and my best friend that I feel that I will be able to get through this and figure it out. As the days are getting closer to school starting back up, my anxiety seems to be at an all time high, and I seem to be down a lot more these days than not. I plan to see the same therapist I saw a year ago when school starts, and hopefully things can go up from there.

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“Depression isn’t just sadness. Sometimes it’s emptiness or hopelessness. Sometimes it’s struggling to get out of bed in the morning. Other times it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and there’s nothing you can do to change it.”

           I saw this quote on a blog post from the Suicide Prevention Lifeline website and wanted to share. I am always open to listening and helping in any way that I can. Please reach out to those close to you or call a crisis hotline if you ever need help or feel like you’re struggling.

                                            [phone]

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Sorry it’s long and that I jumped right into the big stuff, but I’ve been struggling with these feelings a lot lately. It feels good to write it down and put my feelings into words. I hope you enjoyed learning a lot about me very quickly LOL :

#first blog post #blog #blogger #hopelessly hannah #july 27 2018 #july 27 #writing #feelings #emotion #emotions #depression #anxiety #struggles #struggling #struggle #symptoms #signs #therapy #honest #honesty