#another post that has been in my drafts since early march for some reason??? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

niseamstories · 3 years

Text

10 Lessons on Realistic Worldbuilding and Mapmaking I Learned Working With a Professional Cartographer and Geodesist

Hi, fellow writers and worldbuilders,

It’s been over a year since my post on realistic swordfighting, and I figured it’s time for another one. I’m guessing the topic is a little less “sexy”, but I’d find this useful as a writer, so here goes: 10 things I learned about realistic worldbuilding and mapmaking while writing my novel.

I’ve always been a sucker for pretty maps, so when I started on my novel, I hired an artist quite early to create a map for me. It was beautiful, but a few things always bothered me, even though I couldn’t put a finger on it. A year later, I met an old friend of mine, who currently does his Ph.D. in cartography and geodesy, the science of measuring the earth. When the conversation shifted to the novel, I showed him the map and asked for his opinion, and he (respectfully) pointed out that it has an awful lot of issues from a realism perspective.

First off, I’m aware that fiction is fiction, and it’s not always about realism; there are plenty of beautiful maps out there (and my old one was one of them) that are a bit fantastical and unrealistic, and that’s all right. Still, considering the lengths I went to ensure realism for other aspects of my worldbuilding, it felt weird to me to simply ignore these discrepancies. With a heavy heart, I scrapped the old map and started over, this time working in tandem with a professional artist, my cartographer friend, and a linguist. Six months later, I’m not only very happy with the new map, but I also learned a lot of things about geography and coherent worldbuilding, which made my universe a lot more realistic.

1) Realism Has an Effect: While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating an unrealistic world, realism does affect the plausibility of a world. Even if the vast majority of us probably know little about geography, our brains subconsciously notice discrepancies; we simply get this sense that something isn’t quite right, even if we don’t notice or can’t put our finger on it. In other words, if, for some miraculous reason, an evergreen forest borders on a desert in your novel, it will probably help immersion if you at least explain why this is, no matter how simple.

2) Climate Zones: According to my friend, a cardinal sin in fantasy maps are nonsensical climate zones. A single continent contains hot deserts, forests, and glaciers, and you can get through it all in a single day. This is particularly noticeable in video games, where this is often done to offer visual variety (Enderal, the game I wrote, is very guilty of this). If you aim for realism, run your worldbuilding by someone with a basic grasp of geography and geology, or at least try to match it to real-life examples.

3) Avoid Island Continent Worlds: Another issue that is quite common in fictional worlds is what I would call the “island continents”: a world that is made up of island-like continents surrounded by vast bodies of water. As lovely and romantic as the idea of those distant and secluded worlds may be, it’s deeply unrealistic. Unless your world was shaped by geological forces that differ substantially from Earth’s, it was probably at one point a single landmass that split up into fragmented landmasses separated by waters. Take a look at a proper map of our world: the vast majority of continents could theoretically be reached by foot and relatively manageable sea passages. If it weren’t so, countries such as Australia could have never been colonized – you can’t cross an entire ocean on a raft.

4) Logical City Placement: My novel is set in a Polynesian-inspired tropical archipelago; in the early drafts of the book and on my first map, Uunili, the nation’s capital, stretched along the entire western coast of the main island. This is absurd. Not only because this city would have been laughably big, but also because building a settlement along an unprotected coastline is the dumbest thing you could do considering it directly exposes it to storms, floods, and, in my case, monsoons. Unless there’s a logical reason to do otherwise, always place your coastal settlements in bays or fjords.

Naturally, this extends to city placement in general. If you want realism and coherence, don’t place a city in the middle of a godforsaken wasteland or a swamp just because it’s cool. There needs to be a reason. For example, the wasteland city could have started out as a mining town around a vast mineral deposit, and the swamp town might have a trading post along a vital trade route connecting two nations.

5) Realistic Settlement Sizes: As I’ve mentioned before, my capital Uunili originally extended across the entire western coast. Considering Uunili is roughly two thirds the size of Hawaii the old visuals would have made it twice the size of Mexico City. An easy way to avoid this is to draw the map using a scale and stick to it religiously. For my map, we decided to represent cities and townships with symbols alone.

6) Realistic Megacities: Uunili has a population of about 450,000 people. For a city in a Middle Ages-inspired era, this is humongous. While this isn’t an issue, per se (at its height, ancient Alexandria had a population of about 300,000), a city of that size creates its own set of challenges: you’ll need a complex sewage system (to minimize disease spreading like wildfire) and strong agriculture in the surrounding areas to keep the population fed. Also, only a small part of such a megacity would be enclosed within fantasy’s ever-so-present colossal city walls; the majority of citizens would probably concentrate in an enormous urban sprawl in the surrounding areas. To give you a pointer, with a population of about 50,000, Cologne was Germany’s biggest metropolis for most of the Middle Ages. I’ll say it again: it’s fine to disregard realism for coolness in this case, but at least taking these things into consideration will not only give your world more texture but might even provide you with some interesting plot points.

7) World Origin: This point can be summed up in a single question: why is your world the way it is? If your novel is set in an archipelago like mine is, are the islands of volcanic origin? Did they use to be a single landmass that got flooded with the years? Do the inhabitants of your country know about this? Were there any natural disasters to speak of? Yes, not all of this may be relevant to the story, and the story should take priority over lore, but just like with my previous point, it will make your world more immersive.

8) Maps: Think Purpose! Every map in history had a purpose. Before you start on your map, think about what yours might have been. Was it a map people actually used for navigation? If so, clarity should be paramount. This means little to no distracting ornamentation, a legible font, and a strict focus on relevant information. For example, a map used chiefly for military purposes would naturally highlight different information than a trade map. For my novel, we ultimately decided on a “show-off map” drawn for the Blue Island Coalition, a powerful political entity in the archipelago (depending on your world’s technology level, maps were actually scarce and valuable). Also, think about which technique your in-universe cartographer used to draw your in-universe map. Has copperplate engraving already been invented in your fictional universe? If not, your map shouldn’t use that aesthetic.

9) Maps: Less Is More. If a spot or an area on a map contains no relevant information, it can (and should) stay blank so that the reader’s attention naturally shifts to the critical information. Think of it this way: if your nav system tells you to follow a highway for 500 miles, that’s the information you’ll get, and not “in 100 meters, you’ll drive past a little petrol station on the left, and, oh, did I tell you about that accident that took place here ten years ago?” Traditional maps follow the same principle: if there’s a road leading a two day’s march through a desolate desert, a black line over a blank white ground is entirely sufficient to convey that information.

10) Settlement and Landmark Names: This point will be a bit of a tangent, but it’s still relevant. I worked with a linguist to create a fully functional language for my novel, and one of the things he criticized about my early drafts were the names of my cities. It’s embarrassing when I think about it now, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to how I named my cities; I wanted it to sound good, and that was it. Again: if realism is your goal, that’s a big mistake. Like Point 5, we went back to the drawing board and dove into the archipelago’s history and established naming conventions. In my novel, for example, the islands were inhabited by indigenes called the Makehu before the colonization four hundred years before the events of the story; as it’s usually the case, all settlements and islands had purely descriptive names back then. For example, the main island was called Uni e Li, which translates as “Mighty Hill,” a reference to the vast mountain ranges in the south and north; townships followed the same example (e.g., Tamakaha meaning “Coarse Sands”). When the colonizers arrived, they adopted the Makehu names and adapted them into their own language, changing the accented, long vowels to double vowels: Uni e Li became “Uunili,” Lehō e Āhe became “Lehowai.” Makehu townships kept their names; colonial cities got “English” monikers named after their geographical location, economic significance, or some other original story. Examples of this are Southport, a—you guessed it—port on the southernmost tip of Uunili, or Cale’s Hope, a settlement named after a businessman’s mining venture. It’s all details, and chances are that most readers won’t even pay attention, but I personally found that this added a lot of plausibility and immersion.

I could cover a lot more, but this post is already way too long, so I’ll leave it at that—if there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to make a part two. If not, well, maybe at least a couple of you got something useful out of this. If you’re looking for inspiration/references to show to your illustrator/cartographer, the David Rumsey archive is a treasure trove. Finally, for anyone who doesn’t know and might be interested, my novel is called Dreams of the Dying, and is a blends fantasy, mystery, and psychological horror set in the universe of Enderal, an indie RPG for which I wrote the story. It’s set in a Polynesian-inspired medieval world and has been described as Inception in a fantasy setting by reviewers.

Credit for the map belongs to Dominik Derow, who did the ornamentation, and my friend Fabian Müller, who created the map in QGIS and answered all my questions with divine patience. The linguist’s name is David Müller (no, they’re not related, and, yes, we Germans all have the same last names.)

#enderal #dreams of the dying #worldbuilding #resource #writeblr #writing tips #mapmaking #cartography #illustration #realism #writeblogging #novelwriting #writing research #research #writing

784 notes · View notes

relto · 4 years

Photo

“appendix”

i ordered the physical books a while ago (theyre so pretty too..), and there were some presents in books 2 & 4.

let me know if you have ideas for improvement in the translations!

sorry that the pictures are lower quality. its entirely heavy shiny paper and tightly bound, so it doesnt scan or photograph well unfortunately. i feel like tungle is adding some extra blur, so click for full view!

each chapter also has a little drawing in front of it, i assume theyre the blog post drawings since most of them are in sius old art style. the fourth book goes up to mid hide and seek arc, to the scene where quant runs into aa’s setup!

first off, the covers:

(book 2)

”Now that 10 years have already passed since the begin of Tower of God's serialization, it finally (뒤늦게 - too late) ended up being published in book form. There are many reasons for the delay, but while I as a naturally lazy person learned to live a busy life, I think that all these things are extensive work. Apologies to everyone who waited, and I want to express my thanks one more time.

As someone who works as a webtoon author, I think that there is great significance in getting published. Because it's as good as receiving the recognition that between the many creative works on the internet, [this work] survives and is worth keeping.

(slap me if this is incorrect. this sentence was HARD.)

That's why this doesn't feel simple or like it's a given at all. There are many points that are embarrassing or lacking, so it seems that even now I end up questioning if I have the qualifications needed to take another step into the webtoon and publishing fields.

But now that the books have been released, I hope that they sell well and that the result will be good. Haha.

I sincerely thank everyone who supported me in making it possible for these books to come out, everyone who helped, and above all those who made the serialization possible so far, and everyone who will help in the future. I keep saying this, but it seems that I'm a very lucky author. I will try to use this opportunity and repay with equally good work.

Lastly, I want to say that I hope that the unfolding journey through the tower will be an enjoyable one, both for people who encounter Tower of God for the first time through these books, as well as those who have already read the webtoon.

Thank you.

Let's make this a good journey.

PS.

Since some time has passed since season 1 has come out, I picked a few cuts from the previous drafts I thought were important to rework in the current art style, and attached them together with a short comment as a small bonus. (부록 - appendix) If the circumstances allow it, I will try to redraw several important scenes like this in the future. It's small, but I hope it's a good present”

“It's the scene where Bam rushes at the steel eel despite Headon's warning. I chose it because I think that it gives an impression of Bam's personality in the early story and shows the overall work's mood well.”

(i translated 신해어 as "steel eel" bc i remember it being called that, but its closer to "divine fish". also 이미지 is just "image" spelled in hangeul, but using that doesnt really work well)

“It's the scene where Bam and Khun meet for the first time and Khun makes Bam uncomfortable (?) (곤란하게 - awkward, embarrassing) after seeing the Black March. It's one of the scenes that led to the current Rakhunbam, so I picked it to draw again.”

(this is also the illustration on the sticker!)

“It's the scene where Anak confronts Bam with the Green April. In the Crown Game, Anak is definitely at her most active, and I figured that obviously I had to draw her once, so I picked something and tried to draw it. Haha.”

(book 4)

1. print release

(panel 1)

Bam: Khun-ssi! Rak-ssi! Look at this!! Volumes 1 and 2 came out!!

(panel 2)

Oh, I'm on the second book's cover. As expected, that useless crocodile was pushed back to the third book. What a relief. After all, I'm the most important.

(panel 3)

Looks like they're reserving me as a hidden wildcard to boost sales later on. Isn't it that that albino turtle's importance drops sharply after the second book? What a relief.

(panel 4)

Mm~ It's satisfactory.

Bam: It seems that everyone is content, how fortunate!

I think it's well made. Wouldn't the third book make a good hot mat?

(something you set a hot pan/pot down on. i.. dont actually know a good universal word for it in english? research was inconclusive. any tips?)

2. Rakhunbam

(panel 1)

Bam: Khun-ssi! Rak-ssi! I heard that people call us "Rakhunbam"! That's interesting, isn't it? (Let go - you let go)

(panel 2)

The fact that I'm in the middle must mean that I'm the most important. After all, I'm the center of the world!

(panel 3)

Me being first means that I'm the leader!!

As expected, everyone recognizes me as this team's leader! This team's leader is me!

(panel 4)

Hey! Cut it out! Crocodile!!

Bam: It seems that everyone is content, how fortunate!

You stop first! Turtle!!

“Yu Hansong is one of the characters where it gets more difficult to know his true intentions the more his story is developed. I think so, not only in the first season, but also later on. He especially likes mixed coffee (?).”

“Khun likes the feeling of controlling and playing around with situations and people. I don't know if the blood of a great family was an influence, but he feels equal parts mischievous and serious.”

“Season 1 Rak was pretty imposing. As Tower of God's mascot, he's a true hero (for real). Haha.”

(thanks @ skimmilk11 for helping with this one!)

thank you for looking!

#tütensuppe #tower of god #btw english isnt my first language so i ended up swimming in weird grammar a few times #tog tag

92 notes · View notes

victoria-daydreams · 3 years

Text

Till Kingdom Come

Chapter Twelve: A Macabre Rite of Passage

AN: You ever lose a post in your drafts? No, just me. Well, that’s what happened here. I didn’t think that was possible lol.

Word Count: 4.6k

Trigger Warnings: none

Taglist: @nerds4life246, @leahnicole1219

Chapter Thirteen: A Simple Lover’s Quarrel

New York, 1889

On a sunny, New York City afternoon, sunlight shone down on the stately, grimy buildings providing some brightness to the residents below. Creaking of carriage wheels filled the crisp air along with the distinct cries of newsboys, shouting the latest headlines on every available street corner. The busy street was filled with carts selling fruits and vegetables of all kinds to the bustling crowd of New Yorkers, carrying baskets of groceries while children clung to their mother's side or onto their cuddly toys. Couples of young and old strolled on the cobblestone streets, sporting colorful gowns and embroidered suits. Occasionally, stopping to consort with a member of the class below them.

It was just another regular day in the city and Sabine was right in the middle of it.

"Remind me why we're doing this today?" he asked.

Side by side, she walked with Bastien as they did bit of grocery shopping of their own.

Sabine smirked, "Because while we are immortal, we still need to eat," she replied, keeping her voice low.

Steam rose up above the general cheerful chatter of the crowd, coupled with the enticing smells of the competing aromas wafting from the immigrant street vendor's wares.

"Honestly, this is your fault," Sabine stated, adjusting her grip on her own heavy basket. "Someone couldn't keep their hands off me this morning," she pointed out. "We could have been finished by now,"

"Well, someone didn't seem to mind my freshly shaven face..." he trailed off, discretely lowering his lips to her ear. "All over their body," he finished, regaining his posture with a cocky grin.

Her cheeks heated at his words.

"What can I say?" Sabine began, looking over at him. "You cut quite the dash with a scraped chin," she complimented, forcing herself to not touch Bastien's face, a gesture that would be heavily frowned upon.

"I do, don't I?" he remarked, as he gave his clean shaven jaw a stroke.

The two of them passed by rag-tag groups of men and women that walked between the lamp posts. As they crossed over to another street, they walked past a group of middle aged men dressed in sharp suits, smoking on cigars and buying the latest newspapers.

"Wait here will you," Bastien requested. "I must know the latest scandal rocking this city," he quipped, making Sabine smile.

"Go on," she chuckled, flicking her chin out toward the pale faced and rag-adorned newsies ahead of them.

Bastien flashed a smile of his own before moving away from Sabine, leaving her alone on the corner of the sidewalk. Tilting her head up, Sabine briefly admired the cloudless blue sky. She couldn't believe her dreams of coming to New York after had come into fruition. After California, the band of immortals state hopped their way from the West Coast back to the East Coast, residing in big cities where it was easy enough to blend in. There was only one area that they all refused to live in and that was the South.

It seemed like everyday new Jim Crow laws were being enacted...or there was news of another lynching.

The shriek of street children playing in the alleys with a refreshing degree of excitement snapped Sabine from her daze, shaking her head a bit. She had gone into a slight trance and the passing crowd didn't offer her much of a second glance, only if it was to silently question her social status as a colored woman wearing a dress of a middle class woman at best. But Sabine ignored the occasional stares and held her head proudly, waiting for Bastien to return.

"Sabine?"

The voice hit her by surprise and she froze. Nobody knew her real name outside of Bastien, Andy, Nicky, and Josef. The owner of said voice was female, but it sounded weak, frail even. All of which that made it abundantly clear that it was not Andy.

"Sabine?"

Looking from her left to her right, Sabine couldn't find the voice at first only seeing people perusing around the vendors and carriages that trundled along holding the rich. It wasn't until she completely turned around and found herself staring down at an older, black woman, maybe in her late sixties or early seventies.

"May I help you ma'am?" Sabine asked, cocking her head.

"My, my, my," she breathed, her eyes roving over her face. "It's you, it's really you," the woman stated, reaching out to touch her face.

Sabine leaned away from her a little, "Ma'am...I...think you have me confused with someone else," she corrected, but the woman just shook her head.

"I'd know this face from anywhere, so warm and full of love and shaped just like a heart," she remarked. "A mother always knows her daughter's face, Sabine," she said gently.

Sabine nearly fainted from the woman's words.

Her mouth opened and closed, "No, no, you must be mistaken," she said, shaking her head.

The woman gripped onto her arm, "You are, you must be!" she maintained, trying to convince Sabine or maybe herself.

"I-I-"

"Mama, Mama!" another female voice called.

A middle-aged, well dressed woman came hurrying over to them with a parcel in her hand.

"Mama, please let go of the young lady's arm. We don't need to cause a scene in front of all these people," she said, placing her hand on top of her mother's and scanning the crowd nervously.

Sabine glanced around the busy street and sidewalks as well, but no one seemed phased about what was transpiring. In their heads, its just another colored family having a squabble.

"But Emile,"

Once that name came from her lips, Sabine was sure that she was actually going to drop to the ground. Blood rushed to her ears and drummed in its canals, muffling all the sounds surrounding her while she felt heartbeat increase dramatically, it felt like her chest was going to explode.

"Emile. Mama. Here?" Sabine thought.

Faintly, she could hear her older sister and mother arguing with each other.

"See reason Mama, this can't be Sabine, she's too young,"

"It is her, you can't recognize your own sister? She's a Freemen like us,"

"What's going on here?"

Bastien's deep voice is what brought Sabine back down to Earth as she attempted to process if what was happening actually real. His expression was a mixture of seriousness and confusion while tucking his newspaper under his arm. Emile and the older woman instantly became demure at the arrival of Bastien, her mother even going so far as letting go of her arm as if it burned her.

"It's nothing sir, my mother was bit confused," Emile explained, her eyes not quite meeting Bastien's. "It was a mistake, we apologize for wasting your time and disturbing your maid," she said, before quickly walking away arm in arm with her mother from Sabine and Bastien.

"My maid?" he repeated, his brow furrowing and looking in the direction of where the two women went.

Sabine placed her hand on her chest, trying to calm her erratic breathing down which did nothing of the sort.

"Sabine, are you okay?" Bastien inquired, eyes filled with concern.

His hand went to reach to touch her on the waist, but he quickly snatched his hand back. Thank god, he remembered to show restraint.

"Sabine?" he called again, waiting for an answer.

"I think I just ran into my family," she breathed out.

~~~x~~~

"You're acting like a spoiled brat Sabine," Bastien said, opening the door to their home. "You don't get your way for once and you throw a fit," he added, closing the door after Sabine marched inside.

This argument had raged on since the moment they left the street where Sabine had been reunited with her family. They did their best to keep the heated whispers between them, but occasionally Sabine's temper got the better of her and she drew more than a few stares when she lashed out at Bastien. However, once they entered the confines of the safe house, the gloves came off, figuratively and literally.

Sabine slammed down the basket onto a table near the door, "I'm acting like a spoiled brat for wanting to see my family?" she repeated incredulously, as she roughly tugged at her gloves.

Bastien pulled his coat off, "Yes, you are," he insisted, removing his hat and hanging it above his coat. "If that is your family, then they think you're probably dead and it is best that we leave that way,"

Sabine placed her hands on hips and frowned, in utter disbelief at what Bastien said.

"No, it is not," she disagreed, vehemently shaking her head. "Did you see the desperation in her eyes, the way she tightly clung to my arm? After all she has been through in her life, from being enslaved and watching her daughter be ripped away from her. Why should I be the one to make her suffer even more?" she questioned, pointing to herself.

"You're not Sabine!" Bastien replied in exasperation. "She's an old woman, for all we know, she thinks every girl that looks like you might be her daughter," he reasoned, sticking his arm out to the side.

Sabine lifted her brow, "She said my sister's name, Emile," she pointed out, shrugging her coat off.

"Coincidence," he retorted.

"They have Louisianian accents for god's sake!"

"Sabine, there are plenty of slaves that could've escaped from Louisiana named Emile," Bastien guessed, and Sabine's coat hit him dead center in his chest, hard.

"Don't be an ass!"

"What? It's a possibility!"

"You are the most infuriating man I've ever met!"

Sabine began pacing up and down the den area in a vain attempt to control her temper.

"Hey, what is all this yelling about?" Josef asked jokingly, walking around the corner.

"I think they're having a lover's quarrel," Nicky commented, coming from behind him.

She halted in her movements, "Sebastien won't let me reunite with my long, lost mother and my family!" Sabine exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger at him.

Josef's eyes widened sharply, "Your mother?" he repeated, as Andy joined them as well, a half-closed book in her hand.

"Yes!"

"And I forbid you from going to see her," Bastien declared, placing his hands on the waist.

Sabine scoffed, "You forbid me?" she echoed, raising her brow again. "I'm not a fucking child, I do as I damn well please!"

"See Andy," Bastien started, walking towards the oldest immortal. "I told you that we had gone too soft on her," he stated gesturing towards Sabine.

A sympathetic expression was on the older woman's face as she looked at the youngest immortal.

"Sabine, I'm going have to agree with Booker," Andy spoke up, causing Sabine to deflate a bit. "I do understand why you want to do this, but it's going to cause nothing but pain,"

Bastien lifted his hand in the air as if to say 'thank you'.

"I mean, what would you even tell them, hmm?" Bastien questioned, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. "Hello, I'm Sabine, you're long lost daughter thought to be dead. I'm technically forty-seven, but I have the face of a twenty-two year old!"

"Then I won't tell them my true identity!" she shot back. "I'll play the role of a concerned young woman if it means I get to see my family again!" Sabine exclaimed.

"Book maybe-" Nicky began.

"No," Bastien interrupted, looking at him. "Sabine," he called, turning to face her again with his hands pressed together. "I am trying to protect you, reuniting with your family will only bring you more pain," he stressed.

"Just because you're family despised you when they died, doesn't mean mine will!" Sabine snapped.

Even though the sentence had already left her lips, she realized how cruel it was.

Bastien tightened up, his face no longer showing any measure of restraint. He let out a breathy laugh of disbelief and Sabine could see how much her words hurt him to say what she did, his blue eyes were practically swimming now. Regret gnawed at her, she didn't mean to say that, it was the heat of the moment and tempers were flaring. And she...she said it. Sabine didn't like how this was going, she felt her guilt grip on her harder the longer she looked at Bastien.

For once, there was utter silence between all of them, it was eerie, unsettling even. Sabine did not like this sudden change, it was obvious it made miserable company.

"Bastien, I..." Sabine trailed off, when he would no longer look her in the eyes. "Bastien," she called again, but he did not meet her stare.

The Frenchman moved away from her without speaking a word, his expression held tightly. He moved towards the front door and gathering his coat and hat as he went.

"I'll go after him," Josef muttered, briefly looking over to Sabine and giving her a forced semi-smile. "Booker," he called, jogging to catch up with him.

The door slammed shut and Sabine felt herself flinch as the sound reverberated throughout the room, leaving her feeling inexplicably cold. Josef, with his coat in hand, reopened the door and this time closing it with a soft click. Sabine dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, wondering how she was ever going to fix what just happened. Warm hands found there way on top of Sabine's shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

"Everything will be fine Sabine," Nicky assured, and she lifted her head away from her palms.

"How could you possibly think that?" she asked, shaking her head. "Did you not hear what I said to him?" she questioned, feeling her eyes well up.

Sabine knew that Nicky could see the guiltiness on her face, it was easily readable.

"Excuse me," she whispered, her voice trembling and rushed towards the hall where her bedroom was.

The door swung open and Sabine snatched her hat off her head, throwing it to the floor with one hand and slamming the door shut behind her with the other. Blindly, she threw herself onto her bed, landing stomach first with a muffled thwump against the mattress. A soft sob left Sabine as she gripped the soft blanket, her chest tight. A few tears leaked from her eyes and she did nothing to stop them. Sniffling, Sabine sunk deeper into the mattress.

Suddenly, there was a knock at her door and Sabine lifted her head from her pillows and looked back at the door. Sabine turned away, intent on ignoring whoever it was and let out a sigh instead as she closed her eyes. There was shuffling from outside her door, but Sabine remained keen on ignoring Nicky or Andy, they would give up eventually. That belief quickly left her mind as soon as she heard the door knob turn slowly on its hinges.

Then the door creaked open.

The sound of heels clacking against the floor echoed hollowly throughout the bedroom, Sabine squeezed her eyes just as the bed dipped beside her. She felt a hand gently nudge her.

"Come on, Sabine. Get up," Andy ordered softly. "No use in sulking, what's been said has been said, and you can't change that," she said.

Reopening her eyes, she slowly turned her head in Andy's direction. Sabine knew she undoubtedly looked like a mess, her face was slightly red and teared stained. Her eyes, which were usually warm and clear, were now blurred and teary.

"I've ruined everything Andy," Sabine croaked out, sniffling once more. "I-" she began, but stopped herself.

She could feel a lump in her throat that was keeping her from finishing her sentence, and the emotion that clung to her words wasn't making the lump go away any sooner.

"Now, now," Andy started, rubbing her on the back soothingly. "Don't be dramatic," she stated. "The two of you were arguing and hurtful things were said by both parties, that's not unlike for couples,"

Sabine scoffed, "I doubt Bastien would throw it in my face that I was a slave, as I did with mentioning his dead wife and kids," she pointed out, shaking her head.

"No, I don't think he would,"

"He has every right to be mad at me," Sabine replied. "He misses her, he misses all of them," she stressed, burying her head in the pillows. "And I went ahead and said...that," she finished, letting out a huffed breath and closing her eyes.

"Well, I'm not here to berate you Sabine," Andy informed, shifting herself on the bed. "You know what you did and you know what you must do," she remarked.

"I know,"

The youngest immortal looked over at her elder, her brown eyes mixing with gray ones. A grim expression lined Sabine's face. Of course she felt bad for what she did and was trying to fix it, but she feared it wouldn't be good enough. They had their fights like any couple, but this one was different, it felt different. This one was more personal, on both ends. Right now, Sabine wanted nothing more to be wrapped in Bastien's embrace, to have silly, meaningless debates like they always did about food, books, and art. Now she wasn't sure if those would happen anytime soon.

In her anger, Sabine crossed a line.

Andy let out a sigh, "Sit up, sit up," she said, gently pulling at her body.

Sabine was reluctant to move from her position, much more content to wallow in her sorrows, but she did and let Andy guide her into a upright position. Scooting closer towards her, Andy put one hand on Sabine's shoulder and the other on her cheek.

"Clean your face," she instructed softly, using her thumbs to wipe the remaining tears away. "You, Nicky, and I are going out," she announced, her hand gently gripping at Sabine's arm.

"Where?"

"I'm sure Nicky and I could use some fresh air as we finish the rest of today's errands," Andy explained, while Sabine looked over at where she threw her hat. "And you could use the air as well to clear your head, put you at ease a little," she suggested, and Sabine met her gaze again. "Sound good?" Andy questioned, with an encouraging smile.

Sabine nodded her slowly, "Sounds wonderful," she responded, a genuine grin growing on her lips.

~~~x~~~

Sitting at her vanity clad only in her nightdress, Sabine silently unpinned her hair. A knock rapped against her door as she dropped the pin into a little enameled box.

"Come in," she said in a clear voice,

Sabine heard a soft click behind her at the same time that she dropped another pin into the box. When her eyes returned to the mirror, her movements froze at who was standing in the door frame. At that moment, the temperature in the bedroom seemed to drop a few degrees.

"Sebastien," she whispered, turning slightly towards him. "I-" she began, but stopped when he quietly stepped in, closing the door after him

Sabine went to stand up and Bastien just shook his head, motioning for her to stay where she was. Her mouth suddenly felt dry and all the words she had come up with earlier had up and vanished.

"May I?" he asked, gesturing towards her hair.

She nodded slowly, shifting her body to face the mirror again and Bastien's hands found themselves into her hair. He took the ornate silver comb from on top of the vanity and started at the ends. Sabine watched him through the mirror, feeling his fingers separating every last strand of her hair.

"Where did you go?" she asked quietly, finding the courage to speak.

"Where do you think?" he asked back just as softly, though there was a hint of humor in his tone, but also a trace of bitterness.

Though she tried, Sabine could not ignore the overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke and booze, clinging to Bastien's clothes. She stared at his reflection again, he seemed completely unfazed or even showed the slightest sign of inebriation. Bastien languidly ran the comb through her black locks, with steady hands, stroke after stroke. Normally, she would this find quite amusing, Bastien playing sober incredibly well when they both knew he was not. Except that it wasn't, not today at least. Especially since she was part of the reason why he smelled like a brewery and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

"What is going on in that head of yours?"

Bastien had caught Sabine's stare in the mirror and held it, he could see the troubled look in her eyes.

"Why are you...why are you being so kind to me, Bastien?" she asked, her tone guarded. "I was absolutely dreadful towards you earlier," she admitted.

"Yes, yes you were," he agreed, without breaking eye contact and Sabine felt herself wince.

It was one thing to acknowledge it, it was another to hear it spoken aloud by Bastien himself. It stung in more ways than she thought it would. She cast her eyes downward, feeling uneasy and ashamed, but two fingers underneath her chin guided her eyes back to the glass in front of her.

"Shall I braid your hair for you?" he asked.

"Yes, please,"

Bastien's fingers combed through her hair once more and Sabine closed her eyes at his touch, feeling him beginning to braid with surprising ease.

"I would do this for my wife every night before bed," he stated softly.

Sabine's eyes snapped back open, recognizing that far off tone he gets when mentioning his family.

"I guess that explains why you are the only man to possess this rare ability and other men don't," she replied, an attempt to be humorous.

He stopped, only to return to his task a second later, "Or how I'm adept at lacing a corset so well," he mentioned.

"You did that for your wife as well?"

"Every morning when I could," he replied, finishing the braid and combing at the ends.

Sabine felt her heart squeeze slightly with guilt. She turned in her chair, looking up to the man behind her.

"Bastien, I do apologize for my behavior today. I should've never said what I did,"

"When I told you about my family, something so intimate to me and how they treated me afterwards..." he trailed off. "I never would've thought that you would take information and use it against me in the manner that you did,"

"I-" Sabine started, but cut herself off, she could feel herself getting worked up and defensive. "I didn't mean for it to come out that way," she stated, sighing deeply. "I knew where the conversation was headed, I knew what your concerns were," she continued, standing up from her seat. "I wish I had worded it differently, but I was so angry, so hurt, by your flippant attitude. At that point, I stopped caring. I wanted to say something, anything, to reciprocate the same pain you were causing me," Sabine explained, wringing her hands. "Only I took it far," she finished, glancing up at him.

The nervous motions in her hands grew tighter and more frantic that she had to move her hands behind her back.

"Sabine, it felt like you took a knife, and stabbed me with it," Bastien described. "And then, you decided to twist it around for good measure," he added.

She bit the inside of her cheek and lowered her eyes to the floor, "I am sorry Bastien," Sabine repeated.

"Yes, I know," he acknowledged, exhaling heavily. "And I forgive you," he informed. "I am sorry myself, I was harsh with you when it was not necessary. You were not acting like a spoiled brat," he apologized.

"Thank you for recognizing that,"

The two them stood in silence, every second feeling like an eternity. Finally, Sabine brought her eyes to his and and took his hands in both of hers.

"Is all well between us again?" she asked, her dark brown irises looking into his blue ones. "I do hope so now that we both apologized for our regrettable actions today,"

Bastien let out a rough sigh and shifted his eyes to the ceiling, "On one condition..." he trailed off.

"And that is?"

"You let me seal this with a kiss," he answered, staring back down at her with a faint grin.

She scrunched her nose up, "Ugh, maybe later," Sabine suggested, smiling a little.

"Why?" Bastien inquired, pulling her closer.

"Because my dear, you reek of alcohol," she replied bluntly. "And so does your breath," she commented, putting her hands on his chest to keep him at bay. "I'll draw you a bath and fill a glass of water for you-"

"I can do that all myself Sabine, I'm not that drunk," he cut in, his mouth curving upwards. "You go on and head to bed, I'll freshen up. And maybe I'll get that kiss,"

Sabine chuckled, "For now, I can only give you this," she said, before slipping her hand from his and pressing two of her fingers onto her lips and then onto Bastien's.

Gently, he wrapped his hand around hers and kept it there.

~~~x~~~

Sabine was half-asleep felt her mattress dip down beside her, a heavy, solid weight joining her on the bed and underneath the covers. Blinking to adjust to the darkness, she turned over to face Bastien.

"I didn't think you'd be joining me in bed," she said hoarsely.

Bastien slightly froze, "I didn't want to be alone tonight," he explained, his voice low. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," he apologized, settling underneath the blankets.

"Eh, never you mind," she yawned. "I meant to stay awake for a little longer, but my efforts failed," she explained, a sleepy smile on her lips.

Sabine could feel the bed shift as Bastien fumbled about for a moment or two before he found the oil lamp on her nightstand. She blinked a few times, her eyes once again adjusting and she saw the face of Bastien, who is looking at her with a wry smile on his face. Sabine shifted on the bed so that she laid on her side, her elbow on her pillow and her cheek in the palm of her hand.

"You smell better," she commented plainly, and Bastien let out a hearty chuckle.

"Good enough for that kiss that was promised to me?" he asked curiously, grinning at her.

"I suppose so,"

Sabine leaned forward and pecked him on the lips.

"I said a kiss, not a peck," Bastien reminded, wrapping her into his arms and pulling her onto his chest.

A small giggle escaped from her as she reached her hand out, cupping his cheek. Briefly, the two immortals just gazed at each other in silence, content with the other's presence. She dipped her head slowly before brushing her lips over his, indulging in the softness of them. Bastien inhaled deeply through his nose, letting his hand caress the small of her back. Sabine went to pull back, but didn’t get far as Bastien sought her lips in a slower and lingering kiss. A soft hum left Sabine just as they parted for air, their chests heaving.

Reopening her eyes, she leaned down again and kissed the corners of his mouth before pulling away once more. Bastien's warm breath mingled with hers as she stroked her thumb back and forth across his cheek.

"Are you alright?" Sabine asked, searching his eyes.

"I am better now," Bastien answered, his hand coming to a stop on her waist. "Today...today was rough," he stated. "For the both of us," he added.

"I know," she agreed, with a sigh and laying her head on his chest.

Sabine could feel the slow rising and falling of Bastien's chest beneath her head.

"I sometimes forget just how sharp your tongue can be," he commented, his voice sending a low rumble that reverberated through her body. "I don't think I've been on the receiving end of one of your lashings before, at least, not in a very long time," he noted, and Sabine planted a kiss on his night shirt covered chest.

"Bastien," she called quietly, reaching her free hand out to interlock their fingers.

"Yes?"

"Promise me something,"

"Anything,"

"Promise me, that we won't go to bed mad at each other," Sabine said, nestling her face into the crook of Bastien’s neck. "I don't know if I could bear it, us going to bed in anger, and then waking up again the next morning with unresolved, bitter feelings still clouding over us," she explained, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I promise,"

Chapter Fourteen: Welcome Home, Sabine Freemen

28 notes · View notes

rockcrow20 · 4 years

Text

Reasons I Still Believe in Kaylor -

Observations since the red “wedding” that make me still believe that Kaylor are still together.

Thank you to everyone in this fandom for there contributions, posts, observations and secret government agency level clue finding skills. (X = links to relevant posts).

Oct 22nd 2018 - Taylors forget me knots flower t-shirt while in OZ..X

Oct 31st 2018 - New Video in Karlie’s Kitchen and she still had the Kaylor photos up.. X

Nov 9th 2018 - Tay sings out of the woods on Tour and Karlie and co post photos in the woods.. X

Nov 16th 2018 - Taylors matching Karlie Clutch at the AMA’s.. X. also kinda matching outfits..X

Jan 15th 2019 - Karlie’s Astrology post with Sagittarius book shown underneath.. X

Feb 25th 2019 - Karlie rocking a Tye Dye t-shirt at Paris Week with Gigi in tow, hello lover merch and also similar to a shirt Tay was seen in also another PR episode themed tye dye (in 2020).. X X X

March 3rd 2019 - Karlie was in Paris for fashion week - Off White walk on 28th Feb then mysteriously posts that she was passing through NY on the 3rd of March before appearing back in Paris for the Stella McCartney show on the 4th March. Where did she mysteriously fly to and why point it out that she was back in America for some unknown reason - plus we know beginning of march is significant for them aka Big Sur or Love locked down...X X X X

March 14th 2019 - Taylor leaving/disappearing early from the Iheart awards the same night Project Runway Premiered..X

March 14th 2019 - Watch what happens live - Karlie getting asked about Taylor - there is a smirk..X

March 14th 2019 - Interesting anon telling Kaylors not to give up.. X

March 31st 2019 - Tay and KK liking the same Ciara post - X

April 2019 maybe??- The i need to make a phone call when filming ME when adopting Benjamin..X

April 16th 2019 - The Lover Butterfly Mural - 2 lady birds, giraffe print, similar previous to karlie VS wings..X X

April 2019 - Berlin video of karlie playing piano with “a interesting” female voice laughing at the end and saying you always.. X X

May 18th 2019 - Tays ‘we’ slip on the Ellen show then saying its just me and the cats.. X X

May 30th 2019 - Karlie using ME! and 2AM in a story.. X X

June 3rd 2019 - Tay wearing a yellow T-shirt with her Wango Tango rainbow outfit.. X

June 6th 2019 - Karlie using a BBF vogue video gif.. X X

June 17th 2019 - THE HAND in the YNTCD teaser video - no one can convince me this isn't Karlie’s hand.. X X X X X

June 17th 2019 - Lover straw in the YNTCD video similar to Karlie’s bride straw. Also the Mint mojito it’s sitting in linking to Karlie’s 73 Question video where she says Mojitos are a favourite..X X

June 2019 - YNTCD with Taylor carrying out a Daisy from her burning trailer plus Daisies making a number of appearances.. X X X X

June 25th 2019 - KK’s Dad liking certain comments on the Wyoming stunt..X

July 4th 2019 - Abigail liking a KK insta post after the SB drama started.. X

Aug 3rd 2019 - Tay posts Lover Heart crispies pic on KK’s birthday.. X

Aug 16th 2019 - Release date of Lover Track being 13 days after KK’s bday and also track 3 aka KK birthday day also its 3.41 long (3+4+1=8).. X X X

Aug 16th 2019 - Lover lyric video with the kaylor sparklers video plus potential daises and big sur falcon pic.. X X

Aug 22nd 2019 - Lover video fishbowl scene X

Aug 23rd 2019 - Lover release date may coincide with a certain date range where Kaylor may have gotten engaged.. X X

Aug 23rd 2019 - Lover album in general - Cornelia street, Lover, False God etc etc we all know it plus the release letters all over NY..X X

Sept 10th 2019 - Lover Paris Concert Mural ummm a polaroid, locket..X X X

Nov 14th 2019 _ Karlie’s off the wall post during when SB was not letting Tay perform her songs - which i think is her being off the wall angry.. X

Nov 14th 2019 - Selena liking a Hung Vanngo post of Karlie..X

Nov 13th 2019 - Lover remix released on the anniversary of their first meeting VS2013 - “the girl in my story has always been you”..X X X

Nov 21st 2019 - The orange girl In YNTCD along with the Karlie Vogue cover in orange with cactus jewellery.. X X

Nov 25th 2019 - Use of a ballerina for her Lover AMA performance and then karlie also mentioning said ballerina months later in a insta story.. X X

Dec 4th 2019 - Taylor Wearing the VS angel ring on the kiss gate anniversary X X X X X

Dec 6th 2019 - Christmas Tree Farm song lyrics and happiness

Dec 12th 2019 - Taylor posting a pic of her with the huge cats door and then low and behold the following PR episode Karlie walks through a giant door for a Cats promo episode.. X X X X

Jan 2020 - PR episode with Cyndi Lauper aka photo with Taylor at Billboard Women awards and also having Laverne Cox as a guest too..X X

Jan 2nd 2020 - Martha liking KK’s post celebrating her vogue covers which includes the Kaylor one..X

Jan 23rd 2020 - The use of the song Karlie what you want, (karlie would you want to) song in Miss Americana when talking about her partner also the home video.. X X also this X

Feb 6th 2020 - The song release of the Man and KK having a suits themed PR episode..X X X

Feb 12th 2020 - KK’s Daisy coat X

Feb 18th 2020 - The drawn Bethany Richards picture of the rainbow dress Taylor wore to the NFL draft on KK’s Galantines insta story..X

General - Karlie continuously latergraming and the Fiordland spelling mistake incident plus always periods of days where she is MIA aka christmas and coming back looking a bit sun reddened and wearing jumpers, posting dark pictures.. X

OTHER posts to note..X X X X X X X X X

Let me know if i have missed any other obvious big observations.

#kaylor #convince me otherwise

540 notes · View notes

sevenfactorial · 4 years

Text

Info about applying to PhD programs in pure math

This is... basically what it sounds like. I’m sure a lot of this is applicable to other PhD applications but I’m only very familiar with pure math. This is aimed at current seniors about to apply, but there is a section about prepping for applications in advance.

The highlights:

Recommendation letters are the most important thing. Most schools ask for 3ish. Try to get people who know you well, not just a student in the class. Someone you've conducted research with and one from a different institution are ideal if possible

Ask for rec letters at least a month before the due date is a good rule of thumb.

Research experience is probably the second most important.

Get the opinion of multiple professors who know you in order to build a list of potential schools. Then widdle it down to your will-actually-apply list (probably 8-14 ish).

My opinion but please apply to at least 3-4 safety/match schools. Even when you're fully qualified, acceptance rates are simply low enough that a bit of bad luck means getting rejected or waitlisted from a few of them.

Most pure math due dates are in early-mid Dec but a few schools are in Nov and some are as late as mid-Jan.

Schools will generally have their own graduate application portals. Some are better organized than others. Some require you to submit all your material before you can send a request for submitting rec letters so plan accordingly.

Acceptance letters will very slowly start going out in mid-Feb but the vast majority of programs won't send out anything until like, March and not be done until later than that. Accordingly, wait until at least mid-March to begin freaking out if you haven't been accepted anywhere.

You should 100% be expecting a tuition waiver and stipend from a program if you're applying for a PhD.

The rest of the posts is.... ridiculously long so I’m putting it under a cut. I mention things to do in advance to help you decide if grad school is right for you and things that make your application look good, give a full time line of the process, a list of things applications commonly ask for, and some miscellaneous notes. (The points above are repeated in more detail).

In addition, some links to other resources math students may appreciate:

an old post of mine about grad school apps (overlaps a lot and features some ranting from during the application process)

about REUs including my addition specifically about math ones

summer programs for undergrads that aren’t REUs by @counter-example and @jungleuniversity

Tips for prospective grad student visits

Also about prospective grad student visits by @thisurlhasbeenleftasanexercise

Also for context, I went to a large state school in the US for undergrad. I started as a CS major and added on math as a secondary major after my first year and dropped CS during third year. I’m primarily interested in discrete and algebra, though I have a significant topology background from undergrad too. I got most of my advice from people around the department, as I became pretty involved during my third year. Now, I’m a first year grad student at another large state school in the US, generally considered pretty decent though not a “top math program” at all. Not that much else has happened so far.

Things in advance (aka things to help you decide if grad school is for you and things that look good on an application)

Take the standard classes. For pure math, this is at least one semester of linear alg, abstract alg, and analysis each. Linear and analysis are also good for applied math but I'm not sure what else if anything is considered standard.

Take some grad classes if you have the option. Most people are not ready for this until senior year, but some do manage as juniors. Talk to people who know you well and the prof teaching the class before you do this though.

Try to get involved with research whether this is through independent studies at your home institution, REUs, internships, or other stuff.

Be involved in your department. This helps with getting you more personalized advice for applying.

The rough suggested timeline (assuming junior yr is your second to last year and senior is your last of undergrad)

Junior April: Take the math subject GRE so you can take it again in Sep or Oct if desired (perhaps not applicable atm). The general can be taken kinda whenever; I suggest fall of senior year.

Junior April/May: Start talking to professors/post docs/mentors/etc. about programs you may be interested in. Write/type it down. Don't worry if it gets long, you will shorten again later.

Summer: Do some research if possible; an REU or research at your institution (if an REU, also get your mentor's opinion on potential schools towards the end as well)

Senior Sep: Start whittling down your list. 8-14 seems to be the "normal" range of schools to apply to but some people panic and do more. Remember that asking for waivers is completely acceptable but applying is still just generally expensive (I spent around $800 for 10 schools)

Senior Sep: Apply for the NSF GRFP. You can apply as an undergrad senior and once during your first or second year of grad school if you didn't already get it. The due date is in mid-late OC but ideally you'll have a draft of your essays and ask for rec letters by the end of Sep, if not earlier.

Senior early Nov: Ask for rec letters if you haven't already. The rule of thumb is a month before the due date. Provide them a list of schools you want to apply to including due date and where/how to submit as soon as possible (as well as anything else they request of course; many ask for a resume and a draft of your personal statement).

Senior Dec-Jan: Submit stuff! Pure math programs typically have deadlines in Dec or early Jan. I think the big days are Dec 10th, Dec 15th, and Jan 15th but some are earlier or later. (applied math masters tend to be earlier I think; in Nov). I suggest putting them all into a list or calendar. In addition, some schools won't let letter writers submit until all of your stuff is submitted so start applications early, even if you don't finish them immediately.

Senior Feb: Programs will slowly start sending out offers in early Feb and pick up in mid Feb, but don't fret until AT LEAST the beginning of March! Grad programs are just way too slow at getting out offers for it to be worth worrying until then (and even then, it's definitely not time to panic but mathematicians are frequently anxious people so I get it). Waitlists are slower to come out; usually starting in early March. Also note, there are many programs that don't actually send out replies to everyone unfortunately.

Senior late Feb-early April: prospective student days! They might be online in 2021 unfortunately but try to attend whatever form they're in if you can (only one of my visits during spring 2020 was online since the others happen to be very early and safely beat covid in the US). Be warned, it's very possible to get offers of admissions and to visit very last minute. I do not have advice for how to make that less stressful.

Senior April 15th: Common reply deadline. If you got your offer in the first round or two, this is probably your deadline to accept. In addition, this means more offers will likely come out shortly after once more people have declined.

Senior summer: graduate. Send a completed, official transcript to your new institution. Check your new email account for stuff you're suppose to do. Some programs have some sort of program during the summer for in-coming students. Most places have graduate student training of some sort for a week or two before semester starts.

Some common things to be asked for in applications

Not actually a thing asked for but many graduate schools have their own portal for which you will have to make an account to submit an application. A few use a common system that kinda sort shares a database of accounts? Some are fine and some massively suck.

Personal Statement/Statement of Purpose: Occasionally called something else and once in a while actually separate things; will usually have a prompt of wildly differing specificity. Sometimes, the prompts come from the department itself and sometimes from the university's graduate school. I suggest having one or two "base" essays then tweaking them for each school. Sometimes a word/page limit is specified but if it's not, around 2 pages/1000 words is pretty reasonable.

Transcript. Some accept unofficial but some require official but generally not an unsealed one. I ordered myself one official transcript and sent it to multiple schools instead of paying for them to be sent to each school during the application process.

Resume or CV: Most ask for either a CV or is fine with either, in which case I give them my CV. I sent more or less the same one everywhere.

Some other notes

Yes, ask for application waivers. Just be polite about it.

Your goals for your essays are primarily to show that you're interested in math and math research and are capable of like…. writing things that make sense

Do not start out an essay with either "I loved math since I was little" or "I actually didn't like math when I was young" or any variations of those. (I had one essay that started with a mildly humourous anecdote from undergrad combinatorics and another that talked about how my undergrad department has greatly affected me).

You should 100% expect to get a tuition waiver and living stipend as part of a TA fellowship (or more rarely, an research fellowship) as part of your offer of acceptance for a math PhD program (pure or applied). Health insurance is also frequently part of the package. This is not true of masters programs unfortunately.

How schools do waitlists depend wildly though most don't have super long ones like prestigious undergrads do. If you're still interested in a place you're waitlisted at, follow their instructions to confirm your placement on the waitlist then wait until April before following up again, expressing your continued interest and asking for an update. You might even want to wait until around the common deadline, April 15th. The number of people who declined before April is just really really low so nothing really happens until then.

#grad school applications #math grad school applications #math phd applications #math grad school application tips #math grad school application advise #seriously not qualified beyond i managed to do it #but hey it's good to have more people's advice for cross referencing!#seven stories #long post #grad school #god

50 notes · View notes

lillianfromaccounting · 3 years

Text

This ended up being a very long post and I'm on mobile, so I'll fix the read more in the morning when I get on the computer.

TW: covid, depression, Thanksgiving, a lot of food talk

-----------

Today, we officially called off Thanksgiving with family (it had pretty much been decided but today we called the few people to confirm it).

Some background: my family only started celebrating Thanksgiving because I wanted to. We're Chinese, so growing up, it wasn't a thing for us, plus my mom wasn't fond of turkey.

At the age of 13, I picked up a bread baking recipe book at a Scholastic book drive. Up until that point, I had been baking stuff from box mixes, so making bread from scratch was a huge deal for me. Age 14, I told my parents I wanted to do Thanksgiving the American way. We qualified for a free turkey at our local supermarket anyway, so why not? To make it more palatable, I incorporated Chinese elements into the menu--various Chinese vegetables (choy) instead of green bean casserole, sticky rice (loh mai fan) stuffing--and i would bake fresh bread. There would always be white rice.

I have a huge extended family and on the weekends, my parents would have family and friends over to play mahjong, so Thanksgiving went over great because they loved trying all these new foods, and I loved trying new recipes. We always had a rotation of at least thirty people, so the food went. I think one year, I counted just over fifty people--it was like a revolving door at my parents' house, some people would pop in around lunch time and hang out until they had to go to their own family's Thanksgiving dinners, some came for dinner, and some came for dessert and coffee with a side of mahjong.

As the years went on, my menus got more and more elaborate, and I would enlist my younger siblings (I have three) to be my sous chefs. It was a THING. Thanksgiving was my thing.

The college I went to is very involved with the Macy's Thanksgiving parade balloons, and while it would have been an awesome experience, it required giving up your Wednesday night and most of Thanksgiving Thursday. That was a deal breaker for me. That's how much my Thanksgiving ritual meant to me.

Some of my favorite memories are waiting in line at DiPalo's (before they expanded, back when it was just the corner storefront) with my sister the weekend before Thanksgiving to get fresh mozzarella and ricotta and parmigiano (lasagna was a huge hit with my family). The longest we waited was three hours one year.

Another year, this was after I had graduated and moved out and was working. My work let us out early (around 2pm), but this asshat in another department ensured me that he needed these numbers so he can work over the weekend. I ended up running out to DiPalo's to pick up my order and going back to work, working to 9pm to get those numbers out, before going back to my parents' house to start cooking. The asshat didn't look at them that weekend (we get the Friday off too).

Mind you, it's not that I couldn't get the ingredients in Jersey, I just honestly had no idea where to go. My parents did the bulk of their grocery shopping in Chinatown and DiPalo's was right at the border of Chinatown and Little Italy.

As I said earlier, my menus got more elaborate over the years. Everyone kept eating the loaves of fresh bread for breakfast, so I made Thanksgiving an all day affair, with a breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu.

One year, the theme was fried foods (fried turkey legs, homemade mozzarella sticks, etc.). I always tried new recipes on Thanksgiving, because honestly, what I enjoyed most about it was the process, the production of creating something delicious.

My siblings started sending me recipes throughout the year. One year, I made a vegan raspberry cheesecake (the base was cashews and almonds).

My siblings also said that they knew my now husband was a keeper because he had not only survived Thanksgiving at my parents' house, but he rolled with it (I'm pretty sure I put him to work too).

After we got married and bought our house, I claimed Thanksgiving for both sides of the family (there were no objections, because I didn't care about Christmas, so they had Christmas). My husband's family had been getting their Thanksgiving meals catered for a few years at this point, so they didn't mind not cooking.

But including his family meant I had to start making sacrifices to my process. One person only liked Stove Top stuffing (don't get me wrong, Stove Top chicken flavor is amazing, but so is a sausage stuffing from scratch). The year my second child was born, I think I was a bit burned out by everything, so we ended up ordering a whole pig (think spit roast, but Chinese style) and some roast ducks that year. We were told the next year that some people would prefer to have turkey. One year, we decided to smoke our turkey, and the feedback we had gotten was that some people really preferred oven roasted. So the following year, we did turkey three ways (roasted, smoked, and deep fried) and we started getting feedback that we were doing too much variety. This happened with the sides too. Heirloom vegetable recipes (guys, I used to watch the Food Network religiously) were reduced to sauteed green beans or asparagus. We were told to reduce the variety of things, so the only pasta dish that kept making it onto the menu was mac and cheese, because that was someone else's preference. And I couldn't even play around with the mac and cheese, because the family's recipe used Velveeta (yes, I know I sound like a food snob, and it's because I was back then).

But year after year, the creativity of the menu decreased and decreased, to the point where my husband and I felt it wasn't enjoyable anymore.

This morning, after we had called the family (it was really just my and his parents, whom we have been seeing during this whole time because we live close and do shopping for them, etc.), part of me was excited to finally make a menu and my husband and I agreed on a very small menu, because it's just us and our two kids.

And by the time I went to bed, I was excited again for Thanksgiving because we will be cooking things that we want. There are three, possibly four varieties of scones on the breakfast menu right now. I haven't mentioned this yet, but my menus are always too ambitious. I almost never get every single dish on the table, but the important ones get there. The experimental ones get ranked in order of what I want to taste.

After all these years, we have established staples. We always have bacon cheddar scones with breakfast. My sons requested chocolate chip and vanilla, respectively, and I want pumpkin. We'll see how many varieties actually get made. I always make fresh cranberry sauce for the sole reason of baking it into a crumb cake for Friday morning. We also eat the Ocean Spray jellied (with whole berries), and I serve it in slices. My husband is the mashed potato king, so he handles that. The King Arthur masala chai pumpkin pie recipe has been a hit year after year, so that is a staple now. I was excited to be able to cook what we wanted again.

It even inspired a Thanksgiving chapter in the fic I am writing. (I am so, so, so happy and excited for this chapter now.)

But as I was going to bed tonight, I was thinking about those memories at DiPalo's and cooking with my siblings, and pandemic sadness hit me like a ton of bricks. I cried hard. I miss my siblings. I miss the hospitality of it all. Just like my parents' house was a revolving door, when my husband and I took over Thanksgiving, it was an unspoken rule that extended friends and family were welcomed. My siblings' friends from high school and college would stop by. My one sister's friend would even ask to be on the menu distribution list (I usually drafted a menu and my family members would vote on which dishes they wanted, and that was partially how the menu was created) and invite himself over lol.

I miss that company--the people who understood my Thanksgiving--my family. I haven't seen (in person) one sister since January and the other since March. And while we're constantly talking to each other and do the occasional video chat, it's just not the same.

If you read this far, thank you for your time and energy.

I don't have a point to this post, except maybe wear a fucking mask and stay home, so we can eventually beat this pandemic and resume some semblance of pre-covid life.

And I know this post is very much a first world problem. We have enough to eat and a warm roof over our heads. I am very grateful for that. But I am allowed to be sad too. This year would have been my 25th anniversary with Thanksgiving.

Writing all this out really helped though.

#personal #Thanksgiving #food #long post #depression #covid 19 #thanks for reading #i finally feel like i might be able to sleep now #also katiekeysburg would probably agree that my menus are ridiculous #and yeah some of it is excessive

19 notes · View notes

mistytpednaem · 3 years

Text

So, what’s up with Another Me?

Honestly, I tried to draft this post, but the mental block made me decide to just go for it stream-of-consciousness style. Which I hope doesn’t bode poorly or anything. But here goes!

The Past and the Present

As you may know, I’ve been at this for a while now! Since 2014, in fact. In that time, I’ve gotten through the prologue and... most of chapter one (fun fact: I do have the entirety of this story mapped out! We are transitioning into what should be the final scene of this chapter. Originally, I wanted to make this post - or something along these lines - once I finished the chapter, but I figured since the year was about to end I’d be better off doing it now).

Now, let’s not mince words: that is a long time. I have six chapters total (not counting the prologue) mapped out for this comic, and there is more I’d like to do beyond it (what I like to call Arc 2, or, as you may or may not know: The Part Where My Pet Character Marco Evangelisti Actually Shows Up). If I keep going at the current pace, I will probably not be done within my lifetime. So, if I’m aware of this, what gives?

... I mean, damn. There’s a lot I could point to; I was finishing my degree until 2016, and I suppose that takes something out of you. I have unreasonably high expectations for myself, as the people closest to me know. “2020 was a bad year for everyone,” I tell myself, before I also go on to say, “but even though updates slowed down even more this year, it’s not like they’ve been particularly speedy for the past couple of years, and I haven’t had that bad of a year anyway, so that’s a shoddy excuse.” And then some semblance of reasonable thought comes over me and reminds me my grandfather had a stroke in March of last year and passed away in early June of this year, and I’m like “I mean, okay, I guess I’ve been through SOME things.”

But lighthearted reflections aside, there are more actionable problems I have identified - such as, in an overarching sense, my attitude. My friends made me realise this some time late last year, and while I’ve been trying to work on it, I have to admit I’ve made very little progress: at some point, I developed a seriously unhealthy relationship with my art. Here is how my workflow has tended to go:

Start scripting update. I have a small readership, but that’s okay; I am grateful for every suggestion, I can work with this, and I AM building towards something that excites me.

Script done, regardless of insecurities. It’s time to start working on the actual panels. This sketch didn’t come out exactly the way I intended, but hopefully it still works (alternatively: this sketch looks promising! I am excited about this sketch. Sometimes, I do feel happy with my sketches).

Oh dear. I was hoping the lineart would help a little (alternatively: oh dear. the lineart completely ruined this perfectly fine sketch). Maybe it’ll still look alright with colour?

Oh no. I hate it, actually. I suppose I’m too sloppy; I should be more careful next time.

(Repeat for however many panels i have planned for an update, typically with mounting guilt the longer I take on each one, because I keep taking longer and longer and, to my eyes, there is no improvement.)

Well, as my friends keep reminding me, done is better than perfect. Let’s post it!

The update is posted to a small readership and a quiet response, which, again, is okay, but leaves me wanting for feedback that I cannot get because I am reluctant to spread the word for several reasons, one of them being that I’ve convinced myself my work isn’t good enough.

Rinse and repeat, with the process continuing to be slow - if not turning exponentially slower - because apparently when things make you feel bad your brain starts wanting to protect you from them.

Apologies if this is a little harsh, but it is genuinely the most sincere breakdown of The Whole Deal that I can produce.

The good news is there are things I can do about this! Not easy things, granted, as they tie deeply into a lot of the recurring neuroses in my life, but in theory, the more I embrace imperfection, and the less I worry, the faster I should be able to work, and I should start getting some serotonin out of the whole thing again. In theory. This is not the only issue, however, and I have good and bad news about the other issue I’ve identified:

I don’t think the forum adventure format is working in its current shape.

It’s not about the suggestions - I love working with suggestions! Reader interaction is fun, it’s already shaped a good number of things and I hope it continues to do so. It’s more of a matter of visibility. Tragically, forums are not the most In Vogue things these days, and that reflects itself in, well, poor visibility. I’ve tried to remedy this by allowing suggestions through MSPFA, Tumblr and Twitter as well, but honestly, it hasn’t helped much. I think I’ve only gotten one or two suggestions through MSPFA? And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this is in great part because of my passive role in getting the word out! But it’s all contributing towards this strange, shrinking spiral of a feedback loop.

The good news is that, since I have identified this problem, there should be an actionable solution. The bad news is I’m not quite sure what form that solution should take just yet.

The Future

Whew, that was a lot. So, what’s in store for 2021 and beyond?

Well, er, like I’ve implied, I’m a little unsure. But that’s my default state of existence, so let’s go over what I think.

When I finish chapter one, I would like to find a proper hosting place for AM. As I said, I don’t think the forum thing is quite working out, and MSPFA is a wonderful website, but I feel AM has little to do with most of the content on it beyond the second-person narration and the script-style dialogues. Whether that means a change in format is needed along with the change in hosting, I’m not sure; I would like to keep the whole “one panel per page with text underneath it” deal, which... should be doable on most places, but in this current year, I’m frankly not sure how it would come across, haha.

(I’m also not sure what this hosting place should be, mind you; potentially a wordpress blog with a layout tailored for comics, but drawing isn’t actually my day job, so I’m not sure how viable paying for a domain name might be. Or hosting, for that matter, should I need it - but imgur has been friendly enough of an image host so far.)

What I do know is that I want to keep the suggestions, even though I’m not entirely sure how well that will work without a forum structure. Comments on a post, perhaps? Maybe. But we can’t forget that this doesn’t solve one of the other big issues, which is my reluctance to advertise. And there’s still, you know, my unhealthy, unreasonably high standards affecting my entire workflow.

... But that all kind of comes back to one thing, doesn’t it? The fear of taking the plunge? That’s what I need to overcome. Plans are a good first step, but they mean nothing if I don’t act on them. Which is part of the reason I’m talking about all this - so people can hold me to my plans.

(Plus, like, offer feedback and opinions. That’s very valuable too.)

This whole Future section is a whole lot more uncertain than, I think, even I hoped for when I started writing this post. But I hope what I’m trying to say comes across in some kind of way - not just in the sense of this being elucidating (which, don’t get me wrong, hopefully it is!), but also as far as conveying my feelings to my friends and readers is concerned.

I’m going to keep trying, and I know I’m a little lacking in the Doing department, but now you all know what’s been on my mind. Thank you all for the support, stay safe in These Trying Times, and hopefully we can all keep growing together.

#another me

5 notes · View notes

sad-boy-mono · 3 years

Text

Character and Relationship Backstory and an update from me

Hey y'all! I have an update on where I've been at the end of this post for those of y'all who have been following Highschool Casualties and are wondering where I went, but if you've just stumbled across this I don't want to throw a long and random explination at ya!

Haven’t read the main story yet?

Heres the Tumblr Masterpost and the Ao3 link!

The characters

Damien Haas

16, sophomore in high school. Hardcore musical theater kid from grades 4-8. Loves to sing and shit. Got quite a few bigger roles early on. Things got busy freshman year, so he had to put things on hold.

(Favorite musical is probably falsettos or something idk I'm not a theater kid.)

(That's a lie, I'm just a bad theater kid XP)

Fucking loves superhero movies and shit because haha irony.

Favorite class is Drama, least favorite is math. Because math is hard and temporary but Shakespeare is forever.

Has an irrational fear of doctors, dentists, and needles due to some surgical mishaps that occurred when he was young. Also has a fear of the ocean.

Deals with anxiety and frequent panic attacks.

Shayne Topp

15, sophomore in high school. Really fucking loves football, but not on the team. He wanted to be, but he use to be friends with some of the people on the football team. And they... weren't the best to say the least. They were bad influences and caused Shayne to do bad things. He's no longer friends with them, but still goes to the games with Courtney and Damien to cheer on Courtny's brothers who are on the team.

Favorite class is probably woodworking, least favorite is math. Because math is hard and temporary but birdhouses are forever.

(Though he's actually really good at math, like he has the capability to take honors and do well. It just isn't fun.)

Doesn't know how to ride a bike and can't swim. Deep water freaks him out.

Has a huge fear of hurting other (because haha irony) and always puts his friends before himself.

Courtney Miller

14, freshman in high school. Loves writing and art. Has a lot of sketchbooks, but most of them are half filled. At this point she just collects cool sketchbooks.

Also love film/acting/drama but has a lot of anxiety around performing, so she ends up being on her school's tech crew. She's really good at editing, and has a passion for behind the scenes work around productions.

Favorite musical is Heathers.

Favorite class is her painting and art history class, least favorite is math. Because math is hard and temporary but art is forever.

Struggls a lot with school. Doesn't have many friends outside of Shayne and Damien, even when it comes to her tech crew. Generally on bad terms with "friends" (bullies) from middle school.

Doesn't enjoy the other people in her class. A few of them are former (or current) bullies from middle school.

Relationships

Damien and Shayne

Met in the first grade, became friends in a very first-grader-like manner.

Shayne: Hey I like your pokemon shirt

Damien: Oh thanks, you wanna play with trucks?

Shayne: Yeah sure.

They’ve been best friends ever since.

They had a bit of a falling out from mid 7th through 8th grade because of the guys Shayne hung out with. They were your average middle school douchbags but a lil worse.

Things got sorted the summer following 8th grade.

When they started high school, Shayne’s older brother would pick Damien up and give him a ride to school every morning; even though Damien was in walking distance.

But a month-ish before their freshman year, Shayne’s family ended up moving closer to Damien’s, because a tree fell through Shayne’s house during a terrible storm that hit their town. Even though it hypothetically could've been fixed, the house was old so they took it as a sign to just move.

Shayne is the only person who knows about Damien's anxiety outside of his family, and is who Damien goes to when he's having heighted anxiety or a panic attack.

They also bond over their fear of water strangly often.

Shayne and Courtney

Courtney’s family moved across the street from Shayne’s family when Courtney was in the 7th grade and Shayne was in the 8th. And after the initial family intoductions when the Millers first moved in, Shayne never talked to Courtney. Until about a month later, when he was home alone and Courtney knocked at his door.

After Shayne asked 'what's up?' Courtney asked if they could be friends.

“Do you know how to play smash?” Shayne asked.

Courtney sighed and let out a defeated ‘no’ and began walking away from the door.

“Ok, I’m gonna teach you how to play.”

They would hang out quite a bit until Shayne moved, but they still talked a lot.

Shayne later found out that Courtney would go door to door asking for friends. Shayne was the first and only person who had actually said yes.

Most people mistake them for siblings and when they find out they aren’t related, they assume they’re dating.

Shayne treats Courtney like a little sister and is very protective of her.

Shayne was fucking LIVID when he found out Courtney was being bullied. As much as he wanted to fight them, Courtney talked him down from doing so.

He still did the whole 'don't fuck with Courtney or I will fucking kill you' big brother thing. It did the trick for a while. When you're a very athletic 15 year old, it's easy to intimidate people that are younger than you.

Courtney hasn't told him about... the current bullies though.

Courtney and Damien

Met through Shayne. He made a group chat with the 3 of them that Shayne named “Operation Friendship”. Since Shayne and Damien weren't on speaking terms when Shayne and Courtney became friends they never had a chance to meet.

But they didn’t meet in person until Courtney’s first day of high school, where the 3 of them had their first class together, conveniently...

Anytime they play video games, a conversation along this happens.

"Courtney where did you learn to play this game?"

"...Shayne"

"Explains why you suck"

"HEY!"

(Shayne) "HEY!"

------

Hey! Thank you so much for reading! It's been awhile hasn't it. Yeah, I'm sorry. My life has been all over the place for the past few months and I've been struggling to find the motivation to write. I don't want to specifics because it's not only very personal, but a long story.

But to summerize why I sorta dissapeared, I had a lot of personal issues going on with both school and home and as my mental health was on this steady, but consistent, decline, it was at its very lowest in December. My home issues had reached their peak, and with the end of the quarter coming up after Xmas break and my weeks worth of late work coming back to bite me, I was too stressed to work on anything I found enjoyable without losing motivation immidiently.

Things didn't start getting better for me until some time early in semester 2 of my year. My school was transitioning back into fully in person with covid rates at their lowest in my area and things were finally feeling consistant again, but I was still getting my bearings. School still felt draining, though much less than before, and I didn't have much energy to work on things I was passionate about. I don't think I even made a new document for chapter 6 until mid-ish March.

I'm very nervious about coming back to this story after so long for many reason. First being, although I am feeling better mentally, things feel very off with writing this story. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of passion to write this story and want to see it to completion, I've just had a fluxuating interest in smosh aswell. I enjoy the channel, just not as much as I use to. And my hyperfixation on Smosh was a big drive for me writing the story. Second being that I have so much writers block around the sixth chapter of this story, and I'm worried that as soon as I try to work on it, that block will make me lose my motivation again and I'll put it off for another 6 months.

This "chapter" (idk what else I'd call this) has probably been fully finished in my drafts for about a month now, and I've been putting off posting it because of those listed anxieties, but I really want to continue writing this story so I hope you enjoyed!

Also sorry if this explination was all over the place, I just got my first covid vaccine today and am feeling kinda bleh.

#smosh #damien haas #courtney miller #shayne topp #my smosh fic #Highschool Casualties

1 note · View note

yourmandevine · 3 years

Text

Some stuff that made me happy in 2020, in no particular order

God send you no greater loss. It’s something my grandmother said a lot — a bit of highly Irish Catholic wisdom intended to remind you, warmly but sharply, that whatever you’re currently suffering through isn’t all that bad compared to what lots of other people are dealing with. That it probably isn’t too much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. That you should, instead, be grateful for what you’ve got, big and small and everything in between.

God sent a great many people a great many unfathomable losses this year, and as hard as it felt at times, our family wasn’t among them; we’re lucky, in the big picture. In the past, people have recommended I try writing those reasons down, to give myself a list of stuff to be thankful for, for the times it’s tough to summon up the gratitude. I figured the end of the year was as good a time as any to make that list, to highlight the stuff that helped me get through this year — the reasons big, small, and in between.

So: here goes.

Peanut butter and jelly

I haven’t counted how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve eaten since March 11, which is good, because that would be an absurd thing to do, and a sure sign that I have succumbed to a very specific kind of madness. It’s also good, though, because I would undoubtedly be ashamed by the number; the figure would be titanic, like the unsinkable ship of same name, or the iceberg that sunk it.

Or, at least, I would be ashamed under normal circumstances. This fuckin’ year required whatever flotation device you could find, and you know what I found in the fridge and cupboard? A couple of slices of bread, some strawberry jam, and some goddamn Skippy.

Need a weird mid-morning “brunch” after not having breakfast because you went right from waking up to remote school with the 6-year-old? Crank up a PB&J with that third cup of coffee. Need to pack something in the diaper bag to feed everyone while you’re out at the playground for the afternoon? Stack ‘em up, son. Need a late snack after working the overnight shift filing weird bubble playoff columns? Three letters, one ampersand, one love.

I need to eat better in 2021. But I kind of needed to eat sort of like shit to get through 2020, and time and again, when your man needed it most, PB&J was there.

Sunday night Zoom sessions with college friends

I know that most of us started something like this back in March; I’m not sure how many have stuck with it. I hope the answer is “a lot,” because honestly, knowing that I’m going to end the week by seeing a few friends — some here in Brooklyn but mostly beyond our reach for safety’s sake, some who’ve moved away — has felt like a stabilizing agent on more than a few occasions. It’s important, and no small blessing, to have people in your life who really know you, weird messy ugly bits and all, and in front of whom you can let everything go.

That gallery view’s provided a place to vent, to seethe, to laugh, to cry, and to try to find some semblance of center before heading back into another week. I’m grateful for it, and for the people in those little boxes. Except for the time they reminded me that, when I was 18, I was pretty sure I was a Pacey, and they were all extremely confident I was a Dawson. They were right, but still: a bitter pill to swallow, then and now.

Olivia calling herself “Dr. Bloody”

She took out her little toy doctor kit and just turned into a cackling villain.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dan Devine (@yourmandevine)

Deeply disconcerting, yes, but also adorable.

All Fantasy Everything

What got me in the door was the conceit: three very funny stand-up comedians (Ian Karmel, David Gborie, Sean Jordan), often with a very funny guest but sometimes without, pick some topic or another and engage in a fantasy draft of their favorite aspects or representations of that topic. (It is, crucially, a serpentine draft. Now what is that? That’s a great question.) Some favorite examples: Mikes; Words That You Think Make You Sound Smart, vols. 1 and 2; Things You Yell After You Dunk on Someone; Fictional Athletes; Crimes We’d Like to Commit. Yeah. It’s that kind of podcast.

What kept me around was the friendship. Listen to an episode and it becomes really clear really quickly just how much the three hosts love each other, how much fun they have being around each other and making one another laugh. The warmth radiates, just pours out of the speakers; in a year where I sorely needed some good vibes, I appreciated my regular check-ins with the Good Vibes Gang to just ... unclench for an hour and a half or so.

Drinking beer

OK, I’ll admit: This doesn’t sound great for me. It’s true, though. I really like beer. (We brewed one in our kitchen, which I realize is something of a “bearded guy in Brooklyn” cliche, but here we are. It was exciting to complete a project, and it tasted OK-ish.) At some points this year, it didn’t feel like there wasn’t much to look forward to, and sometimes drinking some High Lifes or Narragansett tall boys — with my wife in our living room, with friends on the computer, whatever — helped take the edge off a shitty day/week/month/year. I look forward to being able to do that outside with people again.

The Good Place

I am sure some very smart cultural critics and political thinkers and social revolutionaries have forwarded compelling arguments for why this show is Bad, Actually, because that seems to be more or less true about most things, whether because said thing is Actually Bad or because the economics of the attention economy on the internet functionally necessitate the composition and publication of pretty much every position on pretty much every issue, and especially ones that present a counterargument for why you shouldn’t like the thing you like, and might be kind of a piece of shit for liking it. But I liked this half-hour comedy about the way the universe might be put together, why we should try to take better care of each other, and how doing so might be a pretty great way to take better care of ourselves.

Andrew let me write about it a little bit for a big project we did before the series finale aired, which was really nice of him. I found myself thinking about this part a lot this year:

I also thought a lot about Peeps Chili, but that happens every year.

Taking pictures of my dog

Check out this flumpy goddamn champion:

“Lugar is a good boy” is the main takeaway here. They don’t all have to be complicated.

Schitt’s Creek

I know we’re not alone in this, but we inhaled this show this year. A half-hour comedy about people being laid low, learning how to deal with who they actually are, and finding some grace and community and opportunities for growth kind of hit the spot, I guess.

One of the most wholesale enjoyable ensemble comedy casts I can remember; Catherine O’Hara was already in Cooperstown, but what she made with Moira Rose only polishes her plaque. I’ll never be able to describe with any specificity the thing Chris Elliott does, but I know it has made me laugh since I was a child too young to understand the Letterman bits or see Cabin Boy in the theater, and it’s probably going to make me laugh until I am dead.

I love that people who, for years, never got to see themselves or people like them on screen got to see David Rose on screen and maybe recognize themselves a little bit. The idea that seeing the David/Patrick relationship might make them maybe feel a little more at home, a little safer and more whole, makes me happy. Sad, about the before, but happy, about the now and the what comes next.

Past that, I just love how what was ostensibly a family-and-friends production for a Canadian channel just got absolutely everything right—the tone, the look, the sound, the theme song, the cast, the jokes, my goodness, the jokes—and before long, the rest of the world just got it. Like catching a fastball square on the barrel. Something the show clearly knew a little bit about.

Finding new outdoor places it was safe to go

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need to give the kids a place to be that wasn’t unnecessarily dangerous but also wasn’t inside our two-bedroom apartment led us to do more exploring than we had before. Shirley Chisholm State Park is great. Canarsie Pier was a fun place to spend a Sunday morning; so’s Canarsie Playground. If we got there early enough or made our peace with some rain, the beaches at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden were pretty rad this summer. I lived in Staten Island from ages 8 through 18, and during breaks throughout college, and don’t think I ever hiked in High Rock Park — that’s dumb, because it was nice!

Even if all those little excursions did was kill a little time and reduce the overall stress level of the four humans stuck in our four walls, that’s not nothing. Some days this year, it was everything.

Cobra Kai

I know I’m late here; I didn’t rush to seek it out because I don’t consider myself a huge fan of The Karate Kid, or at least not a big enough fan to sign up for YouTube’s premium service. I checked it out when it came to Netflix, though, and I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this show. Give me “dumb, but with heart” every day of the week.

I believe in Miguel Diaz; I believe in Johnny Lawrence; I believe I will be firing up Season 3 next month, and perhaps drinking some Coors Banquets in its honor. (I cannot, however, believe how the “get him a body bag” thing came back around, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Closing unread tabs

I’m a serial hoarder of links, and I am bad at finishing all of them. I’ve tried to get into Pocket and Instapaper, but I’ve never been able to turn that sort of workflow — open link, save to third-party service, go back to third-party service later to read, then delete from there — into something that felt instinctual, natural, or habitual. So: lots of tabs. Like, lots of tabs.

This was a dicier proposition than usual in 2020, because cutting my work week in half to be able to more effectively coparent two kids who didn’t have school or day care for most of the year meant less time to read things.

I tried to do my best to keep up with the important stuff for work, and to read at least some stuff about how other parents were dealing with their anxiety/anger/depression/frustration at having to be on 24/7 and work, and to stay abreast of (at least some of) what was happening in the world. Sometimes, though, I would wake up and realize I’d been holding onto blog posts about Really Interesting Rotation Decisions on the 11th-Seeded Team in the East or whatever for literally nine months, and I would go against my nature and just hit the eject button on a 25-deep window, and something amazing would happen: I wouldn’t get fired for being shitty at my job. I would move on with my day, and I would feel about 10 pounds lighter.

I still keep too much stuff open. (As we speak, I’ve got three different Chrome windows open on two different laptops. I choose not to count the total tabs.) But I do so knowing that, if it gets too heavy, I can experience the momentary joy of surrendering to the inevitability that I can’t catch everything. In that moment, I feel OK with my decay.

Reading writers I wasn’t familiar with before

Two in particular stand out in my mind: Nekias Duncan, now of BasketballNews.com, who does excellent film breakdowns and statistical analysis, and Katie Heindl, who writes basketball stuff of all types all over the place, and strings sentences together in a way that scratches an itch inside my brain. I’m grateful I got more chances to read them this year, I look forward to bigger and better things for both of them, and I’m hopeful that, if things calm down and our schedules go back to something approximating normalcy, I’ll have more bandwidth to hunt out more new voices in the year ahead.

The time I ambushed my wife as she was trying to break down and put away the girls’ space tent

Pretty good.

Siobhan learning to ride a bicycle (with training wheels, but still)

The moment passed pretty quickly; Not Exactly A Mechanic over here can’t get the training wheels to reliably work right without either loosening them too much or tightening them so much that she can’t pedal it. In that first moment, though, and for as long as it lasted, it was really great to see her get excited about doing something new, big kid shit, for the first time.

youtube

She was proud. I was proud of her. And then we went to a playground for a few hours. Pretty good day.

Tyler Tynes roasting me

Tyler did some incredible work this year — The Cam Chronicles is getting deserved praise as one of 2020′s best podcasts, and his reporting on the Movement for Black Lives was exemplary. It’s hard to top this, though:

You know what the messed up part is? I was excited to tell him what I was doing, just because I knew the reaction would be so violent. Like a body rejecting a transplant. So lucky to have such a dear, dear friend.

PUP

I’m late on everything, so I didn’t start listening to PUP until the spring of 2019, but I haven’t really stopped since. This year has been too sedentary too often; this band is too kinetic to allow me to stay there.

youtube

“Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley Kate” is never more than about 20 minutes away from returning to the front of my mind. I would fucking love for it to be safe enough to watch these guys live at some point, and I am absolutely going to take Steve up on his offer.

Someone sending me a shirt based on a joke I tweeted

First:

youtube

Then:

I’m not sure you should be rewarding my behavior, SnoCoPrintShop, but I appreciate it all the same.

Which reminds me:

Family dinner/family movie night

My wife works in Manhattan and commutes back on the train, and we've tried to prioritize getting the girls to bed early since they were little, so that doesn’t leave much of a window between when she gets home and they go in the tub for us all to connect; before everything shut down, we almost never really ate together. We’re still not great about it, but for a while now we’ve carved out Saturday as family dinner night, where we sit down to eat and talk about our “up” from the day — something that happened that made us feel good or happy, or something we’re looking forward to. (We used to talk about our “down,” too, but that kind of seemed like overkill. Why try to focus on more bad shit right now, you know?)

Then we settle in for a movie, with who gets to pick rotating each week. It’s mostly been Pixar, which has been great but also has its drawbacks; after she caught me crying during one of them (maybe the Bing-Bong scene in Inside Out? or Miguel singing to Grandma Coco?), Siobhan straight up told me, “You need to get yourself together, man.” We just watched My Neighbor Totoro, too, which they loved, so we’re probably going to try some more Miyazaki soon. It’s a really simple thing, but it’s one we rarely made time for before, and it’s been really nice to manufacture something positive that we can share and look forward to together.

Sometimes looking like a shiftless drifter

No shade to anyone who felt strongly about getting a lineup or whatever, but I haven’t really felt like going to the barbershop was worth the risk, and I continue to refuse to believe that my wife can actually pull off the fade she’s long wanted to give me. (It is also possible that she just means she’s intending to run my fade, and that I will before long wind up cold-cocked and slumped by my bride of nine years.) So I’ve just kind of been growing out my hair like it was when I was single, and sometimes been letting my beard get kind of out of control too, and, well, I sort of like looking a little bit like a Wildling, it turns out.

I have since trimmed things up a little. It didn’t go over well with my youngest. Oh, well. I’ll try to do better next time.

My wife and daughter singing the Pixies

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dan Devine (@yourmandevine)

We don’t know all the words to too many lullabies, so we sing the ones we do know the words to. This will probably come back to bite us in the years ahead. For now, though: Pretty good.

Doughboys’ Tournament of Chompions: Munch Madness: Mac Attack

I can’t believe how invested I became in Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell’s quest to determine the best menu item at McDonald’s in a 64-seed tournament that spawned hours and hours of delightfully funny audio featuring all-time home-run guests like Jon Gabrus and Nicole Byer, who gleefully feed into the often warm, sometimes antagonistic, always entertaining chemistry between the two hosts. I have also never found myself wanting to go to McDonald’s more in my entire life. I have hit the drive-thru a couple of times since, and the boys are right: The McDonald’s fountain Coke does just hit different.

Sound Only

I’ve lost track of whether or not a 38-year-old is considered a millennial, but I’m quite confident that I’m not exactly plugged into “the millennial lifestyle” as my teammates Justin Charity and Micah Peters discuss it on their podcast, which relaunched this summer. Doesn’t matter, though, because I love hearing Charity and Micah talk to each other even if I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Their conversation about Dave Chappelle was great. After listening to their Travis Scott episode, I felt like I kind of understood who he is and why he occupies the space he does in pop culture now. I had no idea how they were going to get me to give a shit about set photos from The Batman, but this they not only got me there, but wended their way toward blaming 50 Cent for needing to know who Groot is to have a conversation on the internet, which is something for which Abraham Lincoln did not die. The show is good, it's getting better, it’s fun to hear them talk their shit, and Charity’s regular bellowing of “I, TOO, AM AMERICA” has made me smile for four straight months.

Siobhan’s letters and notes

She’s in first grade now, and she’s taken to communicating her feelings through the written word. A lot.

I won’t pretend that I loved all of these in the moment. I can only get so upset, though, when she’s already writing with such a clear voice. (And trying to use proper punctuation. (And drawing little cartoons to drive the point home.)

Palm Springs

I’m having a hard time remembering too many specifics about it right now, which probably means it’d be a good thing to rewatch over the holidays. But, as I’m sure many people noted many months before we got around to watching it, a comedy about living the same day over and over again, and about trying to figure out how to make your life mean something when everything seems meaningless, scratched a pretty particular, and particularly important, itch this year. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve eaten up every second of Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti together.

I’m pretty sure I cried, although this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Also, put Conner O’Malley in more things.

Joining our union’s bargaining committee

I won’t say too much about this, but I will say that becoming an active participant in the process of a labor union negotiating its first contract with management has been an extremely educational experience. It’s pushed me to have conversations, sometimes difficult ones, about our priorities as a staff and a company. It's helped me get closer with the other past and present members of the BC, and has led me to start developing relationships with members of our staff that I otherwise might not have had much of an opportunity to get to know.

The organizing work takes time, effort, and energy, but trying to do what I can to help take better care of my colleagues has been well worth all of that. Here’s hoping that in 2021 we can reach a deal that helps make our workplace even better, stronger, and more equitable for all of us.

Publishing a story about Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup

I swear this is true: After I accepted my offer to work at The Ringer, but before I started, I told a friend that one thing I was excited about was that you had the chance to work on offbeat stuff here, in both the “kind of weird” and “not about the NBA” senses. That, I thought, might maybe open the door to me getting to write a story about a Saturday Night Live sketch I saw when I was a teenager about Stevie Nicks from Fleetwod Mac running a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant in Sedona, Arizona — a sketch that I wasn’t sure anyone else remembered, but that was stuck in my head forever.

That story ran on May 26.

A lot of people seemed to like it.

Accomplishing this goal was, as dumb as this might sound, a highlight of my year, and, honestly, a highlight of my career. I’d like to do some more stuff like this next year, time permitting; we’ll see. Whether or not I do, I got to do this. I’ll always have that.

3 notes · View notes

hyba · 4 years

Text

Apartment - Update: DRAFTING COMPLETE March 30, 2020

Last night (early this morning, really), I completed my eerie suspense novella Apartment. You might have seen my initial reaction post here, which wasn’t much because I wrote it while half-asleep. This post is a more in-depth look at my experience writing Apartment and where I feel I’m at with it now.

I confess that the first thing I did after completing Apartment was turn it into an EPUB so that I could see how it looked in an ebook reader. I am happy to say that I’ve reached - and went beyond - my goal of 100 pages, at about 34,000 words.

WHAT NOW?

While I am thrilled that I'm done, I also know that the work is not finished yet. I have been editing and re-editing and re-re-editing ad nauseum for months now (probably one of the big reasons I ended up procrastinating so badly towards the end there), and I’m finally at a stage where I feel I am closer to the vision of the book that I had in my head than I have been in a long time - since I first started writing the first few pages, in fact.

Still, I have a few things I noticed that I’m not quite happy with with, like certain character arcs. Despite the fact that the story, in the end, wasn’t really about the characters as much as what they stood for, something feels missing. That’s probably where early readers or beta readers will come in handy - at this point I’ve read it so many times, I’m jaded.

POST-DRAFTING Q&A

I’ve been taking a look at some pages online that discuss what you can do after you’re done writing your book, and I came across this article on Writer’s Digest that asks the following Qs:

Does the story have strong narrative drive?

Is your protagonist too passive?

Are you beginning with the best beginning?

Is your story full of data dumps?

Did you think beyond your first-draft language choices?

Here are my answers:

My story is less plot-driven and more of an aimless, absurd set of happenings, some of which lead nowhere, and others which lead to very definite ends. In terms of something that sort of pushes the plot through, I have to say that that would probably be the suspense - the fact that the main characters all distrust one another and cannot trust each other, as well as the results of their own obsessions.

My protagonists are not particularly passive, but not particularly active. They’re somewhere in the middle - existing within a shroud of stillness that is both infuriating and frightening, because one can suffocate wondering why they don’t do something - why these happenings aren’t making them do something.

The beginning of the book was the first thing I wrote. In many ways, I think the first pages of my book are the strongest. They were written in a wild moment of inspiration, with no plot in mind, but something magical happened and what I wrote was - well, for me, anyway - something to be immensely proud of. I don’t think I’ll be changing the beginning of the book anytime soon. I think it’s quite perfect for it.

My story has a couple data dumps, but a very limited number (literally maybe 2, at opposite ends of the story), and never longer than a few paragraphs at most. I don’t think they take away from the story or the reader experience.

I feel like I edited more than I wrote with this book. I picked my words carefully - then looked them over and fine-tuned them again and again. A lot of the words are there for a reason - chosen instead of their synonyms or counterparts for a specific meaning - and I think I’m happy overall with my word choice in the story, because I went to great lengths to keep it simple and short, but also add some complexity here and there.

Overall, the book is really one of those analytical ones where you have to think a lot about why characters chose to do certain things, and probably read carefully, read between the lines. I think that’s what was most fun about crafting this story. And I did generally stick to my intention - that no violence would be shown on-screen, only the effects of said violence - except for one particular scene, which was designed to sort of circle around that particular happening. I don’t know how faithful I have been to huis clos, but I really did do my best there, too!

Tag List for Apartment: @pied-piper-of-hamlet, @bloomseey-writes, @crypticsx, @alexwillow, @coloursintheblur, @project-nightshade, @bookish-actor, @purpleshadows1989, @halfbloodlycan, @lilquill, @nectargrapes, @kobalt-ink, @james-stark-the-writer, @kaatiba

Let me know if you’d like to be added or removed to the above list!

Got questions about Apartment? Send them in, friends! My ask box is open!

#writeblr #apartment #amwriting #writers #writing #novella #suspense #eerie #update #complete draft

28 notes · View notes

kt757559 · 3 years

Text

COVID-19 : Contract of Employment Nightmare: Summer 2019 Employment Contract vs Summer 2020 Employment Contract :

From April 2019 – August 2020, I worked as an electrocardiogram Technician and administrative assistant at a Cardiology clinic. My summer 2019 contract of employment was professional, coherent and explicit. The contract went as follows:

The contract was a bi-lateral contract. The cardiology clinic and I entered into a bi-lateral contract in April 2019. We exchanged mutual promises to perform and gave consideration for these promises. The offeror was the clinic for which I worked, and I was the offeree. The contract was a four-month binding contract. The intention of the contract was to establish the rights and responsibilities of the employee and the employer and define the obligations of both parties. The drafted contract of employment was the offer and I had to sign the contract which was my acceptance. I accepted and acknowledged all of the terms of the contract. I expressed my acceptance by signing the contract on my first day of work. I was to be paid $15/hr for 8 hours a day/ 5 days a week. My contract began April 30th and ended August 30th. The office was closed the first week of August, and I was not to be compensated. The contract may be have been terminated by either party given 14 day’s written notice. Throughout my employment, there was in fact one post-contractual modifications, the duration of the contract. I was granted to leave for University one week before my contract ended. While the clinic allowed me to leave one week prior to my contract ending, I abstained from working and claiming compensation. I also had to sign a “Confidentiality Agreement”. At the clinic, I had access to over 50,000 patient charts and files and dealt with very sensitive patient information. The confidentiality agreement stipulated somethings as follows: “I also understand that should any of these conditions be breached, I may be subject to corrective action including, but not limited to, termination of employment, contract termination, or other action appropriate to my association with the clinic…” Should I breach the contract (i.e share confidential patient information, fail to perform my duties) the clinic may execute their power to terminate my contract. On the contrary, should the clinic breach the contract (i.e fail to provide compensation or 14 day’s written notice of termination of employment) there was no provision in the contract which states that I may exercise an action against them, however I may seek damages as they breached their end of the contract.

Then…came COVID-19 Pandemid

At the end of April, 2020 I got an email from my old manager which stated…

Was this an offeror of employment? No…this was merely an invitation to treat.

I showed up to the office the next day. The clinic provides life-saving medical procedures for patients with cardiovascular disease, one of the leadings causes of death in Canada and worldwide. Many of the patients at the clinic are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. There was no written contract. No terms were stipulated and there was no signing of a terms of employment or confidentiality agreement. Nothing was contractually secure due to the realities of the pandemic early in late April/ May. They had no time to draft contracts that were specific to the circumstances the pandemic. My manager simply said to me, is your banking information the same and can you start at 8am? This could be construed as the offer of employment and my acceptance was arriving at work at 8am every morning and acknowledging that I was able to work for them during the summer. I had worked at the clinic for the past two summers, 2018 & 2019. Both summers, my contract began on April 30th, and ended on August 30th. I worked for four months both summers. This summer however, the clinic did not specify the duration of my employment or my compensation.

By referring to the course material in the fall semester, there are several legal questions and scenarios which can be analyzed from this summer:

First, if I received the email on April 15th. If one construes this email as an offer of employment, if I did not respond or see the email for a week or two, would the offer have lapsed or expired?

Second, if I recveid the offer of an employment early in April and I responded to the email and accepted her offer. However, the next day after I accepted my offer of employment, she emailed me, saying I was not needed for two or three more weeks at the clinic, would it be possible to invoke the doctrine of promissory estoppel?

The core elements of promissory estoppel are: 1. A + B must be in a legal relationship 2. A must make a promise (a) intended to alter that legal relationship and (b) intended to induce B’s reliance on that promise 3. B must prejudicially rely on that promise 4. It must be inequitable to permit A to go back on that promise

Three weeks later, if my manager decided to rescind the offer of employment, could it be said that there was detrimental reliance? In those three weeks, I could have applied for the CERB benefit, rejected or accepted other offers of employment and refrained from seeking other employment opportunities, especially in the healthcare field, for which I have relevant experience.

As seen in Combe v Combe, promissory estoppel cannot be a cause of action, but it can be part of a cause of action. I could sue for breach of contract and use promissory estoppel as part of cause of action.

There is another scenario where I could potentially invoke the doctrine of promissory estoppel, a leave of absence at work for COVID-19 / isolating for symptoms related to COVID-19. I had a Cardiologist come up to me once, saying “don’t go and get COVID-19, or the whole clinic will have to shut down”. If for some reason, I had to take time off work to get tested or isolate for COVID-19, and my employer said that they would not enforce their strict legal rights to terminate my employment and my job would be waiting for me after my two-week isolation. After the two weeks, I find out that my employer has found a replacement for my job, could I invoke promissory estoppel?

An example that Denning used in Combes was that of the Ministry of Pensions. Soldier claimed pension from injuries. The war officer wrote to him that “your disability has been accepted as attributable to military service”. By relying on the war officer’s letter, the soldier refrained from seeking further medical opinions and more evidence that will strengthen his case against the Ministry. The promise was to accept the disease as war related. He relied, by not taking any more steps to substantiate medical evidence. The part of the cause of action: is that he relied on it. This can be potentially analogized to

On September 27th, 2020, the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit was enacted and provided $500 per week, for up to two weeks (available in two one-week periods), effective until September 25, 2021 for workers who are unable to work because they contracted COVID-19, self-isolated for reasons related to COVID-19, or have underlying conditions, are undergoing treatments or have contracted other sicknesses that will make them more susceptible to COVID-19.

Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB)

Lastly, I would like to explore the potential implications of the doctrine of privity. Before I started work, I signed no medical liability forms. Especially at this early stage of the pandemic, many of the elderly patients, of which there were many, were completely isolated and many of them admitted that “this is the first time I have left the house since March”. If they contracted COVID-19 at the clinic, would they have legal recourse? Probably not, but it is worth considering for the purpose of this assignment.

For example, let’s suppose that before entering the clinic, the patients were required to sign a liability release waiver.

COVID-19 Liability Release Waiver “I acknowledge and accept that there is a risk that I could be exposed to COVID-19 while attending at the medical clinic. I acknowledge and confirm that I am willing to accept this risk as a condition of attending the clinic. I agree to release (Insert Name of Physician) from any and all causes of action in respect of any personal injuries or other damages which may occur or arise as a result of exposure to COVID-19.

If they contacted COVID-19 at our clinic, would they have legal recourse against myself or the clinic (as the contract was between the physician and the patient)? As per London Drugs, does the limitation of liability clause either expressly, or impliedly extend its benefit to me or other employees of the clinic? As per the decision in London Drugs, The limitation of liability must expressly or impliedly extend to the benefit of the employees seeking to rely on it and the employee seeking the benefit must have been acting in the course of their employment. Although I am not expressly mentioned in the liability release waiver, the waiver does mention “attending the clinic”. This can be construed as impliedly protecting any employees who work at the clinic.

1 note · View note

mulanxiaojie · 4 years

Link

The high-profile remake, with an all-Asian cast, a PG-13 rating and a politically-charged star, was always going to pose major risks. Then the coronavirus upended its entire release plan.

Liu Yifei, star of Disney's live-action remake of Mulan, lives in Beijing, but she is originally from Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus. In January, the 32-year-old actress left China for Los Angeles to begin press for the film, weeks before the virus' outbreak, which has now infected more than 77,000 people, killed more than 2,500 and wreaked havoc in her home country. She says she doesn't have any family or close friends personally affected by the disease — she left Wuhan when she was 10 — but the epidemic has added an impossible-to-foresee variable to her film's March 27 worldwide release.

Liu pauses when asked about the outbreak. "It's really heavy for me to even think about it," she says. "People are doing the right thing. They are being careful for themselves and others. I'm so touched actually to see how they haven't been out for weeks. I'm really hoping for a miracle and that this will just be over soon."

In China, Liu is a household name, nicknamed "Fairy Sister" for her elegance and beauty. Modeling since age 8, she broke out in the 2003 Chinese TV series Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, a commercial hit in China and the highest-rated Chinese drama in Taiwan at the time, and hasn't stopped working in film and TV since, earning fashion partnerships with Adidas, Shiseido and Armani along the way.

Disney and director Niki Caro selected Liu from more than 1,000 aspirants from around the world to star as Hua Mulan, the Chinese heroine who disguises herself as a man to fight in the Imperial Army in a film carefully designed to appeal to Western and Chinese audiences alike. But now there's a question of when Mulan will be released in China. With the coronavirus shutting down all 70,000 of the country's theaters since Jan. 24, it's unclear — and more unlikely every day — that multiplexes will reopen in time for its planned release. (Several high-profile U.S. films, including Universal's Dolittle and 1917 and Searchlight's Jojo Rabbit, saw their February releases scrapped.) "It certainly has worldwide and global appeal, but there's no denying that this is a very important film for the Chinese market," says Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "It's a huge blow for Disney if it doesn't release in China." Disney president of production Sean Bailey says he's "looking at it day by day."

Of course, this puts added pressure on the $200 million budgeted film — the priciest of Disney's recent live-action remakes — to perform in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Liu, who is enveloped in her own storm of controversy based on a political social media post about the Hong Kong protests, says she is trying hard not to think about all that. "It would really be a loss for me if I let the pressure overtake my possibilities," says the actress, who learned English when she lived in New York as a child for four years with her mother, a dancer, after her parents' divorce.

Even before the outbreak of the virus, Mulan — the first Disney-branded film with an all-Asian cast and the first to be rated PG-13 (for battle scenes) — would have marked one of the studio's riskiest live-action films to date. While the original 1998 Mulan was a critical and commercial hit, garnering a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination and grossing more than $300 million worldwide ($475 million today), it faltered at the Chinese box office. Part of the reason is that the Chinese government stalled its premiere for nearly a year because of lingering anger over Disney's 1997 release of Kundun, Martin Scorsese's Dalai Lama movie that dealt with China's occupation of Tibet. By the time Mulan reached theaters in late February 1999, most children had returned to school after the Chinese New Year holiday and pirated copies were widely available. For the new film, the plan was to counter piracy by releasing the movie in China the same day as the rest of the world, a strategy that's no longer possible.

The film also has tested the ability and tolerance of Disney — which aims to be ideologically neutral — in managing global political fallout. In August, Liu stirred up a major controversy when she reposted a pro-police comment on Chinese platform Weibo (where she has more than 66 million followers) at the height of the violence in Hong Kong. Her action was seen by critics of the Chinese government as supporting police brutality; soon after, the hashtag #BoycottMulan started trending on Twitter. Liu, who has American co-citizenship from her time in the U.S., was harshly criticized around the world for supporting oppression.

"I think it's obviously a very complicated situation and I'm not an expert," she says now, cautious in the extreme. "I just really hope this gets resolved soon." When pressed, Liu, whose answer seemed rehearsed, declines to say much more, simply repeating, "I think it's just a very sensitive situation." (Bailey also deflects when asked: "Yifei's politics are her own, and we are just focused on the movie and her performance.")

"Most Chinese celebrities choose to avoid posting such political statements because of the risks to their careers internationally," says Dorothy Lau, a professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. But though Liu's post drew criticism globally, some experts believe the political drama could actually result in more support for the film in China. "At the time, the government came out in various publications supporting the film very strongly," says USC professor Stanley Rosen, who specializes in Chinese politics and society. "There's a real impetus on the part of the Chinese government to make this work. I'm sure the government is going to try to show that the boycott has had no effect." And while her comment might still anger filmgoers in Hong Kong, where the recent live-action Aladdin took in $8 million, that market is tiny compared to the mainland (total 2019 Hong Kong box office was $245 million compared with China's $9.2 billion). "Most people outside Hong Kong have likely forgotten about this controversy," says Rosen. "But the Chinese government does not forget these things."

The fact that this version of Mulan is a large-scale war epic inspired more by the ancient Chinese ballad than the original animated film may also help win fans in Beijing, but the choice carries its own significant risks: The film needs to satisfy Chinese audiences raised on the legend while not disappointing a generation of fans in Asia (and elsewhere) for whom the animated film is foundational. "People would come in to audition and would say, 'Sorry, I know this is really unprofessional, but before I start, I just want you to know, the animated movie was the first time I saw someone that looked like me speak English in a movie theater,' " says producer Jason Reed. "The stakes couldn't be higher."

Mulan also represents a leap of faith in the film's director, Caro, whose previous two films boasted budgets of about 10 percent of Mulan's (The Zookeeper's Wife and Disney's 2015 sports drama McFarland USA were each in the $20 million to $25 million range). Caro, 53, was not Disney's first choice. Before hiring the New Zealand filmmaker, the studio targeted directors of Asian descent, including Taiwanese Oscar winner Ang Lee (he was busy promoting Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and Chinese helmer Jiang Wen. Still, Caro showcased a knack for representing cultures outside of her own with her 2002 debut Whale Rider, which follows a young Maori girl who wants to become chief, a role traditionally reserved for men.

The feminist story of Mulan resonated deeply with Caro. "When I first started wanting to be a filmmaker, there was so little precedent for women doing this [big studio] work," she says. She has now directed the most expensive live-action film by a woman, joining only a handful (Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay and Patty Jenkins) who have helmed films costing more than $100 million. "Patty changed the game with Wonder Woman. It was like a shot of adrenaline for me as a filmmaker," says Caro, who assembled a mostly female-led crew, including cinematographer Mandy Walker, costume designer Bina Daigeler, makeup designer Denise Kum and first assistant director Liz Tan.

To those still upset that an Asian filmmaker didn't get the job, Caro responds: "Although it's a critically important Chinese story and it's set in Chinese culture and history, there is another culture at play here, which is the culture of Disney, and that the director, whoever they were, needed to be able to handle both — and here I am."

Soon after Caro's hiring, rumors about the movie began to swirl online. Years of studios centering Asian movies around white protagonists (from Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell to Matt Damon's The Great Wall) meant the threat of whitewashing loomed large. An early report online claimed that the first draft, penned by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek, featured a white male protagonist.

"This is the first time I've been on a big touchstone movie with the internet what it is today. And I had a Google alert set, so I'd see these things, 'Oh, there was originally a white male lead, or they're casting Jennifer Lawrence,' and they were all just made up," says Reed, who adds that there may have been two non-Chinese characters in the initial script, but both were secondary roles.

The rumors may have been unfounded, but the fallout was real: The Lawrence-as-Mulan story sparked a 2016 petition, "Tell Disney You Don't Want a Whitewashed Mulan!" drawing more than 110,000 signatures.

Ironically, as that rumor swirled, Caro struggled to find an actress to play Mulan. The global hunt began in October 2016, when Caro sent a team of casting directors to each continent and virtually every small village in China. They were looking for an actress who could play Mulan across three phases, from a young woman unsure of her place to a soldier masquerading as a man and, finally, as an empowered warrior. She had to be fluent in English, handle the physical demands of martial arts and deliver the more emotional moments with Mulan's family. "She's a needle in a haystack, but we were going to find her," says Caro. "It's impossible to make this movie without this person."

Though the studio cast a wide multinational net, Bill Kong — a veteran Chinese producer known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Monster Hunt who was brought on as a producer on Mulan — advised Caro that in order for this film to play well in China, not just anyone of Asian descent would work. "The first thing I told her was, 'Hire a Chinese girl. You can't hire a Japanese girl to do this,' " he says.

Actresses who made it past that initial audition were brought to Los Angeles, but, after vetting several promising candidates for months, Caro decided to start over. (The search dragged on for so long that Disney delayed the original November 2018 release date.) Eventually, Liu, who had been unavailable during the first pass because of a TV show in China, was able to audition.

"I was determined that whoever played Mulan was not going to be fragile and feminine," says Caro. "She had to pass as a man in a man's army." So the director and a trainer put Liu through a 90-minute physical assessment, with extreme cardio and weight exercises. Other actresses fared less well. "Boy, did they flame out," says Caro with a laugh. But Liu "never complained once, never said, 'I can't.' She went to her limits."

With Liu, Disney also found an actress who could speak English, was familiar with martial arts from her TV work in China and, most importantly, was known to the Chinese market.

While Liu spent three months training for the role in New Zealand, Caro finished up her own extensive research. She took multiple trips to China and spoke to dozens of experts — including the world's foremost specialist on Tang dynasty military strategy. She also studied the 360-word Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan, which first told the young heroine's story. The legend, which originated in the fifth or sixth century CE, is a tale as familiar in China as the story of Joan of Arc or Paul Bunyan in the West, and it's been adapted many times into plays, operas and films.

"I certainly wasn't aware of how deeply important it is to Mainland Chinese — all children are taught it," says Caro. "She is so meaningful that many places I went, people would say, 'Well, she comes from my village.' It was wonderful to feel that profound connection — but also terrifying."

As soon as the first trailers rolled out, so did the grumblings about factual inaccuracy, like the choice to situate Mulan's family in a tulou, a traditional round structure that housed several clans. These homes were mostly present in southern China, in what is now Fujian province (Mulan is said to be from the north), and would not have existed at the time she lived.

"I told [Caro] to not be too concerned about the historical accuracy," says Kong. "Mulan, though very famous, is fictional. She's not a historical person."

Disney tested the film thoroughly with Chinese audiences, including its own local executives. In an early version, Mulan kissed love interest Chen Honghui (Yoson An) on a bridge when they were about to part. "It was very beautiful, but the China office went, 'No, you can't, that doesn't feel right to the Chinese people,' " says Caro. "So we took it out."

Caro and the writers, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (the husband-and-wife team behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World who rewrote the original script), also had to consider the passionate fans of the 1998 film. Most Disney remakes, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, have remained loyal to the tone and structure of the animated source material while adding a new song or character. Departing from that formula wasn't a swift decision. "We had a lot of conversations about it," says Reed. Ultimately they wanted "to tell this story in a way that is more real, more relatable, where we don't have the benefit of the joke to hide behind things that might be uncomfortable and we don't break into song to tell us the subtext."

They swapped the musical numbers and funny animal sidekicks for a large-scale war epic in which Mulan takes her father's place in the Imperial Army. "It's a woman's story that has been told for centuries but never by women, and we felt like it was really time to tell that story," says Silver. The question is whether Generation Z and millennials, who fell in love with these animated tales as kids and helped boost Aladdin to its $1 billion global haul, will embrace the direction. "To be honest, we really go by our gut and what creatively excites the team here," says Bailey. "I think it shows that there can be different approaches to these [movies] that have validity."

When word leaked that Mushu, the silly dragon sidekick (originally voiced by Eddie Murphy), would not be included, some fans expressed disappointment on social media. But the character's disappearance makes sense in the Chinese context. "Mushu was very popular in the U.S., but the Chinese hated it," says Rosen. "This kind of miniature dragon trivialized their culture."

Unlike its Marvel-branded films, Disney live-action movies must appeal to significantly younger audiences. Yet Caro wanted to make a real war movie. "You have to deliver on the war of it," she says, "and how do you do that under the Disney brand where you can't show any violence, gratuitous or otherwise?" She took advantage of the film's stunning locations, like setting a battle sequence in a geothermal valley, where steam could mask the fighting. "Those sequences, I'm proud of them. They're really beautiful and epic — but you can still take kids. No blood is shed. It's not Game of Thrones."

Disney's past live-action performance in China is a mixed bag. Both The Lion King ($120.5 million there) and Jungle Book ($148 million) enjoyed strong showings. Aladdin earned only $53 million, while 2017's Beauty and the Beast took in just $84 million (though it earned $1.3 billion worldwide).

Of course, the expectations for Mulan in China are much higher. "They will eventually release it in China," Dergarabedian notes. "It's just a matter of when and what effect that might have." Some analysts forecast that the film could match the success of the Kung Fu Panda series. The third movie, released in 2016, earned north of $144.2 million and became the country's biggest animated film ever. It was praised for being a Hollywood film that understood and showed respect toward the Chinese culture. Panda, however, had the advantage of being a Chinese co-production, which guarantees a larger share of the market — an advantage Mulan doesn't have.

Caro thinks about the film's fate there in more than simply financial terms. "Of course it's vitally important that it succeeds in China," she says, "because it belongs to China."

#mulan #live action mulan #disney #chinese #article #interview #china #liu yifei

16 notes · View notes