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solange-lol · 4 years

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who is he (and what is he to you?) - ch. 1/3

words: 1,720

solangeloweek day 1: fathers day

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Will Solace has never been nervous to travel.

He used to go on vacations with his mom when they could afford it, although most of those were road trips. Then, when he got older and started working for the magazine company he currently works for, he was sent on all sorts of business trips. Will got used to traveling; used to flying and being in different places every couple of nights.

It’s less the plane ride that he’s nervous for and more the actual reason why he’s going. Yes, it is technically a business trip, but its a business trip to Texas and Will thinks he’s found his father. The one that walked out of their house when he was barely a year old and never looked back. The one that never sent birthday cards or went to Will’s graduation, who didn’t even attempt to contact Will once he was older.

It was an accident, really, that he found his father.

Of all things it was an ad on his Instagram feed that popped up, promoting a touring band called Apollo with lead singer Lester Papadopoulos. Seeing his father’s name not spoken from his mother for the first time was a bit of a shock.

The universe had a cruel sense of humor though, or so it seemed, as their gig in Austin, Texas lined up right as Will was headed there for a business trip slash unplanned reunion with his mom.

The opportunity was at Will’s feet, practically begging him to finally find out what kind of man his father really is. Or more likely, have Will give him a piece of his mind.

“You good?” A voice from behind him came. His coworker and best friend Nico was also assigned this trip with him (like usual, and thank god for that).

Nico bumps their shoulders together as the two of them board. “Usually I’m the one with plane anxiety.”

Will pushes back his thoughts and replaces them with a smile. “It’s not that. Can’t say I’m completely looking forward to three days of conferencing, though.”

“Tell me about it!” Nico groans, practically throwing back his head as the two of them settled in their seats, preparing for the four-hour flight from New York to Austin. “Last time we were stuck in one of those, I pretended to be taking so many notes but I was just doodling!”

Will laughs. “I remember that one. We played hangman at one point,” he reminds Nico, which just causes him to go onto retelling many stories about conference days. It was one of Nico’s ways of calming down before the plane took off, but also gave Will time to zone off again about his father.

He has the date, location, and time of the bar that Lester and his band were playing at just in case. The thought was burning in the back of his mind just like it had been ever since Will first saw the ad, and he imagines it wasn’t going to leave until Will just sucked it up and faced his deadbeat of a dad.

“Is your mom still upset that we aren’t staying with her?” Nico asks, pulling Will from his thoughts once again. (Though not completely. Like he said, burning in the back of his mind.)

“I think right now she is, but once we take over her house during the day, demanding food and laundry, she’ll be glad to have the space to herself at night.”

“We are not demanding anything from your mother,” Nico replies indignantly.

“You might change your mind about that once you taste her cookies.”

They’re cut off as the engine begins to roar, and Nico squeezes his eyes shut, grabbing Will’s hand. Even after a few years of working together, he’s still scared of planes. He has the same reaction to every flight.

Will had offered his hand on their second flight ever together, and every flight since then, to the point in which he just takes it when he feels they’re about to take off. It’s one of their weird business trip traditions.

Will notices an older man eyeing their hands from across the aisle, making him nearly roll his eyes at the guy. For one, they’re not even dating. And if they were, what was the big whoop? Were people still sensitive to two guys holding hands in this day and age?

It didn’t matter, he supposes, because there was no way Nico was letting go until they reached a level relationship to the ground.

⁠—

Naomi Solace was waiting for them as soon as they got their bags. She had insisted that even while they weren’t staying with her for the trip, the least she could do was provide them some transportation so they wouldn’t have to rent a car.

Nico was visibly uncomfortable, Will could tell. He’s tried explaining multiple times that his mother is the last person to be afraid of as long as you don’t hurt Will or mention his father, neither of which Nico had done. It didn’t help to calm him down though.

That worry seemed to melt the moment Naomi catches their eyes, immediately waving them over with the brightest smile on her face.

She hugs Will first, of course, who could feel relief spreading through his body when she wraps his arms around him. Even with all the crazy going on around them, it was comforting to know that his mom was there for him. (Not that she knew Will’s other reason for the trip, nor would she. It would crush her, and he can’t handle that right now.)

After she finally lets go of Will, she immediately goes to Nico. Will winces, cursing at himself internally that he hadn’t told his mom that Nico didn’t like to be touched without warning until he realized that he can’t even help but to relax into one of Naomi’s hugs.

The tension had completely dissolved by the time they got to the car, leaving Will to excitedly tell Nico all about the area that he had grown up in.

“Schlitterbahn!” he cries excitedly, causing Nico to give him a confused look.

“Bless you?” he says, more like a question than a statement, causing both Will and Naomi to laugh.

“Not a sneeze,” Will says giddily. “Just the best waterpark ever!”

Nico still looks confused (has he never been to a waterpark?) but he seems content with letting will rediscover his past. Will’s grateful for it, especially considering it takes his mind off his father.

It also makes Will realize something. Something huge, unknown to Nico, and only a select part of the southern experience. He turns to Nico with a near-crazed grin. “Have you ever had Whataburger?”

“Had a what-a-what?”

“We have to take him there for dinner, mom!” Will’s voice is pitched higher than normal, dripping with pure childlike excitement. Next to him, Naomi’s smile was much more calm, only laughing at her son’s antics

Meanwhile, Nico looks like he’s almost expecting Naomi to say know. Lord knows how many times Will has refused to go to McDonald’s with Nico for dinner on business trips. That changes as soon as Naomi takes a quick turn into a parking lot.

Will nearly pulls Nico out of the car as she parks, dragging him towards the bright orange and white doors of the restaurant.

“I know you’re a devoted McDonald’s fan, but at least give this a try,” he says, walking Nico up to the counter. “I think we might be able to change your mind.”

Once the three order their food, they sit down together at a booth. Will ends up sliding next to his mom rather than Nico, which is a force of habit after many restaurant trips spent sitting across from each other.

Both Naomi and Will eagerly watched as Nico took the first bite of his burger. He chewed comically slow, making vague facial expressions before swallowing. He pauses, then decides “It’s alright.”

“Alright?” Will nearly yells, trying not to laugh through his words.

Nico’s face breaks out in a grin. “Okay, maybe it’s better than alright. I still think McDonald’s is my number one, though.”

Will rolls his eyes. “We need to get you some new taste buds.”

⁠—

Later, Will flops back happily on the hotel bed. He sighs contentedly as several joints in his back pop, savoring the feeling of resting for the first since they got off the plane.

After dinner, they gave Nico a quick car tour of the city of Austin before Naomi dropped them off at the hotel they’re staying at. They’ll have plenty of time to explore the city tomorrow after some much needed rest.

Will hears a soft laugh coming from next to him. He rolls to his side to face Nico, who’s sitting cross-legged on the bed across from him as he bemusedly watches Will stretches.

“Comfortable?” Nico asks, grinning. Will’s taken aback for a moment by how soft his best friend looks at that moment in black sweatpants and a soft gray-green t-shirt. He’s actually very pretty, and for a moment Will wonders what it would be like to cuddle with him.

He shakes that thought away with a smile, dramatically stretching his arms above his head. “Very.”

Nico laughs again, uncrossing his legs and scooching up to the headboard of the bed. “Not quite like my bed at home-”

“But better than some of the others we’ve had,” Will finished, nodding. He mirrors Nico’s actions, sliding under the covers of his own bed and reaching to plug his phone in. He's not really that tired, but he doesn’t want to think about the day ahead of him tomorrow anymore.

“Hope you’re ready for some epic rounds of hangman tomorrow,” Nico says as Will reaches to turn off the lamp next to him.

He grins in response. “It’s the highlight of these conferences.”

Nico rolls his eyes. “We need to stop agreeing to these trips.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he laughs. “Goodnight, Nico.”

“Goodnight, Will.”

He rolls over, facing away from Nico as he tries to force himself to fall asleep. His mind is still racing, though, overlapping thoughts about his mother and his father, and even Nico himself.

All he could do was close his eyes until he fitfully fell asleep.

⁠—

solangelo tag list (message to be added/removed)

@internallyexplodingrainbows @unicornsgomooo @anxiouswinter @soulangelou @number-of-fucks-i-give-0 @underworldystuff @theeloquentsnake @solangelover@thefandomsaretakingover @internallyexplodingrainbows @hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon @motivatedcryptidtamer @emilyfairchild @wherethewildthingsare-nt @hetapeep41 @blavk-dahlia

#solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo #pjo #heros of olympus #sw #solangeloweek2020 #liz writes.com

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reynesofcastamere · 4 years

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Splintered Perspective [β]

(A/N: For reference, any fics I write that aren’t related to my main series will be marked with [ β ] in the title. I may just have to make a masterpost to organize these at some point. Anyway,the prompt for this was: ‘How Rex or some other person from Ahsoka’s past would react to her being enemies with benefits or in a relationship with Maul.’ I decided to go with multiple POVs for the fun of it. And so I didn’t break myself with The Sad. Poor Rex T_T. Perspectives are not in chronological order. Mentions of past Ahsoka/Barriss. Warnings for dehumanization, mentions of torture, death, violence, some ableism and possible misogyny.(Maybe? Your mileage may vary.) Unbeta’d. ) Being one with the Force is...not exactly what she had been taught to expect. Barriss Offee is part of everything, all at once. Those in the Light, living and dead, she is all of them, and yet still herself, in a manner of speaking . Time is no longer such a rigid concept, nor is there any particular sense of urgency. What has happened was meant to be, and the future...Is forever shifting, ripples overlapping in a still pool. Which is why it comes as such a surprise when she can feel Master Plo’s disapproval like a storm on the edge of breaking. At first, she cannot determine what has woken his ire, but slowly the images come into focus. Ahsoka.

Barriss no longer possesses a heart, and yet she cannot deny the lance of bittersweet pain through her chest. There is relief that her friend is still alive, but also regret and something bordering on envy. A feeling that only sharpens when she notices the tattooed Zabrak that Ahsoka currently has pinned down. Wait. She knows him. Not personally, but...He is a Sith, a murderer, a monster. Why is Ahsoka-brash, kind, clever person that she is- smiling at him? It is possible that she is misinterpreting this. Both of them appear rather bruised and a touch bloody, and the lack of lightsabres doesn’t mean-She misses the words exchanged between the pair of them, but...The kiss is unmistakeably passionate, bordering on obscene as the Force crackles around them. Somehow, this is not the worst of it. When they part for air, there is a...look, shared between their eyes, and Barriss experiences true dread. Long ago, she and Ahsoka had-been close. Intimately so. As much as anyone could be, following the Order’s mandate that attachment was forbidden. She’d harboured dreams then, of maybe and one day...But no. Too much had happened, and her rosy illusions had been cruelly shattered. Somehow, watching this unfold hurts worse. Because there is something genuine beneath the crude physical attraction on display. Master Plo does not say a word, but his righteous indignation is so strong that it is a miracle he does not physically manifest in front of them.

Her dearest companion does not belong in the Dark, with this...creature trapping her in his coils, dripping venom into her thoughts. Barriss can only hope Ahsoka will extricate herself before it is too late.

=====

The failed apprentice. A wretched vermin who simply refuses to die. Not for much longer. Darth Vader’s gaze narrows as he reviews the incident reports. A decade of nothing but the occasional annoyance and whispers from the dregs of the galaxy, and only now does Maul scurry out from beneath whatever rock he has been sheltering under. Why? There is no grand plan, no great advantage in breaking into an Imperial prison. Especially one that contains such...unimportant occupants. Then again...The swathe of carnage and destruction left behind had been almost a direct path between the Dathomirian’s entry point and the interrogation chambers. Not a calculated assault, but an act of rage and desperation. Vader had felt it at the time, how the Dark Side had howled and torn at itself like a half-crazed beast. And then there was the fate of the interrogator: Hands cut off, abdominal perforation, shattered jaw,and eyes torn from their sockets. He had suffered a great deal, however briefly. As for the prisoner with him- Records list a female Togruta, mid-to-late twenties, with blue eyes and orange skin. Possibly Force sensitive, but difficult to determine due to her physical state upon capture. The prisoner hadn’t been in possession of anything resembling lightsabres, but had been carrying a wealth of assorted small armaments. It couldn’t be. She died back when...We found her sabres among the graves. Anakin Skywalker is long dead, but sometimes his ghost is loud enough to be heard over the multitudes that inhabit Vader’s hulking, monstrous shell.

Graves required someone to dig them first. Which meant that either some unknown individuals had come along and taken pity on a multitude of strangers...Or that the survivours had done the work themselves. Yet, if Ahsoka Tano lives, and was temporarily imprisoned, it still does not explain the identity or methods of her unlikely rescuer. She was sent to capture him on Mandalore, why would Snips-? Why did she leave us? We needed her when Padme- The room around him warps and buckles in a single, furious moment of clarity. She chose that...animal. That thing, Oh, but she’d been richly rewarded, hadn’t she? One only had to look at the risks her...protector had taken just to secure her freedom. Approval and utter disgust war within him as he rises. So be it. Sentiment has already destroyed them, and it will be his pleasure to finish a task that should have been resolved long ago. Traitors to the Empire must all be purged.

===== Rex should probably be angry. Ahsoka is certainly looking at him like a shiny expecting a stern lecture for breaking regs. Instead he just feels...tired. He can’t be mad at her, not really. Maybe if he’d stuck around longer or managed to make contact more often, this wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it would have. Maker knows his trio of Jedi could never stay out of trouble for long, and that war makes for strange alliances and even stranger...pairings. Still, he has to ask, because he knows her, knows the depths of love and compassion that make her who she is, beneath the layers of soldier and spy.

“Is it serious?” Ahsoka fidgets with her lekku a bit. “I don’t know.” A long pause as she inhales. “It keeps happening, and...I want to murder him half the time, Rex. The problem is that he likes it.” The expression on her face perfectly sums up her opinion on that little tidbit of info. He might have laughed, under different circumstances. Instead, he takes her hands in his. “We’ve known each other for a long time. I might not understand why you’re doing this, or how it works-” He absolutely does not need to know the mechanics, as there are not enough drugs or alcohol in the galaxy to purge the associated mental images. “-but I trust your judgement. And your ability to slice his horns off and hang him from his ears over a pit of rathtars if he pushes you too far.” Rex grins, silently offering to be her backup should that ever happen. Kind of a surprise it hasn’t already, since Maul never karking shuts up and Ahsoka’s patience has a set limit for windbags. Her eyes are wet when she hugs him tightly. “You’ll be the first person I call, Captain. And I’m sorry.” He knows she’s not just apologizing for this, not with their history. “I’m sorry too, Commander.” Rex murmurs, hugging her back. They can stay like this for a while longer. Her superiors are just going to have to wait. He might not be such a ‘good’ soldier anymore, but he knows damned well how to be a good friend. And that’s what they both need, more than anything. People that will survive the disaster long enough to see it end, and come out smiling.

=====

“When I warned that you might be tempted by the Dark Side, I did not expect it to be quite so literal.”

“Master.” “Then again, I suppose there is a certain appeal. Ventress was certainly a...passionate opponent. Lovely sense of humour, too. I suppose you don’t get much of that with your-No, I suppose you are the better half in this equation.” “Master Kenobi.” “Come now, we haven’t spoken in ages, surely you can indulge your grand-master’s curiousity.” “You did not break comm silence after years of letting everyone think you were dead just to call me about my sex life.” “Well, no, but it is an unexpected bonus. How does that work, exactly?” “It sounds like you’re angling for a demonstration.” “Oh Maker, no. I’m not that eager to find out.” “Good, because I don’t particularly feel like dealing with him if he decides to drop everything just to hunt you down.” “Ah. He’s...still upset about that, is he?” “You have no idea.” “Well then. To business. And Ahsoka?” “Yes, Master?” “It is good to hear your voice again. Do take care of yourselves.” “You too, Master Kenobi. And don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

“One last question: When should I expect great-grand-padawans?”

“OBI-WAN!!!!” (A/N: Yes, I had to end with levity. Especially considering the characters involved. To clarify, Anakin isn’t upset because he has any sort of romantic inclination towards Ahsoka. It’s general Darksider possessiveness/jealousy mixed in with a lot of anger and some guilt. Looking after Ahsoka’s wellbeing was ‘his’ job, so far as he’s concerned. And now it’s apparently been usurped by That One Asshole. Also, if anyone’s going to recognize that level of...obsessive regard, it’s gonna be the OG Skywalker Drama King. Many thanks to the anonymous person who requested this, both for the prompt and your compliments. Cheers!)

#maulsoka #Plo Koon Greatly Disapproves of Maul's BS #sadly Bariss and the Seventh Sister are not the same person #that would have been tragically awesome though #Rex is The BestTM #Obi-Wan has to joke about this in order to avoid Trauma #And possibly a heart attack #Anakin is very salty but also missing the point

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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the mandalorian episode 7 reactions

spoilers under the cut!

- during my rewatches I have been thinking ‘damn baby yoda has witnessed A Lot of murders/seen his dad get hurt even more’ and found it strange it hasn’t affected him more and little did I know they were saving it all to fucking stab me in the heart with one barbed wire-wrapped zweihander. the scared way he shakes his little green head while mando tries to reassure him fjskdfhaksd T___________T

cara tho of all people. okay this is kind of a crazy idea but bear with me: what if baby yoda picks up a lot on mando’s feelings (in a wordless baby-with-a-Force-connection sort of way -- almost a metaphoric heightening of how babies actually attune to their caretakers in real life), and normally mando is a bit detached/dissociated around others but he’s starting to warm up to and trust cara and it’s bringing him a bit more online and the baby reads that engagement/excitement as danger because that’s the only thing he has to compare it to? like they’re clearly actually having fun but the baby wouldn’t know that because uh mando has never just had fun around him before and to the baby adrenaline seems like adrenaline no matter the source. that might be completely off base but it was what dropped into my brain right away so *shrug*

I’m so grateful mando doesn’t get mad at bb even when he gets scared like that though. it’s good for my soul.

- cara and mando being bros is Life, is Love

- but most of all CARA!!! I love her!!! and the effortless way mando put down his trump card.... “sorry got stuff to do people to beat up no can do my helmeted friend” “’kay. by the way we’re going Imp hunting” “:D:D:D when do we leave”

- KUIIL Y_____________Y actually I refuse (REFUSE) to accept it until someone finds his body and confirms he’s actually dead, I believe denial is my prerogative it’s almost christmas for goodness’ sake

- when cara, greef karga and mando are about to leave for the town I actually SCREAMED at the screen “MANDO REASSURE YOUR CHILD AND TELL HIM EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE OKAY BEFORE YOU LEAVE HE NEEDS SOME SAFETY” and then he didn’t and then I cried

- pedro pascal did some Things with his voice in this one and it was mean and unfair and uncalled for and awful. the honest hurt and fear in his voice when he says “It tried to kill him”? END ME

- mando straight up doesn’t seem to know anything about the Force at all, or at least not in a way that lets him connect it to the baby. maybe he vaguely knows jedi were a thing but not quite what they actually were. I like that, an interesting showcase of the different perspectives through the galaxy. (maybe finding someone to help out with this is going to be the story arc for next season?

- I actually think this is the first episode where they’ve tried to cover too much in too little time and had to drop the emotional consistency as a consequence. it’s understandable since they need to get all the pieces set up right for the finale, but it didn’t quite work for me (by which I mean for the love of god I needed just one scene, however short, of mando and baby yoda connecting properly with nothing else going on to help me through the stress/reaffirm the bond so it’s unbearably fresh in your mind what this is all for. yes that’s right I wanted them to hurt me more that’s how I roll)

the stuff Kuiil was doing there with his droid story also felt slightly disjointed? out of tune with the rest of the episode? I like him very much and I think I see what they were going for but it felt a little off? mando gently being faced with the fact that droids are naturally neutral and that it’s people who decide what to make them/teach them (yessss go off kuiil!) deserves more space to breathe, this is definitely my least favourite episode so far

- lol @ the empire dude. ‘yeah okay but apart from all the genocide what did we even do to anyone tho???’ in the end he seemed to earnestly admire mandalorian culture in an almost fanboyish way, which doesn’t really surprise me; there must be some decent overlap between people who believed in the empire and people who think the mandalorian tendency towards militarism and (periodic) expansionism is Cool. (which is why I traditionally haven’t cared much for them, incidentally, they’ve always sort of bored me as a warrior culture before this series added some mystical/more overtly religious overtones to the whole thing)

also loved how mando gave him n o t h i n g at all to work with and cara’s ‘who the hell is this guy??’ to the new bad guy lol

- mando averting the fight between kuiil and cara just by being soft and asking for help/reminding them of the kid ;___; I love him he knows how to deescalate a situation when he wants to

also the parallell between baby yoda protecting mando and the droid hovering ready to protect kuiil... right in the feels man. also kuiils air of dignity and experience is so effective. pls be my gruff no-nonsense grandpa who helps me with my computer kuiil

if kuiil is actually dead (which I continue to REFUSE but if) I get the feeling that mando is going to have to Reevaluate some things basically out of respect to his memory, since the way he describes putting this droid back together is framed so heavily as parenthood and surely there must be some empathy for that at least behind that beskar chest plate at this point

I have been thinking that adding a droid to mando’s little uh ‘crew’ would be thematically appropriate so maybe that’s what going on? kuiil said he could reprogram it for childcare, perhaps we’ve found the babysitter we’ve been begging for

- the one-sided vendetta between mando and the very soft spoken, very conscientious, very polite droid is hilarious. mostly because it thus far has manifested mainly in mando presumably glaring behind the helmet and being slightly snippy in saying he won’t come down for dinner like a fucking teenage boy in a sulk fjskdafhsd (I am slightly forgiving of him because droids pointing guns at the kid must be trigger central for him and I can sympathize, it’d take some time to change)

- some other high points of hilarity: three blurrgs and four people in mando’s tiny rustbucket of a ship. “It’s trying to eat me!”. the fact that greef karga was ABSOLUTELY planning to double cross them from the beginning and admitting it openly, he ain’t ashamed (the ‘mando get better friends’ campaign continues). mando describing the spectacular firefight at the end of ep 3 as ‘a bit of a run-in’. baby cackling as he finally gets a turn behind the steering stick of the razor crest. the mysterious multiplying four storm troopers (‘you said four fucking storm troopers karga!!!!’) phenomena. “well there are more. what can I tell you”. mando, with perfect disdain: “on your wall”. the panicked force choke was upsetting but the fact that ‘we do not strangle our friends’ was the Mando Parenting Lesson of the day is undeniably kind of funny.

- anyway I am here and ready to pass out from stress waiting for mando to lose his entire shit and go on a roaring rampage of rescue to save his kid in the next episode (I swear to GOD disney there better not be any between-season cliffhangers about this or I will fucking riot/possibly just die)

ETA: I FORGOT TO MENTION: credit where it’s due the flamethrower did pull it’s weight in this one, I still think he should invest in something more reliable but it did the trick this time and fair is fair

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #man here just have all my feelings this is a debrief before I vibrate out of my skin lol #slightly delirious now I'm going to go drink some water #ETA: now with the part you were all actually waiting for: the flame thrower report!

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calpalirwin · 4 years

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Shenanigan Squad

Summary: Ashton’s focus was simple: graduate. But if he happened to make some friends, and maybe a little more, along the way, he wasn’t one to complain.

A/N: College Ash AU!

Content: Swearing. Alcohol usage. AKA Bri and her usual bullshit.

Word Count: Just shy of 6k

And away, and away we go!

~~~

Ashton’s glasses pushed up as he rubbed at his eyes. Eight am was way too early to be having class. But, at least he had his friend Mike with him. Graduation was so close, he could practically feel the degree in his hand. And at least the class was taught by Professor Lewis. So even though it was early, the enthusiasm was infectious as the red-haired, freckled professor bounced around the front of the lecture room, his voice way too perky as he went, “Alright! Let’s get this started! Get to know your neighbors! Find out what they did over the summer!”

Ashton couldn’t help but chuckle at the older man’s energy as he turned in his seat and started conversing with Mike, catching up on how the summer had treated them both. While they had kept in touch, neither of them had actually seen each other since May right after finals. That wasn’t to say they weren’t friends though. A shared major and common quest for a scrap of paper was a bonding experience and Ashton had created a small close-knit group without ever realizing it.

“Ah, Jo! Nice of you to join us!” Professor Lewis said as a young woman walked in, backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” she greeted warmly, hurrying up the aisle and taking the empty seat behind Mike.

Ashton looked at the woman in her flannel with the sleeves rolled up, her blonde-streaked hair pulled back into a ponytail, her cheeks flushed from her fast-paced walk across campus. Her black glasses slid down her nose as she pulled a notebook and pen out of her backpack. She pushed them back into place and she flipped open the notebook before reaching forward to tap Mike on the shoulder. “Psst, Mike, what are we doing?”

“Jo!” Mike said happily. “Introductions. What we did over the summer. You know.”

“Cool,” she nodded, her brown eyes scanning the room. “Aw, sweet Luke’s here, too? Dope.” She offered a small wave to the tall blue-eyed blonde closer to the back of the room. “And you are?” she asked, her gaze settling on Ashton as she finished her scan of the room.

“Ashton,” he supplied, offering her a hand.

“Jordan,” she smiled, a dimple appearing in her right cheek. “Or Jo. Are you new to the history department? Or have we just never been lucky enough to have a class together?”

“Not lucky enough to have a class together,” Mike explained to her. “Ash is gonna be in thesis with us, too.”

“Oh, shit, yeah?” she asked, her eyes brightening. “Dope. Luke’s in it too, yeah?”

“Yup,” the green eyed boy said. “Not Cal though. He couldn’t get a section.”

“Bummer,” she said, leaning back in her desk. “So, Ash- Do you prefer Ash or Ashton?- How do you know this nerd?” she asked, gesturing to Mike.

“Oh, we took the historiography class last semester together. But we’ve had other classes together too. And Ash is fine.”

“Right, cuz you, Cal, and Luke ditched me,” she said with playful roll of her eyes as she nudged Mike’s shoulder.

Ashton wasn’t sure why, but he swallowed harshly as Calum’s name was brought up for the second time. He knew the brown-skinned boy fairly well, having had a class or two with him in the past. They were friendly. Ashton would easily consider Calum to be part of his close-knit group. But the fact that the girl to his right also knew Calum didn’t settle well in his stomach.

“It didn’t fit in our schedule. And hey, at least we had Lewis together,” Mike defended.

She nodded again. “True that. And my historiography paper was loads easier than yours.”

“Fucker,” Mike muttered with a small chortle. “Jo here got it easy with Lopez and turned in...” Mike started to explain to the rest of the small group but faltered. “How many pages did you turn in?” he asked, his green-eyed gaze shifting to the girl.

Jordan’s gaze went up and her teeth bit into her lower lip as she thought. “Like.. 4 and a half, I think?” she answered, uncertainly.

Ashton whistled low. “Shit, I turned in 12 I think.”

Jordan shrugged. “I got a B minus, so…”

“Alright!” Professor Lewis said, his hands clapping together to get the attention of the room full of history majors. “Let’s hear about your classmates’ summers.”

“Shit…” Ashton muttered under his breath, realizing that the group of two turned three hadn’t figured out who was introducing who.

Jordan waved a hand in a circle. “I’ll do Mike. Mike’ll do you. You’ll do me.”

Mike nodded in agreement but Ashton’s hazel eyes widened a bit in panic. He knew nothing about the girl he was supposed to introduce. He was so panicked at being unprepared that he even catch the way Mike jokingly wiggled his eyebrows at the young woman’s words. “What am I supposed to say?” Ashton whispered at her.

“I’m Jo. I’m in my last year. I went to Oregon,” she whispered back with a wink.

Ashton nodded and leaned back in his seat, waiting for their turn.

“You three?” Professor Lewis said, gesturing at the group.

“This is Mike. He’s a last year history major. And he played videogames over the summer,” Jordan started, making up something about Mike she knew to be true on the spot.

Mike laughed with a nod before he went about introducing Ashton. Then, it was Ashton’s turn. “This is Jo. She’s in her last year. And she went to Oregon over the summer,” the soft brown haired man said.

“Oregon, nice,” Professor Lewis nodded approvingly. “Do anything cool?”

Jordan shrugged. “Ziplining, cave exploring. Had a snowball fight at Crater Lake.”

“Snow in the summer, huh? That must’ve been cool,” Professor Lewis continued to converse.

Jordan laughed. “Not nearly as cool as white water rafting.”

“Sounds like quite the adventure. Glad you came back to us.”

“No place I’d rather be,” she grinned, hands clasping behind her head.

“You flatter me, Jo,” Lewis laughed before moving on.

Ashton on the other hand, agreed with Jordan. There was no place he’d rather be either.

~~~

“So, what’s the game plan?” Jordan asked, her backpack slung over one shoulder as the trio milled around the hallway outside the classroom, Luke having slipped out and disappeared already.

“Gonna hit up the library before thesis,” Mike told her, a hand ruffling his blonde hair.

“Aw, so that’s a no on food?” she frowned.

Ashton shrugged, his hands going into the pockets of his jeans. “I could eat,” he offered.

Jordan grinned and then her arm was flinging itself across his shoulders. “Catch ya on the flip side, nerd!” she waved with her free hand as she started walking towards the door, taking Ashton with her.

“You’re the nerd, nerd!” was the response called after her without missing a beat, giving Ashton the impression that this was a frequent back-and-forth between the two

“The nerdiest!” was the retort, complete with a middle finger thrown Mike’s way and a laugh that seemed too loud for a girl of her size. “So, Ash,” she started as they walked together, her arm dropping from around his shoulders. “Whatcha in the mood for? I’m thinking a bagel from the coffee shop sounds amazing right now. But, I’m open to persuasion if you want something else.”

“Nah, a bagel and coffee sound fuckin great now that you mention it.”

“Ooo a coffee person, huh?”

He shrugged, “Gets me through the day.”

She waved a finger at him in agreement, “Fair enough.”

“Not a coffee drinker, I take it?”

“Not really. I mean, I will on occasion. Like I’ll probably get one after lunch to power me though my poli sci class later.”

“Which one?” he asked, curious as he too had a political science class later in the day.

“California,” she frowned, clearly not excited about the concept. “It’s so dumb. Like I’ve taken California geography and California history, and now I have to take California politics? They should figure out a way to combine it all because the overlap is ridiculous.”

He giggled, knowing her pain all too well. “What time and who with?”

“Uh… 4 with Stevens.”

“Shit, me too!”

“Yeah?” she asked, turning to look at him, her brown eyes lit up with excitement behind the black frames. “Sweet! I won’t have to suffer alone.”

He giggled again and her heart did flips at the sound. He pulled the door to the coffee shop and held it open for them. “After you, m’lady,” he said with a silly posh voice.

“Oh, why thank you, good sir,” she responded in the same voice, even giving him a small curtsy before walking through the door and giggling. “You got a girlfriend, Ash?” she asked as they got in line.

“Nah,” he said, his cheeks flushing the same color as his red sweater, a hand pushing through his fluffy hair.

“Bummer,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “Me neither.”

“Oh?” he chuckled, her words taking him by surprise.

She giggled. “It’s a joke. But it’s also true. I’m bi. But, I got a boyfriend instead.”

“Oh…” he said. Of course someone like her would have a boyfriend. She was as if laughter and sunshine had become a person. Who wouldn’t want her? But it did make him feel loads better at her knowing Calum.

Jordan was grateful it was her turn to order so Ashton couldn’t catch her blush. She had heard the deflation in his tone. She had always thought herself too boy-ish and loud to draw much attraction from others. Attention she certainly held as it was hard to ignore the quick-witted young woman, but attraction? Nah, there were plenty of girls who were prettier and more soft-spoken than her. So it always took her by surprise when people seemed to like her. Especially when that attraction seemed to be coming from someone she deemed as so far out of her league as Ashton. “Eh, he’s an idiot,” she finally said, moving to the side so he could order. “Him and Mike are gaming buddies. It’s how I met Mike, actually.”

“Oh?”

“You say that a lot,” she decided with a giggle. “But, I can hook you up with someone if you like? I mean, I set Luke and Sierra, and Crystal and Mike. So, I’m pretty good.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Nah, I’m good for now, thanks though.” He only wanted to be hooked up with one girl and he was looking at her. And she had the most dazzling smile.

~~~

“You better have blocked Nick, that scumbag,” Jordan growled at Mike a week later, her usually shoulder length hair shorn short in an asymmetrical bob, showing the woman’s natural chestnut colored hair in its full glory.

“Already did,” Mike said, patting the hand she had slammed down on her desk with affection. “I dig the hair by the way. Very edgy. It suits ya.”

“You think?” she asked, a small smile at her lips, a hand running through the longer side. “Not too dramatic?”

“Oh, very dramatic,” Mike replied.

“Dramatic enough to appease the girl gods?” she asked sarcastically with a roll of her eyes.

Mike shrugged, “Here’s to hoping.”

“I really hate boys,” she said with another eye roll. “No offense to you guys.”

“None taken,” Ashton told her.

“Yeah, we’re men,” Mike added, making his voice deeper and puffing out his chest.

Jordan laughed and shook her head, “You’re a bunch of nerds is what you are.”

“The nerdiest,” her two friends smirked back at her. Then “Who’s Nick?” Ashton asked, curious about the boy who evoked such a rage from such a happy person.

“Her boyfriend,” Mike answered.

“Ex-boyfriend,” Jordan clarified, before tilting her head back to yell out, “God, boys suck!”

“And what’s your evidence, Jo?” Professor Lewis’ voice asked as he strolled in the classroom.

“Uh, all of history? Let’s face it, your gender blows.”

The man frowned. “That’s quite the over-generalization, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But, you know I’m right. Your gender has an…” she paused, fighting to find the right word. “Affinity! For making history the chaotic mess it is.”

“I’ll grant you that much,” the man agreed. “Speaking of chaotic messes!” he continued, loudly, drawing the attention of the rest of the class and starting the lecture.

~~~

“So, what’s the game plan?” Jordan asked her usual question as the trio walked together out of the building.

The two guys shrugged. The small joy of taking a morning class that met on Fridays was that they did had the whole day to do whatever after class.

“Think it’s too early to get a beer?” she asked with a short laugh.

“Jo, it’s nine in the morning,” Mike laughed. “And you don't drink.”

“Much,” Jordan corrected. “And I’m not hearing a no.”

Mike shrugged. “I ain’t got shit to do. Your place?”

She high-fived the blonde, “Fuck yeah.”

“Do you even have anything to drink at your place?”

She smiled sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders. “Booze run?”

Mike laughed loudly. “How typical! Jo wants to get drunk, but wants us to foot the bill.”

“Hey!” she laughed back, poking his chest. “I am a broke college student. So you’re damn right I do!”

This earned laughs from all three of them. “Alright, so my place in say an hour? Bring your own choice of poison?” she asked.

There was a murmur of agreement, then, “Wait,” Ashton said. “I don’t know where you live.”

“Aw, shit,” Jordan said, her nose scrunching up as she pulled out her phone. She typed something into it and then both boys’ phones pinged. “There,” she chirped happily, pocketing her phone.

“Shenanigan Squad?” Mike asked, eyebrows raising at the name of the group chat. “Nice group name,” he approved.

“Oh, damn that is a good name,” Ashton agreed.

“I like alliterations,” Jordan shrugged.

~~~

“So, why’d you and your boyfriend break up?” Ashton asked as they all hung around Jordan’s place which turned out to be a small back house behind her grandparents.

She passed a hand through her hair and let out a slow breath. “Gonna have to get me drunk to hear that story,” she decided, giving a short laugh.

“That won’t take long,” Mike said, his gaze not shifting from the game he was playing with some other friends online.

“Shut the fuck up,” she laughed, a sound truer to her real laugh than the short one she gave a mere moment ago.

“Aw, you’re really gonna say you’re not already feeling it a little?” Mike asked, looking over at the woman to wiggle his eyebrows at her before returning his attention to the game.

Jordan tilted the cup in her hand to peer at the liquid swirling down at the bottom. “Almost. But, I’m gonna need a refill first,” she confessed, drumming her fingers against her jeans as she stood up. “Y’all need anything?” she asked, walking the short distance to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” came the response from both guys.

“Whoa,” she laughed, “I’m not your waitress. Mike, you know where shit is.”

“Yeah, but you’re up,” Mike said.

Ashton rolled his eyes and pushed himself off his spot from the couch. “I’ll help ya,” he offered, crossing the short distance to her fridge and pulling forth a beer for Mike.

“Mike, you’ve been dethroned as my favorite,” Jordan told her friend smugly before smiling softly at Ashton. Ashton noted the way it made her eyes squinch up- a true Jordan smile.

“Yeah, love you too, Jo.”

Jordan shook her head and set out to make her drink. “Bottle opener’s there,” she said, gesturing next to Ashton with the bottle of whiskey in her hand.

“Whatcha making?” Ashton asked, popping open the top to the beer.

“Jack and Coke. Want one?”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Fair warning, I make it with a lot of Coke,” she told him. “Like a lot, a lot.”

“That’s fine,” he responded. He could handle strong drinks, but he wasn’t the biggest fan of drinking himself. Getting drunk scared him.

“Here,” she said, holding out her cup to him. “This is how I make mine. Same or stronger?”

Ashton took the cup in his hand and took a swallow. The carbonated sweet drink held just the slightest trace of that good whiskey burn. “Yeah, that’s good,” he said, passing her the cup back. “How do you get drunk drinking like that?”

She took a deep drink, winking at him over the rim of the cup. God, he wanted to be that cup. “That’s my secret, Cap. I’m never drunk.”

~~~

“Catch ya on the flip side, nerds?” Jo asked, her hands going into the pockets of her zip-up hoodie as the trio walked out of the last class of the semester.

“Yup, see you nerds in January,” Mike said, pulling up his beanie down lower over his head.

“Where you headed?” Ashton asked Jordan.

She shrugged. “Home probably.”

“Wanna get one last coffee?” he asked, his hands pushing his hair to the side. Their bagel and coffee had grown to become the duo’s tri-weekly tradition, and Ashton wasn’t ready to say goodbye until January just yet. Not that he had made a move. No, he was letting Jordan recover from her break-up. He didn’t want to be a rebound. Plus, he wasn’t even sure if Jordan liked him that way. And as cliche as it was, he didn’t want to risk losing his coffee date buddy.

She smiled and looped her arm through his. “To coffee!” she declared in a silly voice.

“To coffee!” he giggled, taking the lead in walking down towards the coffee shop. “M’lady,” he said, getting the door.

“Why thank you, good sir,” she laughed. Then, “Hey, I’m sorry. I got a little caught up this semester with…” she let out a huff and waved her hands around, “everything. Did you ever get that girlfriend? Or find someone you’re interested in?”

He giggled and shook his head, his hair shaking with the movement, glasses sliding down his nose. He pushed them back up into place. “Nah.”

She frowned but her brown eyes remained playful behind her own glasses. “Aw, one of them ‘gonna finish school’ first types, huh?”

Ashton chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

She scoffed as she got her bagel and hot chocolate. “While I respect those types, I also can’t understand it. Like why not date someone while you ‘find’ yourself or whatever? That’s half the fun of a relationship is watching them grow into the person their meant to be.”

Ashton nodded his head as he grabbed his coffee and they took a seat but didn’t say anything. In his opinion, she was right. Half of his fun over the past semester was watching her grow back into her loud tomboy self. Instead, he watched as she sipped her drink, an urge to capture this moment washing over him. “Smile,” he said, opening his phone’s camera. Instead of smiling, she raised her eyebrows, giving him a mysterious quirky look over the rim of her paper cup.

“You gonna show me?” she asked, leaning across the table.

“Nah, not a chance,” he giggled, pocketing his phone.

“It is good at least?” she pressed.

He giggled more, his cheeks flushing slightly. “I’m not answering that.”

“Damn, that bad, huh?” she laughed.

He just laughed with her rather than admit his true feelings about the picture and the girl in it. It was perfectly Jordan in every possible way- cute and snarky with a little bit of knowing he’d never be able to fully pin her down.

He was walking just a few steps in front of her when he saw the phone come out. He turned, his tongue coming at the corner of his mouth as the camera shutter clicked. “Ha!” she laughed at him. “If you can take candids of me, you best believe I’m gonna do it back.”

She was more generous than he had been, tilting her wrist so he could look at the picture. “Damn, that’s bad,” he giggled.

“Well, by all means,” she gestured with her phone.

He rolled his eyes, but cocked his head slightly to the side, offering the barest hint of a smile. “Better?” he asked.

“Would it have killed ya to smile?” she teased.

“Would it have killed you?” he teased back, patting his pocket where his own phone was.

“Touche,” she relented. “Alright, catch ya on the flip side, nerd,” she finally said, stepping in the close the gap between them, her arms wrapping briefly around his shoulders.

“See you in January, Jo,” he responded, hugging her back and swallowing how easy this felt. Everything about his relationship with Jordan was easy. His urge to kiss her felt so natural he almost did it. His head tilted and his lips puckered. But then she was pulling out of the hug and his heart was pounding in his chest instead.

~~~

SmashIrwin: Last coffee of the semester with @heyitsjogirl

Liked by @heyitsjogirl and @mikerowave_X

Comment from @mikerowave_X: WITHOUT ME?!

@heyitsjogirl replied to @mikerowave_X: We’ve been getting coffee all semester, where you at?! #shenanigansquad

heyitsjogirl: Gonna miss this nerd. With @SmashIrwin

Liked by @SmashIrwin and @mikerowave_X

Comment from @mikerowave_X: Wow, the audacity… #ineednewfriends #shenanigansquad #morelikesheNAHnigansquad

@SmashIrwin replied to @mikerowave_X: Mikey, don’t even… #shenanigansquad

@heyitsjogirl replied to @mikerowave_X: What @SmashIrwin said. No complaining if you can’t roll with us #shenanigansquad #thenerdiestofnerds

~~~

Jo-girl: Fuck! Overslept! Don’t let Lewis drop me, lol

Smashton: I’ll make sure he doesn’t

Mikeywave: UGH HURRY UP!

Jo-girl: FUCK YOU!

Jo-girl: Also save me a seat!

~~~

“Jo, welcome, welcome!” Professor Lewis’ voice chirped brightly as Jordan breezed in, her cheeks flushed from both the cold and the half-sprint across the campus as she took the seat next to Ash and behind Mike.

“Sup?” she nodded her head, half-heartedly, her glasses pushing up as she rubbed at her eyes and yawned. “Fuck, getting back into sync is gonna suck.”

Mike laughed, “How late were you up last night?”

She shrugged, “Like 2? What are we doing? Saying what we did over break?”

“And what we’re looking forward to most,” Ashton told her.

“May,” she said with a harsh laugh, then her eyes danced as she looked longingly towards the door. “Get me outta here, please!”

“Glad to have you in class again, too, Jo,” Professor Lewis said with an eye roll.

~~~

“So, how was your break?” Ashton asked as they walked out, having left Mike behind because he had another class in the same room.

“Just the recharge I needed,” she said, looping her arm through his. “You got class or is it time for coffee?”

“Nah, I’m free until Van.”

“To coffee!” she declared in that silly voice he had missed than he realized.

“Onwards, m’lady!”

Her laugh rang out, her breath still visible in the morning cold. “How was your break?” she asked, her voice back to its normal lilt.

“It was good,” he replied.

She nodded, accepting the barely-scratching-the-surface answer. Then, “Have you taken digital research yet?”

He shook his head. “I’m taking it this semester.”

“Sweet, who with?”

“Professor Walker.”

“Yes!” she cheered, pumping her fist in victory. “I won’t have to suffer alone!”

He giggled. “Professor Walker’s great, what are you talking about?”

“Oh, I know. But like… you know?”

He nodded, knowing what she wasn’t saying. Taking classes without Jordan sitting next to him just weren’t as enjoyable.

~~~

@heyitsjogirl: Not the same without my #shenanigansquad but jo girl is TIRED!

Liked by @SmashIrwin and @mikerowave_X

Comment by SmashIrwin: Clearly not too tired to commit BETRAYAL!

@mikerowave_X replied to @SmashIrwin: THIS IS TREASON!

@heyitsjogirl replied to @SmashIrwin: Y’all are idiots lmao.

~~~

“Deja vu!” Jordan’s voice laughed as she waltzed into the room and spotted Ashton in the same seat he had been in earlier when they had been in the classroom for their thesis class. “Holy shit, definite deja vu,” she continued to laugh, waving over at Luke on the other side of the classroom. “Lu, do I just have you for every class? You stalking me?”

Luke’s blue eyes danced and his blonde curls shook as he laughed. “Shh, just ignore me.”

“Hey, remind me to get your number after class.”

“Oh yeah, for sure.”

Jordan was about to turn to start chatting with Ashton but the door opened and in walked Calum Hood. “Yo! Where ya been, Hood?!” Jordan said, her brown eyes lighting up behind her glasses.

“Jo girl!” Calum said, taking a seat on the other side of her.

Ashton busied himself with staring out the window. Great. This was just what he needed. Competition from the tanned soccer god.

“Britt!” Jordan’s voice squealed as a young woman breezed into the room, startling Ashton from his thoughts.

“Jo! I’ve missed you girlie!” the woman said, coming to sit behind Calum.

“Do you know everyone?” Ashton laughed, breathing a little easier at the other woman’s presence. Maybe girl bonding would distract from Calum attraction.

“I’m popular, what can I say?” she winked. “Britt this is Ash. Ash, this is Britt. My year is not complete if I don’t take at least one class with her.”

Ashton clutched his hand to his heart in mock pain. “I am OFFENDED!” he gasped.

Jordan giggled and pushed his shoulder playfully. “Fuckin’ nerd. You know I love you.”

“You’re the nerd, nerd,” he mumbled, his cheeks flushing and heart racing at how easy the words rolled off her lips in his direction.

“The nerdiest,” she grinned.

~~~

Ashton’s heart sank a little when Jordan left the classroom without waiting for him. But when he pushed his way out, he saw her standing in the hallway, chatting with Luke. “And send,” she said, tapping at her phone.

Two seconds later, Luke’s phone pinged. “Sweet, see ya, Jo. Later Ash.”

“Later,” they both told him, watching the blonde sling off into the dark evening. Then, “Thought ya ditched me. Watched you go and was like ‘Jo! Jo, no!’”

She laughed. “Nah, I’d never ditch ya. C’mon, I’m parked in lot M.”

“Cool, me too,” he lied.

They made pleasant conversation as they trekked across campus in the dark, both admitting their delight in the course they were taking and how close graduation was. And also admitting their fear that graduation was right around the corner. “But you’ll be back in August for the graduate program, won’t you?” he asked her.

“Yeah, but still. You know people always tell you to chase after your dreams no matter the cost. But nobody tells you what to do when those dreams come true, you know? Like what happens when there’s nothing left for me to chase after? What if I’m chasing after something to fill a void that’s unfillable?”

He nodded, pondering her words. Then, “But is that any reason not to chase after what you want?”

Her laugh echoed throughout the parking structure. “God, no. I’m a firm believer that taking your chance is always worth the risk.” She reached into the pocket of her jeans to pull out her car keys as she jogged up the stairs. “Well, this is me,” she said, slightly breathless. “Catch ya on the flip side?”

“See ya, nerd,” he smiled before heading back to the staircase.

“Hey!” she called out after him, her hands on her hips. “You said you were parked here!”

“I lied!”

She laughed, shaking her head. “You didn’t have to do that, you know. I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“I know. I wanted to. See ya!”

She chuckled to herself as she watched him disappear down the stairs. Damn, he made it really hard not to like him. In their short time together, he had become one of her closest friends and he knew her almost as well as Mike did. It took a lot of willpower to not brush his hair out of his face every time she saw him. She bet it was soft and imagined it would fall through her fingertips like water. She bit her lip and chuckled again, deciding then and there that she would kiss that boy at graduation if he didn’t kiss her first.

~~~

“Hey, you stole my shirt,” Jordan said, her nose scrunching up playfully as she walked into class and took notice of Calum in his seat, wearing sure enough, the same grey NASA t-shirt Jordan was wearing.

“Psh, I had mine longer, so I think you stole mine,” Calum teased her back.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she laughed, taking her seat. “Hey, Ash.”

Ashton nodded in greeting, his gaze never leaving the window. “Gonna rain,” he murmured. A perfect metaphor, he thought with a sigh. His feelings for Jordan, much like the storm clouds outside were growing faster every second. And soon it was all going to come crashing down.

“Fuck, think we’ll make it out of class before then?” she asked, her brows furrowing together. She had a coat with her, but if it started pouring rain, she was toast.

Ashton shrugged. The storm in him was getting worse with each class session he spent with Jordan between him and Calum. Outside, lightning cracked across the sky and the first droplets began to fall.

~~~

“You good?” Jordan asked as they walked out of class together.

“Yeah, why?” he asked, his voice clipped, a frown on his face as he pushed his way out of the building. The rain was coming down, but the downpour had had given way to a lazy drizzle. Their hair began to frizz as they walked at a fast pace to the parking lot. He had started parking in the same lot as her since that first day of classes.

“You just seem off,” she commented, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

“Just tired, I guess,” he shrugged, walking a few paces ahead of her.

She shook her head and quickened her pace to fall into step beside him. “No. I know you. This isn’t your end of the day tired. This is something is wrong pissed off.”

He paused, his brows furrowing together. He had spent so much of his time noticing her that he never once thought to think she had been doing the same. Why would she notice someone like him, anyway? He was so… and she was so… “So,” he said, his voice as chilly as the air, resuming his walk.

“So?” she asked with a short chuckle and a click of her tongue. “Ash, we’re friends. You can tell me anything.”

“No, I really can’t, Jo,” he mumbled under his breath.

“That’s bullshit,” she scoffed.

“Is it?” he challenged, stopping again and whirling to face her.

“It is,” she asserted, planting her feet and crossing her arms, preparing for battle. Lightening cracked, illuminating them both, their eyes dark behind their rain-splattered glasses. “Well? Before I’m soaked, please,” she demanded, gesturing around as the rain started to fall faster and heavier.

“Do you like Cal?” his voice boomed with the thunder.

Her laugh was harsh. “Do I like Cal? What type of dumbass question is that?! Of course I like Cal.”

He gaze flicked away from hers, his face pinching. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Another harsh laugh fell from her lips. “Wow, the nerd finally realizes I’m friends with Cal. Stunning discovery! Bra-fuckin-vo!”

“Friends,” he scoffed, his eyes still avoiding hers as he struggled to come to terms with the fact he had been desperately hoping wasn’t true ever since he first learned Jordan knew Calum. Of course the pretty girl would like the pretty boy. He really shouldn’t be so surprised. But the truth stung all the same.

“What the fuck is your problem?” she growled, her hands shoving at his chest. “You’re being a real jerk and honestly, I’m not sure if I like this side of you.”

“Do you like any side of me?!” The question flew from his lips, his voice cracking with another lightening strike.

“Again with the dumbass questions! Of course I like you!”

“You just said you like Cal!”

The pieces clicked into place. Every shy shrug of his shoulders. Every door he opened for her. How he parked in the same lot as her so he could walk with her at the end of the day. The digging into her relationship with Calum. His persistence that he wasn’t interested in dating. God, why did it take feeling like the girl was slipping through their fingers before they could finally fight for what they wanted? “You really are a dumbass, aren’t you?” she shouted. If he needed a fight to finally do something, she was going to give him his fight. “I can like more than one person, Ashton! I’m allowed to have friends!”

He flinched at the usage of his full first name. “That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

“Well, here, I’ll dumb it down for ya! Do I like Cal? Yes! Do I think he’s pretty? Yes! Does it matter? No! You wanna know why? Because Cal likes pretty girls, like Britt! Nobody who looks like Cal is looking at nerd tomboy Jo when a girl like Britt is right there behind him!”

Ashton faltered. Did Jordan really think she wasn’t pretty? Did she feel for Calum the same way he felt about her? That Calum was as far out of her league and she was out of Ashton’s? Fuck, of course she thought that. In what world would a girl like Jordan ever go for a boy like Ashton.

“Are you going to do something or just continue to stand there looking like a jackass?” her voice pulled him from his spiral.

The pieces clicked into place again. Every little smile she gave when he said he wasn’t interested in dating. Every hug that lingered. How she had told him she was a firm believer in taking chances, win or lose. Fuck it. Now or never.

He crossed the distance between them in one step, one hand gripping her chin as the other wrapped around her back. His head dipped down as he tilted hers up. His lips attached to hers and he smiled, feeling her sigh into it. It was deep and soft and it made their heads spin.

“Fuckin’ finally,” she said when they broke apart. Her eyes were shining as her finger traced the tingling in her lips.

“What?” he asked with a breathless chuckle.

“Took ya long enough.”

“I’m still not following.”

She rolled her eyes. “I like you, dumbass.”

“You do?”

“Would I do this if I didn’t?” she asked before kissing him, her hands running through the soft hair that fell through her fingers like water, just like she knew it would.

~~~

Jordan’s laugh bounced off the walls of the building as her and Ashton rounded the corner and found Britt with her back against the wall, Calum’s lips on hers. “See? I told ya Cal likes the pretty girls,” she told Ashton, her nose scrunching up.

Ashton giggled and took a page from Calum, pressing Jordan up against the wall, earning a small shriek of surprised laughter to fall from his girlfriend’s lips. “Shut up and kiss me, nerd,” he said before pressing his lips to hers. God, he would never get tired of kissing her.

“The nerdiest,” she smiled into the kiss.

“And the most beautiful.”

~~~

Tag List (Wanna join? Just ask!)

@goeatsomelife @flameraine @cashtonasff5sos @here-for-the-uproars @cxddlyash @1-irwin-94 @baldcalum @sparkling-chaos

#shenanigan squad #ashton irwin #ashton irwin fic #5sos #galcal irwin

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m00nslippers · 5 years

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Titans S2E2: Rose, a review, I guess.

Here, have another bullet-pointed, kinda-review. Spoilers ahead!

This episode has awesome stuff, but it’s kind of choppy. We flash pretty quickly from scene to scene between pretty much all the Titans. We get Dick with the kiddos at the tower, Kori and Donna going after Shimmer, Hank and Dawn at their ranch in Wyoming. And then there’s the occasional jump to Rose or Dr. Light. It didn’t jump so much that it was confusing but it gave me the feeling that as soon as I was really into what was happening the scene moved on to something else and that left me disappointed. Luckily everyone seems to be coming together by the end of the episode so hopefully this won’t be an issue going forward.

Dick is getting super into the Big-Bro/Dad/Mentor thing and it’s kind of hilarious. After spending all last season trying to get rid of as much responsibility as possible he’s gone all-in on the mentorship thing to the point that it’s funny to me. He’s over here being super serious with his “Even your eyes can be taken from you!” sensei-thing, and having them read Sun Tzu, and making them food that is apparently terrible. No wonder he goes to that coffee shop all the time, his food is inedible I guess. Like, he’s trying so hard it’s a little manic, but endearing.

Dick is actually pretty great with Jason. Sending Jason with Dick was probably the best thing Bruce could have done because it’s clear that Dick is starting to get Jason where Bruce seemingly didn’t. Jason is complaining about being stuck in Cali and wants to go home to Gotham and Dick’s like, “Me and Bruce don’t think you’re ready, you were joyriding in the batmobile and the thing with the motorcycle and using the batcomputer inappropriately (seems like a porn reference), yada yada,” And Jason seems a bit dejected and upset. And you can see Dick looking at him, seeing how disheartened he is and he seems to get an idea and is like, “and besides, I could really use your help around here, you’re more skilled than the others, they don’t have your experience, everyone looks up to you, etc.” And like, yeah the first part is true, but it’s clear by the others reaction that they really don’t like Jason much or look up to him, Dick is just trying to cheer him up. Jason wants praise and recognition so bad. Even when he’s obviously being manipulated he just wants to believe it so much. That leads me to think this Bruce has been doing typical Bruce-things and maybe not giving Jason much positive reinforcement, which is probably contributing to Jason acting out.

I like Jason but it’s clear the Titans don’t. Last episode we saw bits of Donna and Hank and Dawn not exactly giving Jason a warm reception even though he really didn’t do anything to deserve it. And now in this one Gar and Rachel are icing him out a bit (referring to how he basically adopted Gar and Rachel, Dick says, “but I didn’t help Jason,” and Rachel rolls her eyes and says, “can anyone help Jason?”). Dick said they look up to Jay but that doesn’t seem like the case, I felt like he was just handling Jason. Do they defer to him when it comes to vigilante things, well yeah, maybe, but that’s not quite the same thing. I’m really hoping this isn’t the comics all over again, where everyone was said to pretty much universally dislike him outside of Donna and Eddie (after Jason’s character was rebooted). I know I’m a Jay-fan so I might be biased but aside from being a little cocky and mischievous there’s nothing we’ve seen him do to anyone that really warrants this kind of dislike, IMO. I’m hoping over the course of the season he proves himself to Gar and Rachel at least and they get along better. I want everyone to like Jason but even if they didn’t I would be fine with it if they at least disliked him for good reasons, and right now I haven’t seen anything to suggest their reasons are anything but shallow.

Kori and Donna interacting are a treasure. Kori and Donna clearly bonded over being badass chick who like to beat people up and have the same sassy sense of humor. They are constantly bickering but you get the impression they are loving every second of their verbal repartee. They are so hilarious. It’s interesting to see Kori interact with someone who is an ‘adult’ and isn’t Dick. I feel like with Donna more of that zest that Kori has in the comics but didn’t really last season, comes out. Before she was so focused on her mission she didn’t have time for herself and now she does and it’s great seeing her do Earth-things and finding them fun or interesting and enjoying herself. Kori loving Disco and Donna liking Madonna is so damn appropriate.

Roy foreshadowing!!! Donna’s contact that sent her after Shimmer is shown to be Roy Harper from her phone call. I have to wonder what version of Roy we are getting here. OG Roy-fans and Titans purists are probably going to hate me for this but hear me out...I want it to be the new version of Roy, in terms of personality and looks. Goofy genius-dumbass hillbilly with a heart of gold Roy. Look, I just feel like the other version of his character overlaps way too much with characters we already have, especially Donna. Say what you will about New 52 Roy, but he’s got character and personality, he stands out in a way I feel the other Roy didn’t, especially alongside Wally and Dick, who had very similar personalities, I feel. I’ll be happy with either version because it’s Roy but I think it would be interesting to see the New 52 alongside these characters, with his trucker hat and gadgets. Or maybe they could do a fusion, at least have his aesthetic. Everyone in this show kind of has a sameness that could be shaken up. We could use some comic relief, honestly. I hope we actually do see him this season though and it isn’t just foreshadowing something for next season.

The stuff with Hawk and Dawn was...fine. Basically after getting that ranch, Hank getting clean and presumably getting his surgery and retiring from heroing like they always dreamed/planned it all went up in smoke. I guess it was probably inevitable, to be honest. But there was this whole thing where Hank caught Dawn going out as Dove behind his back after they’d decided to stop and they were having a big important fight about it--and then it’s all rendered moot when Dr. Light destroys their whole life and they have to go to Cali and meet up with Dick. It just kind of seems like too easy of a way for the writers to resolve the situation. I hope this isn’t the end of Hank and Dawn’s argument because it was a really big deal. Hank was giving Dawn a break-up ultimatum if it’s never brought up again I’m going to be annoyed.

Rose has potential. I felt like the actress’s acting was a little stiff but that might have just been the choppiness of the scenes she was in, the sections were too small to get a real feel for her. I like her looks, she’s awesome in the action scenes and she has her powers/healing factor and all her comic abilities which is great. I feel like her writing is good though, and I’m interested to see is she’s actually on her own like she seems or if she’s a mole for her dad (I kind of feel like she’s a mole...). I hope we see JayRose though. I think him being interested in her is just a given, he called her a badass from seeing her fight. Whether she will have any interest in him back is more of a question, but I’m hopeful.

I wanted more Deathstroke. Not gonna lie, I wanted more Deathstroke. We saw a scene at the end where Jason found the connection between Rose and Slade, but that’s it. I have a feeling he’ll be in the next episode though.

Seriously, Ian Glenn is an awesome Batman. We got another great conversation between Bruce and Dick and I loved it so much, you guys. Give Ian Glenn a chance, people. I’m telling you the writing for Bruce is on point and the acting is great. He feels a lot like the DCAU-version to me, the one voiced by Kevin Conroy. I actually really like his voice in particular because it’s sort of deep like Conroy’s is, and he manages to put a lot of buried emotion into more or less flatly spoken words. The writing and the acting absolutely has that Bruce-thing where gives you answers in the most concise but cryptic way possible, acts all dramatic and he’ll seem unhelpful and kind of like a jerk and then he’ll say something profound and meaningful to let Dick know he actually does care about him a lot and it’s like...yeah, that’s the Bruce I’ve wanted, guys. he’s an asshole without really meaning to be but his intentions are good. It’s just so nice to have Titans!Bruce when comics!Bruce is such a nightmare right now...I really hope people who don’t like or doubt him will give Ian Glenn’s Bruce another chance, because I love him so much already. Yeah, his looks aren’t quite right but I’m getting used to it. The core of Bruce is there and that’s what’s really important.

And those were my main thoughts watching this episode. I loved it and it left me wanting more. It had some issues but nothing deal-breaking.

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algernoninwonderland · 5 years

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Why the Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics is a rubbish idea, and how to do better

I’ve been reading fanfictions for almost a decade now, younger me really liked Johnlock and Stony and things like that. I’ve read some godawful things and some genuinely great stuff. But if there’s one thing I’ve always felt quite iffy about, it’s the a/b/o dynamics and the omegaverse things.

I genuinely believe that the entire premise of the omegaverse is rubbish and really easy to use to portray harmful ideas, relationships and power structures as something hot and sexy and whatnot when it’s clearly terrible.

Let’s:

1. Take a look at what the a/b/o premise is 2. See what is utter rubbish about it 3. Propose a few ideas to avoid writing an omegaverse fic (if you still wish to write one) which present these ideas at face value

But before we begin, a few things:

First, the themes of rape, sexual violence and abusive relationships will be discussed during this, so there’s a tw tag for these things.

Secondly, I do not believe that depicting terrible things in art means you automatically condone them. Take the way Toni Morrison deals with that scene between Pecola and her father in The Bluest Eye, for instance (that’s the one example that comes to my mind but there are countless others). But I also believe that you have to be responsible when you depict terrible things, and that you should try to make sure what you produce cannot be interpreted as an endorsement of these things.

I’m not here to tell you you are a bad person if you enjoy omegaverse fics, I don’t know you and I’m not here to judge you as people, I wish to engage with ideas and the way they may impact people.

At last, I am not here to tell you what to think or what to write. These are just my thoughts and suggestions, nothing more. I have no authority over you, I can’t tell you what to do.

Are we good?

Alright, then, let’s get started!

1. What are these Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics all about?

There are posts all over the internet for that’ll explain you that in more detail than this post, a Fanlore wiki page here if you want to read that, it does a great job at tracking down the history of a/b/o, but I’ll sum it up here with a few extra things I think are relevant.

So, in the omegaverse, the society is split between two, or three categories. Characters are either alphas, betas or omegas, well-established roles, socially and genetically: Alphas are in a position of power, the sexually ‘dominant’ ones, whereas the Omega is the opposite of this and the one to carry the Alpha’s seed and whatnot (there are no other ways to put it); the beta is sort of a middle ground between the two.

This introduction of these concepts and that distinction between so-called Alphas, Betas and Omegas comes from a 1970 bestseller, “The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species” by zoologist L. D. Mech, and we’ll talk a little more about that thesis later.

So it is not surprising that the omegaverse tropes are really common in werewolf fiction and werewolf AUs. Teen Wolf and Supernatural have thousands of these fics on ao3 alone, and there’s more on many other websites.

The classic narrative scheme is the following: the strong and domineering Alpha is in heat and mates with a submissive Omega, bonding with them in the process. The great majority of these fics are M/M fics.

What we have here is the superposition of a social role and of biological functions: the Alpha is in a position of absolute power from a social, and material standpoint, and is the one who gets to impregnate their partner/partners, they have the most sexual power. To put things crudely, they are the ones to make use of their penises whereas the beta/omega does not have this sexual intensity and plays a more passive role.

In the omegaverse, you need Alpha blood and an Alpha’s social status to have sex the way an Alpha has sex, you need to have Alpha blood to live like one. These two things cannot be dissociated. And sex… There’s a lot of it in the omegaverse, I mean it’s basically the offshoot of other kink fics and is pretty much a kink itself.

2. So, OK, the hierarchical aspect of the relationship is a bit weird, and maybe Mpreg is as well, but that’s it, right?

Well not only. Remember that thing about the 1970 bestseller? Its own author acknowledges that it is biologically incorrect and does not apply to wolves at all. There are no such things as Alphas, Betas and Omegas in wolf packs.

But did that keep people from using these notions even though they have been proven to be rubbish?

I mean, the alt right seems to love them and uses them unironically so, I don’t know… And so do some fics. Does that mean that all a/b/o fics are inherently fascist? For the most part, I don’t think so. But they don’t always try to detach themselves from that either.

What about the sex? Yes, let’s talk about sex. That’s the main reason why 14yo me once clicked on one of these fics, out of curiosity and because I was 14 and didn’t know better. I regret so many things.

Sex in the a/b/o fics is very explicit, very anatomically inaccurate (though it’s not why we click on these in the first place, or smut in general, but none of the gay/bi/pan men I personally know enjoy a/b/o), and quite often, it’s very fucked up sex. Dubious consent, underage sex, outright rape, you name it, that’s what tags are for.

Sex in the omegaverse is a traumatic experience with that strong sense of hierarchy, a possessive alpha and their possession, an omega. It often comes with knotting, too. And if you don’t know what that is, you’re really lucky, don’t google that, ever. Just know that, at least in the beginning, sex doesn’t feel good for the beta/omega, and when it does, it still comes with quite some pain.

I’d argue that sex in a/b/o fics is not too far off from the uke/seme dynamics in yaoi, the two even overlap: there’s an “attacker” and a “receiver”. This is not just dom/subs, which can still be healthy, it’s almost spelled out “the way these have men have sex is downright abusive”. I won’t discuss the rape tropes in yaoi here, many have done so before and better than I could ever do it, but they’re here.

The Alpha is the attacker, depicted with hyper (and obviously toxic) masculine traits and quite the emphasis on his… Membrum virile. He is not the one who has to carry the child in the case of a Mpreg fic. He can’t act any other way, it’s in his blood, it’s his nature, his instincts, he can’t help it if he’s in heat and wants to fuck. Oh, I sure wonder what that sort of justifications makes me think of. I’m sure you’ll find it.

The Omega, on the other hand, is in a position of inferiority because of his role during sex and due to his social status: he is submissive, abused, soft-spoken and physically weaker than the Alpha. He is belittled because he is the one who can give birth to a child, yet a prized possession — not a being, a possession— because of that. Change the pronouns from “he” to “she” and there you'll have a nice surprise. (It’s really not surprising at all).

I’d like to quote a prompt also featured in the Fanlore wiki page for a/b/o, and think about it for a little while.

“There are three types of men, alpha males, beta males, and omega males. Alpha males are like any ordinary guy with the exception of their cocks, they work just like canines (the knot, tons of cum, strong breeders, etc) The beta male, is an ordinary guy without the special cock. Omega males are capable of child bearing and often called bitch males”

The use of “bitch” here is extremely revealing, don’t you think? We’ve got both the animalistic aspect and the misogynistic undertones that come with it. And we, readers, are supposed to find that sexy.

So, what we have is M/M fics dripping with rape culture, misogyny, homophobic clichés (the rampant homosexual and his uncontrollable and violent sexual urges). And don’t get me started on the transphobia and transmisogyny, and racism (when there are POC in at all, which is to say rarely).

Does this mean all writers who write a/b/o fics are rampant misogynistic, homophobic people who endorse rape culture?

The answer is complicated. But, as a former member of the “not like the other girls” group, I’d say that internalised misogyny is very, very pernicious. Rape narratives are ubiquitous in modern “Western” culture. And a/b/o often perpetuates homophobic clichés.

3. What do we do now?

With such a terrible premise, it would be wise to not write anything a/b/o at all.

But perhaps with a self-aware approach, perhaps by subverting these tropes, by dissociating this “biological” aspect from the societal one or by throwing them out the window completely, writing something a little more interesting is possible.

Showing that these categories are rubbish and an artificial construction, for instance. Have the rape victim get away from his rapist, or even better, no rape at all. Have the couple adopt children.

But, personally, I believe writing something else than a/b/o is still the better option.

Fan fiction, fan content can be so much more than these terrible shitty things if we try our best to know where ideas come from, what they imply and how to execute on them.

#fanfiction #omegaverse #discourse #tw: rape #tw: homophobia #a feminist and queer approach to fiction #alpha #beta #omega #a/b/o dynamics #a/b/o verse

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exhaustedwerewolf · 5 years

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Detroit: Become Human fans, please consider checking out C4/AMC Humans!

I’ve been meaning to make this post since D:BH’s release, but I just found out that Humans was canceled after three seasons, and in my grief, I’m going to finally deliver. I’m not sure what the overlap between these two fandoms is like because I’ve never seen anyone talking about it and couldn’t find any posts tagged with both, which surprises me a lot.

For those unfamiliar with either, both shows are set in a world where humanoid robots are commonplace as servants and members of the workforce, and what happens when some of these individuals begin to achieve sentience. Asides from the subject matter- so similar I literally don’t have to explain them separately- so many characters have parallel roles in the story, the commonalities, from the overarching themes, to the robot detective, to the blue blood, are practically endless. I really want to draw people’s attention to Humans, though, because in my opinion it’s a severely underrated show, and I think those who enjoyed D:BH would get more of what they loved from it, and those who had more mixed feelings about it would find Humans delivers where D:BH lacks.

Let me explain what I mean.

Warning, though, that this ramble won’t be spoiler free, so if you‘re interested in the show but don’t want to read any spoilers- I’d really urge you to give it a shot!

Also warning, I’m a little dismissive of D:BH here, but that’s not to say I dislike it or don’t think people should like it, etc. I’m just trying to explain why I think in some areas, Humans does better- ofc, Humans is a tv show and not a game that needs engaging gameplay and multiple endings, so it has opportunities D:BH doesn’t.

The Synths (Androids)

I’m not a huge fan of the way androids are presented in D:BH, and the reason I’d argue for that is Cage makes no real effort to “other,” them- in fact, he goes beyond the logical to make them as human as possible. Androids’ body language and movement, range of facial expressions, idiosyncratic habits like Connor’s coin flipping, tendency even, to lie down to rest... they endear them to the player, but they’re ultimately all superfluous. Why were these things programmed in? Why don’t they operate as economically as possible? Further, why do androids become deviant, and burst out of their programming? We’re told it’s due to “stress,” but why can they feel such stress in the first place, and why does it trigger sudden sentience? We never get a clear answer. It’s pretty unclear, admittedly, how sentient androids are before they become deviant in the first place- and I see where the game was coming from with that, however...

Synths in Humans are far more unsettling- the actors portray their movements with a jarringly uniform perfection. Their speech and facial expressions are far less emotional, because emotions were never intended for them. They can’t feel physical pain, (although incurring damage remains a stressful and frightening experience) because again, that was never intended for them, and so they have no mechanism by which to do so. This gives humans arguing that they’re only machines a lot more clout. Everyone has memories of blank slates who never laugh or smile, and who can be turned off with a tap under the chin, only to crumple like mannequins. There’s times when they’re presented to the audience as unapologetically eerie and even disgusting, and it’s easy to see, therefore, how they’re being perceived by the public as machines or monsters, which arguably, was somewhat less credible in D:BH, where even non-deviant androids were personable and warm, had the capacity to create art from their imaginations, etc. Letting synths be genuinely different to humans while still portraying them as sentient and deserving of rights, rather than just... “human, but mechanical,” gives the issue a lot more nuance and fuels the inclusion of elements like anti-synth propaganda, and counter-protest, which I’ll talk more about later.

(As a note, the “why” behind their sentience is also explained in a manner that was, imho, more coherent and satisfying.)

As I mentioned before, a lot of the characters have seeming direct parallels, so I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about a couple of characters in depth.

Niska

The blue-haired Traci’s appearance is one of the most controversial elements of the game, from what I’ve seen. The writers undeniably dipped their toes into multiple subjects fraught with heavy implications in her scene, but ultimately that was as far as it went- Traci and her lover only existed to further the narratives of Hank and Connor (and to provide a frankly fan-servicey fight scene while scantily clad in the rain, but hey, that’s neither here nor there.) To anyone who found this character interesting but ultimately underutilized, might I introduce you to the light of my life; Niska. Like Traci, Niska spends a stint as a prostitute, and ultimately kills one of her patrons and skips the joint. Like Traci, Niska is a wlw- although her relationship with her girlfriend comes a little later on in the show. Unlike Traci, Niska is one of the main protagonists of the show, and undeniably one of the most important- she holds everyone’s fate in her hands more than once, she’s fascinating from an emotional point of view- her traumas are confronted in depth and not dismissed- and her actions are very often a driving force in the plot line. Her relationship with her girlfriend is developed on screen, and in many ways, arguably the most important in the entire show.

Max

I‘ve seen criticism of the revolution storyline in D:BH in that violent protest always nets you a bad ending, and in that the peaceful route is arguably too idealistic.I’d posit Max’s storyline (and the effects of his dynamics with Mia, Niska, etc.) as a more nuanced exploration of the issue. There’s characters pushing for both paths and they’re all portrayed as understandable, and their reasons for pushing either a peaceful or violent agenda are present and reasonable. As similar as he might seem to Markus at first glance, I’d argue Max, soft-spoken, brotherly, and empathetic, is a very different kind of leader, so I’m hesitant to compare them too much. But it’s interesting to see a character like this in such a high-pressure leadership role, and I’d argue that this is a less rose-tinted look at compassion in the face of oppression and violence.

Sam

I’m not going to mince words on D:BH’s Alice twist- to me, it felt inorganic and disappointing. I felt like the game withheld foreshadowing and intentionally misdirected the player to keep the reveal a surprise, and that really bothered me. However you feel about the Alice reveal, it’s undeniable that it is so late on in the game means that the whole idea of robo-kids being adopted into human families doesn’t really get explored in much depth. Humans gets more into the grit of this, discussing how a kid like this would be able to relate to kids and adults alike, what this strange form of “eternal youth,” would mean, etc. If that was an idea that interested you, you’ll get far more of it in Humans.

This really isn’t where the parallels stop- like I mentioned, we have a robot detective with a really close relationship with their human partner (hannor shippers, I’m looking right at you) we’ve got themes of domestic violence and abuse, we’ve got separated families, we’ve got art and morality- I can’t be here all day, but I’ll say it like this; if it’s explored in D:BH, it’s probably explored in Humans, too.

The Humans

D:BH is very much grounded in the perspective of androids- all the player characters are androids, as are the majority of the supporting cast- Hank is arguably the only human character that gets any real screen time, and one of the only real insights we get into how humans are coping with this new android-filled world. I think this is a shame, because the setting is a really interesting one, and a lot goes unexplored, or at least, unexplored in depth. It frankly feels kind of disingenuous to me to only see little of Markus’ impact beyond a number on the screen labeled “public opinion,” and this is something that I feel Humans deals with a lot better. One of Humans’ biggest strengths is, ironically, the humans in it- the viewer is grounded in this sweeping, overarching plotline primarily through the perspective of the Hawkins family, but ultimately other human characters play a lot of important roles as well. We’ve got synth/human romances, we’ve got humans passing as synths (yes, that IS Princess Shuri down there) we’ve got synths passing as humans, we’ve got humans campaigning for synth rights, we’ve got humans campaigning for synth extinction. Getting the human side of the story is really valuable and adds so much to the narrative as a whole, it makes the protagonists’ struggle more real and raises the stakes.

Frankly this post is a mess but if you made it this far, thanks for reading, and please watch Humans if you like this type of sci-fi. I promise it’s worth it.

#detroit: bh #d:bh connor #detroit: become human #c4 humans #amc humans #tv recommendations

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xtswifts · 5 years

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in all my years on tumblr, this is still one of my favorite gifs of tay in existence, so i shall use it now on my mega ooc appreciation post.

i am still on hiatus — it has been a ROUGH 36 hours my dudes — but i did want to drop in and post some ic/ooc appreciation things while this week is still here because i am all in the business of sharing the love. it’s one of the many reasons i absolutely adore this group. this group has always been about love, for me, and would probably be the singular word i’d use to describe my experience here.

i joined this lovely bunch back in july, i do believe? i had actually just finished up writing and self-publishing my third book which wound up being a behemoth (seriously it was a lot) and while i was absolutely and completely braindead when it came to writing, i still wanted to write. i’m a writer. that’s who i am and that’s who i’ll always be. i wanted something a lot more low-stakes, kind of go-with-the-flow, no real pressure and more collaborative than the isolating fun of novel-writing, so i turned back to roleplay. hollywood rps have always been my absolute favorites in the rpc for whatever reason; i have such fond memories in hollywood groups and it’s a fun and creative way for me to just project the love i have for my faves. after a few experiences in groups during late 2017 and early 2018 i was pretty sure that i was done with roleplay. it just wasn’t the same for me, no matter where i went. priorities had shifted and it was no longer about writing because you loved to write. but, me being ever the optimist, i decided to dive back into the tags and see what was still around or had recently popped up. i found this group and i saw that they had just had a taylor swift removed from the group, and hi hello nice to meet you i am taylor swift trash no. 1!!!, i felt like it was all Meant To Be or something like that (plus, she was taken in every other group and that’s who i really wanted to put a hand at writing). so i put in an app for her, got accepted, and i have been plaguing your dashes ever since :~))

in the four-ish months that i have been here, so much has happened in my life. i started my (outrageously stressful) junior year of college, i lost my grandma, i went to go see queen swift in atlanta and meet my baby princess camila, i have had major friend complications and doubts about my career track and i have had just really boring, empty days where everything was going seemingly okay. this group has been there for me through every high, low, and in between. this group has been my escape to run to when i’m stressed or up late at night and can’t sleep or just really looking to be social or want to write something. this group has been so welcoming, warm, and fun; i have had the opportunity to explore my character any which way that i please and form awesome plots with people, and even more awesome friendships ooc. some of you send really, really kind things my way which, fyi, i’m super grateful for and have probably cried over because this was the first time i not only felt welcomed in a group as taylor, but felt welcomed in a group as me. i am so grateful that i get to call this place my internet home and there is absolutely nowhere else i would rather be spending my free time writing. i stand by what i say: this is the best group in the tags, hands down. you could not ask for a more inclusive, diverse, welcoming, creative playground to spend your time on. to all the lovely admins over on main @hollywoodfamerp thank you for doing the heavy lifting and giving us a safe and warm place that we can call home. the work you do never goes unnoticed. you are appreciated and you are so, so loved. ♡

some ~personal~ shoutouts:

@nhxran — peyton, you are without a doubt one of my best friends both in this group and just in general. we had an immediate chemistry as writing partners from that very first starter reply and nothing about that has changed. you are the writing partner i always hoped i would find in a group due to how generous you are in every reply, the way you are willing to headcanon and brainstorm (even at the craziest of hours) and i still remain in awe of you as a roleplayer with the way you juggle such diverse characters, all of which have their prominent voices that never seem to overlap. you are the roleplayer i wish i could be. even though we might sometimes be ships in the night ic, ooc i know that you are always there and you always have my back, and i truly hope you know that the same goes for you. i love you, you intelligent, creative, witty, beautiful, heart-of-gold woman you. i would not have stayed in this group if i had not met you. you are one of my favorite people, period. thank you for being one of my dearest friends.

@cara-x-delevingne — mickey, the first person to ever pop into my ims and say hello (and you were FAST about it too, lol), you have been one of my favorite people to write with! the way you breathe a life into your characters is almost unparalleled to any writer, much less any writer in a hwood group. you have such a talent and not only that, you are funny and kind and inclusive and i am so glad that there are people like you (and you) still out there in this world. we need more people like you. thank you for one of the most epic friendships i’ve ever written in a group and always challenging me to step up to the plate and bring my a-game with taylor. you inspire me and i love you. never change.

@armiehmmer — graaaaace, the law to my swift! you were actually one of the reasons i joined this rp; before i joined i stalked a few blogs and as i have told you (and you have probably seen via my wildin’ ass on twitter) i love jen, so much. i saw how dedicated you were to your jen and how included she was, which i thought was amazing because like my girl t, some people just aren’t about. i figured if you could put in the effort and grind hard enough with her and get positive results, i could do the same for taylor. and here we both are, killin’ it. you are such a lovely person who has always been nothing but kind, i am still endlessly jealous you were in pasadena for rep tour but we’ll let it slide for now, lol. i love you, thank you for being the epitome of grace in this roleplay. you’re a pure light and the dash is dimmer without you on it.

@jstntimberfake — nicki, or should i say, GOD, i don’t know where to begin with you. you are the reason i almost took home a jt standup from 2nd and charles. i love everything that you do on both of your characters. you become them, they stand so far away from the person that you actually are and i think that is the testament of a true, talented writer: they are able to convince you that they’re someone else. and you do, every time. i’m just really, really happy that i get to say that i’m in the same rp group as you because it makes me feel like a Cool Kid on the playground who has light up sneakers. you are so cool and it sometimes lowkey intimidates me, how amazing and talented you are. thank you for always putting a smile on my face. love ya love ya

@itsscarjo — aria, my magnificent love. you are so well spoken and kind and as my clumsy twin, i have no choice but to love you dearly. it’s so nice to just have somebody to talk to sometimes and every time we’ve talked, it’s like being all bundled up in a warm fuzzy blanket. you are so easy to talk to and i cannot wait for the things you and i do on all of our people now that our lives have calmed the heck down and we can come on and write. thank you for being such a spectacular, inviting person. i had several other people sing your praises to me when you joined the group and i can wholeheartedly agree with them. you are one of a kind. big love

@aubreycplaza — marissa, i mcfreakin’ adore you. i’ll be honest, i have not had the best experiences with aubreys in the past but that all goes out the window with you. i’m obsessed with you and all of your people, and to know you and get to write with you is an absolute pleasure. thank you for being so much fun to write with, thank you for giving me so much quality stuff to stalk while i’m on the dash and feeling like trash, thank you for being so understanding of me constantly feeling like trash, i adore you. can’t wait for tay and aubrey to finally go on their fuckin girls trip and become little jetsetters together (forevaaaa)

@jamesrodriqez — hello stranger idk you but i think you’re pretty cool! and i think that you have been one of the most entertaining, fun people to write with in these last couple of weeks when i feel like i’m barely able to write two sentences that haven’t been written onto a powerpoint that i’m copying off of. you just give me so much excitement about writing and plotting and that excitement is something that can be difficult to find again after you’ve gotten comfortable in a group. thank you for keeping things refreshing and new for me and taylor. i’m excited to get back to all of our fun shenanigans (and to love on your new people bc yes amen) #jandrea forever

@jarpadking — nikki! first of all, i’m in awe at how fast you can come up with replies on TWO characters that are so well-crafted and authentic to that person’s voice. i struggle just writing a single coherent reply on taylor half the time, lmao. you are one of the hearts in this group, the way you make it an effort to branch out and talk to every single person and create connections with both the mun and the character. you’re one of the unsung heroes and if we could all be a little more you like you, we’d be the best roleplayers around. love you so much, my dear, and of course, thank you for being so warm and inclusive. people like you are rare

@itskeeoone — i have spent all day binging pll because that is how i choose to veg out and every time i see keegan on screen now, i think of you, em. you just write him so wonderfully and truthfully and i don’t ever want to let you go (please don’t ever leave this group or i’ll cry). taylor and keegan have given me all the life, they are very similar people and i’m happy that my 15 year old self’s dreams are coming true by their worlds colliding here in the group. i’m so excited to write even more with you now that the holidays are coming and i’ll actually, y’know, BE AROUND, but yes. love you.

@goddamnjade — lucy, you know anybody that is as big into the dance scene as i am HAS to get a spot on this appreciation post ;) but also, you have just been one of the loveliest people ever? i think you’re one of the hearts in this group, the reason that it is why it is and the reason that it’s so warm and welcoming. you are so inclusive and fun to write with and i really hope that i get to talk with you more ooc because i adore youuuu!

@yosebstan — rileyyyy, gotta admit, sometimes you intimidate me but it is only because you are an absolute fuckin’ legend in this group, and not just because of your admin status. your characters have something that a lot of people try hard to encompass but can’t ever capture, and that’s longevity. your characters never feel stale, they always feel new and fresh and like real people, not just tropes or over-concentrated personality traits and i get so excited every time i see one of your people on the dash. i’m lucky to be in a group with you, so so lucky. i sometimes hope your natural inclination for rp will rub off on me and make me a better writer. love you, and i really hope we get to do some fun stuff in the future!!

@jpgsasha — cami, you and i clicked so fast when we started replying to each other’s stuff back when you still had camila and i cannot WAIT to write with you as my honey sasha (seriously, a fuckin’ plus switch). we had some of the LONGEST replies on the dash at one point but when you’re inspired, you’re inspired! thank you for inspiring me and being one of the most down to earth people in this group. you deserve all the fuckin’ love. please love me so i can give it to you.

@avycias — katieeee!! it legit surprised me to find out how close we are to one another #hurricane watch friends, lol. you are so sweet and your alycia is absolutely legendary, i was biting at the bit to write with you from the minute i joined this group. i hope we get to do all of the things with taylor and alycia because writing with you makes me so happy. you are wildly talented and the way alycia comes to life every time you type something is magical. you write her with a conviction and you make her your own and i think that’s why i adore her so much. thank you for being you. love you much babes

@milesdominic — marie! miles and taylor had one of the cutest friendships ever and it needs to make a comeback asap, because 1) that, and 2) writing with you comes so naturally (*plays naturally by selena gomez and the scene*). i barely have to think about what i want to reply to you with because there’s a chemistry there that is hard to replicate; thank you for keeping me on my toes and my brain alert and being such a fun person to write with. you give me the chance to explore sides of taylor’s voice that other people look over and that i love, and that’s all anybody could ask in a writing partner, someone who allows them to run wild!

@blccmtroye — fiona, i fuckin’ love your troye. he is too much fun to interact with, and i am thankful that you gave this group a shot (and that you gave me a shot). i couldn’t imagine this place without the wit and the charm that you supply with every single post you make.

@flynnpls — marie, i’m just in love with all of your people and you. you’re one of the people i feel like i admire from afar because i stay in awe of the way you write and how effortless it seems to come to you. you balance all of these different personalities with finesse and i really do feel like i’m talking to or reading the words of the actual celebrity in every single reply. i am crossing my fingers that i get the opportunity to write some really incredible things with you here in the future because i have such mad respect for you.

+ to everyone else that i either forgot to mention, have not really formed connections with outside of replies or haven’t had the chance to talk to you/your babies due to my super fun hiatus: i stalk so many of you on the dash and keep up with your plots and where you take your characters and it really and truly is such a privilege to be in the same group as you. they say that birds of a feather flock together and if that’s the case, i am simply a reflection of all the things y’all are. kind, funny, clever, creative, welcoming, intelligent, and a part of something, and i could not ask for more. i love all of you, whether we’ve talked or not (believe me i probably stalk you and just love you from afar) and any time you ever need a friend, call me beep meeeeee. i’m always game to do things with taylor and explore her more through whatever plots or connections we could create, and i promise that if i don’t respond to an im, it’s because i’m off on hiatus or it got eaten. i want to do ALL the things with ALL of you. come hit me up! let me love you! k thanks!!!

obligatory thank you note to my queen taylor alison for existing. love u bitch.

xx, caroline

#hfrpappreciation #♚ ; tswift and tpain.#i spent 2 hours typing this so if you'll excuse me i'm off to get food and start throwing shit in a suitcase since i'm leaving tomorrow at 7 #yay for early mornings #said no one ever

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lingthusiasm · 7 years

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Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 10: Learning languages linguistically

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 10: Learning languages linguistically. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 10 shownotes page.

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Gretchen McCulloch,

Lauren: and I'm Lauren Gawne, and today we'll be talking about how learning a language is a way of giving yourself great linguistic skills. But first, Gretchen, you sound amazing!

Gretchen: Thank you! You're hearing me on this new microphone, actually a recorder, which is thanks to our lovely patrons who have enabled us to buy this microphone. Lauren, how is it that you always sounded so good?

Lauren: It wasn't just sheer, natural magic, it's because I have been using, since the beginning of the podcast, an audio recorder called a Zoom H4N, which -- the H4N Zoom have a slightly newer model as well, but these recorders are kind of linguist-famous for being reliable, solid recorders, especially for doing things like fieldwork, so I've had one for quite a few years to do my linguistic fieldwork with, so if you listen to any of my recordings from Yolmo or Syuba or any of those in the archives that I have, they're made on this very same recorder and so that's why I've always been able to sound good without us needing any budget for that. But now we're twinsies, and you have a Zoom H4N as well.

Gretchen: So now I have a matching one. They're friends.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: They haven't met yet, but that's okay, they're going to meet in audio heaven, so that we will sound the same audiowise and so that I can learn how to use it from Lauren and we're going to sound really good, so that's exciting!

Lauren: Yeah, and a big thanks to our patrons for that.

Gretchen: Yeah! And it is thanks to people on Patreon that we were able to make this possible and keep doing that, so that is really exciting. Also, they get to listen to bonus episodes and this month's bonus episode is about hypercorrection.

Lauren: Bonus episodes will also sound amazing because they're all on the shiny new recorder as well.

Gretchen: Yes!

Lauren: As you said, our current one is hypercorrection, but we also have a whole bunch of other bonus content and you can get all of it if you become a monthly supporter of the show.

Gretchen: On patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website/social media. And by the time you're listening to this, I will also be in Kentucky at the Linguistics Summer Institute, or Lingstitute as we like to call it, and we are recording this in advance because we're organised like that, but that will be having lots of stuff going on.

Lauren: 'Cause you're going to be a bit busy.

Gretchen: Ha, I'm going to be really busy -- that'll have lots of stuff going on on the Lingstitute hashtag, which we can link to, and as well my class at the Institute -- I'm going to be teaching a class on linguistics communication, linguistics outreach, how to be better at explaining linguistics and bringing linguistics to more people -- and so we're going to be using the hashtag LingComm, that's LingComm with two Ms as in communication --

Lauren: Awesome.

Gretchen: -- and so you can follow those as well if you want to follow along with the class and see what we've been up to.

Lauren: I will definitely be doing that.

Gretchen: Lauren is going to be, like, co-teaching the class from afar, she doesn't know it yet, but she's going to be like, "Hey, go support my students!" [Music]

Lauren: So, Gretchen, you're a linguist. How many languages do you speak?

Gretchen: That's a good question! That is a question that a lot of linguists get, a lot of the time.

Lauren: It's a question that a lot of linguists get -- it's a little bit annoying because it misrepresents the idea that linguistics is just about learning lots of languages, but independent of being a linguist, you'll find that people who study how language works are often interested in learning other languages as a way of kind of getting an understanding of how they work.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I think for me, because -- at least personally, the way I got into linguistics was in high school, I came across pop linguistics books and stuff like this, and I was like, "Wow, this is so cool, I want to do this when I get to university." But I knew that I couldn't do it in high school, there's no high school linguistics course that I could take then -- they're still very rare in high schools -- and so I said to myself, "Well, I know it's not quite the same as language learning, but I'm going to at least enrol in all of the language classes that I can because I'm sure it won't do any harm. And, you know, I could be learning about cell biology or something, or I could learn more languages and I think the language would be more useful," and I think they were for me. I mean, cell biology's fine if you're into it, but like...

Lauren: So what languages do you have experience of learning?

Gretchen: So, I started learning French in grade four when I was in school, because that's the latest age you can learn French in for Canadian schools. It would have been nice to learn it earlier, but that wasn't offered. And then I did a Scottish Gaelic summer camp when I was like 10 or 12 or something? I went to Cape Breton and I spent a week learning Scottish Gaelic. Everyone else was there to learn, like, fiddle and step dancing and stuff and I was like, "I'm just going to take all the language ones." I don't remember a whole lot of that, except for the fact that they put the verbs at the beginning of the sentences, which is really neat, and I have a couple songs memorised from that, so that's fun. So I can occasionally sometimes do something with a song. But I didn't really know much about grammar except what I'd learned from French at that point, so I didn't have a lot to hold on to there.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: I also mostly self-studied Latin in grade 10, because again, I was interested in linguistics, and at that point in my mind, linguistics and Classics overlapped a lot, and the history of grammatical descriptions of English is very bound up in Latin. So I was like, clearly, this is the thing I need to do. So I got myself a Latin textbook and worked through all the exercises.

Lauren: Of course! This is a very good insight into how Gretchen's brain works there.

Gretchen: And then in grade 11 I convinced my guidance counselor against his better judgment to let me take both Intro Spanish and Intro German and continue my French --

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: -- because I was like, "Look, I'm not picking between these."

Lauren: That's a lot of language.

Gretchen: That was a really interesting experience, because one day, I remember, in German class we did numbers and then I went to math, and then in Spanish class an hour later we were doing numbers and I was like, "I can't... handle this..."

Lauren: Right, yeah, challenging.

Gretchen: But it really taught my brain. I really convinced my brain that there was more than one other language than French.

Lauren: Yup.

Gretchen: 'Cause this is a problem a lot of people run into you when you're learning another language is that you're like, "Okay, I have my native language and then I have, like, every other language" and they just blend into each other too much."

Lauren: Ah, that is how my brain is organised, definitely.

Gretchen: I have to say, if you really want to convince your brain that there are multiple languages, learning them all in parallel is one way to get that. It's not pretty at the time, but it has been very persistent! Yeah, so then in undergrad I was trying to do about one new language a year for about eight years or so. So in undergrad I took Ancient Greek for a year and then I was like, "I'm doing too many European languages this is ridiculous," and so then the next year I took Arabic. I took that for two years and then wrote my honours thesis about Arabic.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: And then I did a field methods class on Kinyarwanda, which is a Bantu language spoken in Rwanda. And that was really interesting, but I learned more about that from kind of the linguistic side than from the conversational side.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: I only remember a few words. And then I took Italian just for fun, because I needed to fill an elective.

Lauren: You needed to fill in your romance paradigm.

Gretchen: Yeah, I needed -- I was like, I feel really incomplete in the romance languages! I still have never learned Portuguese and I don't know if it would be a good use of time, but there's a part of me that wants to, just to fill it in. Yeah! And then I got to grad school, and then in grad school I did a field methods class in the first semester on Mi'kmaq, which is an Algonquian language located in Eastern Canada, and then I kept on working with that language and the language teaching classes and stuff for the rest of my degree and for my thesis. So yeah, that was kind of when I stopped learning a new language every year.

Lauren: Fair enough!

Gretchen: But I had a really good run of it!

Lauren: Yeah!

Gretchen: And the European languages got easier and easier as I kept learning more of them. The non-European languages were each their own unique challenge, as far as the grammar went.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Yeah, so I have a pretty extensive language learning history and I definitely don't remember all of these, so obviously the question of "What do you know, what do you speak, what do you learn?" is always one that comes up when you're talking about speaking lots of languages. But I did spend a lot of time in language classes.

Lauren: Yeah, fair enough.

Gretchen: What about you? You speak some languages.

Lauren: I kind of lumped my language learning into three different phases of my life. So, the first exposure I had to language learning was in primary school. My primary school taught Italian, but by "taught Italian" I mean in this very Australian -- Australia is, like, upsettingly proud of its monolingual educational focus, I think, so a lot of schools do some amount of language learning, but there's no real understanding, or nothing imparts to students why you might be learning this or why it might be interesting to care about another culture or a language, and so I learnt lots of random Italian vocabulary and some songs in primary school and at the start of high school. And then when I changed schools halfway through high school, no one felt at all compelled to encourage me to keep going with Italian or to take up one of the languages at that school, and I didn't really understand the idea of learning languages. Everyone in my family day-to-day spoke English, everyone in my social life day-to-day spoke English, and other countries and languages just seemed really far away. So that was kind of my early, underwhelming language exposure. Does mean I can navigate an Italian menu quite well sometimes, but not much more.

Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, I guess for me in Canada, the French thing was, "Well, you should stay in French because it'll help you get a job later." Because if you want to work in tourism, or if you want to work for the government, it's useful to be able to speak French. So it was very kind of, like, mercenary-focused around learning the language.

Lauren: And also being in Canada, like, even if you're in an English-speaking province, you're exposed to this idea that French is a language in the wild, like it's on your groceries when you buy them and it's in the news --

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: -- kind of thing.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: So then after high school, I went to live in Poland for a year and that was interesting, because my grandmother's Polish and it's her first language and so I was interested in kind of reconnecting with that and also kind of just living somewhere different and doing something different. And that's my period of, like, understanding the motivation for language learning, but it was before I'd done linguistics or really had any good role models for language learning and so I became pretty competent, but I missed out on a lot of things that are kind of considered good practice for becoming a strong second language learner. So I was having some lessons, but I wasn't always good at kind of encouraging myself to speak to people in certain contexts, and so I really enjoyed doing that, but when I got to Australia there weren't many opportunities to continue that. And for some reason I think I was so annoyed about that when I started university that I never took up a language course.

Gretchen: I took, like, all the languages, I was like, "Oh, I can finally take other languages!"

Lauren: I really don't understand what 19-year-old Lauren was thinking, but I'm really thankful that she took linguistics, because obviously I've been pretty enthusiastic about it ever since. And that kind of led to my third era of language learning, which has been kind of understanding, like, post- studying linguistics, understanding my own motivations and practices and behaviours in language learning, and since then I've learnt Nepali, which I use in kind of day-to-day interactions when I'm on fieldwork, and Nepali is great because it's an Indo-Aryan language, so it's part of this larger Indo-European family, so it's not too hard for me to get my head around in terms of the structure, but it does some really cool, nifty things with the grammar. And I've also learnt -- to varying degrees, not as well -- a couple of different Tibetan dialects that I've worked with. I would say my competency there is more what we call passive competency in linguistics. So, I can understand a lot of things that are said to me, I often can't reply that speedily or I end up just falling back on Nepali. And then I've also been learning some Auslan at various points while in Australia, which is the Australian sign language. It's related to British Sign and New Zealand Sign Language, and now that I've moved back to Australia I'm really looking forward to getting back into Auslan. And that's been really great because it's completely unrelated to my study, I just really enjoy it. So that's kind of a whirlwind tour of my --

Gretchen: And it's related to your research in the sense that you do gesture, and so having a better understanding of sign probably helps you with gesture research? I don't know, I'm making this up.

Lauren: It helps with my gesture research, but, you know, I think as a linguist I can kind of make the excuse that any language learning is helpful for my job to some degree, but I also just love Auslan and learning a sign language is a really fun change from spoken language to a sign language is quite good for my brain, and it does get less chatted up with all the random bits of Italian and, you know, café French.

Gretchen: I never had the opportunity to learn sign language, although I'm sure I could find lessons now. If I was going to learn another language it might be either ASL or LSQ, which is Langue des Signes Québécoise, and I'm not quite sure what the relative linguistic situation there is about, which one is spoken more in Montreal, but yeah. I knew a linguist who could speak Mayan and was learning ASL and was like, "My brain is trying to do Mayan structures in ASL and it's the weirdest thing."

Lauren: Oh, that's great, that's so good.

Gretchen: Yeah! So, I don't know if that happens everybody, but I guess some people do get that kind of cross-modal transfer. For me, the question of, okay, how many languages do you speak is, I can answer that, but I feel like I'm kind of letting down the team in that case because I don't speak a lot of them terribly well, and I think for me one of the things that changed was when I started learning non-European languages, I mean the grammar was very different, but also the kind of cultural context that you come into learning those is a lot different. So, you know, as an English speaker, learning French, particularly in Canada where they're both official languages and so on, that's very different from being either an English- or French-speaker in Canada learning a Canadian indigenous language where, you know, indigenous languages aren't on the cereal boxes.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Where they aren't being taught in schools from a very young age the way English and French are.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So I think becoming more aware of kind of the colonial context in which language learning and denying people the opportunity to learn their language is a bigger issue that I became more aware of.

Lauren: I grew up in Australia on Bunurong country and that is a language that is now taught in some primary schools around that area, which makes me so happy and I wish that was a thing that happened when I was a kid. There is a lot of complexity around, you know, language ownership, especially in the Australian context -- who is allowed to learn a language and which parts of a language -- it doesn't operate the same as, say, English or French or Italian where you can hand someone a textbook and they kind of have the right to speak the whole language. So there's an imbalance there, and there's also just -- same in Australia as in Canada -- that historical imbalance of who is expected to learn whose language.

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly, and if you say, like, okay, well, my ancestors are the ones that were preventing their ancestors from learning the language in the first place and now I want to come in and I've decided it's cool, like, that's a weird position to be in.

Lauren: And there's also a bit of a problem in Australia with heritage languages. So as I mentioned, my grandmother is a native Polish speaker and out of all of my aunts and uncles and my cousins, I'm the only one who speaks or, more likely, spoke that language with her to any kind of degree of competency, because in Australia there's this erasure, often, of people's migrant languages and their linguistic experience. And she was told to never speak Polish, or, she's also a fluent German speaker, and was told to not speak either of those to her own children because it would interfere with their English. And those attitudes are kind of changing...

Gretchen: Yeah, I think it's the same here, though a lot of people, at least -- I'm not sure so much about people who came over in like the '60s -- you get this kind of generation that immigrates, speaks their language, they learn English, and then their kids grow up and they're kind of more or less bilingual, and then the grandkids only really speak the dominant language.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Depending on the community, some of them try to retain their heritage language more -- they'll send their kids to Chinese school or Hebrew school or something on the weekends to try to have them retain that connection to their heritage language, and some of them don't have access to those schools, or don't feel the pressure to do that, so it depends on the community, but there's a lot of language loss. And I think that's something else that doesn't come up so much in language classes, is there's this sense when you go into a language class that you walk in and then you're starting with zero knowledge and you're going to have the knowledge, like, spooned into you the way that when you walk into a math class, you don't know any math, or when you walk into a science class you don't know what a cell is and you just have to get that told to you and then you know.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Whereas for kids that are coming from a heritage language context, they may know some stuff, and there may also be a lot more guilt about not knowing this stuff, or feeling like you should already know it, which you don't get so much, like, I didn't run into that learning French or something.

Lauren: And there's also a kind of prestige thing about learning certain languages as certain communities, and so a lot of English-dominant or English-monolingual parents might see a lot of prestige in sending their child to a bilingual English-French school because French bilingualism has this prestige status, but then we have these children who come in who are amazing bilinguals in, say, Vietnamese and English, or, in Australia we have a lot of indigenous children who are Kriol speakers, so that's a language that has a lot of English words that have created it, but it is its own language, or they speak a variety that's called Aboriginal Australian English. So they speak these varieties and then they come into school and they're in a similar position where they're bilingual or they're trying to become English speakers as well as Kriol speakers. Even though there are, you know, many cognitive benefits that people discuss in relation to multilingualism, there's not the social prestige and there's a lot of issues with getting people to accept that these children need additional support to move towards being full bilinguals and so that kind of thing, when you're kind of just signing up for your undergraduate Spanish class or you're taking Japanese or Arabic or some of the global languages, you can often not be aware that there's a lot of social prestige and a lot of good fortune to just be able to do that.

Gretchen: And I think also that our expectations are different when it comes to rolling up to a college-level language class and spending a couple semesters learning Japanese or Spanish or something, like, "Oh, now I kind of speak this!" And you can -- you know, you passed the test but if you go there you can barely do greetings. Whereas, if you have someone who speaks a different first language at home coming into an English-dominated school environment, that's gonna be a very different situation because they're now going to be expected to function at the same level as these kids that have all of this English at home as well. It's not just like, "Oh, I can say a few greetings and read menus and signs now and now I speak this language," it's -- you're not functioning completely 100% like a native English speaker, like you're doing something wrong, and like who we value bilingualism coming from.

Lauren: Yeah, and also what the motivation for people to learn a language is. So for a lot of people, to learn English is increasingly considered a kind of economic necessity to move forward in life. Like, when I was in Nepal, for me, learning Nepali was a great way to connect with people, it's a way to allow me to do my job, but no one is forcing me to learn Nepali in my family to improve my economic outlook or allow me to work overseas, whereas a lot of my friends are really struggling to learn English and and feel like they are obliged to learn English to have a more secure economic future and that's, like, it's such a gulf in expectations. And you know, if I didn't speak Nepali I would probably still get by day to day in Nepal because so many people can accommodate my linguistic needs and so many people there speak an amount of English now to get by day to day, and they're massively different motivations.

Gretchen: And something else that you run into, I think, in English-speaking areas is that, like, English is a lingua franca, so even people who don't speak the same first language, they all speak English as a second language. And in those contexts, sometimes the native English speakers can be the ones that speak too quickly or use too many idioms or aren't paying attention to doing the comprehension checks that you do if something's your second language, and so you have a kind of global English and you have a kind of too quick English, or too nativised English as well in some of those contexts.

Lauren: Yeah, I think -- and this is something you have a post on, about learning second languages -- like, learning other languages has made me far more tolerant and understanding of people who have different levels of English speaking.

Gretchen: For me, being able to say, oh, okay, so this person's English is around the level of my French, which makes me able to say -- I'll only say things in English to this person that I could say in French.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Or this person's English is around the level of my Spanish. My Spanish is much worse than my French, so now I'll only say things in English that I could say in Spanish.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And to be able to kind of put myself in the shoes of what do I find useful if someone's trying to do a comprehension check with me, you know, it's not just a matter of talking louder, but sometimes it's a matter of articulating a little bit more clearly, or a matter of saying something two or three times in the same sort of way. Yeah, figuring out, like, what do I appreciate when someone is doing for me in a second language and how can I do that if I'm talking to someone who's less fluent in English, I think is one thing -- I think another thing that comes up for me with second language speaking is there's a big rupture between the classroom experience of learning a language and the real-life experience of speaking a language that you're less fluent in.

Lauren: Oh my gosh, so much.

Gretchen: Let's pause it and think about how big that it is, right. Like, there's a lot there. And you can be, like, a straight-A student in your language classroom, or you can get all of the -- check off all of the things on Duolingo or Rosetta Stone or one of those, and tick all the boxes and yet when it comes to speaking, you're like, "Uhhh..."

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Or you don't even want to let on that you do speak any of the language because it's so terrifying.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: How have you dealt with this?

Lauren: Well, I consider myself pretty articulate in English and I've just kind of had to accept that I'm a different person in Nepali because I just don't have the same linguistic repertoire that I have in my native language, and so in Nepali I'm a very quiet person, I do a lot of listening and I make really bad jokes about my poor language to kind of offset the fact that my language is really poor.

Gretchen: Yeah, yeah, you become kind of more willing to laugh at yourself.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: To compensate. I think for me, yeah, I'm less verbally dexterous in French; I'm pretty fluent in the sense of doing stuff, but it's harder for me to make just kind of idle small talk.

Lauren: Yup.

Gretchen: Like, beyond one or two stock -- I have one or two stock things, but if I'm trying to make casual conversation about something, I don't always have those words, so maybe that's just not a kind of conversation that I'm currently able to have in French.

Lauren: So I think the big difference for me between learning Polish and learning Nepali is that I just -- even though my Nepali was atrocious when I first turned up in the country, I made a point, even with people who spoke English, to make our day-to-day social interactions in Nepali. And it was horrific for everyone and it was exhausting for the first little bit, but in a way I've benefited because there were all these relationships that I now have that I had so much more Nepali practice, whereas in Polish, because my language was really poor when I arrived, a lot of my initial relationships and friendships that I set up were in English and that kind of set the tone for those. So I've learnt to use that doggedness about just kind of sticking with it even though I've only got like three sentences' worth of interaction to have, but it is really exhausting. And it's the benefit of being in the country.

Gretchen: Yeah, I found this -- so I live in Montreal and when I moved here, I had, my whole life, this cautionary tale that my mom and my uncle had both learned some French in school and then they had tried to improve it when they were around university age, and my mom had gone to some sort of -- to a camp thing where they were only allowed to speak French and they had to sign a contract that said they'd get kicked out if they spoke any English, and --

Lauren: A contract!

Gretchen: Yeah! This is how you create this social pressure. This is not uncommon in language learning camps, actually, is that you signed yourself up for this contract.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: And my uncle instead had gone to Montreal where over half the population is bilingual.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And at the end of their respective summers, my mom's French was quite good and my uncle's French had not improved at all, really, because he just spoke English with everybody.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Because he didn't have to do it. And so I said to myself, well, I'm moving to Montreal, I'm not going to be like my uncle -- lovely guy, but I'm not going to do this thing. I'm going to decide that the city speaks French to me, that even when people try to switch into English, I don't have to accept that. The analogy I like to use is that somebody trying to switch into English on you is like them trying to pick up the check.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: It's a very nice thing for them to do, but you don't always want to be in the situation where other people are picking up the check for you.

Lauren: Yup.

Gretchen: And once you realise that you can sometimes pick up the check, it gives you this tremendous feeling of power and altruism to be like, "I am so magnanimous and I am paying for this now!"

Lauren: So smugness is one of your secret language learning powers.

Gretchen: Yeah, be more smug to speak better, to learn language better.

Lauren: Yeah, fair enough.

Gretchen: So, you know ,if you're in a context where -- like a service-type interaction where you're in a store or restaurant or something, and someone says -- in Montreal it's very common to hear "Bonjour hi," and what they're trying to do is say, "Pick a language so I can speak to you in it."

Lauren: Right, yeah.

Gretchen: And because it's pretty much impossible to get a job in downtown Montreal if you're not bilingual in English and French.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: And so, saying, okay, like, most people, what they want in that situation is they want to be able to speak their first language. And I know this because I worked at a museum for a couple summers and I was one of the designated bilingual staff members, and when I could find a tourist who was speaking French and I could speak French to them, you could just see this relief wash over them in waves. It was beautiful. And the nice thing about, you know, particularly if I'm going to the grocery store or whatever, is you have lots of microinteractions where it's just a couple sentences. And so even if you end up in English for one of them, you can do French the next time and it's okay.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So you have a lot of kind of micro- practice. And so I think, you know, they say that speaking a second language improves your executive functioning, or your --

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: -- you know, that kind of quick-wittedness and self-control and these kinds of things, and I think one of it is it gives you this practice in being very persistent and putting yourself in situations where you're uncomfortable and working through that, and I think that's one of the places where that benefit is really apparent.

Lauren: It's definitely given me this ability to be, like, having a very basic conversation using one half of my brain and the other half of my brain going, "Okay, what's next? What's next?" Have we got words, have we got words? What are the words? What've we got? What can I talk about next?! Um, um, um..." And I find that knowing that my brain can do those two things and I can look relatively chill while doing that has definitely helped my English public speaking. Like, I know when I lecture now, my brain is kind of doing the same thing and I'm like, well that's okay, it's just running that parallel process and it's fine, and others keep saying sentences in this really like methodical one word after the other kind of way and so, yeah, I think it does -- it helps with that level of executive functioning.

Gretchen: I think it's also taught me more about how conversations are structured. And this is something I never got in the language classroom, but how to talk around something that you don't have the word for so that the other person can supply the word for you?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So, like, if I want to buy a zipper or something in Montreal, I don't know the French word for zipper, but I can talk around, like, "Oh yeah, I need this thing," and point to one and they'll be like, "Oh, of course, un zipper," or whatever it is. And then I'm like, "Yes, obviously, I clearly knew this word, I just chose not to say it right now until you did, obviously."

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And, you know, being able to use words like "this thing" or "that thing" or point to stuff or indefinite types of words, I think we spend a lot of time trying to get vocabulary lists of concrete nouns into people's heads when you can't learn all of the nouns. You need to learn how to learn nouns in context the way speakers do. You know, as a child you don't go memorise a vocabulary list of what all possible things you can put on a pizza are, you just pick them up as people are pointing to them and stuff like that.

Lauren: Yeah, definitely. I think also the difference in my language learning now is that I have moved through language and interactions and language a bit more with my linguist brain on, and so becoming more competent in the language involves more than -- like, when I was learning Polish or even Italian as a kid, it was all about learning the words and what order they go in and those kind of early language learning experiences, whereas now I pay a lot more attention to things that happen in social interactions. So how if interrupting someone is an okay thing to do or if people kind of leave a lot of silence. So in a lot of my social interactions in Nepal, people are very happy to leave long silences and I think when I was starting to learn Nepali and a couple of other languages of Nepal, I was always like, "Okay, okay, what do I say next? What do I say next? There's a silence, I have to say a thing, I have to ask a question, isn't that how it works?" And now I know the social rhythm of interactions allows for a lot more, like, "I want to sit here for a bit and then one of us can think of a thing to say, that's okay."

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: Also politeness. So, like, who to be polite to and who you can be informal with. So for example, in Nepali you have different verb politeness registers for, like, a more honorific one if you're talking to someone who's more senior than you, and a much more informal one for friends, and an even more informal one that is, like, it would be so rude for me to learn it in a Nepali context that I've just never bothered to because that makes that easier. And at the start, learning who to say those things to -- and now, like, I know with some of the younger kids I know I'll occasionally use those more honorific ones if I want to be like, "Oh, I'm treating you as an adult now," like, "You're growing up," or if I want to bring someone in a bit more conspiratorially, I'll use the informal one -- and so knowing how to navigate those social features of the language, not just conjugating the verbs for those.

Gretchen: I think being able to say, like, having more tolerance for yourself on saying, if I'm going to make these mistakes, that's very interesting because this is what it tells us about my language capacity right now. Or I'm interested in what I'm doing, but I'm not as -- there's a sense of okay, well, you should just be able to acquire a language and now it's done and you've got it and you totally speak it, and that's not a thing that you end up at, but where do I have intuitions about this and where do I not have intuitions about this.

Lauren: There's a whole field of second language acquisition in linguistics that just looks at how people go about learning their second language and I remember taking that class as an undergraduate and just being really relieved to know things that we know are pretty common facts about language acquisition, like there's often a very rapid acceleration and then a plateau in learning. So moving from being an intermediate competent to an advanced speaker involves a lot more work for visible improvement.

Gretchen: Yeah, something that was very interesting for me to learn in second language acquisition classrooms was that we have this sense that, oh, you need to start learning a language as a baby because otherwise you're going to be doomed and you're always going to, you know, it's always going to be hard for you. But there are actually some domains where adults have an advantage or older speakers, older children even, have an advantage. And so children tend to be better at the phonology side, so they're going to learn the sounds, the subtle distinctions, because that's all they're being exposed to and they have that capability. But it takes a long time for kids to learn a significant amount of vocabulary or grammar. Like, if you think about a baby, right, a baby gets exposed to a language. And as many hours in a day as it's awake, for a whole year, generally, before it even says a single word. Like if you gave an adult that kind of exposure, if you had them literally only being exposed to that language and you're like, "Yeah, we don't really expect me to talk for a whole year," that's just not what our expectations are when it comes to adults. And the fact that an adult can walk out of an hour-long class and have half a dozen words that they pretty much know, even if they have forgotten half of them by next week, that's still six words that they've learned, and the baby takes like a year and a half to learn that.

Lauren: Six words up on the baby! And the other thing is that, like, I'm learning a language around having a full-time job and hobbies, whereas a child is literally doing nothing besides being fed, put to bed, hanging out listening to language, and they don't even have to speak.

Gretchen: They're not doing nothing but learning the language! You gotta learn to sit up at some point in there, too, that's pretty difficult.

Lauren: Yup.

Gretchen: But I mean, you've also got to learn a lot of stuff as a baby, like the fact that you have a mouth and that words exist and that language is possible. Like, these are things that adults don't have to learn.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And adults have these tremendous advantages -- you don't necessarily want to be doing all of your language learning by writing stuff down because that's one of the ways that people get very dependent on a paper and not very confident about talking -- but as an adult you do have the ability to write stuff down and go study it and, you know, spend an hour of focused practice on a bunch of words and then remember them next week. And the kids don't do that kind of focus practice, already knowing how to read and write in one language makes it easier to learn it again, so there are certain advantages. So adults learn, like, vocabulary and syntax a lot quicker than babies do, even if you end up still having an accent. Also, in addition to that kind of first year where you don't expect kids to be able to do anything, there's also the later period of if you have a three-year-old who's fluent in English or whatever language, you don't expect a three-year-old to be able to do a whole lot. You don't expect them to be able to negotiate business deals or follow complex instructions or, like, write novels. There's a lot you don't expect a three-year-old or a five-year-old or even like an eight- or ten-year-old to be able to do. You don't expect ten-year-olds to know contract law.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Whereas if you're an adult and you're learning a language for business purposes, you often want to be able to go directly into a business context or directly into complex social environments, like, we don't expect kids to be particularly good diplomats in a social context where you have to keep secrets and stuff. So our expectations are a lot higher as adults.

Lauren: Good work adults, you just have a pat on the back.

Gretchen: Yeah, adults: underrated language learners.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Even though it's difficult, and spending, like, three or four hours a week on it, which is considered a pretty good amount for a language class, is not very much at all compared to what a kid gets. I think there's a general idea that if you are really serious about being a language learner, you don't just go to class for three hours and figure you'll get it eventually. Like, people do watch movies and listen to books on tape and give themselves a whole bunch of extra exposure and stuff as well, but that's considered like a kind of high-intensity language learning thing.

Lauren: And I think it's okay if you get as far as learning how to order a coffee in Italian or you get as far as being able to make small talk with your friends in Swahili. If that's your aim, then that's great. We're not saying that you have to start a language and you have to become completely fluent in it, but knowing what social aspirations you have for the language you're learning and being aware that it's the language that exists in a culture and it has things like its own way of making jokes and being polite and having conversations definitely help you get the most out of your language learning experience.

Gretchen: It's also worth pointing out that there are different levels of resources available for language learning, like we're used to the idea that any language is going to have bilingual dictionaries or online resources or TV shows and this kind of thing in that language, and that's not something that exists for all languages either. So, you know, which languages you even can learn is something that also comes up.

Lauren: It comes back to that economic access and prestige thing that we talked about at the start and I think that's one thing to also think about when you're deciding to embark on language learning is the fact that some languages are more accessible.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on iTunes, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can follow Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: And I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter and my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, and help keep the show ad-free and sustainable, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or follow the links from our website, lingthusiasm.com. Current bonus topics include hypercorrection as well as the behind-the-scenes story of doggo-speak, how to explain linguistics to employers, how to teach yourself linguistics, and swearing. And you could help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. Can't afford a pledge? That's okay too. We also really appreciate if you can rate us on iTunes or recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our producer is Claire and our music is by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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spiritionary · 7 years

Text

Divination Deck Spirit Experiences

The mods of Spiritionary as well as others we’ve spoken to have noticed spirits in many of our divination decks whether tarot or oracle. Each seems to be unique and in many cases completely sentient, and it not only varies from type of deck but deck to deck as well, each specific deck having its own spirit. It’s quite common for cartomancers (diviners who use card decks) to describe their deck’s personalities. Even doing an “interview spread” to communicate with a tarot or oracle deck itself is a standard practice for a lot of diviners when they get a new divination deck.

Yet despite how normal it is in the world of divination to speak of deck interviews and personalities, divination is usually considered a totally separate and distinct practice from spirit work. So acknowledging that most or perhaps even all divination decks have their own spirits has important implications for the potential overlap between spirit work and cartomancy divination (if not other forms of divination as well). At the very least, divination can always be used as a tool for communicating with spirits and the relationship between cartomancy and spirit work is very strong in that sense!

Here we’ve gathered some personal stories from 14 diviners about individual tarot and oracle deck experiences collected by Mods Wind and Fire...

Idris’ Shadowscapes Tarot Deck

"My Shadowscapes Tarot deck is very sassy but not it a bad way. She tells it like it is and makes you face hard truths. With me she is always particularly harsh and throws out lots of major arcana. With others she isn't too bad, but she still is blunt in her messages. She cuts to the chase." - Idris, @crystalwitch-in-the-tardis

Periwinkle’s Hawaiian Mana Card Oracle Deck

"I have a Hawaiian Mana Card Oracle deck and every time I use it, it feels as if I'm consulting a wise grandmother ancestor figure because she's very perceptive to everything (especially BS), and will give it to you straight, but with the utmost love and respect. She only wants the best for the readee, so any hard-to-swallow words are immediately followed by words of compassion and love for your true, vulnerable self." - Periwinkle, @destinylightreadings

Siris’ Chrysalis Tarot and House of Night Oracle Deck

"I have two decks I mainly use: Chrysalis Tarot and House of Night Oracle. The Chrysalis Tarot is very happy self-help yet doesn’t exactly explore the downsides. It’s more good advice and what you can do to address a problem so very practical. Comes off like a school guidance counselor. House of Night has more a motherly tone. Where it looks out for you yet win tough love. Likes to tell you the good and bad of a problem and give their opinion of how to proceed yet it’s ultimately up to you." - Siris, @path-of-stars

Subterranean Roses’ Steampunk Tarot Deck

"My steampunk tarot appears as a young woman in steampunk garb. She's actually fairly nice, like a supportive friend who sometimes is blunt because you need to hear it but not really in a sassy way. I'm pretty sure the spirit looks like one of the characters on the cards, but I haven't figured out which." - @subterraneanroses

Kuro’s Tarot Deck

“Mine can be sarcastic, and is usually pretty straight forward. I do have to store it with a little salt, because I have had problems with it being possessed in the past.” - Kuro, @ladykuro

Lala’s Oracle Deck

“My oracle deck. I love it to pieces. I didn't pick out my self but I did buy it. It is very good telling when to stop shuffling. Like it would be very hard to shuffle if I need to stop. It is very guiding and accurate. It tells advice in a practical and loving way. I didn't pick it. Someone else did. But it has this very distinct smell that no matters what doesn't go away. I am big on smells. It just feels like home. And comfortable. And just everything I need.” - Lala, @ursalala

Titan’s Tarot Deck

“My deck is pretty call out and harsh, but always has this little gentle, motherly tone. Like "Face your problems and get your life together omg but it'll be okay bb." It's stern but kind. I also conceptualize my deck as female.” - Titan, @a-spoonful-of-magic

Ismerila’s Tarot Deck

"For some reason, my deck reacts differently for me when around other people, and I really, really believe that it's trying to help me. Like with my nana, we shared doing readings together and it really laid out what she's going through and what she needs to do to change her life for the better, and when it got to me, the cards kept saying, ''Hey. I know you feel miserable.'' And the more cards that I drew that said ''you feel down.'' the more nana was like, ''uh.... u good?'' When I'm alone it offers advice, but when I'm around my family it's like ''HEY PAY ATTENTION LOOK SHE FEELS BAD HELP HER GENIUS.'' - Ismerila, @natasatcha

Amy’s Tarot Deck

“I've had my deck for almost three years... I truly believe my deck and I have a strong connection. Actually the first time I really connected with my deck I was going through a really hard time and it's like she (for some reason my deck really feels like a female presence) laid it all out for me and that's when I really started to get close to my deck. When I'm feeling confused or just need clarity in a situation I always find reassurance and answers with her. Also, it's nice just to spend some time with my deck. I feel more protected and secure when I do this... in my opinion in feels like something has my back and will tell me what's up, even when I don't want to hear it sometimes haha" - Amy, @glass-of-her-boudoir

Anonymous Divination Deck Owner

"My tarot decks def have "personalities" if that's what you mean one of them (Morgan-Greer) is very gentle and grandmotherly (maybe bc I received it from my grandmother and her energy rubbed off on it?), another (Aquarian) is pretty distant and abstract in its messages, and the third (Hermetic) is a bona fide troll or maybe the Hermetic deck just rubbed me the wrong way at first bc of its appropriation of Jewish symbols. (Nonetheless, it's very easy to read, esp. if you know astrology well.)"

Mod Fire’s Buddha Tarot Deck

“When I first finished printing and cutting out my deck, which has the card art from the Buddha Tarot but meanings from Buddhist sutra texts, I could feel a sort of presence within the stack of cards right away. I did a deck interview and got very clear answers about how the deck felt about me and wanted to work with me - it doesn’t care at ALL how other people think of it and will only deliver the honest truth from its point of view. I still haven’t really figured out what the spirit of my deck is, but I suspect that it’s derived in a way from the collective consciousness of all the cards within it - a sort of make-shift divinatory Buddhist messenger of wisdom drawing from all the Buddhist spirits and symbols represented by each card in the deck. I love my deck dearly, and for now, I’m so happy with it as the only one I own.” - Mod Fire

Lena’s Linestrider Tarot Deck

“I hadn't been doing much divination lately because my Linestrider deck is pretty serious and requires a lot of contemplation and reflection when I do a reading and I hadn't had an occasion when I needed that voice lately. Well today I did my Litha spread which was pretty encouraging but heavy, and then I did a deck interview spread even though I've had the deck for about three months. First of all: the "who are you/essence of the deck" card was the Queen of Pentacles. The book it came with described it as "If the Queen cards were embodied as friends that you went to for advice, the Queen of Pentacles would invite you to her beautiful plant-filled kitchen for homemade bread and soothing herbal tea." I couldn't have described the personality of this deck any better! The rest of the reading was super encouraging and reflective of the deck. I feel like we've really connected and I can read better from them now.” - Lena, @katialena

Lena’s Mini Tarot Deck

“I have this mini deck I got from Coles back in January and it's been good for learning the meanings and getting used to readings as a beginner because it was pretty straightforward. But ever since I got the Linestrider this deck (I call it my travel deck or my pocket deck) has had a bit of an attitude problem every time I tried to use it, like it was petulant and jealous. I was getting frustrated and contemplating resetting and cleansing the deck to give away since we clearly were not clicking anymore. But today I was on a tarot roll so I decided to do a simpler deck interview spread with it to kind of just "Why not?" WELL, let me tell you I was floored by the results.

I started as a casual conversation like "listen, I'm open to this conversation, talk to me" and the cards were SO snarky! The "who are you" card was the 8 of Swords and was basically saying "I'm a stubborn, straightforward, tongue in cheek kinda guy, but reserve your ultimatums and keep an open mind even if it's not pretty.” And the rest of the cards followed that lead talking about the strength as being cutthroat honest and the limits being super carefree like "I don't give a fuck" and at the end when I asked if I would be able to use reversals with this deck (clarification card) it told me that further exploration and learning would be my strength, but also to tread with caution. I really appreciated the candor of the conversation so I shuffled the cards so they would be all mixed up and different directions and when I had them all mixed and in a pile I felt this huge surge of power unlike anything I've ever felt from the tarot before. It actually brought me to my knees and made my eyes sting. When I felt it had absorbed/passed I brought them together and they seemed to buzz with new energy and purpose. Since then I’ve kept my travel deck with me in case it calls me for a quick warning or piece of advice.” - Lena, @katialena

Lotus’ Tarot Deck

“I’ve noticed that all of my decks have very distinct personalities - and I feel like with that, a spirit that embodies this personality. The deck I most often use has a very strong, brutally honest, alpha-male, warrior-like spirit. The deck and I work extremely well together, it delivers honest readings and never sugarcoats its answers. I get my strongest, clearest readings from it, in part due to the spirit's personality and due to our connection.” - Lotus, @lotusulfr

Mod WInd’s Elemental Tarot Deck

“My deck, who I call N, definitely has a (what I perceive as feminine) spirit. She’s very straight with me but kind, and pleasant most of the time. I think she has a very calming presence, even when I’m not reading from her. I have another deck but N is my go to for true advice and when I need to really hear something, my trusted deck. She’s become a great friend to me even though I don’t talk to her often knowing she’s near brings me peace. She can be silly but usually is more calming and pleasant, while being straight. Like a soft light in darkness.” -Mod Wind

—> Have questions? Send them to us at SpiritFAQ!

#modfire #modwind #divination #tarot #oracle #cartomancy #cartomanticspirits #divinationspirits #tarotdeck #oracledeck

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whatwouldfrogsdo · 7 years

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Peeling Back the Layers (Part ii: After Hazeapalooza)

In terms of Fresh, this fic lines up with chapter 5, but it's actually more of a sequel to Mistake. It also repeats a part of Surprise because it didn't make much sense without that section. (actually it's more accurate to say that I used an extract of this for Surprise).

Nursey finally tells Dex about his bipolar

Content warnings: - Discussions of bipolar (including paranoia and dissociation) - Discussions of medication, and mixing medication with alcohol

AO3

Part i (does not have to be read to understand this part): Tumblr | AO3

“Oh, hey,” Skye said, glancing up as Derek walked into their freshman suite after class the day after Hazeapalooza. Derek raised an eyebrow. Skye was the quietest of all the girls in their suite, and he wasn’t sure that she had ever spoken to him directly before. “A girl came by looking for you. I let her into your room.”

Derek frowned. He wasn’t expecting anybody. Lardo, perhaps?

It wasn’t Lardo sat in Dex’s desk chair and looking incredibly amused as she pushed his pens slightly out of line with each other.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. He flips out if I touch his stuff.”

She turned to grin at him. “And here I thought you’d learnt not to touch other people’s things after I confiscated Tigger.”

“You didn’t confiscate him, you stole him, Lei. And I was three, you could have just let me play Barbie with you.”

She laughed, and jumped to her feet to throw her arms around his neck. “I missed you, Der-bear.”

“What are you even doing here?”

Her expression turned to serious when she pulled away. “Shitty rang me.”

It took Derek by surprise, sometimes, that Leila and Shitty were friends. He and his sister hadn’t overlapped at Andover at all, her being five years older than him, but she had been there the same time as Shitty. In fact, she had known him before he became Shitty, and it frustrated Derek no end that she wouldn’t reveal his real name. “What did he ring you for?”

“He said you weren’t doing so well.”

Derek groaned, and backed up so that he could sit on his bed. “I’m doing fine. I stopped sleeping, so I went on the antipsychotics and my first day on them they decided to do hazing. It just took me by surprise, and shit happened, but I’m fine. I’ve been taking benzos, too, just to be sure. It’s all chill”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“I rang my one in Andover.”

Leila sighed and flopped down next to him. “Okay, aboowe , I’m glad you’re trying to take care of yourself, but you do need to get a doctor closer to here, and you need to let other people look after you properly when something happens.”

“It’s chill.”

“It’s okay if it’s not, though,” she told him. “And I’m serious about the doctor. If only because it’s ridiculous to have to drive up to Andover every time you need a prescription.”

Derek let his head come to rest on his sister’s shoulder and breathed out a sigh. “Okay.”

“Promise me you won’t deal with all of this on your own.”

“I promise. There’s a few people now, on the team, who know at least bits and pieces.”

“Including your roommate?”

“Er, no. Dex doesn’t know anything.”

“You know it’ll be easier if he does.”

Derek didn’t know what to say. Leila had no idea of the relationship between him and Dex, and trying to explain the complexities of how they got along, or the way that there was only a small collection of things Derek could actually talk to Dex about, was impossible.

When he didn’t respond, she just knocked her shoulder against his and pulled his laptop onto her knees, guessed his password right on the second try and brought up Netflix. Derek tried to remember the last time things were so calm and simple between he and Leila. Childhood had been arguments and tension and the constant feeling of being overshadowed. Even at Andover, the upperclassmen had all looked at him and immediately said “You’re Lei’s brother.” That had become his persona for two years until everyone who had known her had graduated. Derek wondered if what fixed their relationship was just them growing up or him finally going to a school where the only person who knew her was Shitty.

“I’m glad you came,” he muttered, and when she looked at him, he could see she wasn’t expecting him to say anything like that.

“Of course I did. You’re my baby brother. It wasn’t too bad a surprise, then?”

“Nah.”

They watched a film, and then two episodes of Brooklyn Nine Nine, and then Dex walked in. As Leila scrambled to cover her hair with the scarf she had abandoned on his pillow, Derek tensed. They had barely spoken the past couple of days — not since before Hazeapalooza. Dex didn’t look over at Derek’s bed as he strode across the room and dropped his bag in its place under his desk. He froze, head bowed over the desk, then a shaking hand came up to slowly fix the crooked pens. He turned back to Derek, eyes narrowed.

“That was her,” Derek said quickly, pointing at Leila.

“You always were a tattle-tale. Hi. I’m Leila. Sorry about that. He was late.”

Dex looked between them. “Derek’s sister, right?”

“That’s me!”

“He didn’t say you were going to be visiting.”

Derek scoffed. “Ch’yeah, you need to talk to me for—”

“Well, to be quite honest, I didn’t tell him, either,” Leila interrupted

Dex flexed his hand. “Oh. Just… I mean, no offence or anything but I kind of thought you two didn’t really—”

Leila snapped her head towards Derek. “What the hell have you told him?”

“Nothing about you!” Dex said quickly, hands up in surrender. “Just about your parents, and—”

Derek sucked in a breath. “Shit. Shut up, Dex.”

“What did you say?” Leila asked in Gujarati.

Derek flinched. “Nothing, just— Fuck.”

“Tell me,” she demanded of Dex.

“That they forgot his birthday,” he replied.

Derek flinched. “Lei, it’s not—”

“You ungrateful little brat,” she snapped, and he shut up.

“Is that not—?” Dex looked bewildered now.

“Ever since I went to Andover we’ve celebrated birthdays in the school holidays,” she told him, then continued in Somali for Derek’s sake, “And Diri knows better than to use mental illness as an excuse to be a dick about it.” Derek sunk backwards in shame.

Dex blinked. “That was a different language.”

The comment made Derek snort. “Yeah, ‘cause she doesn’t know how to say mental illness in Gujarati. That’s something we’ve only ever talked about in English or Somali.”

“Mental— What— How many languages do you speak?”

“English, Gujarati, Arabic, some Somali and AP Spanish,” Derek listed off.

“Oh my God, AP Spanish doesn’t count, you nerd,” Leila interrupted. “And fucking tell him before I do, because you need someone who can keep an eye on you so that the shit show of Monday night doesn’t happen again. You notice he wasn’t sleeping?” She pointed at Dex, whose eyes were bulging out their sockets.

“Uh… Maybe, yeah, I guess. But I didn’t think— That’s just college, though.”

She huffed. “Yeah, for some students it might be. Where’s your bathroom?”

Derek sighed and pointed the way she needed to go. When she had slammed the door behind her, he spent a few seconds pulling at the blankets where she had been sat. Finally, he looked up to meet Dex’s eye. “I’m sorry I lied about my parents. That’s not why that birthday sucked, but it was always the easier thing to say. It’s always what I told everyone else, and soon as I knew the truth about yours, going back on what I’d said seemed like it would hurt you more. I can’t— I don’t want you to think I’m a mess if I tell you.”

“I already think you’re a complete train-wreck, Nursey, it’s okay.” An amused smirk played on his lips, but he quickly seemed to realize it was the wrong thing to say, because he got up and took up Leila’s vacated spot on the bed. “Shit, I don’t mean that. I mean, you let me think you had shitty parents just because mine are dead, which is a bit messed up, but whatever it is, you can tell me, okay? No judgement.”

“I don’t know how to—” Derek shook his head and fell silent.

“Why don’t you start with what happened on Monday night. At Hazeapalooza, does she mean? You weren’t even drinking that much, so—”

“Yeah, but I was on pills that I’m not supposed to drink anything with. Well, technically, the ones I take every day say not to drink with them, but I know my limits with them normally and I can work around it. When I’m taking the extra lot I can’t. I got paranoid quicker, and dizzy and shit which didn’t help. But, uh, the short of it is that I have bipolar. And recently I’ve been slipping into a manic episode, so— Uh. Yeah, so that’s a thing, and now you know.”

Dex reached out and wrapped his hand around Derek’s. “What, uh… What exactly does that mean? For you. If you don’t— I mean, I can Google symptoms and stuff if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Right. Yeah. Uh, well before I was on medication, it got really bad. I used to hallucinate. It was like someone was sat there telling me to do things, and I had no sense of why it was a bad idea. There was this one time I was absolutely convinced that me and my friends would be able to go clubbing even though we were fifteen and none of us had fake ID. Mostly back then it was compulsively buying things, booking holidays, that sort of shit. I don’t sleep, and just feel really pumped up. I could do anything.”

“But Monday—”

“Monday we fought, and then I found out something I shouldn’t, and I got about as stressed as is possible for me. I hit a limit and it’s like my brain short circuits, and I dissociate. It’s like having an out of body experience, but… less spiritual or whatever. It wasn’t too bad. Shitty sort of knew what was going on, and caught it early. The further I’m into it, the harder it is to get me out, but Monday I was aware. I don’t think I even lost any time.”

Dex frowned and rubbed his thumb over Derek’s knuckles. “How long can it last, then?”

“I’ve lost three days before. I woke up on Monday thinking that it was Friday. The whole weekend had just gone. The longest I’d count as normal for me is a couple of hours, though, if I’m on lithium.”

“And bipolar… That’s swings, right? So you have, uh… downs? As well?”

“Depressive episodes. I guess I have a few months of mania and then some time of just normal, and then a few months of depression. But I’m on mood stabilisers, so you shouldn’t have to worry about that happening.”

“Let me know if it does, though. Please? You’re my d-man, I’ve gotta have your back. I won’t ghost you again, I promise. I just— it’s hard to fight with you when we can’t get any space from each other to cool down after. But me having your back is more important than a stupid little fight.”

Derek sighed and rested his head on Dex’s shoulder. “Okay. Thank-you. I will. Let you know, that is.” He felt the brush of Dex’s lips over his forehead and he smiled softly.

“So everything’s okay?” Dex asked, “With your parents?”

“They’re the best. They’re both coming to family weekend, actually, so you’ll meet them.”

After a moment’s silence, Dex spoke again. “AP Spanish definitely doesn’t count. I did that, too, and got a 5 and I only count myself as speaking one language. It’s like knowing a bit of ASL doesn’t count. I couldn’t hold up a conversation with a native speaker.”

“Are you saying you know ASL?”

“Not much. Most people can at least do the alphabet, right?”

Derek shrugged. “You wanna take Spanish with me next semester? Get the language requirement out the way?”

“Couldn’t you just take Arabic?”

“It’s more interesting if I get to learn something new. We only have to do one course of it if we got a 5, right?”

“Your sister’s right, you’re a nerd.”

Derek grinned and snuggled into Dex’s neck. After a pause, Dex tugged on him so that Derek ended up in his lap, and lay back against the wall, cradling him in his arms.

“Tell me what helps?”

Derek hummed. “This is helping. Touch. It’s grounding. I have my blanket and Tigger for that too. Reminders to eat and drink and take my pills are important but I’ll probably get irritated with you for not trusting me to remember them on my own. It depends on my mood, I guess. But… Yeah. This is helping a lot.” He suppressed a yawn. Dex’s lips brushed against his forehead, and Derek lifted his chin for a proper kiss.

They sprang apart when Leila walked back in, Derek tripping over himself to get out of Dex’s lap, but she regarded them both with a discerning look and shrugged. “Hey, I’m not going to judge what you two get up to in your own bedroom. I’m craving Thai.”

“Okay, let’s go get food.” Derek pulled himself up off the bed, and looked back at Dex. “Are you coming?”

“Uh, no, I told Chowder I’d meet him at dinner so we can work on some coding. Uh, and I think I need a bit of time to process. Research. Stuff like that.”

Derek nodded and walked away without saying anything else. He wasn’t sure how to handle the fact that he really wanted to kiss Dex again to say goodbye. That wasn’t something they did.

#nurseydex week #i know i know i've done two for today oops #and h/c isn't even really my thing so idk if either of them count as it #nurseydex #omgcp fanfic #check please!#stephwrites #freshverse tag

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krawdad · 7 years

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Big Disney magic time anniversary vacation magic thing. Magic. : day three

We went to see the formerly-MGM-but now-Hollywood studios park today.

I may have spoken too soon about the heat not hitting me that hard. But luckily(?) this park was not particularly big, so we were able to see everything we set out to see in about half a day, and get back to our room before I started to wilt and get too miserable.

It seems to me that DCA sort of became California��s surrogate for this park. There’s a lot of overlap.

Lots of star wars And at least the vaguest of allusions to “movies are pretend, here’s some of the processes needed to make them happen” which Disney as a whole seems to be so very, very averse to. (In spite of its seasoned “hey let’s pull back the curtain a bit for the folks at home” history and tradition.)

The Indiana Jones stunt show was pretty spectacular. I’d recommended it. I appreciated the “we’re putting on a show for you guys, this is all pretend” acknowledgement for a change. Plus it is pretty darn enjoyable. Huge spectacle. It must be a huge undertaking to reset for the next show.

I got the chance to see Muppet Vision 3D for probably the last time ever. Because unless I become uncomfortably wealthy in the future somehow, or return to the company in spite of my experiences, I probably am not going to see these Florida parks again. At least not for some time. And I don’t KNOW for sure that it’s not coming back to California. Except I’ve learned that when Disney says something “might come back” it means “no one has any idea what’s going on, or what will happen” and probably “it’s not coming back.” Let’s face it, they pulled it for seemingly no reason, and replaced it with film trailers. And they’re pulling our show for reasons (but definitely not spite you guys, we promise) and they STILL don’t know for sure what they’re going to do with the space.

I’m beginning to think that someone in Disney’s management in California may have had some kind of bad experience with puppets.

I considered saying hi to the Florida puppeteers over at junior. But at that point I was already feeling drained and vaguely sad as it was. I figured it might be best to just cool off and relax.

Also, compared to what I’m used to, there was a noticeable absence of Marvel properties in either of the parks we’ve been to. Which, I could take or leave. But I’m a little shocked they aren’t whoring the crap out of them. I guess, nice show of restraint, Disney? For a change?

#10 year vacation adventure

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overcomingdepression101 · 6 years

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Why we become addicted depressed and anxious, what it does to our mind, and how to overcome it

Ive been considering all these topics as of late. For the past two years now Ive felt overwhelmingly depressed, apathetic, and lethargic towards life. Most notably of all the depressive symptoms though, my focus has deteriorated, that I find it hard to maintain visual focus on any one thing. At the start of the depressive cycle, reading was impossible, and even now continued visualization is difficult. I find myself regularly pulled out of the imagined scenario. Its odd though. Its not like I lose the drive to maintain focus and then all of a sudden im putting the material down and shifting to a different task. Its as if my mind itself has ceased to see any true value in continuing the action. Ill be in the middle of reading a page, and then without warning, my mind will have shifted focus. It will reflect on something in my life. Generally it will bring up a past memory that has some degree of lament to it and start creating a fictional instance around the memory or the projection of a person; an argument that could have been had, lovelorn words that could have been spoken, experiences that could have been shared, hell, sometimes it will be a want to discuss the material im reading with someone that I once had feelings for and will begin to build a feeling of self importance as a result of having those conversations. Afterwards I feel discouraged, realizing, especially in the ladder case, that any intellectual validation or merit or strength that could have been ascertained from the actual activity of reading was undermined by delving into the fantasy.

Thats the strange thing about this focuses lack actually. A lot of the time, I will fantasize about doing or responding to what I am doing. The ultimate value underlying the digression actually being completing, with clarity and competence, the activity at hand. And yet my mind continues to wander away from the task at hand, inhibiting me from actually learning or appreciating or involving myself in what Im doing.

So, as of this point, Im sure you're wondering where the question about the reward center of the brain comes in. Well, we generally understand that the reward center of the brain, when primed and matured and uninterrupted, will release dopamine, the pleasure center of the brain, to influence the body to continue this action; chemical positive reinforcement. In doing this, the body is habituated to pursue self actualizing behavior. Yet, in my instance, there is some recognition that my mind desires to pursue the self actualizing behavior, but something always gets in the way.

I shouldn't say something. im more aware of the mechanism than that. Its actually a who. An ex. A woman I believed to be the love of my life, potentially soul mate. To a certain extent I maintain some of these beliefs. But I am become more suspect of them as time progresses and as I learn more about the interactions of drugs on the mind. Let me explain.

This relationship had a good deal of drug over the course of its duration. But there was one experience, the day I’d say the relationship really began and also an event that Im begin to hold more and more accountable for my current state of mind, that I accredit more than any other. On our first true date. This woman and I went to a music festival together and took MDMA. This experience was prefaced by three dates, a growing belief that I had never prior met someone who was so like me, the first true wisps of love as a legitimate feeling, and an intense sexual attraction. To say little of the experience other than what is necessary, I have never felt so much mental, physical, or spiritual affirmation in period of time. I can only imagine that my body was flooded with an unparalleled amount of dopamine.

The day after, in an unexpected and tragic way, the relationship flourishing was cut short, but continued on and off for the next few months. During this period of time, whenever I was in her presence, I felt more intelligence and focus flood my mind than at any other time. But that to was quickly diminishing as I got further from the events of the festival.

We know that stimulant drugs and psychoactive drugs have a cerebrally stimulating effect. There are studies that demonstrate that the mind is more active and acute while under different influences. Marijuanna, Nicotine, Cocaine, MDMA, etc. We also know however, that there are near degenerative effects to these substances if used over a period of time. The general consensus explaining this phenomenon revolves around the brains pleasure response mechanism. When we are doing something that intellectually validating and we combine it with an external chemical that causes a release of dopamine which is the neurotransmitter that enables focus and memory, we ar enhancing our minds capabilities to learn because we are flooding it excessive amounts of dopamine. However, over time, the body becomes reliant of external chemicals for the same dopamine release, self regulating as it is. Beyond that, the chemicals wheres away at our minds ability to producedopamine, eventually leading to a reduction in overall production, even while in the presence of the substance. If the substance is removed all together though, then the relative level of dopamine in the mind is comparatively less than a mind that has abstained, leading to the neurodegenerative process we've seen.

Certain substances cause such an elevated release of dopamine, that production is hampered for months or even years after use. MDMA is an example of a drug that produces this effect. While the research discussing the phenomena is heavily politicized, there is still evidence suggesting that MDMA at worst is neurotoxic and at best still cause a significant decline is available dopamine for sometime after use.

Knowing both of these facts, I began to consider what that dopamine drop would look like if it cooccured with high levels of oxytocin present in the mind, I.E. what if someone were in love and also released an immense amount of dopamine? Would the effects be even more drastic? Would they be noticeable? In a mind that was still demonstrating significant levels of neuroplasticity as an adolescent, could this lead to severe long term damage.

Before going further into detail, its also important to note that the effective of substance on the adolescent mind are well researched and documented. Long term substance problems are usually the result of adolescent consumption and that generally speaking is a result of an alteration to the reward mechanism inside of the brain. “The brain regions and neural processes that underlie addiction overlap extensively with those that support cognitive functions, including learning, memory, and reasoning. Drug activity in these regions and processes during early stages of abuse foster strong maladaptive associations between drug use and environmental stimuli that may underlie future cravings and drug-seeking behaviors.” (Gould) Gould’s paper elaborates on this in significantly more depth but in laymen's terms, while our brains would normally get hard wired to reward us with dopamine if we pursued altruistic behavior or things that were generally good for us, substance abuse in minors rewires the brain so those chemicals are released when the drug is present in the body. Learning, memory, and focus are all hampered as a result of this wiring and as such, instead of pursuing things that benefit our wellbeing, we pursue the drug.

This has many different implications, especially when considering the nature of focus in the recovering addicts mind. But prior to that, it also brings up a bevy of other questions. How many uses of substance are necessary to rewire the brains reward circuitry? What are the varying degrees of circuitry rewiring that exist; more to the point is there a way to create a spectrum for the varying degrees of learning deficiencies and rewiring behaviors? Can other chemicals that act of neural circuitry behave in a similar way: love, sugar, validating external mediums (social media for example). If so, or even if not, when this manifests in a person what is the actual psychological process and experience of deteriorated learning and focus look like? Is the process reversible to any degree? What is the method of reversing the cognitive deficit? And lastly, is there any way to ascertain a general time based on treatment behaviors?

I opened up this line of question because after reflecting on may experience, I do believe the co-occurence of love and MDMA in my system made me truly addicted to the presence and validation of a person. Realizing that the a-priori consideration of my mind, even when pursuing things I found generally enjoyable for two years post experience, was to try and validate it to this other, made me realize just how deep rooted this type of addiction could be. I will note that I did have experience with other substances prior to this point in my life, and as an adolescent, but they were minimal at best, and never as irreversible or as all consuming as this singular experience.

I have been completely clean of any substance (alcohol and tobacco included) for over three months now. I am emerging from a period of intense depression and anxiety and on a daily basis I still live with a mind that is fractured and quick to recall and past ill, grievance, misgiving, or yearn. But through a strict lifestyle of regular meditation, exercise, sobriety, and presence, I am making real headway in overcoming the anxiety behaviors. More-over, having spent the majority of the past year deeply researching mental disorder, anxiety, and depression in a functional sense, I feel like i understand the disease better than ever and what type of mental schemas and behaviors lead into it.

To preface a lot of what Ill be talking about, i believe that anxiety and depression are a result of biological traits, chemical presence, and behavior. That said, having been deep into the pit of both depression and anxiety, having lost all my mental faculties and general feelings of pleasure for the world, I dont think these feelings are permanent, or genetically predisposed to hamper you your entire life. Many people overcome these trying disorders, even with long family histories present with the condition or even after long periods of drug abuse.

I started writing when I became stricken with fear that I would never get my mind back, I would never achieve the intellectual or potential filled heights I could have prior to making the decisions I made, and I would never get over the addictions I faced (the girl and the substances that had destroyed my life). Im getting close to the other side though. I can see with clarity how it will happen. And Im going to articulate each step.

Im doing this so i can have a written record for myself more than anything. I want to know how I emerged from such a pit in case it ever happens again. As a result, this is one part journal, one part help guide. Sometimes the writing will be messy. Sometimes it will be more personal than universal; in those instances, ill try and qualify what I say. But know that I always write recognizing that each struggle with depression and anxiety is incredibly personal. The demons that haunt and pester us all have their own back stories; stories so powerful they would have to be lived to truly be understood. I will never pretend to understand them.

What I do understand is that there are shared characteristics between each experience. I also know there are shared characteristics revolving around many individual’s escapes. I am writing to those experiences. I want to make them understandable, digestible, human too. To regularly in medical writing, you feel depersonalized because its like a prescription bottle is talking to you, in that same sterilized, medical dialogue we expect from a droning oncologist. Not here.

And thats the last thing I understand and really, my point in writing this and giving you a little insight into what I’m thinking, how I’m thinking, and how it relates to my life. Im there with you. Not living your story, but desperately trying to escape a story that has some shared characteristics as your own. I hope we can help each other, grieve with each other, and overcome with each other. This is hell. We know it. This isn't what life should be or has been or could be. We also know that. And with that knowledge in our hearts, let us remind each other. Continually and eternally. And push each other in the direction of clarity and song.

Till next time,

Alex

#depression #anxiety #depression help #anxiety help #mental health #mental disorder #mentally ill #ill

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flauntpage · 7 years

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Thinks: Michael J. Golec

One or Three Chairs: An Interview with Michael J. Golec

Keeley Haftner: Let’s start broader and then go to specifics. In general, your overall project seems to be about defying categorization –for example, you’ve taken an interest in the work of Wendell Castle who muddies design, furniture, sculpture, craft, and you’re the department head of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute but specialize in the study of graphic and typographic design as also seen through art historic and philosophic lenses. Is defying categories important to you?

Michael J. Golec: I think there’s a historical question in there, which is that certain categories are accepted at particular moments in the history of any form of cultural production. As a design historian who was trained as an art historian, one of the things I’m interested in is where within the broader discourses have art and design been understood as distinct practices, and where they overlap. In terms of the discipline, design history is a relatively new field compared to art history. Many of my colleagues within the field are very careful about distinguishing content, topics, and objects that are unique to design. Such objects can’t always count as art objects, and therefore would not require an art historical interpretation based on art historical methodologies. And so a lot of my work really tries to figure out in some ways how particular kinds of objects can circulate between different kinds of practices and while they are objectively or empirically the same object. In each field they act in different ways that are specific to that field. In my book, Brillo Box Archive: Aesthetics, Design, and Art, I see the Brillo Box as a non-material entity that circulates between art, philosophy, and design. Identifying that object, the Brillo Box, really depends on the epistemological culture that exists for that object, or in which that object is produced. One of the things I was interested in was how three distinct fields of inquiry could produce three distinct objects – a thought experiment, an artwork, and a package design – and how the three of them interpenetrate at different moments, specifically in terms of how they are discursively understood. I mean, categories shift, and while we’re defining them they will become mutable depending on what parties, practice, and epistemological communities are engaged with them. So one of the things I’ve be interested in in my work is trying to figure out where those distinctions lie, and also where they are blurred.

Brillo Box Archive: Aesthetics, Design, and Art by Michael J. Golec

KH: In the introduction to Brillo Box Archive, you talk about the image of James Harvey, the abstract expressionist painter and designer who was photographed in front of his painting holding his Brillo box after Warhol had made it famous as an artwork, which strikes me as a very apt example of how these categories overlap. Some have spoken of the sensual qualities of Warhol’s Brillo Box and how they are missing in discussions around his work – is the sensual nature of that piece of interest to you?

MG: I think that certain epistemological communities are more interested in the sensual qualities of objects than others, which again is historically contingent. One of the things that Arthur Danto was very invested in was arguing that the material quality of the Brillo Box doesn’t matter, since for all intents and purposes the Brillo Box raises a question in terms of perceptual skepticism. If two things look alike, Danto argues, we can’t judge them based on how they look, so we have to resort to some other kind of framing. For him it’s a theory and history of art that directs us towards identifying specific objects befitting the category of art. For artists and for designers of that period, there are particular material qualities that make a difference in how one comes to terms with those objects. So that was one of the issues I was trying to work out. For Danto’s brand of philosophical aesthetics, materiality doesn’t matter at all. This means that his artworks could be anything relative to how they are received, understood, or framed. He would have been very much in opposition to something like a post-modern deconstructive interest in indexicality, or the materiality of the sign. So that would have distinguished him from other philosophers and critics of his generation.

KH: I’d like to transition from the framing of objects to the framing of the human form in the in the work of Ray and Charles Eames. Through some of the courses you’ve taught over the years, including “Eames Overload” you’ve spent time discussing their work and their affect on design principles globally. Can you talk a bit about how their design principles bring together politics, technologies and aesthetics, and whether or not these principles hold up today?

MG: Ray and Charles Eames are an interesting topic for me. I started working on them while I was teaching at Iowa State University, and saw their work as a way for me to bring design students, engineers and scientists together into a single classroom. So originally I used a very media focused method to teach the first course, which focused on the Eames’ as master manipulators of all kinds of media. I haven’t taught the course for quite some time, but in the meantime I’ve been sort of reintroduced to their work through a colleague of mine, Todd Cronan, who wrote a phenomenal review of a publication called An Eames Anthology, which is a collection of their writings that came out through the Yale University Press. And it’s Cronan’s thinking about the Eames’s in relation to a set of intentions that he perceived they held that got me to reread this material, this time attending to particular statements that Charles in particular would make. I started to notice a repetition of the emphasis on human scale in relationship to the explosion of information that Eames and his colleagues perceived at that particular moment in the post-war era. So I’m currently rethinking that class. For example, one of the questions I’ve always had with Charles is: why the focus on furniture when he was trained as an architect? What it always goes back to is that furniture is a discrete object where designs can be put to the test very quickly, and judged. And I’m starting to believe that this interest in judgement for Charles has a lot more to do with case-by-case situations. The Eames’ were never interested in providing universal design that fit everyone. My new thesis would be that, for them, every interaction with an object, exhibition, or film that they produced required individuals to account for how they relate to that particular thing themselves. It’s that kind risk and coordination that I think allows a certain suppleness to what could be called “Eames Design.”

The other issue that I’m really interested in is that almost all designers who are revered in design history belong to some kind of “school” – especially in architecture, but also to some extent in design. In any overall survey of architects or designers you can find them being organized into different groups that we would call a school, in which there’s a discernable method, and there are discernable principles of design that are executed and then exemplified or embodied within the work itself. The Eames’ didn’t fit neatly into that framework, and I find it ironic that probably one of the most famous design teams in the history of the United States is a couple that belonged to no school. Again this is something I’m just coming to, and am not trying to reconcile that relationship, but rather to make the claim that “non-school” is a kind of school of thought in design that we’ve inherited today. I think this is so interesting, because the Eames’ provide a method that is not a method. It is a kind of post-method approach to design. This counters the trend toward Design Thinking that has been embraced within the past twenty years, and its relationship to the schools of design, engineering, and business. Design Thinking is meant to provide a method for designing that enhances interface between the object and the user. The Eames would not agree that there would be any such method. They believed that there are only case-by-case situations, and that every design, just like every statement, has to be received either felicitously or infelicitously in order for it to work. There is no guarantee, ever. Just as we use conventions so that we understand each other when we speak, there are conventions involved in say, chairs, for example, and those conventions create a certain vernacular that effects the colloquial versions of a chair. To design a different style requires a great amount of risk, and there’s no guarantee that any sitter will receive the intention of the designer that this is something meant to be sat on.

“Powers of Ten”, Charles and Ray Eames, 1977

KH: And the whole over-arching conversation makes me think of their Powers of Ten film, with regard to scale and the individual, but also through their interdisciplinary and borderline scientific way of considering the human subject.

MG: I’ve published a few articles and chapters in books on Powers of Ten. My first impulse was to see that everything known or possibly unknown would be connected to the two human figures on the blanket, which one might call a remnant of the Frankfurt School form of criticism. I’m beginning to rethink that; I don’t think it’s what they really intended. Everyone needs to be reminded that when I say “Eames,” I mean the entire network of individuals that worked within the studio of which Charles and Ray were the most visible; they had armies of designers and non-designers working with them to make what they made. But in Powers of Ten – even though we might call the couple on the blanket the culmination of human scale, there is always a question at every power above and below them. What is the relationship to the human social sphere? I think it’s nicely framed by the picnic blanket. It’s an image of human sociality, however normative it may have appeared in 1968 and then in 1977. But then again, the Eames’ never took norms for granted, which could easily be and was contested by a host of social critics. I think the Eames’s were suggesting that this couple is a convention that is commonly understood, and it is not absolute. So at every layer one can imagine, even down to the molecular and cellular, this prompts a question of what the normative relationship might be. Thus every single power poses a question in terms of the stability of that couple sitting on the blanket. Like I said, you’ve caught me at a moment that I’m really just formulating this, and the class that I’m teaching this semester will help me to frame and expand on that further.

KH: It strikes me that convention has a lot to do with how typography and pictograms are created, and how they evolve over time. Both have been interests of yours… For your Graham Foundation Fellowship (2014-15) you spent a lot of time looking at the REA’s (Rural Electrification Administration) archives in reference to New Deal era attempts to electrify homes between the late 1930s and early 1940s. You say there is a gap in the literature in regard to how design and pictographs were used as opposed to photographs, which by contrast is well studied. What was the convention of the pictograph able to do in this campaign that a photograph could not?

MG: That’s been an ongoing project that I’ve worked on intermittently over the years. It started as part of general history of graphic design course that I taught beginning at Iowa State, and that I still teach here at SAIC when I’m teaching my full load and not chairing. Since I started teaching it the textbooks for the course have changed, or there have been new books that have been introduced into the bibliography. But for a very long time such books included a series of nine posters that were produced for the REA by a designer by the name of Lester Beall. It was commonplace to refer in histories of graphic design to Beall’s pictographs as having a twofold impact in terms of design in the United States. The first was that he chose pictographs because rural Americans were illiterate, so therefore those pictograms or pictographs were easily understood as a kind of basic language. They’re also praised because they’re seen as having integrated European style Modernism into the American scene of design, and famously the isotypes of Otto Neurath of the 1930s and 1940s were seen as a source of inspiration for Beall. When these posters are depicted they’re never shown in the environment in which they were posted – they’re always just floating posters isolated without any background or framing for their reception. So when I introduced this idea of their being used for illiterate Americans – my students, many of whom grew up on farms in rural Iowa, said, “That doesn’t’ seem right – why would you assume that all farmers were illiterate?” So I said, “Great question, I’ll look into it.” And it happened that Iowa State, being a Land Grant and agriculture school, had all the REA news publications from the exact year Beall produced the posters. So I did some research and came back to the students to let them know that in fact the posters were not always or exclusively shown in the context of a rural public; they were often shown first and foremost in Washington, D.C. at REA events, and they were also often shown at county fairs, state fairs, and the like. The logic would be, in order to electrify the farm you would have to own your farm, and most rural Americans who owned farms had some education, definitely high school, and were not necessarily illiterate, itinerant farmers. So there was a mix-up in terms of who the audience might be for those posters. I also found that earlier the REA had employed a person by the name of Rudolf Modley to use a pictograph as a way of communicating statistical information to farmers. So the result of this was that Beall was responding to an already existing graphic vernacular for the communication of information to farmers who could read. So that started to open up the possibility that pictograms were a sophisticated form of communication. We can no longer argue that Beall was using pictograms to introduce Americans to European Modernism, since we had already adopted those images as part of communications.

KH: And they do appear quite sophisticated in their design – I’m looking at them and they’re quite beautiful…

“Radio,” Lester Beall, 1937. Photo courtesy of Michael J. Golec

Shifting gears… you’ve jokingly described yourself as an anachronism at SAIC in the sense that by researching 19th and early- to mid- 20th century histories such as these you are researching ‘ancient history’ in the eyes of your contemporary-minded graduate students and colleagues. I’m wondering if you take a position to ardently focus histories that predate the 21st century, or if you also consider current art and design history in your research?

MG: [Laughs] It’s open, certainly. With regard to anachronism, my point really is that the idea of the contemporary is only relative to a past, and that this past persists in our contemporary conventional uses of all kinds of forms of communication. So as an historian, I think this idea of thinking about the now as unrelated to a past is problematic, and requires I think a great deal more scrutiny. I mean, whatever we think of as “the present” is inundated with “the past” and “the future” simultaneously, so it can be erroneous to make absolute distinctions between them. The typeface that you might be looking at in a contemporary design or art catalogue is an anachronism in and of itself. It may be newly designed, but reproducing it requires technologies that are centuries old. Even though there have been advances in print technology, they’re’ not so advanced that they don’t require ink and some form of depression or coating of paper with a form. So I like to open students up to the possibility of understanding that the present is interwoven with past technologies, conventions, and traditions, and to convey to them that the only way they can think about the future is in a way predicated on those kind of interweavings, if that makes sense at all.

KH: Totally! I’d like to address my particular interests, which are perhaps a little less to do with your specific research focuses but were the means by which I came to in the first place – thinking through Object Oriented Ontology. A chapter of yours in a recent publication, “Heidegger’s ‘From the Dark Opening:’ Image Theory for Human and Nonhuman Worlds” in Heidegger and the Work of Art History, sounds as though it likely hovers around this topic.

MG: For that chapter in that book I was interested in the relationship that Heidegger might have to something most often referred to as Actor-Network Theory, and particularly in this confusion of objects with materiality that happens in design history, but to some extent also in art history. I want to undo is this notion of material and object as being thought of as synonymous. In object theory, if you follow a straightforward account as it’s been put forward by like someone like Graham Harman, such theorists are not interested in the material nature of objects at all. Their argument, specifically Harman’s, is that what is “real” in relationship to objects is always forever and irreducibly withdrawn from us. With the discussion Heidegger presents in terms of Van Gogh’s Peasant Shoes, I wanted to work out what the underlying networks not immediately visible were – the invisible networks that Heidegger opened up behind the work. Viewed in that way, the painting itself is a glimmer of the vast networks of agricultural production and labour that would have related to late 19th and early 20th century farming.

“Shoes”, Vincent van Gogh, Oil on canvas,18″ x 21 3/4″, 1888. Image: Public Domain.

KH: Well, I’m looking forward to reading that! What is it that is preoccupying you most these days in your recent research?

MG: I’ve contributed a chapter entitled “Distributing Stresses”, to a forthcoming book Encountering Things: Design and Theories of Things, that’s related to the Eames. It addresses the question of sympathy and the DCM chair that the Eames’ produced. It discusses the chair as a means of caring for the body and the psyche of post-war humans. This was written a little bit before I started thinking about Eames and human scale, but I think it directly addresses that theme. So that’s one project. The other is an article related to the “Champ Fleury in the Machine Age” lecture I gave at the School of Visual Arts a few years back, which is currently under review for the Journal of Design History.

One of the things I’m interested in that is this notion of tradition and convention in typography – both its complex story and looking at what would count as modern verses traditional typography in the early 20th century. So I see someone like Bruce Rogers as a modern typographer, someone who is not only interested in reviving old forms but is also interested in addressing a tradition of typography as it relates to his contemporary moment. And this is something I think all designers do, whether they’re typographers or furniture and product designers. The reason why the question of what constitutes “modern” is perhaps more compelling in typography is because it raises the question “what typography isn’t traditional?” In the West we’ve already basically agreed for hundreds of years what our essential alphabet is, and since the 16th century we’ve embraced Roman style letterforms. We don’t really use Fraktur; when forms like this have been revived from the past they’ve been aligned with particular ideologies like National Socialism and dismissed, so we’re pretty much set. So again the question for me is when isn’t typography traditional? Attempts to modernize language like changing to Basic English and producing a universal language have never really stuck… What’s the one language that was introduced?

KH: Oh Esperanto?

MG: Yes, Esperanto! Yes, I mean even when we code computers we still use characters that are established as part of our everyday language. So the distinction in terms of what counts as traditional or what might count as contemporary have to be looked at in different ways. I would just argue that from a contemporary standpoint, someone like Rogers basically creates a new operating system for a very old form of hardware. He creates a new formatting for traditional typography and printing. And that that might be the best we can hope for in our lifetime.

Centaur (typeface), Bruce Rogers. Created 1914 and released 1929.

KH: Anything we missed?

MG: The first thing I would like to say is Keeley, I really appreciate you reaching out, and I’m quite honoured and humbled by being interviewed.

Second, on the face of it I think that there are a lot of different projects that I work on, but the thing that draws them together is my interest in how every day designers have to deal with what already exists in the world. And a problem that I think is not unique to designers, but one which applies to anyone in a creative field, is the question of how to address what already exists in order to add something that has real meaning, and conveys what you want it to convey. That’s the core of my interests throughout all the different examples I draw from. For example, the question for Beall was one of intention: what did he have to work with, and how could he produce something that was unique to his own intentions, but that still drew on an already existing graphic vernacular? And as you observed, he created something quite remarkable – something that alluded to the already existing use of pictographic communication within a bureaucratic administrative field like REA, but with much more. Now these posters exist in every major museum. You can go to the MOMA they’ll have a little design section where there’s always a Lester Beal REA poster. Or, as another example, what does someone like Rogers do when he’s asked by the Grolier Club of New York City to design a translation of Geoffrey Tory’s “Champ Fleury”? Does he try to create something that’s just a facsimile (which is how many people have approached this), or does he try to communicate something from Tory’s ideas within his contemporary moment?

Ostensibly one chair should fit us all. When the Eames’ sat down – pun intended – to design a chair, they had to think about what would count as something that would attract and afford a certain kind of human comfort – something that did not exist, but was still recognizable as something that was chair-like. They drew from history, from their own time, and from a perception of where things might go. Sometimes it’s difficult for people who look at my work to see the common thread, but that’s the source. Even the Brillo Box Archive is trying to distinguish the differences between the three “Brillo boxes”, but also to show how they’re all related. I think this is an increasingly important issue within the humanities, regardless of whether its design history, art history, history of literature and so forth: how we can acknowledge shared and different concerns, and how they can be embedded in the same object, body, or thought? That sort of openness, that acknowledgement of sameness and difference, is something that I think the humanities is well positioned to explore, and that will perhaps have some meaning for our current fractured moment so focused on differences.

KH: Well that was far too eloquent for me to add anything! [Laughs] Thanks for speaking with me, Michael.

MG: Thank you!

Michael J. Golec is the Chair and an Associate Professor of Art and Design History in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. You can find his complete bio here.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

Text

Thinks: Michael J. Golec

One or Three Chairs: An Interview with Michael J. Golec

Brillo Box Archive: Aesthetics, Design, and Art by Michael J. Golec

“Powers of Ten”, Charles and Ray Eames, 1977

KH: And they do appear quite sophisticated in their design – I’m looking at them and they’re quite beautiful…

“Radio,” Lester Beall, 1937. Photo courtesy of Michael J. Golec

“Shoes”, Vincent van Gogh, Oil on canvas,18″ x 21 3/4″, 1888. Image: Public Domain.

KH: Well, I’m looking forward to reading that! What is it that is preoccupying you most these days in your recent research?

KH: Oh Esperanto?

Centaur (typeface), Bruce Rogers. Created 1914 and released 1929.

KH: Anything we missed?

MG: The first thing I would like to say is Keeley, I really appreciate you reaching out, and I’m quite honoured and humbled by being interviewed.

KH: Well that was far too eloquent for me to add anything! [Laughs] Thanks for speaking with me, Michael.

MG: Thank you!

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