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tsauergrass · 3 years

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TOP 5 Of 2020

I was tagged by @tackytigerfic @amortentiaboys and @cibeewastaken, thank you lovelies <3

1. Lemon Blossoms 🍋

Personally I really like the atmosphere of this fic, it’s wintery and warm and very lemon-y? I like the way the story flows, the way scenes and time change without breaks or feeling choppy, like it’s all one river. And I remember writing this fic, sitting on my bed and having no idea at all how to start, and I was for some reason obsessed with lemons at the time so I just started. Writing lemons. And the rest of the story came, just like that. It was so different from what I imagined or mentally jotted down notes and outlined for this fic, it’s like I just tossed all that away (haha) but the end result is so unexpected and so perfect for the story, I realized it was the one I wanted to tell all along. A lot of ppl also left comments saying they crave something lemon-y after reading this, which I consider a success haha

2. To the Rhythm of the Waves

I saw a text post once saying how when you’re trying to write, your brain doesn’t give you a story, instead it just. Gives you an aesthetic, an atmosphere and chucks it at you and tells you to work with it!! (The post said it much funnier than I did, gosh I loved that post.) But the point is, that’s like my brain 99% of the time. And I don’t think I’ve ever really, really centered a story around conveying an aesthetic/atmosphere until this fic. There is, like, minimal plot, but I think what I wanted to create was there: a very soft, faint, tender sweetness. It’s about finding homes and living very simply but happily. In the process of writing it there was a lot of feeling around, trying to find the road this story is leading, trying to find the pieces that would build up this atmosphere, but a lot of it came from within, like from a single place? So the story feels whole, I think. And I’ve gone back to reread it a couple times, but every time I get something different out, so. Haha

3. This drabble

This was super short but I loved it. I had to have typed it out within fifteen or twenty minutes and it just feels right. I liked the Draco in that drabble, and I liked the brief glimpse of perhaps a late evening in a dark room, and I liked the idea of their names. I liked that Harry was so indulgent when Draco was all panicky and hard on himself, when he didn’t expect kindness and softness but Harry gave it to him anyway, because it’s Harry. Because adoration, because love. Just a tiny piece I played with and I liked the result

4. In Your Voice

I don’t know if anyone could tell but I wrote this with so much yearning, like, god. Quarantine was first getting to me at that time, I think. And I remember reading about this article then that talked about the death of landlines (!!) in literature (which was super interesting!), and seeing that idea of having a piece of someone, but not the whole of them. You have their voice, but not their solid presence. They are here, but at the same time they’re not. Having a companion partially, not so completely, which comforts some part of you but makes other parts lonelier. I just liked the idea that Draco and Harry only have each other’s voice, I tried to convey that through their phone call, that it’s the only thing they have of each other. And it’s enough, but at the same time it’s not enough. They want so much more, but they can’t get it. That physical restraint brings out emotional chaos, I think. Looking back now I’m a bit embarrassed about the part where Harry says he misses Draco, it’s kind of cheesy haha. But overall I liked it. I also received a lot of comments saying this feels like home, this feels like longing, a lot of people relating to this and hopefully this brought them comfort, which I am really glad about.

5. Prompt: I love you - Over a cup of tea

This is one where I didn’t expect it to have as many notes, but it did, and I tried to think about why, so I read it and reread it, and I think in that process I came to like it. It’s a small piece that delineates Draco’s journey to learn to say I love you through cups of tea. I tried to put in the story the idea that even though at the beginning Draco can’t say the words, and he feels lacking and guilty about it, he does say i love you—through actions, through small gestures. It was the language he spoke. And I like to think that the reason why Harry was so patient and understanding was because he understood that. He knew how Draco spoke his heart, and he accepted it. And he didn’t, like, wait for Draco to say I love you; that acceptance wasn’t a means to an end. Instead he embraces and loves who Draco is, and when Draco says the words they’re more like an unexpected surprise that made him really happy, because it means Draco feels safe around him now, it means Draco feels secure enough about what they share that he is willing to bear his heart out like that. Just, subtle languages, man.

(May I also take this chance to rec Cibee’s wonderful drabble responding to the same prompt, which is the prettiest thing I have ever read in this world!!!)

Honorable Mentions (because why not!!)

. Colour Me Blue

This isn’t HP but I really liked it. Check it out if you’re also in All For The Game and ship andriel! It’s a story about enamel pins and very, very subtle promises, I liked the atmosphere I created

. Prompt: I love you - Muffled, from the other side of the door

This didn’t get as many notes but I was proud of it. I liked the way I threaded the flashbacks to the present. I wonder whether I would do it differently if I have the chance to rewrite it, but I like it now.

. To The End Of The World And Back

Listen, I just imagine Draco, heartbroken and tired and nervous and aching, walking around the gallery, almost mindless and suddenly—the huge photograph of him appears in front of him, taking up the entire wall, and it’s called Home. Like, jesus. I can’t draw but if I could I want to create this scene

And that’s it! Thank you if you made it here lol, it grew so long. It’s 2021 already and I know loads of people have already been tagged, so if you want to do it and you saw this consider yourself tagged!

I also just want to take the chance to thank so many amazing ppl who made this year better. Thank you to everyone who has ever read, liked, commented, reblogged my fic, or just enjoyed it and savored it themselves—you really made my year so much better, and I hope the coming year will be kind to all of us🥂

#tagged #top 5 of 2020 #my fic

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jawnkeets · 4 years

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just saw that you love rilke's letters to a young poet as well! it's one of my favorite reads when i need a pick-me-up or motivation. but i wonder whether you agree with him when he says "works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice"? xx

it is beautiful!! 💕

funnily enough this has been driving me nuts this entire year to the point where it has become almost academically central, especially during term time when i’m writing weekly essays and reading loads of crit. this is just my two cents, and i’m only just beginning to attempt to put my thoughts in order, which will be obvious, so pls no one hold me to this lol. this is also specifically about literature, though i’d love to hear people’s thoughts concerning other arts!

anyway, this started when i was working on george herbert, whose poetry is just stunning, but it’s so easy to push his ideas until they fall apart or contradict each other, and many critics have done so. however erudite and academically interesting this work was, though, i couldn’t shake the idea that it was entirely missing the point, and i couldn’t get a quotation by monet out of my head: ‘everyone discusses my art as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love’.* critics try to unravel the thread of herbert’s poetry, herbert pulls at their critical thread in turn. i’d read secondary criticism when trying to work out what to say about him, then come back to herbert and realise i had nothing to say at all which truly added to his poetry, or to use rilke’s words, did it justice.

and so from then on i often felt like i was writing to say something that seemed clever, or being original for originality’s sake (because i didn’t want to fall into certain critical grooves), or saying what everyone else had already said (and if it was bang on why not just read the poetry itself?!), and returning to the poetry would always make me feel so silly, though in a gentle, humbling way. rilke says as much: ‘it [criticism] will either be partisan views, fossilised and made meaningless in its lifeless rigidity, or it will be neat wordplay, where one opinion will triumph one day and the opposite the next.’ this was partly, practically, because i didn’t have time to discover what i ‘truly thought’ - when you’re reading the primary stuff, secondary stuff, and writing the essay in two or three days you often have to pick an idea somewhat arbitrarily and run with it. but it’s also embarrassing to say what you actually feel about a work of literature, even if it is possible within a critical framework (which i’ll come back to); if a tutor didn’t like something i’d written when i didn’t care for the opinion myself, no big deal, back to the drawing board. if it had been what i really thought about an author i revered, it would be hideous. sharing love with someone else makes you vulnerable, as in any other area of life.

but, to use the rilke quote, how can you ‘do them justice’ if not by criticism, and by criticism truly meant, if there is such a thing? by writing creatively yourself? by reading, absorbing and sharing with other people? passion/ effusion rather than ‘rigid’ academic analysis (i.e. old-school romantic 'criticism’, like lamb’s thoughts on hogarth)? this is kind of the problem with english literature as a discipline. i’m no expert on its development, but when i’m in a cynical mood i think it’s because to study english literature (i.e. for it to be institutionalised and taken seriously as an academic discipline, for us to ‘do’ it at all as anything other than recreation) it needs to have grounds for legitimacy, by which i mean that it needs to have scholarly method, quantifiable elements, be teachable, etc. unlike classics which arguably the institutional study of english (or substitute any vernacular) literature rose out of in european education, there’s no immediately obvious linguistic rigour (as in, fluency in another language or languages isn’t a primary focus of the discipline**), so we also need, if not english language as a module or core part of the course, which some courses do have, a focus on language and its constituent parts, or close-reading (the verb does this, the parallel structure does that, etc). but, less cynically, i think it also emerged because we felt there’s something to say about vernacular literature, and we wanted to try and do that. but the paradox is that whatever that is can’t really be said. hence the increasingly complicated 20th century stuff culminating in deconstruction, and now in the 21st century what is often a focus on manageable specifics - pathways through texts (like ‘wind in shakespeare’), spotlighting something in the historical moment and reading it in conjunction with the text (the laryngoscope really helps us read george eliot because...), etc.*** i should say that i do find this stuff really interesting, i just struggle to reconcile it with the feeling i get when i read and am spellbound by what i read, and what is so fundamental to reading for me - the ambiguity, the innumerable elements comprising the text that cannot be separated or delineated without the magic fading,**** the wholeness or completeness, the feeling of comprehending many if not all elements of the text at once.

i do think, as well, that reading and practicing critical writing has helped me to appreciate literature more. partly because it’s helped me realise what i don’t think literature is ‘about’, if there is such a thing, but also in terms of positive definition as well as negative, because rigour, deep thinking, attention to detail, extended and focused meditation on a single text/ idea/ theme/ topic/ word, etc are skills which are enriching. it’s a strange thing where i feel like i’m moving closer at the same time as i’m moving further away.

so basically, as the year’s progressed, i’ve been impetuously trying to fight criticism through the medium of criticism, which has its obvious ironies and shortcomings. i wrote an essay, for example, arguing that keats’ poetry is anti-taxonomical, and that criticism, conversely, is taxonomical - it’s from κρίνειν, to judge or decide, so to be a critic is to choose/ select/ interpret/ delineate - criticism of keats, then, is best when it’s as unlike criticism as possible (and so bad criticism), because otherwise it’s deliberately misunderstanding keats. i’m being as honest as i can be, and at times as embarrassing and embarrassed as i can be, and it’s working much better. but i think after all this that the best criticism, to be as generous to other critics as they really deserve (as i have not been all year, to my discredit), is passionate, and that critics show this in different ways.***** one way around my crisis is to take the view that literature reconciles work and play, and criticism does or at least should do the same, thus running parallel with the text instead of converging (because in ‘playing’ it will naturally be somewhat divergent). i buy this to a degree. and also some people do study literature on the grounds for which i’ve criticised criticism above (they love specifics, or creative pathways through texts, etc), and i don’t want to set myself against them at all; i’ve realised that i am also partly one of these people - some hugely inspiring tutors have shown me that it is amazing to study in this way, and i’ve seen from the work of tutors and fellow students that love can be suffused through criticism like this, that it can be genuinely moving and inspiring. i also get that this perhaps doesn’t feel like a binary split in other places or for other people as it does for me; i think creative writing for example is way bigger in america as a subject, so it might not feel like ‘enjoy literature and write literature recreationally’ and ‘do literature academically/ in an academic setting’ are diametrically opposed, or that you can do both but that they have to be separate, or that there’s a disconnect between the way you do one and the way you do the other. so now i’m trying to be as honest as i can be when it comes to criticism, and pushing forward whilst trying not to cover or lose sight of the little spark reading generates - i think that if your criticism bears this in mind, it might not be able to grasp the poetry like simply loving it does, but it can perhaps reach out and gingerly touch it. whether that makes it worth it is up to you.

i hope this answers your question - i realise this got long. what an interesting ask, thanks very much for sending it!! 🌹

* speaking of - i recommend this poem!!

** though some courses, like the oxford one, teach old english, which is arguably another language.

*** i appreciate that what rilke means by criticism is not necessarily identical to what i mean by criticism, which obviously developed a lot after rilke, but even so.

**** granted, in engineering a car is and should be taken apart so we can see how it works, but the end goal is still the working car!!

***** some would disagree, saying that we should be ‘objective’ and/ or shouldn’t be ‘on a poet’s side’ (i.e. trying to do them justice) and i struggle with them a lot more, but after a bit of grumbling they still have my firm respect.

#asks

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paradisobound · 4 years

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World’s Greatest First Love: Chapter 4

Summary: Dan Howell wanted a clean break from his father’s publishing company. It was why he applied for a different company in London: to stop the ridicule of his coworkers for riding on his ‘daddy’s coat tails’. But he wasn’t expecting to suddenly be going from a literature editor, to a graphic novel editor. And he certainly wasn’t expecting to come face first with his first love who broke his heart from when he was a teenager: who just happens to be his new editor-in-chief.

Based on the Anime and Manga “The World’s Greatest First Love: The Case of Ritsu Onodera” aka Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi

Rating: Mature (For Now)

Word Count: 2.7k (this chapter)

Warnings: None for this chapter

Updates Every Tuesday at 12pm EST and Saturday at 1pm EST

Thanks to my lovely beta @phanandpenguins who has been doing a great job of editing these chapters for me!

READ ON AO3 | READ ON WATTPAD

Phil is having a heated argument with someone when Dan arrives to the office on Thursday morning. There is tension in the air and Dan feels like everyone is too hyper focused on the argument that is taking place to focus on their own work. Dan had never seen the guy before, but he stands tall and broad over Phil as he hovers above the desk. He looks mean, and definitely like someone Dan should avoid so he makes a mental note of it.

“We sold out of the Marmon book in the first day,” The man says. “What kind of a rookie mistake is that, Phil?”

“It’s not my rookie mistake!” Phil shouted back. “It was your superior who wouldn’t allow for us to print more than 5,000 copies when I requested 7,500.”

“Don’t start blaming it on…”

Dan stopped listening because the arguing did nothing but make the anxiety in his chest weigh heavier and heavier. He opened his laptop and loaded up the manuscript that he had been working on for his author and pulled up some of the edits he had made. He was beginning to scroll to where he had bookmarked to look at next but the arguing grew louder and he got more and more distracted.

He turned his head and saw Mitch was working unphased next to him, scribbling some red marks onto a printed storyboard, “Hey, Mitch?” Dan asks and Mitch turns his head, “So I can’t help but listen to that fight and I guess I’m confused why it’s a bad thing that Phil’s author’s book sold out so fast? Isn’t it a good thing that you’re making sales? ”

Mitch furrowed his brows and then perked up and opened his mouth, “Yes and no, really. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“How so?” Dan asks, genuinely curious.

“Well, if a book sells out the same day that it comes out, then that’s not good for the author’s sales because it’ll take another week or two for us to do another printing by the time the printer gets around to it. By that point the book will have sadly been forgotten by most people. So it’s better to have just enough copies and do a second printing than to sell out and have to wait with nothing out there to be sold.”

Dan nods his head because that does make a lot of sense, “So is the man Phil is arguing with in charge of that process then?”

“Yes!” Mitch answers with a smile.

“So...who is he?”

“Oh! That’s…”

“Me.”

Dan stiffens and turns his head to come face to face with the man he had just sworn he would avoid. His dark hair is sticking straight up in places and his eyes are so dark they’re like black holes. Dan instantly feels more intimidated than before.

“Damien” He says, adding on before Dan can catch his bearings. “I’m the head of the sales department here at Onyx. I take care of how many copies your book gets.”

Dan just stiffens further and forces out a smile before Damien turns on his heels and walks away, leaving a trail of overconfidence in his way that left Dan feeling more uneasy. Dan turns to Mitch, his mouth agape, “Is...is he always like that?”

Mitch shrugs, “Actually no. He can be tough when he wants to be but honestly, he’s also nice. Just probably have to get to know him. I’m sure he was on edge from his conversation with Phil.”

Dan nods and agrees because sure, that’s honestly probably it . So Dan turns back in his seat and goes back to working on his manuscript again.

He gets through quite a bit of it before his hands start to cramp and his stomach starts to rumble. When he stands up from his desk, he takes a second to look over towards Phil’s desk but he notices Phil isn’t there, which being honest is a bit unusual , Dan thinks. He makes his way into the breakroom and stuffs some money into a vending machine to get a lousy cup of noodles for his lunch.

Dan takes the container of noodles and opens the top and pours some of the hot water from the coffee maker into it. He lays the lid back closed and sits and waits for his noodles to start working their magic to give him a hint of satisfaction for his hunger. He knows he hasn’t been eating properly but he genuinely doesn’t have the time to make himself something else besides quick food.

People from the floor come and go as they please which leaves Dan sitting all alone at the table with no one to talk to but he’s not entirely upset about that either. He’s been so busy lately that having this short break was actually a bit of a reprieve.

His noodles become finished far too quick and he pushes a couple pound coins in the vending machine for a candy bar and begins to nibble on that just as he leaves the break room. He goes to his desk and takes a seat, looking to Phil’s desk on instinct and for some reason, Dan feels a little bit calmer seeing Phil now sat behind his mounds of papers, running his hands through his hair.

***

Dan decides to leave the office as soon as he sends the manuscript with corrections back to his author. He emails her the corrections and then prints out a copy for himself to take home and look over one more time. His deadline is rapidly approaching and he wants his first time being an editor for this author to go as smoothly as possible.

Dan’s exhausted, and as he walks off from the elevator, he feels like the weight of the world is on his body, holding him down and barely keeping him upright. He needs some proper food and maybe a few drinks. Probably also some water. Has he even drank water in the last week? He doesn’t remember which probably says a lot more than it should.

He shuffles his feet as he walks and he rounds the corner to the exit when he sees Phil and Damien talking next to the doorway. Damien is enjoying a cigarette and Phil is stood with his arms crossed. Dan steps back and hides behind the corner because he doesn’t want to intrude.

Are they arguing? Is something else happening between them? Dan feels uneasy all over again and his stomach starts to hurt at the thought. But he wants to get home, and in order to leave, he has to pass them which means he’s going to have to walk by them and deal with whatever they are saying.

He turns the corner and begins to walk past them when he sees Phil start to laugh, throwing his head back and Damien laughing along with him, cigarette smoke funneling from his lips. He puts out his cigarette and looks at Phil and just as Dan is trying to walk by, he hears, “ Are you up for that drink?”

Dan is suddenly confused. So Phil and Damien were friends? But why were they screaming at each other earlier. It had to be just work things, right?

“Oh Dan!”

Dan stops in his tracks at Phil’s voice calling after him.

Dan turns around and faces Phil who is zipping his jacket up a bit further on his neck, “Damien and I are on our way to the bar for a few drinks if you want to join?”

Dan shakes his head and declines, “No, I just want to get home and get some rest.”

Before Phil can say anything, Dan just nods goodbye and hikes the hood up on his jacket and leaves the building into the bitter cold of December evenings. He puts his hands into his pockets and walks half of his commute, only taking the tube when he physically couldn’t stand the cold on his cheeks anymore.

His apartment is chillier than he would care to admit so he turns the heat on a bit higher when he passes through the front door. His stomach is rumbling so he goes to his refrigerator and opens it up to see nothing but wilted greens and spoiled food. He shuts the door and lets out a sigh.

He could order out, but that would require spending more money and he doesn’t have a lot of that at the moment. He ends up not finding any food suitable for eating and he flops himself down on his couch, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before he has to go to his miserable bed.

Dan’s eyes are just starting to close when his phone begins to buzz in his pocket and he pulls it out to see an email from his author.

Re: Finished Manuscript Edits

Hi Dan,

Just finished looking over your edits and I’ve made some adjustments accordingly. Please let me know what you think. I would love more feedback.

Best,

Veronica “Roni” Tully

Dan sits up straighter on the couch and immediately lunges for his bag at the end of the cushion. He opens it up and grabs his laptop and boots up his email. He loads her edits and her storyboard and sees that she has made a lot more corrections and so he hits print on the document and hears the printer in the corner whirl to life.

He throws his laptop to the side and sets down on the floor with the manuscript sprawled in front of him on his coffee table. He grabs his red pen out of his bag that he’s learnt he needs to carry with him at all times and uncaps it and begins to get to work.

He tries to work diligently, taking into consideration everything he’s learnt from his few short weeks of being a graphic novel editor. But he soon can feel like he’s not doing something right and it takes away any of his ability to finish the rest of the manuscript.

As much as he doesn’t want to, he knows he needs to get ahold of Phil somehow. He has Phil’s number from their brief exchanges at work but he doesn’t want to text him, especially when Phil just said he and Damien were going out for drinks.

Dan will need to email him the manuscript. He quickly grabs for his laptop again and loads his email and attaches the file and sends it to Phil with the note reading that he would like Phil to look over the manuscript and help him a bit in making corrections. He no longer hits send when his phone vibrates and he looks down to see a message on his screen.

Phil: I’m right next door. Bring me your corrections

Dan feels mortified. He can’t just go next door and bring Phil the corrections because now he feels like a moron for emailing him them to begin with! He sits chewing at his nails until a knock appears on his door and it startles him. He gets up and rushes over to it, opening it.

“I’m right next door,” Phil repeats as soon as the door opens. “You literally just have to walk two steps.”

“I...I…”

“Where are your corrections?” Phil asks, extending his hand. “I’ll look over your corrections but I’m not going to do them for you.”

Dan’s cheeks heat up and he blushed as he turned on his heels and rushed back to grabs his corrections from the coffee table and hands them to Phil. Phil shuffles through them and then stills, “Come over to my apartment.”

Dan furrows his brows, “Why?”

“Just...come with me and we’ll look over the corrections together,” Phil says, stepping backwards and not allowing Dan to say otherwise.

Dan swallows and follows him out of the door to his apartment. Phil pushes the door open and they step inside. Dan looks at the surroundings around him and is actually impressed by how nice everything looks. Everything looks so precise to him…. so not Phil.

“So first off,” Phil says as he sits down at his kitchen table, “tell me why you made the corrections that you did.” Phil flips through the pages a bit more and then stops and shoves a page at him. “Especially the ones on this page.”

Dan looks down and sees that this is the page where he made the most corrections, but that’s basically because he found this part a bit boring compared to the rest of the story. He stutters for a moment and then finally says exactly that, “I thought this part was boring.”

“Why?” Phil quizzed.

“Because it didn’t go with the rest of her story. The pictures don’t do anything for the rest of the novel.”

“So why did you suggest these specific corrections?” Phil pressed.

Dan stuttered a bit but he failed to answer right away and Phil noticed. He picked up a red marker and uncapped it with his teeth, blowing the cover onto the floor as he marked for two different panels to be switched around, “This is all you needed to do,” Phil says. “The rest of the corrections don’t actually enhance the storyboard like you just explained to me.”

“But I thought…”

“Dan, you can’t do these corrections half-assed.”

“I’m not doing them half-assed!” Dan countered. “I did exactly what I remember you teaching me to do!”

Phil shook his head, “You’re doing too much.”

Dan feels like his head is spinning. So is he half-assing his work or doing too much ?

“I…”

“Here,” Phil says, shuffling through the pages again, “Let’s go through each page together.”

Dan nods his head, feeling even more mortified than before and let Phil flip through each page correcting and fixing more.

By the time they were done, the storyboard had much more red on it than before and many corrections crossed out and redone. He looks down at it and feels like his heart is sinking out of his chest because he feels like he’s just completely shit on his authors work.

But the truth is that his author’s work is fantastic and that’s why they need these corrections to push them past fantastic to amazing. Every author wants to be a best seller but this is the only way to do so.

Dan gathers the papers and puts them into a pile and stands up from Phil’s kitchen chair, “Thank you.”

Phil looks up at him and nods, “You’re welcome.”

He starts to walk to the door but is stopped when Phil’s voice cuts through his head, “We still haven’t talked about us, ya know.”

Dan feels the color drain from his face and he swallows down the knot in his throat, “There isn’t anything to discuss.”

“So you’re not even gonna talk about how we used to love each other?” Phil asks, standing up from his chair. “You’re going to just ignore that…”

“You broke up with me,” Dan says, turning around to face Phil, “You’re the one who broke my heart.”

“Oh is that how you remember it?” Phil asks, his voice rising in volume. “You’re remembering that I broke up with you .”

“Because that’s what happened!”

“Dan,” Phil shook his head, “You’re the one who literally slapped me across the face and then ran out of my house. I never heard from you after that.”

“I…”

“I know you don’t remember it,” Phil says, his voice going tense, “But maybe it would be nice if you tried.”

Phil all but pushes him out before Dan can get an answer and he stands on the other side of Phil’s door with the storyboard hugged to his chest and tears coming up to his eyes.

Dan had spent years trying to repress the memories of Phil and what had happened, and there was no way in hell he was going to let himself remember them all over again.

Even if it cuts deep inside his core.

Just as he turns to go to his apartment, he hears footsteps coming down the hallway and he turns his head just in time to see Damien walking towards them, and Dan momentarily forgets how to breathe. He grabs the door handle for his apartment and jumps inside, shutting the door just in time to hear the knocking of Damien’s hand on Phil’s door.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #first love fic #second chances #angst #fluff #princesslexi763fics

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solastia · 6 years

Text

The Dragon’s Lair | 2

Chapters: [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

Pairing: Dragon Hybrid Namjoon x Reader

Word Count: 3,748

Genre & Warnings: Hybrid au. Fantasy themes. This will have a little bit of everything. Lots of fluff, some angst, perhaps eventual smut. Mentions of physical abuse and possible other trauma or emotional issues in the future. Brief mentions of death but no MCD.

Notes: Trying to make up your own Dragon lore is a pain in the ass.

You could hardly believe that it had only been a week since you’d met Namjoon and discovered a whole new world. The two of you had decided to wait until the weekend for him to move in, giving him time to wrap up his classes and say goodbye to his friends since he’d be away from the center for a while for a bonding period with you. It also gave you a chance to prepare your home, although you were still pretty confused about how the hell you were supposed to prepare for a Dragon. You’d settled on just making sure there were the basics in his room; bed, dresser, desk, and a laptop. You’d take him shopping for whatever else he wanted later.

The two of you had also used this time to get to know each other a little more. You rushed over after finishing your work for the day, and you’d watch him teach a class. He taught literature and music production for fun, but helped with the classes that covered hybrid health and law as well. After his class, the two of you would hang out in the exotic wing’s playroom, watching movies or playing with the other hybrids, or go to his room where he showed you books he’d been reading or whatever shiny thing had caught his eye in the yard that day. He was such a beautiful old soul, and you gravitated towards him he was an oasis in the desert.

The more you got to know Namjoon, the more excited you got about bringing him home and starting a life with him. He was smart and passionate, caring of his hybrid friends, so sweet and shy. Honestly, the more you thought about it, the crazier it was that he hadn’t been grabbed before this and was settling for someone like you. Not that you were willing to give him up. They’d have to fight you now.

You’re practically skipping as you make your way into the now familiar lobby of The Fairy Pawmother, sharing a smile and a wave with the regular hybrids that hung around the area helping customers and potential adopters. Heechul is in his usual spot behind the front desk, smirking over your obvious excitement.

“Either you’ve become a bunny hybrid, or it’s Saturday,” Heechul chuckled, pulling out Namjoon’s file.

“Todays the day! Is everything ready? Did he change his mind?”

“Are you serious? That kid has been ready to go since six am. I had to force him to eat because he was too excited, and he’s been sitting on the couch with his bags for hours. I’m almost insulted he’s so ready to leave me.”

You snort, accepting one of the papers he hands you to sign.

“You know he’s going to be coming back to help with classes and to see his friends after the bonding period.”

“Still not the same. Be good to my baby.” Heechul fakes a tear, and the two of you chuckle. “I’ll have someone load his things into your car for you. Let’s finish signing these and go get him before he comes barreling down the stairs and hurts himself.”

Once the paperwork is all completed, he takes your arm to escort you to the exotics wing. You take the chance to ask him something that had been on your mind, but you hadn’t wanted to upset Namjoon by asking him.

“Hey, so I was just wondering why Namjoon was here for so long? He’s so amazing, and I mean, I can’t possibly be the best person to come along.”

“I don’t know about that, but he actually was adopted once, a long time ago. It’s all in the copy of his files that I’ll be giving you today. I believe he was...five? They brought him back when he was seven. I was really upset about that. I’d had this off feeling when they met, but Namjoon was so excited to have a home that I let it go.”

“Seven? Poor thing. Did they say why?”

“They couldn’t handle him, they said. Probably expected him to act like a dog hybrid when he’s a dragon. I assume you won’t make that mistake.”

“I hope not. I’ve been trying to do research, but there’s not much out there about dragons besides that they like shiny things and dumb jokes about how humans are tasty with ketchup. There’s absolutely nothing about dragon hybrids.”

“That’s because he’s been the only one in thousands of years.”

That fact brought you up short and gave you a whole new set of worries. Mainly, that there was no way for you to ask others if you had problems. Except for Heechul, but he was overly fond of vague answers. You’d have to rely on Namjoon being honest and open about his needs. So far nothing hinted that this would be too hard, but it was still worrisome.

There was also the fact that this meant he was completely alone and had no one that really understood him as a dragon hybrid. He had his other exotic friends, and they could relate on some levels, but as far as being a dragon he had only himself.

“Wait, if he’s the only one in thousands of years, how was he born?”

“Just caught that did you? It’s all a bit complicated for the mortal mind, honestly. Let’s just say that there are souls out there deserving of a good life, some that have been here before, and not all of them are human. They are granted a chance to be reborn and adapt to be more accepted into the current world.”

“So he was reincarnated? But where are his parents?”

“Oh, that’s basically me. Namjoon came to me as a lovely gold and silver egg.”

“An egg. He was freaking hatched?”

“Well, he is a dragon, remember?”

“So someone just put a shiny egg on your doorstep, and you let it hatch?”

“It was more like it shimmered into existence in the nest I have set up in my room for such things.”

“Right. Shimmered. Got it.”

You didn’t get it.

Heechul patted you on the head, and you could practically hear the There, there, you dumb human.

“Namjoon’s great, though.” Heechul continued. “Very smart, I’m sure you’ve noticed. He likes to talk things through, so he’ll probably let you know what you need to know. I think the thing those people had a problem with the most was the hoarding.”

“I saw stuff about dragon hoards, but I didn’t realize he’d do that too.”

“Oh yeah, although Namjoon is easy. His current obsession is those Ryan teddy bear dolls. Last count there were at least sixty-three of them covering his bed, and he slept in them like a nest. Frankly, it's adorable. He still has the urge for all things shiny, but I think Namjoon is the sort of dragon whose hoard will end up being more...sentimental.”

You recalled seeing a few of them in his room before, not nearly the amount Heechul had described though. He must have started packing them away the moment you’d met.

You finally reached the floor where the exotic rooms were kept, making your way towards the now familiar room at the end of the hall.

You peek into the room with a grin. “Hey, you.”

Namjoon was sitting on his twin sized bed, that was now stripped bare, kicking his legs back and forth with a large gold velvet bag sitting next to him. His eyes shoot to meet yours, jaw dropping in shock before melting into the sunniest smile. He was absolutely beaming as he jumped up and hugged you, practically crushing your smaller frame to his.

“You came! I...wasn't sure. I hoped, but...thank you.”

You pulled back, patting his cheek gently. “Of course I came. You’re stuck with me now, buddy. Sorry.”

“I’ll try to live with that,” he giggles, lowering his head shyly.

“All ready to go?” you ask, taking a moment to scan the room. It seemed he’d done an excellent job of clearing everything from his room, except for whatever was in the giant Christmasy looking bag.

“Yeah. Just this. I, uh, didn’t want anyone taking my Ryans down. I wanted to take them myself. Do you have room for them still?”

“Yeah! Of course. Heechul told me how much to expect, so there should be plenty of room in the back seat, and you’ll still be able to keep an eye on the bag from the passenger side. Is that alright?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry for being a bother.”

“Hey, you’re not. It’s really fine, Namjoon. Honestly, I get it. I have an Avengers collection at home, and I would probably have a panic attack over anyone else trying to move it.”

Namjoon chuckles, nodding in understanding. “I didn’t know you liked those types of movies. Who is your favorite Avenger?”

“James Barnes.”

“Does he count as an Avenger? Wasn’t he a bad guy? I know they tried to fix him up before he fought in the last one, but does that make him an Avenger?”

“Are we about to have our first fight? I will fight you over Bucky,” you smirk up at him as he grabs his giant bag of plushies.

Namjoon’s stunning amber eyes glint with undisguised amusement. “Duly noted. Bucky is an Avenger. I know how to pick my battles.”

“Good boy.”

Namjoon’s cheeks flush at the words, and you hope that wasn’t too far. You were just teasing, but it could be taken either good or bad. You settle for clearing your throat with a small smile and letting Heechul chat with Namjoon as he guides you both back to the lobby.

Heechul and Namjoon discuss the lesson plan Namjoon had prepared for the classes in his absence. You allow them their time as you all wander through the halls, using the time to build a mental list of things that Namjoon might need.

You’re startled out of your thoughts when fingers softly touch yours, and you glance up to see Namjoon has moved the bag to hang off of one shoulder, leaving one hand free and was tentatively trying to hold yours. You smile reassuringly and pull him a little closer, lacing your fingers together firmly.

Heechul walks with the two of you all the way to your car, opening the door for Namjoon to gently secure his collection in the back.

“Well, I’ll see you in a month, Namjoon. I wish you the best of luck. You know where to find me if you need me, but somehow I’m sure you won’t.” Heechul pulls him in for a quick hug, and no one acknowledged that the man’s eyes looked suspiciously watery.

You both got in the car and waved to Heechul one last time, clasping your hands back together as you drove off.

“Let’s go home.”

You pull up to your house about a half hour later, watching Namjoon inspect it out of the corner of your eye. You can’t help smiling to yourself over the fact that he could barely hold himself still. He was practically bouncing in his seat as he looked at every bit of the outside he could see.

“Here we are. I know it doesn’t seem like my style, but my Grandparents built this place, and it didn’t feel right to repaint or anything,” you explain as you both grab a couple boxes and his bag of plushies and lead him up the grey bricked path to the buttercream yellow and ivory painted farmhouse.

“This place is huge,” Namjoon wide eyes travel over every bit of the house and the land around it. “You didn’t tell me you lived on a farm.”

You chuckle, using your knee to balance the boxes on while you unlock the beautifully carved oak and glass windowed front door.

“It’s not really a farm anymore. They sold off the big chunks of land years ago when it became apparent there was only me to inherit, and I am no farmer. I’m already struggling enough trying to keep Grandma’s flowers and kitchen garden alive. We just have a little barn and some penned up areas in case I ever want to get, I dunno, goats or something. There is the big forest behind our house past the pool; that’s technically mine. Not much I can do with it, but I didn’t want to sell it off and have some corporate assholes come in and build a carwash behind me or something. I used to go exploring in it as a kid and pretend I was Snow White.”

“Why Snow White?”

“Oh, because there were a few squirrels and a couple of deer that got used to me and would let me pet them or give them treats. So, to a little girl, that means I’m obviously Snow White.”

Namjoon laughs and follows you into the house, and you lead him up the steps to the room that sits next to yours. You set the boxes down near the massive king sized bed and gesture grandly around the room.

“Here are your quarters, sir.”

Namjoon quirks an eyebrow as he sets his things down, shaking his head.

“Yeah, you’re right. That was cheesy as fuck,” you giggle. “Anyway, it’s nothing special right now. I wanted you to be able to pick what you wanted, so I just got the basics. We can go to a home goods place to pick out everything else you’ll need. Bookcase, blankets, bathroom goods, all that.”

“It’s so big!” Namjoon wandered around, poking his head into the closet and the bathroom.

“You’re kind of a big guy, so,” you chuckle, watching him plop on the bed and bounce as he smiles up at you. “I gave you the biggest room available, besides mine. I’m right next door. There are three other rooms if you wanted to choose a different one.”

Namjoon shook his head. “No, this one is great. Big and bright. More than I thought I’d ever get. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” you blush as soon as the words leave your mouth. You hadn’t meant to say it, but your head to mouth filter always seemed to malfunction around Namjoon.

He didn’t seem to find anything amiss with it though since he continued playing on the mattress. You clear your throat and walk back towards the door.

“So, I’ll leave you to unpack your things and make a list of what else you’ll need. Don’t worry about cost or anything; it’s best if we just take care of the big stuff now so you’re comfortable. Forgive my ignorance, but will we need to go by a hybrid store for unscented things? I know the other hybrids are into scent marking their stuff but is that important for you too?”

Namjoon rubs the back of his neck. “Uh, yeah. That would be nice. I can get pretty territorial. Um, but not in a bad way! Don’t worry. I just...need to protect my den?”

“It’s cool. I understand that you don’t exactly have a guide and you get by instinctually, so whatever makes you feel comfortable and fulfills whatever urges you get, we’ll do. As long as it’s not like, burning the mailman. Let’s avoid that. He brings me cookies every Christmas.”

Namjoon chuckles silently, shoulders bouncing as he shakes his head. “Got it. No crisping the mailman.”

“So you really shoot flames?” You raise your eyebrows in surprise, having expected for at least that to not be a real thing.

“Sort of? It’s not like, dragons in the movies kind of flames, or all the time. Twice a year, in the spring and late summer, I run even hotter than usual. Like, so hot that the first time it happened, I thought I was dying. And I get really protective of my hoard and can get a little aggressive? I don’t really mean it, it’s just the hormones and stuff.” He glances up at you like he’s begging you to understand, and you have a feeling this is a sore spot for him.

You nod and pet his shoulder a bit to let him know you understood and didn’t blame him. He seemed to get the hint and relaxed his shoulders, continuing his story.

“Anyway, one year we had a new hybrid in the center, and he heard me shouting and came to check on me. I guess no one warned him not to. And in my hormone driven mind, he was coming after my hoard, so I screamed at him. I could feel my throat expand and my mouth suddenly tasted weird as something coated the inside like mucus. And then, to everyone’s surprise, I shot what was basically a fireball at him. Singed off his eyebrow, but he thought it was so cool we became friends. Jackson is awesome. I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

“Sure. You know, that sounds kinda like your..heat season? I don’t know what it would be called for you.”

“Me either. Heat or rut is a dog and cat thing. Everything online is just for snakes and stuff, and they just call it mating season. Heechul hyung calls it a rut to make it easy for everyone, so we can just keep calling it that I guess.”

“Okay, I guess we’ll...discuss that stuff more later. We have a few months before Spring,” you try to hide your blush as you realize you’re going to have to figure out arrangements for that. You’ll have time to ask Heechul, you suppose.

“Anyway, make your list, and we’ll go get you taken care of.”

“Thank you, Y/N.”

You nod and smile softly at him, leaving him to settle in.

Many hours later, you both get home exhausted and ready for bed after such a long day. You’d bought him everything his eyes landed on just a little too long. Among the many items that you’d purchased, he now had a beautiful royal blue and silver bedding set, everything he could possibly need for his bathroom, and a new Ryan plushie that you’d insisted on buying him. He’d maintained he didn’t need it, but you’d seen the way he clutched it tightly to him and narrowed his gaze on anyone that got too close to it.

There was still plenty more he’d need, but the big stuff like the bookcases would be delivered, and there was plenty of time to get whatever else he needed later.

You help him make the bed after washing the new set and stand back to fondly observe as he adds his Ryans one by one with painstaking care. The newest one you’d bought him seems to have a place of honor next to his pillow.

“I’ll leave you to your rest. I’m beat. Night, Joonie. I’m so happy you’re finally here,” you say softly, reaching up to peck his flushed cheek before you head to your own room.

You’d finally started to drift off a bit when you heard your door creak, and a light tap sounded in the silence.

“Y/N, I’m sorry, but are you awake?”

“’S’matter Namjoon?” you slur, struggling to come back to awareness.

“Um...it’s just. I can’t sleep? I’ve tried so hard but...”

You sit up slowly, rubbing your eyes a bit. “Oh, yeah. New environment. That happened when I went to summer camp a few times. Couldn’t sleep well for the first three days. Uh, if you’d be comfortable with it, you’re free to sleep here.”

You hear a shuffling sound coming closer in the darkness.

“Are you sure? It’s not weird? I just...have this urge like somethings missing in my hoard and I know there’s not.”

“Maybe I should try sleeping in there then, so you’re not away from it?”

“Would you?” Namjoon’s nearly breathless excitement at the suggestion settled that. You hummed sleepily as you got up and waved around for his hand in the darkness. He saw better in the dark, you guessed, because he latched on easily and gently dragged you to his room.

He flipped down the blankets and helped you get under them, arranging his plushies so they wouldn’t be in your way but still close. He snuggled in when he was done, inhaling loudly before releasing a pleased sigh.

“You can cuddle if you need to. It’s cold in here, and you feel like a damn furnace,” you mumble into the pillow as you settle in.

He wraps his arm around you slowly, like he’s worried you’ll change your mind. Eventually, he relaxes, and you find yourself completely wrapped in his long limbs. You giggle when you hear his pleased rumbling.

“Better?”

“This is perfect. The weird tickle I get when something is wrong with my hoard is gone.”

“Does that mean I’m part of it now? Not sure how I feel being compared to a Ryan doll.”

Namjoon huffs a laugh against your hair.

“Would it bother you if you were a part of it? It seems kind of possessive, I guess. I don’t want to scare you off already.”

“No. Its...kinda nice, actually.”

Namjoon rumbles again, the vibrations strangely calming as you burrow close to his chest. Your last thought is that if you had to belong to anyone, you were glad it was him.

#kwriterskollection #kpopwritingnet #btswriters #bts #bts fanfic #kim namjoon #namjoon fanfic #Hybrid!bts #Hybrid!Namjoon #Dragon!Namjoon #Hybrid au #fantasy au #kpop #kpop fanfiction #Dragon hybrid

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jeveuxetreecrivain · 5 years

Text

The Art of Storytelling - Truth in Fiction

[During the upcoming weeks, I’ll be taking Neil Gaiman’s class on the Art of Storytelling, available on MasterClass - a fitting birthday present. I’ve decided to use my Tumblr site to post the assignments, which I hope will keep me motivated. It is not like I can send them to the Master himself. Bear in mind, those are exercises. Real opinion pieces would require much more research, and I am no journalist.]

Read an essay, write your opinion about it, and “show too much of yourself.”

The essay chosen for this assignment is Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.

I am not familiar with this author. I’ve known for a while he exists, in the landscape of American Literature, but I had never taken a particular interest. A few months ago, I heard him being discussed on a podcast by four queer writers and they made me curious, even though it was not enough to prompt me to look him up. But now, since one of his essays is in the list provided for this writing exercise, I figured it was as good an occasion as any.

In this essay, Foster Wallace recounts a lobster festival in Maine he was meant to cover as a journalist. The piece starts by being very descriptive of the event and slowly moves into more reflective territories, by becoming a piece questioning eating habits and the cruelty inherent in killing animals for the nutrition and taste they provide.

Foster Wallace doesn’t advocate for veganism – I don’t know if the man himself was – but rather asks questions. At the end of the essay, he does say he asks them because he has a sense of discomfort about the topic, and also states his hope that the piece isn’t too preachy. Which effectively defeats the purpose, I’d say. If you worry about being preachy, I’d argue it is because you already know you are.

I do believe the piece to be preachy. By just asking questions, Foster Wallace effectively puts them to his readers without providing even the beginning of an answer, however weak the latter could be. As a person, it disturbs me. It is a very valid method to question phenomena, but to do so without reaching a conclusion feels like a work half done.

There are valid reasons to question a system that disregards the cruelty inflicted upon other beings perceived as weaker than us. It is also very valid to look at a food event which effectively rests and relies on the killing of thousands of animal for mere entertainment and festivities. That is the perfect illustration of a capitalistic system that view human beings as simple consumers – at best, when it is not a source of cheap labor – and anything else as a common property for grab which sole purpose is to provide an opportunity for profit.

But Foster Wallace doesn’t take that road. Rather, he puts the focus on the individuals, the people coming to the festival, the gourmet and the mortals who dare cook the lobster in their own kitchen, keeping the issue wrapped around itself, not looking beyond it.

I will say this – reading the article, I felt uncomfortable. When he describes the process by which a lobster is put to boil and when I read the details put forth to illustrate the unwillingness of the animal to be boiled, fighting against it, I felt the queasiness in my stomach. It hit close to home because a couple of days ago, I argued with the Viking about the exact same issue. We had talked about going to the restaurant and eat lobsters, because in doing so, a higher step would be reached, a certain standard of living would be achieved. Lobster as a marker for social mobility. When you can afford lobster, you’re moving up in the world, another notion I have no space to dive into here.

The discussion turned into an argument, because we also talked about buying the lobster in the shop and cooking it ourselves, and I did question his willingness and ability to kill the animal. He argued that he didn’t have a problem with the killing as such, but rather about the means, to wit, boiling. That feels inhumane to him, more so that killing a cow in a slaughterhouse because in there, certain standards are applied – I don’t think the Viking has ever watched a video in a slaughterhouses, witness accounts abound to show that there is nothing humane about killing cows, pigs, and chicken one after the other, on a perversion of the (dis-)assembly lane established by Ford, more than a hundred years ago. And to me, it didn’t make sense, establishing a distinction between ourselves, as a couple of individuals living in a city and outsourcing the production of all the food we eat, and the rest of the food industry. Questioning one action when it is only a tiny piece in a much grander system that needs to change as a whole, it felt wrong and misguided and this is why we fought.

If you take part in a problematic system, without actually getting your hands dirty, aren’t your part of the problem? I believe that to be true, I believe it is called complicity.

I am complicit. It is a uncomfortable notion, one I push aside, one I’d rather not examine because if I did, I would actually have to stop and look at what part in the system I play, and I would fall apart, I wouldn’t be able to carry on with my day, I wouldn’t be able to earn the money I need to earn to buy the food I need to function and be a contributing member of society, whatever this latest notion means to each and every one of us. So I have pushed the ugly outside, content to make it disappear in the slaughterhouses and the industrial fishing boats, because I cannot look at it. If I did, my whole life would crumble.

So what is left to do for us, the Viking and I? We could decide not to buy the lobster, but I don’t think that would accomplish anything. We could go to the restaurant and outsource the whole killing and cooking process, and just enjoy the nutriments put in our plates, forgetting that the lump of flesh was once a living creature.

Or we could go out and find a fish shop, talk with the sales person who would have, let’s hope so, been recently at the seaside, to look at the load of individual fishing boat coming back with the tides, to carefully choose which pieces they decide to sell in their shop. We would choose the lobster we want, take it home, plunge the knife in its head and drop it in the boiling water with the herbs and salt. But we wouldn’t go away. We’d stay for the whole process, how uncomfortable it’d make us, fully acknowledging the cost – financial and moral – of doing so. This time, we wouldn’t put the ugly aside, we’d look right at it, and see how it’d make us feel.

And above anything, we wouldn’t put the mental load of killing an animal that we would be eating on another human being. That pain and sense of wrong and disgust with ourselves would be ours to carry.

And maybe – maybe? – that would be the last time we’d enjoy lobster together.

[I don’t know if I fulfilled the assignment, if I “showed too much of myself.” What I know is that I was deeply uncomfortable writing this, putting words onto unformed thoughts that I didn’t wish to contemplate.]

#neil gaiman #masterclass #writing assignment

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madscientistjournal · 5 years

Text

Handling the Contents of Consciousness

A case study by Goire Zatla, as provided by Soramimi Hanarejima Art by Ariel Alian Wilson

Keeping this secret from you has become so taxing that I have to use the venom of sleep bugs to tame the eagerness to divulge it.

In the mornings, I apply this toxin to the region of my memory where the secret resides. A little dab of it spreads easily from my fingertip across that part of my mind, cool and thick, greasy until it dries to leave only a minty, vaporous sensation. It’s marvelously effective. This insect secretion from the local apothecary preemptively soothes the itch, which will otherwise inevitably flare up by the middle of breakfast, and the relief it provides lasts well into the evening. After a few days of performing this practice, it is assimilated into my morning bathroom routine, tucked cozily between washing my face and brushing my teeth. Like I’ve been doing this for years.

But after a week, I find that this use of sleep bug venom does have at least one side effect. It is numbing me to beauty. When I see a meteor shower or moonbow or quadrilateral triangle or northern pygmy owl, I merely note it as an exceptional phenomenon. No longer am I enthralled by that sense of ethereal, transient joy.

While this is concerning, the numbness to beauty does present one benefit: I will be able to converse with Qalixy without being in awe of her gorgeous personality.

So I arrange to meet her in conference room R, to provide critical, candid project feedback with a state of mind undistracted by her psychological splendor.

And indeed, within minutes of sitting down at the conference table, I’ve delivered all my comments on her work with pithy honesty. This leaves her plenty of time to ask follow-up questions, most of which are concerned with my emotional responses to key facets of her project, particularly metaphor repurposing and thought nucleation catalysis.

“But how does that make you feel?” she keeps asking.

Unable to experience the inflections of her voice as aurally aesthetic, I can answer all her questions immediately and succinctly.

We move quickly through her concerns and curiosities, and soon, our discussion is metamorphosing into genial conversation. So much so that we end up talking about emotional dexterity. And were I not in the beauty-impervious state that I’m in, I would no doubt be hung up on how uncommonly pretty her ideas on this subject are. Their arcs and colors and twirls verge on–almost veer into–the eccentric, yet remain firmly masterful in the domain of the articulate and cogent. They convince me to try the training routines she recommends and to take her up on her offer of going to emotional workout sessions with her.

The regimen starts with works of art that are unyieldingly evocative, literature and film that cover varied psychological ground at breakneck speeds, full of dynamic characters in ever-evolving situations that evoke one emotion after another for me to handle in unabating succession.

From there, I move on to paintings and photographs that are dense with emotional content ranging from overt sentiment to nuanced suggestion. The most confounding of these is of a teenage boy happening upon a man watering his melon patch as hulking monsters duke it out in the hills behind him. With a backpack purposefully shouldered, the boy appears to have somewhere he’s headed but is now thrust into a moment of reconsideration by this encounter, which has resulted in a posture of puzzlement, a countenance of consternation. The man’s expression seems to be one of calm worry, of anxieties reconciled enough to be only mildly troubling in this moment. Is it the menacing clash of beasts behind him that stirs the agitation he has quieted? Or is it something else entirely?

Another painting unnerves me with its incongruous elements–an understated goodbye, a butterfly in a jar, looming jealousy and tufts of harvested wheat–all coexisting placidly, as if in a carefully balanced state.

Steadily, I work my way through the assortment of visual works she has curated for me, each one pushing me to grapple with an ever-bulkier load of emotional material. Then I graduate into the echelon of theatrical productions, poetry slams, sketch comedy shows and other narrative forms that present numerous emotions nearly simultaneously. Each forces me to manage my psychological responses, holding some to the side while new ones enter. I am challenged to unfold sympathy while clutching outrage, put longing at arm’s length so appreciation can be brought closer, embrace humor one moment and in the next cast it to the edges of my attention to wrangle heartache and compassion. Typically, I must do all this from the confines of a narrow theater seat, amidst the exuberance of a boisterous audience, without the benefit of even a notepad to shelve a feeling or thought. And there, pushed to the brink of my capacities to experience and handle emotions, I become a blossoming of the human potential to be emotionally limber and active with audacious tenacity.

The emotional vigor of the artistic worlds she’s brought me into astounds me relentlessly.

“Aren’t you a fast learner,” she says two weeks into this.

We’ve just finished a workout–a rambunctious, entrepreneurship-themed musical this time–and I’m catching my breath.

“I’m impressed,” she adds with a smile.

“Yes … well … I do feel like … I’ve got a bit of a … knack for this,” I answer, still winded. “And it probably helps that … I’m not distracted by beauty.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, smile fading.

I briefly explain my use of sleep bug venom.

“Oh no, no, no, no,” she says, shaking her head. “That won’t do at all. Beauty is a deep part of all this. I can’t believe you’ve been missing out on that.”

“Missing out on what?” I ask in earnest; it didn’t seem like I was missing out on anything.

That won’t do at all. Beauty is a deep part of all this. I can’t believe you’ve been missing out on that.

“It’s hard to explain, but basically, beauty is one of those things you have to juggle along with everything else, and also, the whole act of juggling is itself beautiful. That’s a drastic oversimplification. You need to experience it. You cannot truly know emotional dexterity while you’re untouchable by beauty.”

I worry about spilling the secret to you or someone else if I lay off the venom, but she is very clear on this point.

“Okay, I’ll give it a try,” I assure her.

She smiles again. I try to figure out if this one is wider than the last.

The next morning, I embark upon a hiatus from the daily application of insect-derived sedative. Cutting this activity from my morning makes my wake-up bathroom routine feel incomplete–wrongly abbreviated. But as I have breakfast and get ready for the day, I feel delightfully normal and become optimistic that the secret has lost its potency, its power subdued by repeated use of the toxin. But this is of course too good to be true.

While walking my customary path along the riverbank, I feel the desire to reveal the secret coming on. It’s faint but growing steadily. I pick up the pace, hoping that moving faster will divert energy from the rising compulsion.

But the urge only gains urgency. I become concerned that I’ll shout out the secret, yell like I’m trying to tell it to someone across the river. Anxious, I reach for the vial of sleep bug secretion I’ve kept in my bag all these weeks, just in case.

Then the morning sunlight on the river catches my attention. It sparkles like it’s flecks of luminous, filmy material floating out there, following every fluctuation of the water’s surface.

As I pause to admire the interplay of light and liquid, my hand falls away from my bag. The beauty of this sight has displaced the urge to divulge. That fact is itself beautiful.

Feeling at ease now, I conclude that when the secret threatens to burst out, I just need to have something beautiful to direct my attention to. Fortunately, you’ve supplied me with just that. In my bag, there’s a postcard from you, a mesmerizingly colorful scene of a mountainside covered in wildflowers from your recent trip to Nolinga Canyon.

As soon as I arrive at work, I place the postcard in the lower right corner of my desk, for easy glanceability. I feel as though I’m back in kindergarten, with my security blanket kept close at hand. Every few minutes, my head turns for a look at the postcard, like I’m afraid someone will swipe it from my desk. These frequent, small doses of the floral landscape seem to ward off the symptoms of secret bearing and keep me feeling almost normal, which delights me.

When it’s time to assemble for the team meeting, I pluck the postcard from my desk and tuck it in the back of my notebook before heading to the conference room. Briefly I muse that to some onlooker, it could appear that I can’t bear to leave the postcard behind, that it’s some vital memento of you.

As fellow members of Team Snurgler get settled around the conference table, I open my notebook. Then I place the postcard on the left page the notebook is open to. Wernt’s gaze is immediately drawn to it, probably because the postcard is the most colorful thing on the conference table. I become self-conscious about having it out, and when he’s not looking, I discreetly put the postcard among the unused pages toward the end of the notebook. When needed, I can sneak a glance at it back there during the meeting.

But when Qalixy enters the conference room a minute later, I know that won’t be necessary. I can admire her personality from across the room when in need of beauty.

And that’s exactly what I do 17 minutes into the meeting. I fixate on her elegant integrity and splendid insightfulness, the prettiness of her lightly prissy conduct. Her qualities easily hold at bay the pressures exerted by the secret. I settle comfortably into her sheer magnificence for wondrous, pacifying minutes, until her eyes flit up and meet mine. We regard each other for some very long seconds. Then she smiles at me.

Abruptly she rises from her seat and leaves the conference room.

My eyes widen as I begin to fret. The deprivation of her beauty leaves me feeling as if the secret is with tremendous force pushing its way out of its confinement in my memory. I might have to step out of the meeting myself. Or flip to the back pages of my notebook, to look at the postcard at the risk of piquing the curiosity of the team members near me.

In the midst of my mini-anxiety attack, I hear Bonrol say, “It may seem harsh, but we must be anti-mediocrean on this.”

“Exactly right,” Kierce joins in. “We have our potentialist values to uphold.”

These words resonate with me, despite my confusion about what exactly they refer to. I’ve lost track of the discussion while lost in Qalixy’s beautiful qualities, but hearing Bonrol and Kierce take this stand, feeling the unmistakable passion in their voices, roused within me is a keen sense of camaraderie, my long reticent aspirations of living the tenets of potentialism stirring to life.

Amid this, a quiet awe suffuses me.

My admiration for my peers, a consternation over what has evoked their vehemence, the trying nature of this secret, the knowingness in Qalixy’s smile, the reassuring brightness of the sky outside–it’s all strikingly beautiful.

And I can juggle them adeptly as I re-engage myself in the proceedings of the meeting, handling these feelings just like so many others I have during my training.

And that is unmistakably beautiful.

Having forsaken aspirations to join the intelligentsia, Goire Zatla is a metaphysiologist whose research focuses on memory, emotion, and consciousness. Goire’s recent studies have examined the properties possessed by a shard of shattered attention and responses to immoderate chronesthesia.

Soramimi Hanarejima is a writer of innovative fiction and the author of Visits to the Confabulatorium, a fanciful story collection that Jack Cheng said “captures moonlight in Ziploc bags.” Soramimi’s recent work has appeared in various literary magazines, including Panoply, Pulp Literature, and The Absurdist.

Ariel Alian Wilson is a few things: artist, writer, gamer, and role-player. Having dabbled in a few different art mediums, Ariel has been drawing since she was small, having always held a passion for it. She’s always juggling numerous projects. She currently lives in Seattle with her cat, Persephone. You can find doodles, sketches, and more at her blog www.winndycakesart.tumblr.com.

Handling the Contents of Consciousness was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Ariel Alian Wilson #Goire Zatla #Metaphysics #Soramimi Hanarejima

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settle-down-frohike · 7 years

Note

OHOHOH! Can you please do the “Welcome to fatherhood.” prompt?

For the promp #37. “Welcome to Fatherhood”, and inspired as well by this lovely gifset courtesy of @wholeperson

Sorry I’m just now getting to this, anon. I try I really do, but I’m slow.

Also I’m southern, and the linguistics are too. Apologies in advance.

Paternitas

Gordon County Hospital, GA

9:23 pm

I lean against the wall of the break room, trying to center my thoughts and calm my breathing. 15 years as an L&D nurse and cases like that one never ceaseto shake me up. I need a cigarette. My heart is beating out of my chest and myhands are still shaking. It’s just adrenaline, I know. I haven’t eaten since before I left home and my sugar is in the toilet. {I need food, not acigarette}, I think as I absent-mindedly rub the patch on my upper arm. {For the kids.} I’m doing this for the kids.

A debbie cake and a bottled water later, I pad down the hall to check on my patient.She’s out of surgery now, and it went well. God, just one tiny sliver ofplacenta can wreak so much havoc. So much blood…. I wonder what in thehell happened to bring her in in such a state. A home birth gone wrong, maybe?No. She wasn’t even dressed in a nightgown. I guess it isn’t important now. Herpoor husband looked about as frightened as I’d ever seen. I think I heard theyarrived by chopper?? Not medevac, though. Important folks, apparently. They looked like they’d bothjust come from work, truth be told. This patient assessment is going to be interesting.

When I get to the room the husband (? No ring I see) has exchanged his blood-saturated suit for a set of standard issue ‘dad scrubs’, and is sitting by her bed, studying mom’s face intently. He strokes a lock of hair from her face, leaning in and murmuring something unintelligible. He sits back down in the guest recliner, still holding her hand as he brings it to his lips for the mosttender of kisses– once, twice. The gaze on her face is not broken. I wonder if he even blinks.

He’s cute. Very. I shake my head at my inappropriate thought and proceed to the bedside with her chart in hand and a load of questions to ask, feeling contrite.

Flipping back through my notes at the nurse’s station I kick off my crocs and hear mytoes crack. I’m only 40.. just, in fact, but tonight I’m feeling everyone ofthose years. FBI….Huh. And his name isFox? Suits him… {Jesus, Susan. Get a grip.} This one’s clearly taken, old girl. What’s gotten into you? I need sleep, that’s it. I’m getting punch drunk already. This usually doesn’t happen til the end of my shift…

*Clearly* taken.

He never let go of her hand throughout any of the inquiries. He stroked her thumbcontinually with his, startling and glancing her way from time to time as ifhoping she’d stir, maybe thinking she had. I’ve seen my share of jittery new dads– but this one seems, I don’t know, for lack of a better word….. spooked. Lost. Thrust into a foreign universe and flailing. It’s clear who is his anchor here.

When I asked if he was the father (he’s listed as such on the chart, but I’mrequired to ask for my notes) his eyes went wide and expressionless, and helooked at her again, as if waiting for an answer. “Yes, yes” , he repeated,nodding, testing the words and lookingto her. I wrapped up my initial assessment, vitals strong, although her BP could come up a bit, capillary refill: good. Bowel sounds present. No distension. No hint of fever or infection. All good signs. She could be out as early as a couple of days. Dad sits quietly close by, giving me space to work but not much more thanthat. His knee bounces with anxiety.

I finish quietly, wash and unfasten from my clipboard the standard pamphlets andliterature: birth certificate form, social security, “Getting to Know Your Baby”, “Welcome to Fatherhood”, “Mommy and Me: An Introduction to Breast Feeding”. I hand them overwith a small smile and he glances down non-committedly before placing them onthe bedside table. He scoots the chair back close to her side and again strokesthe same wayward lock of hair from her closed eyelids, and again, kisses her hand. The tender expression of adoration convoluted with worry is so profound and unabashed that I find myself staring, my face growing hot, but I thankfully recover quickly and begin to go over hercondition, letting him know what to expect when she wakes… she’s a fallrisk…she’ll need help to the restroom….call a nurse if you need one…he nods,nods. I hope that at least some information will give him his bearings, a comfort perhaps, but I get the sense it has no effect at all. He hears me but I get the sense he’s just waiting on her.His eyes plead with her to wake, to tell him what to do. Apparently she’s an M.D., so she should pretty well know her way around things, at least until they bring the baby in.

Parenthood is tricky. No one really ever knows it all. I think back to the birth of my first daughter. The elation, the fear, the absolutely necessity to have her at my side immediately and at all times.

He hasn’t yet asked to see his son.

Once they wheeled her in for the d&c he took off like a shot to the nursery,shouting questions of where and why over the child but I sense it was more for her knowledge than his need. He was a sentinel,utterly at her service, unconscious as she was, but he was also her proxy in every sense of the word.

He hasn’t been back there since, though.

Baby from what I hear is fine; APGAR was a 9, nuero: solid. Good thing, too. Had hiscondition deteriorated we would have had to transport him to a bigger facilitywith a NICU. Somehow I sense that separating these 3 would prove problematic. Thankfullythe nurses have been able to tending to the boy here with no trouble. Her milk is starting to come in though, and if she doesn’t wake soon I’ll need to requisition a pump.

2:30 am

Time for vitals again. They’ve wheeled the baby in I see. And now there’s a man outside their room. A broad guy, balding and with glasses, looking stern but exhausted as well. I’m assuming a friend but he looks and acts like a bodyguard. He gives me a polite nod, but a suspicious once over as I enter the room. Dad is still at his station. Wide-awake. He should sleep, if he knows what’s good for him. Real life is about to hit and newborn induced sleep deprivation is entirely another animal.

But, God, the way he looks at her. Utterly besotted. The intensity of his love is all around him, a thrumming, golden aura, even as his body has begun to sway lightly in exhaustion.

I hate to disturb them but her BP is still a bit low for my liking. We’ll need tocontinue pushing fluids.

"Hi there. Me again,” I smile apologetically. “Baby boy has joined y’all, I see?“

"Yea, I uh, I wanted him to be here when she woke up.“

I don’t comment that she may very well be out for the next 12 hours or so.

"Well, the nurses fed him I’m sure, so you should have a few peaceful hours. Theymostly just sleep and eat at this stage. And poop.” I chuckle, but thejoke falls flat.

I need to make sure the baby’s nurse comes back for a diaper check. This guyisn’t ready. I note the various monitors and change her bag.

"Would you like to hold him?“ That gets him to look right at me, with an unidentifiable expression. He looks overat the bassinet, back to me and his mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He’s blinking furiously. Bless. Indecisionand panic are clear as day in his eyes. But something else, too. He looks…guilty. It’s the strangest thing. I can sense that he wants to hold the baby but can’t bring himself to.

He lowers his chin to his chest, pauses and swallows. “Um…no… I… I don’t wantto wake him." All of my maternal inclinations are screaming at me to hug this poor boy, who isn’t a boy at all. I tamp down the urge, and decide instead to turn my attention to the baby.

I lean over the to take a glance. They’ve got the room fairly warm so he’s loosely swaddled in addition to a hospital issued t-shirt and diaper. His arms curled above his head, snoozing away. He smells of clean laundry and lavender baby shampoo. Just a dusting of strawberry blonde hair, long lashes of the same shade. He’s got his daddy’s chin. I watch his lips and cheeks mimicking the suckling reflex. Oh heavens. I do miss this. "You won’t, don’t worry. Babies love to be held. He might even sleep sounder that way.

Again he swallows. I won’t push.

"Y’all have a name picked out?“ I want to make friendly conversation, because Ifeel like this guy could use a friend, but mostly I want to leave. I feel awkward and oddly intrusive. Something about his room feels sacred in a way I haven’t encountered before. And I’m trespassing.

He blinks. As if the idea just occurred to him. "Um, no. No not yet.”

"Well, never mind that. No hurry. He’s just precious,” I hug my clipboard to my chestand flash a nurturing southern grin, “Congratulations.“ Lord what a drawl.My accent really does get worse at night, especially deep into a shift. But I domean that, wholeheartedly.

His eyes flit over to the baby, who’s begun to stir and whimper and then he glances up atme, alarmed. I walk over and place my hand on the tiny human’s rapidly rising and falling belly, and place a firm but gentlepressure there. I lightly jiggle and ‘shhhh…’ softly. He settles instantly andresumes his slumber.

I feel dad’s eyes on me. Yes, he loves this baby. His paternal, protective instincts are unmistakable . And yet he holds back. I smile over at him again, reassuringly. “See? Nothing to it, “ with a wink. No need for any hardcore parenting truths right now.

As I gather my things and wish him a good night, tell him I’ll be back in a coupleof hours to recheck her vitals but I’ll try not to wake them, in case he wantsto rest his eyes for a while. Somethingtells me he won’t.

He thanks me routinely and I turn to walk out. At the threshold of the door I hearthe plastic of the chair crack and I turn around, wondering if he needs anything. His attention isn’t on me, but the baby, walking over to the clear bassinet and peering over. He hasn’t touched him yet, only gazes down at the newborn. Earnest curiosity quickly blooms into boundless wonder, and finally, an expression of such heartbreaking devotion that I feel my eyes begin to burn and a lump lodges behind my throat. I freeze. He gently mimics,exactly, his movements from earlier. He strokes the baby’s face, no hair to move but along side his cherubic cheek just the same. Then places a finger in the baby’s palm, which instinctually grips his father’s outstretched digit. He leans close, so carefully close, and places an impossibly soft kiss on the tiny hand, lips trembling.

“Hi.”He mouths.

His face begins to crumple slightly and he gathers his entire bottom lip in histeeth, desperately trying to contain what’s so obviously a flood of emotion.

Feeling truly instrusive now, I make my exit asquietly as I can and scurry down the hallway.

The whys and how’s of their appearance at this lonely small town facility are inconsequential, really. They are just parents now. New parents. With vast, phenomenal, uncharted waters lying ahead of them. And yet, something tells methey are well equipped for such territory. Call it experience, call it optimism, call it hope, call it what you will.

{Good luck you two}, I think, walkingtoward my station and yearning for my shift to end so as to return to my owntwo sleeping babies at home.

Fin

#msr prompts #msr fic #my fic #prompts #anons

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spamzineglasgow · 6 years

Text

SPAM Digest #2 (Oct 2018)

A quick list of the editors’ current favourite critical essays, post-internet think pieces, and literature reviews that have influenced the way we think about contemporary poetics, technology and storytelling.

‘How to Write About a Vanishing World’, by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker

Like many others, I’ve spent a week in a state of grief about the recent IPCC report. I’m all over The Guardian like a traumatised fungus, trying to find nourishment in the form of answers, devouring data I don’t understand. I sense the dyspeptic effects of all those figures. Thank goodness for Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014), who draws us back to the role of narrative in making sense of our vanishing world. Provocatively she opens with the familiar trope of the ‘stormy night’ and tells of ‘an American herpetologist named Marty Crump’ who, after a neighbourly tip, discovers the emergence of golden toads not far from her home in northwest Costa Rica. This is in the late eighties. These strange and beautiful creatures are part of the biospheric treasure trove whose loss Kolbert then documents across the intervening decades, up to the present. By the turn of the century, she suggests, biology had become a practice of living elegia: ‘A biologist could now choose a species to study and watch it disappear, all within the course of a few field seasons’.

Her article collects numerous other stories of scientists losing their subject — from Arctic ice to Great Barrier corals — until extinction becomes the presiding litany of our times. She notes how researchers find themselves paralysed, unsure of intended outcomes when faced with such scales of ecological loss. Even as scientific projects to assist vulnerable ecosystems gather in nuance and strength, there’s a sense that we’re already fighting a losing game. Science becomes a question of narrative transmission, as much as active intervention; by doing research, you’re sending some sort of message of hope. As Kolbert puts it, ‘Hope and its doleful twin, Hopelessness, might be thought of as the co-muses of the modern eco-narrative’, inspiring nature writers and scientists alike. The central question is ‘how we relate to that loss’: is it a question of elegy and mourning, or sparking a call to arms? Even those writers who urge us to act, who celebrate the potentials of direct intervention, admit that none of this will happen fast enough to make a lasting difference. Ending on the phrase ‘Lalalalalala, can’t hear you!’, Kolbert sardonically evokes that familiar, Trumpian stage of climate denial which has been rearing its all-too-human, deluded head of late. But what persists is the value of keeping on — ‘Narrating the disaster becomes a way to try to avert it’ (and here I am reminded of Maurice Blanchot’s writing of the disaster as a polysemous, irreducible event) — writing, as Kolbert does in this piece, our stories in the face of defeat. An earnest act in the face of inevitable cynicism, a careful digestion of failure. Maybe ecological writing just needs to be more metamodern.

M.S.

‘Your favorite Twitter bots are about die, thanks to upcoming rule changes’, By Oscar Schwartz, Quartz

Twitter bots fans, you might want to take a seat: there could be some terrible news out there. According to Oscar Schwartz and his article on Quartz, many of our favourite sources of coded linguistic beauty might disappear in the coming months due to what he calls ‘a company-wide attempt to eradicate malicious bots from the platform.’ A couple months ago, Twitter announced that they would start requiring bot developers to undergo a thorough vetting process in order to gain access to Twitter’s programming interface (where the essence of a Twitter bot lies) - an amount of bureaucratic load that prolific bot artists have told Schwartz would simply be too much work to keep up with.

Regardless of the bleak prediction, the think piece reads less like a eulogy for Twitter bots, and more like a defense of them. Schwartz provides us here with a real goldmine for Twitter bots to follow - from Jia Zhang’s @censusAmericans, which composes little biographies of nameless Americans by compiling information provided to the open census database, to Allison Parrish's @the_ephemerides, which couples images of distant planets from NASA’s archive with computer-generated poetry. In a statement to Schwartz, Parrish (a poet, computer-programmer, and educator as well as a Twitter-botter) states that ‘asking permission to make a bot is like asking someone permission to do graffiti on a wall (...) It undermines everything that is interesting about bot-making.” - a point that is not only rhetorically effective, but possibly a very productive way of conceptualising Twitter-bots as an art form.

‘For these bot-makers, letting their creations die off on Twitter is an act of protest. It’s not so much directed at the new developer rules, but at the platform’s broader ideology. “For me it’s becoming clear that Twitter is driven by a kind of metrics mindset that is antithetical to quality communication,” Parrish says. “These recent changes have nothing to do with limiting violent or racist language on the platform and are all about making it more financially viable.”

[Darius] Kazemi [another prominent bot artist] agrees, adding that to continue making creative bots on Twitter is making a bargain with the devil. “We’re being asked to trade in our creative freedom for exposure to a large audience,” he says. “But I am beginning to suspect that once we all leave Twitter, they will realize that we represent a lot of what made Twitter good, and that maybe the platform needs fun bot makers more than we need Twitter.”’

D.B.

‘Erasing the signs of labour under the signs of happiness: “joy” and “fidelity” as bromides in literary translation’, by Sophie Collins, The Poetry Society

Some of our most significant intellectual epiphanies occur in lecture theatres, often in resistance to the lecture in question. Maybe this is a form of vicarious translation. In her piece, Collins begins with an anecdote about a lecture she was looking forward to leaving her cold. The speaker’s takeaway slogan, the ‘joy of translation’, rang hollow as a company ‘mission statement’. Against this platitude from the corporate happiness factory, Collins explores the affective entanglements of reading translation through various types of negativity, the disciplinary disparities around its process, intentions and attendant critical debates. Drawing upon her own experience in translating literature from the Dutch, Collins explores the value of acknowledging struggle in translation — from ‘uncertainty and self-consciousness’ to ‘breakdown and frustration’. She makes room for the translator’s own vexed identity to be critically recognised in the process, and thus asks for analytic frameworks which keep in mind the theories around hybridity posited by thinkers such as Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhaba and Julia Kristeva.

Working through the negative space of translation, Collins goes on to deconstruct the concept of ‘joy’ itself, upon whose insistence various arms of society’s ideological apparatus are able to keep us in stasis and check: ‘Given that the desire for happiness can cover signs of its negation, a revolutionary politics has to work hard to stay proximate to unhappiness’. Joy becomes less a personal experience than ‘something more like obedience to a collective cause’. Translation might allow us to notice relationality and difference between cultures; but as a creative act in itself, translation also provides a discursive technology for intervention in structures of power. Often denigrated as secondary or indeed ‘women’s work’, translation occupies a precarious position in the ‘creative hierarchy’, and this is reinforced by vacuous proclamations about its joy. Whose joy are we reveering here anyway? What we need, Collins argues, is a more complex set of theories around translation, which bring into play its disruptive, ‘negative’ aspects. Her productive alternative to ‘fidelity’ or ‘faithfulness’ as the goal or logic for translation is that of ‘intimacy’: a translation process that ‘exhibits a heightened contextualisation of its source text for the reader’; one that bears with it the often fraught emotional truths around the act of moving between texts, times, cultural tones and affective states. Emotional truths whose discernment opens a space for seriously ‘affirm[ing] the possibility of change’:

As a proposed ideal for translations, ‘intimacy’ brings with it its own questions, problematics and risks. Ultimately, however, my application of the term is intended to shift the translation relationship from a place of universality, heteronormacy, authority and centralised power, towards a particularised space whose aesthetics are determined by the two or more people involved, in this way amplifying and promoting creativity and deviant aesthetics in translations between national languages.

M.S.

‘On Translating Human Acts’ by Han Kang - By Deborah Smith in Asymptote

Han Kang plays language with the kind of near-unbearable intensity which Jacqueline du Pré applied to the cello, exploring its sensory possibilities through a continual detailing of the minutely physical—a bead of sweat trickling down the nape of a neck, the rasp of even the softest fabric against skin—which builds to such a pitch that even the slightest physical contact, no matter how intentionally tender or gently performed, is felt as violence, as violation.

As someone who works in the field, I'm always eager to read the translator's note before commencing my reading of the work. Translators' introductions, beyond outlining the context of any novel, tend to reveal the hyper-specific difficulties they faced when attempting to replicate linguistic nuances of the source language into the target language. In this case, one example given was the 'brick-thick Gwangju dialect', as Korean dialects are distinguished by grammatical differences rather than individual words. Looking to avoid 'translationese', Smith identifies that her primary concern was the effect the text had over the reader, rather than specific syntactic structures, aiming for 'a non specific colloquialism that would carry the warmth Han intended'.

Already intrigued by Smith's introduction, and after having finished Human Acts, I continued my research of Smith, coming across much of the criticism she received by many academics for her translations of both The Vegetarian (she had been studying Korean for only three years before commencing this work) and Human Acts. In this essay, Smith takes us on a journey through the complexities and challenges she faced as a translator. One that really stuck out to me was the necessity to find as many possible synonyms for the verb 'to erase'. This word continued to resurface in the original often as a straight repetition. As Smith notes, Korean is 'far more tolerant' of this than English. I had once encountered a similar issue myself when translating a memoir based in one Rio de Janeiro's jails. The prisoners in that text frequently used the word 'parada', a local slang that can mean 'thing', 'business', 'occurrence', but is context specific. The heavy repetition of any of these options in English didn't read well, making the text clunky and awkward. Only through methodically finding specific synonyms to match with each context was I able to resolve this.

Out of all the nuances and subtleties Smith had to work through, none can be more thought-provoking than the title itself, 'Human Acts'. As Smith notes, a literal translation of the Korean would have resulted in the slightly awkward title 'The boy is coming', leaving her with the tricky task of finding a captivating title that retained the neutrality of the original. Read the full article to hear about which elements Smith had to keep in mind when deciding how to translate Kang's 'restrained Korean'.

M.P.

#SPAM Digest

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theloganshannon · 6 years

Text

If I Only Wrote For Myself

In reflecting recently I’ve realized that I cater to the reader more than myself in my writing. In some ways this is a great, commendable thing. In other ways this has certainly limited my means of expression. Which is counterintuitive to my pursuit of being limitless in all things. It also presents an ironic incompleteness in my aim for complete transparency. As though I can only take my honesty to a certain point until it no longer becomes helpful.

Yes, I have already been more honest than most people would ever dare to be. And perhaps that has served as an excuse for me to not take my honesty to its heaviest places. The places where, truthfully, most of my thinking actually dwells. For unmistakable reasons I have a heavy soul, which inevitably leads to heavy thoughts. Thankfully I am filled with the perfect Spirit who lightens the load, though. Even so, an epic war between the flesh and spirit wages in my soul.

The fact is, if I only wrote for myself my writing would likely present as rather depressing. Not to me; For me it would assuredly be a sweet release. But, because I write for others too, I worry that doing so would lead my readers to despair. It is my fear that divulging the entire trueness of my experiences could distract the reader from what is actually true. After all, “my truth” should never, can never, take precedence over The Truth.

Fortunately, I don’t believe the Lord means for me to carry this concern. In fact, I know He doesn’t. The Holy Spirit is the one working in people's lives; He can use anything to bring forth any necessary growth and change in any individual. And that includes using my (and your) deepest, most honest grievings, even the ones that are partially or entirely untrue. They feel true, but they don’t properly reflect the gospel truth. Yet, it’s okay to express such desperate griefs. Sometimes it’s what’s required for us to keep pressing onward. It allows for a sort of reset.

With these things being said, expect my writings to be even more honest going forward. No more holding back. Instead of fearing that my heaviest expressions will lead readers astray, my greatest concern has become that my holding back would in some way hinder the Spirit’s movement in others. I dare not do that. I desire that the Lord would use every part of me, including my most honest feelings and experiences, to advance the Kingdom in the lives of others. He desires to do so as well. That’s what the plan of redemption is all about!

By the restorative power of the Savior, every ugly thing that submits to Him is made beautiful. The Redeemer uses whatever follows this pattern without fail. We see it all over scripture. We especially see it in the parts of scripture known as literature and/or psalms of lament. This is a biblical writing style that does just what I mean to do with my own writing. Just what I have been describing here. These pieces of lament in God’s Word are the recordings of the most honest feelings of grievance felt by God-fearing, God-worshiping men.

Among other passages, the books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations, as well as many of the Psalms are (or include) examples of this biblical genre. Because I won’t go through an exhaustive list of quotations here, I encourage you to read these parts of scripture on your own time! Believe me, it won’t be hard for you to spot the style.

Literature of lament consists of some of the most shocking, head-scratching, heart-wrenching portions of the Bible. So much so that they wouldn’t seem to belong in the book of the divine. To the uninformed reader these writings would understandably appear to be incessant complainings. But that would be the wrong prognosis. The sentiment of these pieces is sincere confusion at circumstances amidst a fervent desire to faithfully follow God. A heart of turmoil that seeks to trust. The purpose of these pieces is to release tension and return to, or grow in, submissive worship.

That is what I hope to do with my writing. To bear my soul clearly and fully that I may be shaped into the image of Christ as he means for me. Literature of lament is a form of writing that enables this process. I face many, many seasons where it has been and will be necessary. Much like God’s Word though, I won’t exclusively write in this style. There is much more to be explored. But at the end of the day, my art exists beyond myself; it is not merely expressions of me; it exists to establish Kingdom come. Arrived, but also, please arrive.

“The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all.” - Psalm ‭34:18-19‬

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him.” - ‭‭Job‬ ‭13:15‬

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God,” - Job‬ ‭19:25-26‬

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” - Habakkuk‬ ‭3:17-18‬ ‭(NIV‬‬)

“It seems to me that we do not need to be taught how to lament since we have so many models in Scripture. What we need is simply the assurance that it’s okay to lament. We all carry deep within ourselves a pressurized reservoir of tears. It takes only the right key at the right time to unlock them. In God’s perfect time, these tears can be released to form a healing flood. That’s the beauty and the mystery of the prayer of lament.” - Michael Card

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ashleydpalmerusa · 6 years

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A 2018 Refresh: The CPA Exam User Experience Reno

Along with a series of other 2018 CPA Exam changes that will make the testing experience easier for CPA candidates, the latest version of the exam will feature a redesigned CPA Exam user experience (UX) for virtually all interfaces. The AICPA is demolishing the outdated look it’s had for so long and introducing a more modern and open layout, with updated features and colors. Pop-ups, action screens, and questions will all get the new look. It’s a renovation that Chip and Joanna Gaines would be proud of!

To be honest, when I first saw the new interface, I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. I’m so used to the old design – it seemed odd to have to adjust after all this time. And I’ll admit to a certain fondness for the simplicity of the old screens. To me, the new design was eye-catching, but I wasn’t sold on how necessary it was. The more I learned about and experimented with the new look, though, the more I came around to it. It’s better looking for sure, but it actually also does a lot more to make the CPA Exam easier on candidates, and every little bit counts.

Hmmmmm….Is that a load-bearing wall?

Old CPA exam version (through March 10, 2018)

Redesigned CPA exam version (beginning April 1, 2018)

At the most basic level, one main update is that the new UX changes the proportions of the exam screens. Prometric testing centers are upgrading to wider, 23” HD monitors, so the CPA Exam is knocking down some walls and adjusting its screen size to fit. The wider screens will allow the replacement of vertical/horizontal split screens in Task-Based Simulations with a workspace where the exam tools and exhibits will open. Having gone back and forth between interfaces in our Gleim CPA Review course for a couple of months now, I can’t overemphasize how much easier it is to research in the exhibits and answer Task-Based Simulations (TBSs) with this workspace instead of splitting the screen. It’s like having two monitors at work – it might take a little getting used to at first, but in the end it’s so much better because you can open multiple exhibits at once and keep both the TBS and exhibits at full size as you work in them.

Orange is the new black

Did you know that there is an official color of the year? Yup, apparently 2018 is the year of all things Ultra Violet unless you’re a CPA candidate, in which case the hot new hue for you is Blazing Burnt Orange, which will make the exam’s icons, fonts, and buttons stand out more. And as any Gator fan will tell you (shout-out to Gleim’s HQ in Gainesville and Dr. Gleim’s long-standing relationship with UF), the perfect complement to orange is blue, so exam tools, exhibits, timer, and a few other test accessories will be Deep Navy. Since no good palette leaves out the neutrals, Stone Gray and Linen White will round out the color scheme of the CPA Exam UX. Didn’t I tell you it was going to be pretty?

Out with the old, in with the new

There are also a lot of little improvements throughout the exam process that add value in one way or another. I’ve gathered what I think are the most impactful to candidates and shared some screenshots below. Some of these may seem like small details, but as I said, every little bit counts when the clock is ticking. Overall, there are better options for navigation and more obvious calls to action, which will make progress more intuitive and human error less likely.

Skipped questions notification

The take-away value added with this pop-up is that the alert icon stands out better in yellow (formerly red), and the Submit Testlet button is enhanced in orange (formerly the same blue as Return to Testlet) so it’s indicated as the better choice.

Break option: Standard

The main difference here is that the header focuses in on the optional nature of the break, the text gets to the point about the timer pausing better, and the action buttons are called out in the bright orange instead of subtle blue.

Information bar

Now for the best part: This renovated information bar has a lot going on. Notably, the highly important exam timer is now on the left so it’s the first thing your eye is drawn to. In addition, the exam tools stand front and center with more separation from the Submit Testlet button than they previously had. Finally, a brand new feature is a line of tabs at the top left illustrating which testlets are currently open (ie, the one you’re in), checked (ie, the one(s) you’ve completed), and locked (ie, the one(s) you haven’t started yet). Hovering over these indicators will show you the type and number of questions per testlet.

More specifically:

Timer

The exam timer has larger numbers that offer more specificity on the amount of time you have left. When the timer reaches the 2-minute mark, it changes into bright red digits to catch your attention like HEY CODE RED FINISH UP.

Toolbar

The toolbar switches up its look depending on the testlet. When featured in a multiple-choice question testlet, the toolbar includes the Calculator, Excel, Overview, and Help buttons. In a TBS testlet, it contains the Authoritative Literature button as well. The main value add here is the Help tool, which will be all-around more user-friendly as a searchable file in comparison with the static directions and help pages of the old the exam.

Navigation

The question navigation’s new location is handier than a sledgehammer during demo. The line of question numbers now sits at the top of the screen, right beneath the toolbar, where you’ll always be able to find it without having to scroll down. The number for the question you’re on is taller and more orange, and questions you’ve marked are flanked by a little flag icon.

Calculator

The Calculator also boasts improved capabilities that you can learn all about in our comprehensive breakdown of the CPA Exam changes *shameless bait and switch redirection to our website.*

It has good bones

For decades, the AICPA has delivered a high-quality CPA Exam that accurately tests what a beginning CPA would need to know. The content-level changes from last year and these new changes for this year simply enhance an already prestigious credential. While all of these visual updates are very refreshing, you should know that however the CPA Exam may change, Gleim will always be there to support you. You can see even more illustrations of the new CPA Exam user interface and discover all the digital advancements in our free 2018 CPA Exam changes guide.adroll_adv_id="ZI5DG3AAMFA7RI2UBWMUMI",adroll_pix_id="EFMIIL4VKNDW3POFFOLEL5",function(){var d=function(){if(!document.readyState||/loaded|complete/.test(document.readyState)){if(!window.__adroll_loaded)return __adroll_loaded=!0,void setTimeout(d,50);var t=document.createElement("script"),e="https:"==document.location.protocol?"https://s.adroll.com":"http://a.adroll.com";t.setAttribute("async","true"),t.type="text/javascript",t.src=e+"/j/roundtrip.js",((document.getElementsByTagName("head")||[null])[0]||document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0].parentNode).appendChild(t)}else setTimeout(d,10)};window.addEventListener?window.addEventListener("load",d,!1):window.attachEvent("onload",d)}()

The post A 2018 Refresh: The CPA Exam User Experience Reno appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News http://goingconcern.com/cpa-exam-changes-user-experience-gp-sponcon/

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cristinajourdanqp · 7 years

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5 Obscure Nutrients: Why We Need Them and How Grok Got Them

Everyone reading this knows about the macronutrients. You’re all eating enough protein, fat, carbs, and the various sub-categories, like fiber, omega-3s, MUFAs, SFAs, linoleic acid, and so on. You know the major micronutrients, like magnesium, calcium, vitamin B12, and most of the minor (but still vital) ones, like plant polyphenols, iodine, and vitamin K2. Today I’ll be talking about the truly obscure nutrients. The ones health food hipsters were super into like, five years ago (“I’m taking beta-1,3-glucan, you probably haven’t heard of it, there’s only one group at Hokkaido University doing any research, you can only get it off the DarkNet using bitcoins”). The ones Grok was super into like, 50,000 years ago.

What are they, what do they do for us, and, if they’re so great, how did Grok obtain them?

Beta-glucans

Beta-glucans are fibrous carbohydrates that make up the cell walls of certain organisms. They’re found in oats, yeasts, and—most relevant to you—mushrooms. Rather than just provide colonic bulk or prebiotic substrate, what makes beta-glucans so uniquely attractive is their ability to modulate the immune system.

Given to critically-ill patients on enteral feeding, they reduced CRP and improved immune function.

They may improve the immune system’s ability to fight tumors.

According to a recent survey of wild and cultivated mushrooms, both types contain appreciable levels of beta-glucans. Were our hunter-gatherer ancestors eating mushrooms? Almost certainly. Recent research into dental residues found that Neanderthals living in Spain ate gray shag mushrooms. They may even have used mushrooms for their medicinal properties, as gray shag contains an antimicrobial protein.

Phosphatidylserine

One of the hardest words in the English language to type, phosphatidylserine is probably my favorite stress-fighter. The body doesn’t make much of it and stress depletes what little we have. PS works on both mental and physical stress, improving mood and blunting cortisol after physical exercise. (And, yes, it’s why I include PS in Primal Calm.) Older folks in particular seem to benefit from PS, enjoying boosts to memory and cognitive function. Kids with ADHD show better attention when given PS, especially paired with fish oil.

After refined soy lecithin, an industrial product Grok never would have had access to, the best source of PS is ruminant brain. If that sounds like an arcane, unrealistic food source, guess again. Before we were top hunters, we scavenged. We ate the stuff the top carnivores couldn’t, like load-bearing bones and heads, both of which we’d shatter with rocks to obtain the marrow and brains inside. After brain, which is no longer available due to Mad Cow disease worries, the best sources are cold water mackerel, herring, and chicken hearts. A 100 gram (3.5 oz) serving of any of them will give you between 400-700 mg of PS, which matches or exceeds the dosages used in the studies.

Inositol

To give you an idea of inositol’s importance, it used to be called vitamin B8. To give you explicit details of insoitol’s importance, I’ll discuss some research.

High dose inositol can reduce anxiety, even comparing favorably with some pharmaceuticals. It can also reduce insulin resistance and improve fertility in women with PCOS.

If you’ve got the right gut bacteria—and since Grok spent his entire life immersed in a decidedly un-sterile world of dirt and bugs and animal guts, he likely did—you can even convert phytic acid into inositol. Or, rather, they can. That means nuts and seeds effectively become good sources of inositol, provided you train your gut bacteria to make the conversion.

Beta-alanine/Carnosine

Carnosine is woefully underrated. Found abundantly in meat, it’s a combo of the amino acids beta-alanine and histidine. We can synthesize it in our bodies, but in-house synthesis isn’t always up to par. And if it is, adequate isn’t always optimal.

High levels of carnosine are linked to muscle endurance and it acts as an antioxidant in the brain. There’s something called chicken extract that can enhance mood and reduce anxiety, and speed up recovery from stress-related fatigue, and it’s basically a carnosine supplement.

There’s some evidence that taking beta-alanine as a precursor is more effective at increasing muscle carnosine content than taking carnosine itself. We can absorb carnosine, but it doesn’t seem to increase serum levels. Beta-alanine is one of the fitness supplements with the most support in the literature. If you can get past the pins and needles feeling it provokes, beta-alanine can provide:

Improved muscle endurance.

More anaerobic (sprints, high intensity output) capacity.

More lean mass (perhaps by increasing the amount of work you’re able to complete).

Either way, you could just eat meat, the ultimate source of both beta-alanine and pre-formed carnosine. People with a history of athletics have higher muscle carnosine levels than non athletes, and researchers suspect this might be due to the former’s higher meat intakes.

Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA)

ALA is created in the mitochondria (especially liver mitochondria) to assist in the creation of various mitochondrial enzymes and Acetyl-COA, which we need to metabolize fats, protein, and carbohydrates. In short, we use ALA to produce cellular energy and maintain cellular function. It’s extremely important.

Yes, we make it. We can still use some extra, some of us more than others.

Diabetics: ALA has also been shown to prevent the descent from glucose intolerance into full-blown type 2 diabetes and increase insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetics. It may even reduce diabetic neuropathic pain.

Oxidative stress: In patients with metabolic syndrome and endothelial dysfunction, 300 mg/day reduced several markers of inflammation and improved vasodilation. In healthy exercising men, it reduced lipid peroxidation and increased glutathione.

Kidney has between 3-4 mcg of ALA for every gram. Liver, around 1-2 mcg/g and beef heart, about 1 mcg/g. Spinach, tomato, and broccoli are the best sources of ALA in the vegetable kingdom. If you try to get ALA through food, you’re looking at a dose far smaller than you’d get through supplementation, and far smaller than the doses used in research. Then again, the amount of oxidative stress we face as modern humans is unprecedented, whether it’s from the diets we eat, the psychological stress we undergo, the exercise we don’t get, the lack of sleep, the absence of meaning, the loneliness, the disjointed manner in which so many of us lead our lives. Hunter-gatherers by and large didn’t have these problems. They had other problems, more immediate ones. But they weren’t bogged down by the chronic oxidative stress that requires supplementation.

You’ve probably noticed that the research I cite to support the importance of these obscure nutrients almost always uses supplemental doses unachievable through natural sources. Does this mean we can’t benefit from taking them?

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate a wider variety of plants, all wild. Wild plants are exposed to more environmental stressors than domesticated plants. To stay robust and survive, the wild plants produce higher levels of polyphenols. They were effectively consuming superfoods in every bite. Supplements can play that role.

Our ancestors lived lives punctuated by short bouts of extreme stress. If they survived, they were more resistant to future stressors, with less inflammation. We don’t have that. We have chronic stress that breaks us down, makes us more vulnerable to future stressors, with more inflammation. If we want similar stress resistance, we must manufacture it and then make sure we get ample recovery time, all while getting a handle on the chronic stress. Supplements can help with that.

Our ancestors likely didn’t deal with the kind of existential crises and psychosocial stress we embroil ourselves in. They break us down and deplete reserves of critical nutrients required for stress resistance. Supplements can replenish them.

If I’ve done my job, you’ll be rushing out in the next few hours to grab chicken hearts, kidneys, almonds and Brazil nuts from the grocery store and forage for mushrooms out in the woods. Right?

Thanks for reading, everyone.

What are your favorite nutrients that few people know about (or ones you’d like me to write about in the future)? What vitamin, mineral, or phytonutrient were you taking before it was cool? Take care.

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fishermariawo · 7 years

Text

5 Obscure Nutrients: Why We Need Them and How Grok Got Them

What are they, what do they do for us, and, if they’re so great, how did Grok obtain them?

Beta-glucans

Given to critically-ill patients on enteral feeding, they reduced CRP and improved immune function.

They may improve the immune system’s ability to fight tumors.

Phosphatidylserine

Inositol

To give you an idea of inositol’s importance, it used to be called vitamin B8. To give you explicit details of insoitol’s importance, I’ll discuss some research.

High dose inositol can reduce anxiety, even comparing favorably with some pharmaceuticals. It can also reduce insulin resistance and improve fertility in women with PCOS.

Beta-alanine/Carnosine

Improved muscle endurance.

More anaerobic (sprints, high intensity output) capacity.

More lean mass (perhaps by increasing the amount of work you’re able to complete).

Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA)

Yes, we make it. We can still use some extra, some of us more than others.

If I’ve done my job, you’ll be rushing out in the next few hours to grab chicken hearts, kidneys, almonds and Brazil nuts from the grocery store and forage for mushrooms out in the woods. Right?

Thanks for reading, everyone.

0 notes

milenasanchezmk · 7 years

Text

5 Obscure Nutrients: Why We Need Them and How Grok Got Them

What are they, what do they do for us, and, if they’re so great, how did Grok obtain them?

Beta-glucans

Given to critically-ill patients on enteral feeding, they reduced CRP and improved immune function.

They may improve the immune system’s ability to fight tumors.

Phosphatidylserine

Inositol

To give you an idea of inositol’s importance, it used to be called vitamin B8. To give you explicit details of insoitol’s importance, I’ll discuss some research.

High dose inositol can reduce anxiety, even comparing favorably with some pharmaceuticals. It can also reduce insulin resistance and improve fertility in women with PCOS.

Beta-alanine/Carnosine

Improved muscle endurance.

More anaerobic (sprints, high intensity output) capacity.

More lean mass (perhaps by increasing the amount of work you’re able to complete).

Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA)

Yes, we make it. We can still use some extra, some of us more than others.

If I’ve done my job, you’ll be rushing out in the next few hours to grab chicken hearts, kidneys, almonds and Brazil nuts from the grocery store and forage for mushrooms out in the woods. Right?

Thanks for reading, everyone.

0 notes

watsonrodriquezie · 7 years

Text

5 Obscure Nutrients: Why We Need Them and How Grok Got Them

What are they, what do they do for us, and, if they’re so great, how did Grok obtain them?

Beta-glucans

Given to critically-ill patients on enteral feeding, they reduced CRP and improved immune function.

They may improve the immune system’s ability to fight tumors.

Phosphatidylserine

Inositol

To give you an idea of inositol’s importance, it used to be called vitamin B8. To give you explicit details of insoitol’s importance, I’ll discuss some research.

High dose inositol can reduce anxiety, even comparing favorably with some pharmaceuticals. It can also reduce insulin resistance and improve fertility in women with PCOS.

Beta-alanine/Carnosine

Improved muscle endurance.

More anaerobic (sprints, high intensity output) capacity.

More lean mass (perhaps by increasing the amount of work you’re able to complete).

Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA)

Yes, we make it. We can still use some extra, some of us more than others.

If I’ve done my job, you’ll be rushing out in the next few hours to grab chicken hearts, kidneys, almonds and Brazil nuts from the grocery store and forage for mushrooms out in the woods. Right?

Thanks for reading, everyone.

0 notes