I’m no longer holding Star Trek or Star Wars “accountable” for their clunky-looking sixties-and-seventies future technology.
Why?
Because the Enterprise is off on a years-long voyage through space. There’s no Verizon store, no Radio Shack, no Geek Squad out there. If the Klingons fire photon torpedoes and the bridge shakes and Spock’s head bangs against the fancy iPad72 touchscreen and cracks the glass, the ship’s toast. If Han Solo’s fingerprints get all over the starchart and the touch-calibration is off by half a centimeter, the Falcon is going right into a star. But if Mister Worf accidentally twists the command knob too hard and pops it off, he can just screw that thing right back on and it will keep working. Dust gets in there? Take it apart and clean it out. All the plugs are big and universal, all the power cells are functional and have a decent battery life, and nothing is built to expire in the next six months so you have to buy a new one.
That tech isn’t anachronistic or suffering a bad case of Zeerust–it’s practical, effective, and it works. Apple tried launching its own space exploration craft, it had to come back for full repairs within three months, and then it had to be upgraded over the next two.
But this? This is just good, long-lasting, fully-functional, and reliable craftsmanship.
The actual real-life space shuttles’ electronics looked pretty much like that for their entire lifespan and this is exactly why.
no but (among the 1424356 other things on my list) i so need to write a book about medieval history for a popular audience, just because the reality would blow people’s minds
there are so many things you can learn from it, so many misconceptions to destroy, and such an interesting social and cultural study of people learning to do things in different ways after rome fell. they had a period of almost 1000 years where classical culture was NOT the automatic standard. that is why we have gothic architecture and script. why they invented new literary and artistic genres, why they developed new laws. where, unlike in the ancient world, women and slaves were not relegated to a position of utter inferiority – in fact, slavery was abolished throughout most of the middle ages, and only began returning in the 16th-17th century when people were determined to replicate the criteria and legal systems of antiquity. same with women. you can find records of women doctors, bookbinders, copyists, shopkeepers, traders etc throughout the high middle ages. women religious were HUGELY influential; the abbey of fontevrault in france was required to have an abbess, not an abbot, in charge. queens regularly ruled whenever the king wasn’t around. it was only in 1593 that france, for example, decided to outlaw them from public/professional life. the salic law, made by philip iv in the early 14th century, barred them from inheriting the throne and later spread throughout europe, but that was not the case beforehand.
don’t talk to me about how “feudal anarchy” was a thing. feudalism was the last thing from anarchy, and it wasn’t about a lord mistreating or killing his peasants however he pleased. it was a highly structured and regulated system of mutual obligations – not a desirable condition for the serf, but still the bedrock on which society functioned. serfs were not slaves. they had personhood, social mobility, could own property, marry, form families, and often obtain freedom once they were no longer in an economic condition to make serfhood a necessity. abbot suger of france (late 11th-early 12th century) was most likely a son of serfs. he was educated at the same monastery school as the later king louis vi, ran the kingdom while louis vii was on crusade, and became the foremost historian of the period and partially responsible for establishing the tradition of ecclesiastical chronicles.
don’t talk to me about how everyone was a fervent and uncritical religious fanatic. church attendance on the parish level was so low that in 1215, pope innocent III had to issue a bull ordering people to take communion at least once a year. the content of clerical grievances tells us that people behaved and thought exactly as we do today – they wanted to sleep in on sunday, they wanted to have sex when they pleased, they didn’t believe the guy mumbling bad latin at them, they openly questioned the institutional church’s legitimacy (especially in the 13th century – it was taking assaults on every side as splinter and spinoff sects of every nature grew, along with literacy and the ability of common people to access books and learning for themselves). in the 14th century, john wycliffe and the lollards blasted the rigidly hierarchical nature of medieval society (“when adam delved and eve span, who then was the gentleman?”) partly as a result, wat tyler, a fellow englishman, led the peasants’ revolt in 1381. yes, the catholic church had a social and institutional power which we can’t imagine, but it was fought and questioned and spoken back to every step of the way.
don’t talk to me about how they were scientifically ignorant. isidore of seville, in the frickin 7th century, wrote books and books on science and reason from his home at the center of the andalusian “golden age” in muslim spain. toledo in the 9th century was a hotbed of theology, mathematics, and writing; admiring western european observers called multicultural, educated iberia “the ornament of the world.” in the 8th century in the monastery of jarrow in northumbria (aka in the middle of FRICKING NOWHERE) the venerable bede was able to open his “ecclesiastical history of the english people” with a discussion on cultural, linguistic, demographic, historical, geographical, and astronomical details, and refers to britain’s location near the north pole as a reason for its days being long in summer and short in winter (“for the sun has then departed to the region of Africa”). while bede’s information is obviously imperfect by virtue of his social and chronological location, he is a trained scholar with a strong critical sensibility and the ability to turn a memorable phrase; discussing an attempted imperial coup by an illiterate roman soldier, he sniffs, “As soon as he had seized power he crossed over to Gaul. There he was often deluded by the barbarians into making doubtful treaties, and so inflicted great harm on the body politic.”
don’t talk to me about how they were uneducated and illiterate. they were well versed in antiquity and classical authors through the high middle ages. they didn’t just suddenly discover them again when the 15th century started. the renaissance wasn’t about finding the texts, it was about deciding to apply them in a systematic way. beforehand, the 13th century saw the rediscovery of aristotle and the development of a new philosophical system to compete with the long-entrenched and studied works of plato. thomas aquinas and the dominicans were writing in this century. dante wrote the inferno in this century. i could go on.
don’t talk to me about the stereotype of the silent and oppressed woman – we already discussed that a bit above. i should also add, women usually had voting rights on the level of their community and this wasn’t regarded as odd. i already wrote a ranty post earlier on the myth that “it was just medieval times” and thus a rapey free-for-all.
we should also talk about how a form of gay marriage was legal for hundreds of years – two men could take wedding vows in a church and live together like any other married couple (though they called them “spiritual brotherhoods”). we should also talk about the cult of male bonds between knights in the 12th/13th century, and how it was idealized as the highest form of love. i also wrote a post a while ago about richard the lionheart and how sexuality worked. so.
we should talk about how all of this was happening in the time period that routinely gets written off as basically a wash between the fall of rome and the renaissance. we should remember that the renaissance was what led to modern structures of oppression for women, slaves, etc – everyone who had been worth nothing in antiquity. we should tear into the myth of historical progress and how it was invented to justify massive, wholesale colonization, genocide, and “civilization” in the supposedly enlightened 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries – because nothing we do now, apparently, can be as bad as what those bad ol’ bloodthirsty ignoramuses did back then.
we shouldn’t idealize the medieval era as a golden age either. that is never the right way to approach history. but we should take a long, long look at why we are so insistent on our simplistic, erroneous concepts of this time period, and how exactly they serve to justify our behaviors, mindsets, and practices today.
further reading to support any of these topics available on request.
When I was growing up any time my brother upset/hurt/was rude to or downright nasty to me I was told “he’s just doing it to get a rise out of you” “he’s just doing it to annoy you”
Like??? I know?? I know he’s being mean to upset me. I know he’s saying horrible stuff to annoy me. And guess what?? I’m annoyed!!!!
I was literally told not to be upset, because his intentions were to upset me????
How is that not upsetting? Especially to a young girl??
THE GASLIGHTING STARTS EARLY.
“Sweetheart, its easier for you to just bear it than it is for us to teach him to stop. Mkay?”
Everyone still does this to me about everyone.
Also, like, listen: why is “oh don’t worry, they’re just doing it out of a malicious intent to hurt you” supposed to be…better?
Actually, yes! I preferred her Immortals and Circle Magic series, and having reread one of them just a couple years ago (the Immortals series, with Daine) I can confirm that they age remarkably well and I still really ship Daine/Numair. Feel free to come talk to me about my feelings.
Oh, wow, sit tight, all of these are entirely predicated on God my life would be easier if I shipped the most popular ship in the fandom.
Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr: I got committed to the tragic friendship way too young to change my mind, but I have nothing against the ship.
Any configuration at all of Jim Kirk/Spock/Bones McCoy: I just…struggle? I concur that Spock/Kirk is pretty gay in TOS and I want to ship it, and honestly Kirk/Bones should be my exact shit, but I just–look, Kirk is too in love with the Enterprise for anyone else to have a claim.
Buffy Summers/Spike: nope, nope, nope, nope, can’t do it. Too rapey, too much sexual assault, even if I didn’t like Angel I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Doc Holliday/Wynonna Earp: the show clearly really wants me to care about that pairing and like…I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, but I raise you Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp and Wynonna/Dolls because Dolls is wonderful and Doc is so blindingly obviously in love with Wyatt and trying to work his issues out by fucking Wynonna, which, no judgement, because Wynonna is clearly trying to work out her own adequacy issues by fucking Doc.
Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter: I want to ship it just so I could stop feeling this level of seething wrath about it, I feel similarly about almost EVERY ship that the HP fandom likes, including literally anything that includes Severus Snape.
F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
I mean…I was a late-comer to the concept of internet fandom (the last…four or five years?) because of various reasons, but I’ve been a devoted consumer of any X-Men content I could afford to get my hands on since I was 7 and I’ve been collecting Animorphs books about as long, so there’s those.
*Finishes Book 13* *screams* OH GOSH I LOVE THIS BOOK VERY VERY MUCH. Like the Hork-Bajir plotline AND THAT ENDING!!!!!!! So good! I'm pretty sure this is my favourite book so far. AHHHH. I'm sorry I can't contain mY EMOTIONS BECAUSE THIS IS A GOOD BOOK AND I LOVE HAWK BOY TOBIAS. I LOVE PAIN. 1/2
And like the Hork-Bajir??? I… love them???? Bless them and all good wishes to them in their little Eden. Oh god and again another battle they won, and with like a damn good strategy rather than you know everything falling apart at the last minute. AND ALL THANKS TO MY BOY TOBIAS. And I really love how this book gave so much insight into his character. Sorry for the rant.
DO NOT BE SORRY I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH, I’M??? I LOVE IT? TOBIAS GETS TO BE A HERO AND THE HORK BAJIR GET THEIR LITTLE EDEN AND RACHEL AND TOBIAS GET TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF TOGETHER, WHICH IS JUST THEIR RELATIONSHIP IN A NUTSHELL TBH.
AND HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LIKE THE SCENE OF THESE SIX TERRIFIED CHILDREN AND THESE TWO REFUGEE ALIENS STANDING IN THE FOREST AND TAKING A MOMENT OUT OF THEIR BUSY SCHEDULE OF BEING HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS TO SHOUT FREE OR DEAD AT THE TOP OF THEIR DESPERATE LITTLE LUNGS. LIKE, THAT IS THE THESIS OF THESE BOOKS, THAT IS WHAT EVERYONE IN THESE BOOKS BELIEVE, THAT IS THEIR CODE: FREE OR DEAD.
I’M GOING TO START CRYING ABOUT THIS?????
GOD OKAY I LOVE IT. PLEASE, GUYS, IF YOU KNOW OF ANY ART OF THIS GIVE IT TO ME SO I CAN WEEP SOFTLY OVER MY F A V O R I T E SCENE IN THIS SERIES.
Here are several arbitrary universe mash-up AUs I’ve been thinking about lately.
Mediator AU of Jessica Jones/Luke Cage
Jessica is basically Susannah Simon (from the Mediator series, which I read as a kid and am rereading) all grown up with an alcohol problem, so this is the universe in which Jessica can see, talk to, and punch ghosts. This can either be a straight up nothing-is-the-same AU where the entire plot is Jessica moving into a new apartment haunted by a beautiful guy from (help) maybe the 20′s who just never left for reasons that are unclear, or it can basically be canon, except that Jessica could always talk to ghosts and then acquired superstrength and *gasp* TRISH KNOWS EVERYTHING. Clearly that is the superior AU. But so then Jessica moves into her new office/apartment at the start of her show and it’s already haunted by a kinda grumpy recently dead guy who…possibly she murdered his wife still, that would be debatable. Regardless, Luke (after about an hour of arguing about this is my goddamn apartment– excuse you, you can’t just kick me out, I was here first, she finally does get a name out of him) has the strongest telekinetic powers she’s ever seen, and Jess can still lift cars. Stuff proceeds apace, but with more Luke and maybe Kilgrave is an evil mediator or an extra-solid and terrible ghost or maybe he’s just Kilgrave, and I have no idea what the plot would look like or how Luke’s show would happen. But it would have Luke appearing in Trish’s apartment to push something heavy over and yell “JESS IS GETTING HERSELF KILLED” until Trish woke up and went to help Luke deal with the situation.
Rogue One AU of Animorphs
Obviously. I’ve seen a couple casual comments about a Star Wars AU of Animorphs where people are Jedi or whatever, but listen. No. The Animorphs are Rogue One. Jake is Cassian, obviously, and Rachel is Jyn but less intensely disillusioned and more Ready To Go To War (both for the cause and for the war). The major difference here is that it’s Jake who delivers the stirring speech, while Rachel is the one who recruits a small force of mutineers to back them up. And no sexual tension. I feel like Ax is Chirrut but like a baby, like he was really REALLY young when the war went down, and Tobias is Baze (ditto) and Rachel is like “…nice shoulder cannon” the first time they meet. Instead of being gay married space warrior priests, Ax and Tobias are best friend space warrior priests. Elfangor was definitely the older priest initiate who survived the massacre on Jedha and raised the two of them in the old ways and then dies tragically during Rogue One’s attempt to reach…Naomi? I’m not sure who Saw would be in this argument. CHAPMAN MAYBE. Because Naomi has to be an engineer rather than a lawyer so that the plot can progress.
Wait, actually, no, Eva is the engineer, they don’t have to go on a hunt to find Rachel for the contact information because Marco already has it and MARCO IS K2 except he’s not a robot, he’s still a human and Jake’s best friend. They go pull Rachel off an undercover op on Jedha because they need reinforcements, and Ax and Tobias basically just invite themselves along, and CASSIE IS THE PERSON WHO IS DRIVEN TO RISK HER LIFE BY REBELLING AGAINST THE EMPIRE WITH WORLD-SAVING INFORMATION.
This story would be like 95% Cousin Feelings with an additional 5% Ship Feelings, but the point of it all would be that Jake and Rachel die sitting on the beach shoulder-to-shoulder like they did when they were little kids, and Rachel says that Jake’s brother would have been proud of him and Jake smiles and it’s all terrible.
Mrs. and Mrs. Smith AU of Atomic Blonde
No, that’s it. That’s literally it. AU where Delphine and Lorraine have been married for five years and spend a few days trying to murder each other as couple’s counseling/the complications of the job and have wall sex in their destroyed kitchen. Alternatively, Good Omens AU of Atomic Blonde, where Delphine is a sweet-natured demon who loves music and dancing and photography and Lorraine is a rather embittered angel.
if you call someone to witness and they refused to show up, you are legally entitled to stand outside their house and scream, but only every third day
you can sell your son into slavery once or twice, but after the third time he doesn’t have to put up with that shit anymore
no wailing allowed at funerals
also you can only have ONE funeral per person, don’t get greedy
if your neighbor’s tree has a branch hanging into your yard, you can legally cut down the entire fucking tree
however, if some of your neighbor’s fruit from his dumb tree falls into your yard, he can legally come into your yard to snoop around get it
if you call someone to witness and they’re too sick or old to get to court themselves, you have to provide a cart for them to come in, but it doesn’t have to be, like, a nice cart if you don’t want it to
With the exception of the second one, I wouldn’t change any of these. They’re already perfect.
Confused about the 3rd one bc there’s literally a Latin verb for wailing and beating your chest out of grief, which I explicitly remember seeing in several funeral scenes.
However, I’ve only heard that word to describe the professional wailers (yes, they had those) hired at funerals.
So if that’s true that means people couldn’t wail so they hired outsiders to do it instead. Can’t believe we killed the wailing market.
a lot of people have actually been confused about this point so i’ll go ahead and explain it!
the law against wailing (as well as lacerating yourself) at a funeral falls kind of into the category of sumptuary laws- not exactly, because that’s a specific term, but it’s the same concept of preventing excess. there are several laws designed to prevent people from getting too extravagant with their funerals.
the thing is, you have to keep two things in mind when looking at the twelve tables. the first is, we aren’t exactly sure of the extent to which some of these laws were actually enforced. some of them entail pretty brutal punishments that we don’t think were necessarily carried out; for example, if a patrician was condemned to death, there was frequently enough time allowed for him to quickly pack up and go into exile. so while technically the twelve tables don’t allow hugely extravagant funerals, we know that people didn’t really heed that, especially in the case of public heroes.
the second thing is that these laws are really, really old, and not all of them stick around. probably the most famous example is that the law prohibiting marriage between plebeians and patricians was repealed after only a few years by the lex canuleia.
so yes, the twelve tables does outlaw excessive funerary practices, including wailing. but does that mean that anybody listened to that or that it remained a law? not at all.
is there a word for “i was instantly good at a lot of things as a quote-unquote gifted child, and, as a result, i was able to skate by without ever being taught how to actually learn a new skill, and now that i’m an adult trying to learn new things that i can’t be good at instantaneously, i don’t have the patience or knowledge to improve on them, because skills that don’t come naturally to me just make me angry because i lived off instant gratification my whole childhood due to not ever being challenged intellectually or taught basic learning skills?” asking for a friend
Wait, so could it be VCD if it feels like your throat immediately dries out and it hurts to breath when you exercise for too long/too strenuously? Or would that be something else? (I just read your post and I've never heard of this before so I wouldn't know where else to look..)
It’s not so much it dries out or that it happens if you exercise too long. It’s pretty much an instant sensation of everything tightening up and closing due to muscle dysfunction. So while someone with say, asthma might be able to run up and down the stairs three times with no problem before they start to feel like they need to stop, for VCD it’s as soon as your activity level spikes that your airway just shuts off and you’re left halfway up the stairs trying to breathe while the muscles unclench. It can be quite scary, especially if like myself you throw up a lot from other health problems, and then you wind up choking and wondering if you remeber how to do the self Heimlich maneuver :/
Also, to any men reading my posts who are horrified and want to know how they can help—offer to go with your female friends and relatives to appointments. Explain to them you’ve been reading about medical neglect towards women and let them know that if they ever want emotional support, you are there for them.
No, really, you have no idea how differently doctors react when there is a man in the room. Some female doctors will give ETD the side-eye and try to find ways to ask if I am okay (which, bless them) but once they are made aware that he is there at my request for emotional support, they are perfectly happy to have him there, and don’t talk to him unless I need them to.
Male doctors? Whole other ball game. They spot him sitting there and their whole demeanor shifts, and if they do talk over me to him, he quickly sets them right and doesn’t engage in their misogynistic comments, he just stares them down and steps in if he thinks I am being gaslighted, words and phrases like “is this the usual treatment for symptoms like this?” forces the doctor to explain usually what they’d do for him, at which point I am able to ask “so why am I not being sent for XYZ testing/why am I not being prescribed pain treatment?”
But also remember, you are there to be my ally, not to tell the doctor what you think is wrong with me, but to make them pay attention to me. Direct the conversation back to me, and if it’s not working, repeat exactly what I am saying and make them listen.
It’s entirely fucked up, but your mere presence could mean the difference between misdiagnosis and proper medical treatment.
And just because I am seeing it in the tags “#this shit doesn’t happen with female doctors” oh it absolutely fucking does.
Misogyny in the medical world is fucking ingrained. It’s in the very teachings of modern medicine.
Some of my worst gynecological experiences were at the hands of other women who thought I was bullshitting my pain levels when it comes to certain procedures and illnesses.
I’ve been told to “stop making a fuss” while I have screamed on the table from a speculum insertion (by the way, HUGE warning sign there is something majorly wrong with your muscle walls, pain upon insertion is not “normal” do not accept it if they tell you agony is normal upon insertion of anything) for a “routine” exam. And to give you some idea of my pain tolerance levels, I’ve had two root canals without anesthesia (cause
anesthesia doesn’t work for me) and I breathed deeply through them. I left nail marks in the chair and had to tap out a few times for a rest, but I’ve never screamed and shot out the chair like I was being murdered.
I’ve had female doctors tisk at my medical file and tell me I want to “get myself together”, like I’m having an autoimmune collapse for funsies. I’ve had female doctors tell me I “just need to have a baby” because that will “calm me down” and also “what does your husband thing of all this?”
Which speaking of, I’ve also had female doctors turn to my husband and say “wow you sure are good to be coping well with this” like eXCUSE YOU, HE’S NOT THE ONE WHOSE BODY IS EATING ITSELF ALIVE???!! BUT OKAY, SURE, I’M THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO “BE MORE POSITIVE AND TAKE A TYLENOL”. OKAY THEN. (also as an aside: if they do ask your male friend/loved one to leave the room to ensure your safety and you aren’t being controlled, remember to ask for him to be brought back in. Sometimes they “forget” and you’re left on your own again)
And all of this? All those things I posted up there? Those apply to white women as well.
Women of color and women with disabilities, are more likely to be neglected and gaslighted than cis white able bodied women are—and we (I use the term losely when it comes to able bodied re: myself, heh) already get the short end of the stick when it comes to appropriate medical care. Be aware of your fellow women (all your sisters, not just your cisters) and if you are in a position to offer help and go to appointments and sit in on exams, know that it would be greatly appreciated.
And again, remember, it is not your place to talk over your friend, this is not about you or what you think is wrong.
This is about you using your privilege by your mere presence alone, to make sure your friend is going to get adequate medical care, whether it’s pain management or diagnosis.
Be a witness and hold those in the medical industry accountable for their neglect and actions against the vulnerable. Because by gods no one else will.
it’s like Gritty Crime Noir PI + Reasonably Mature Adult Guy Just Trying to Help People + blind ninja dude, but still somehow pretty grounded in reality … and then there’s this random noodley ramen-haired white boy from the Mystical City of Super Exotic Asia-Land who absolutely cannot fathom poverty and has the most generic Revenge Motive ever put to screen
every time luke cage rolls his eyes i’m like right there with u man
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but - it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration - why do assholes always come out on top? - and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.
God fucking bless the “worried well” who seek psychotherapy. They can mostly keep their lives/jobs/families running, but want an increase in their mood or quality of life, and come to me for a tune-up. They talk about existential questions and childhood dreams and personal fulfillment, and worry that they’re “whining” or “taking up [my] valuable time.”
I like them for them, of course; I find their lives and worries interesting and valuable, and enjoy the work we do together. But also?
They make the more “serious” work I do possible. People with the greatest need for therapy are frequently the least able to pay for it. When one of my clients loses their job and benefits, they need therapy more, not less. And in private practice I can only afford to keep treating them for free if I have enough people on my caseload who are paying me full price. My ability to volunteer at a homeless shelter and talk to them about grief and trauma is strongly dictated by how many upper-middle-class people pay me $200 an hour to talk about optimal job performance.
And emotionally, it is an honest fucking joy sometimes to get out of a session with someone whose childhood abuse makes their entire life difficult, and spend an hour talking to one of my worried writer clients about anxiety management and creativity and nothing too deeply painful.
So if you’ve ever paid a therapist but felt self-indulgent or whiny or like your problems “weren’t serious enough”: please know you’re valuable and important. Not just for yourself (though you are), but because your presence in that therapy room makes a lot of other things possible.
i was tense because as someone who has trauma in her history but looks to a lot of people like “worried well” (to the point it took me years to be properly diagnosed with PTSD, ugh) i expected bashing from this post
THANK YOU for doing a very different thing <3
I mean, once upon a time the worried well had confession with priests, or village elders/wise old men and women, or shamans/people in touch with the spirit world to listen to them and advise them on how to lead a happier, wiser life. Now that we’re a secular society that treats shamanism etc. as superstition, and locks old people away? All the worried well have is self help books, psychotherapy, people they know in person who are probably no wiser than they are, and talking to people on Tumblr. Of all these options, psychotherapy seems the most likely to actually help. Going to psychotherapy when you’re not severely mentally ill fills an important need that society isn’t otherwise filling, so it’s not shameful to go.
Also, the boundary between “worried well” and mentally ill/traumatized can be blurry sometimes. At one point I was in therapy for severe depression. But now, with my lower grade trauma, social anxiety, excessive shame, and just Needing Someone To Talk To In Order to Deal With Emotional Stuff And Reflect in General? That’s “worried well” compared to a lot of people here on Tumblr.
A related idea (which I’ve had before) is that if you do have a serious trauma, you’re wasting your/the therapist’s time if you aren’t talking about the most traumatic thing possible every single moment of therapy. But sometimes you’re not ready to go there, and that’s okay. Sometimes, your work or family need you to focus on more minor problems, like anxiety management or writer’s block. And getting unstuck on something like that can make you feel so much better about yourself, and more capable of change in general. I would think that could only help you deal with the serious trauma.
Also, I want to point out that someone might objectively be the “worried well” but still be in distress, and as was so astutely stated above, those people need somewhere to go to ease that distress. And therapists offer that.
the tv in the caf today was talking about james cameron dissing wonder woman and one of the freshman girls behind me in line asked her friend with 100% sincerity “who’s james cameron?” and it’s already the best thing i’ve heard all day
Um…Enjolras/Grantaire from Les Mis, Baze Malbus/Chirrut Imwe from Rogue One, Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught from Wynonna Earp, Hamilton/Laurens from Hamilton and also HISTORY, Legolas/Gimli from LotR, and Aziraphale/Crowley from Good Omens, probably. Those are the ones that come to mind. Oh, and of late Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin from The Man From UNCLE. And Breq/Seivarden(/Mercy of Kalr) from Ancillary Justice.
U: What are your favorite M/F ships?
Rachel/Tobias and Elfangor/Loren from Animorphs, Jareth/Sarah from Labyrinth, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff from Avengers, Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori from Pacific Rim, Aerin/Tor and Aerin/Luthe and Harry/Corlath from the Damar series, Jame/Torisen from the Kencyrath series, and any arrangement of Rey/Finn/Poe Dameron from Star Wars. I’m also currently watching B99 and feeling a great deal of affection for Amy Santiago/Jake Peralta.
so if in the soulmate au the very first words your soulmate ever says to you are tattooed somewhere on your body since the day you are born imagine having something like ‘man I cant believe dumbledore died’ tattooed on you. imagine being spoiled for a book series that doesnt even exist yet. imagine worrying about this dumbledore guy your whole childhood while not knowing who he is. imagine knowing dumbledore dies before jk rowling even thinks about it.
Everybody go home, this is my favorite soulmate au
So you finally find your soulmate. After years of knowing that dumbledore dies and the entire franchise being ruined, you find him. You’re in the theatre, dumbledore is dead and you hear it. ‘Man I can’t believe dumbledore died’ by a guy walking right by you and in you’re rage you shout ‘You! You’re the one!’ The guy stops, looks at you, his own arm to read the words, then back at you and he says, “That’s not really how I imagined that being said”
D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?
Pretty sure the first thing I ever actually contributed was THIS Scarlet Witch/Vision post-Civil War fic, which is entirely fluff originating in a conversation I had with my best friend about the lack of fic for the two of them and the fact that no one had written a mid-air kiss for these two FLYING SUPERHEROES.
An excerpt:
Vision’s hand reached out, hovering just over her shoulder. “Are you having nightmares again?”
“Nothing shocking,” she said. “The same.” The wreckage of her house, her brother’s body. Strucker’s failed experiments. Straitjackets inside cages inside prisons. The Avengers, twisted and shattered in red light. “Some new.” Men without limbs, and sinking into the sea, and Vision, turning his clear cold eyes and terrible power toward her.
Vision lingered for a moment, then lowered his hand so that his palm was up, an invitation. “Come with me. Just for a little while. I promise to bring you back.”
When I was younger, I only read to book 13 of Animorphs before my mom told me that I should read more mature books and my school library didn't have past book 13 so I stopped but I found your blog and book overviews and now I'm reading it again and what the fuck. This is not for children, I mean, it is, but it's not. And I love all my children so much and I completely adore your Animorphs tag. I don't have time to read during the school year, so I'm trying to get as many books in
over the summer as I can, and I am just now caught up on #13, but I just wanted to say I love your blog and your thoughts on Animorphs so thanks so much. <3
Honestly bless? I love this comment so much, I hope you don’t mind me publishing it so that I can keep it forever? I’ve enjoyed watching you go through my Animorphs tag so much, tbqh, and I’m frankly honored to have dragged so many people into this series with me. And you’re so right, these books are not for children, but they’re for kids, but also I would never be allowed to give them to a child. (I would give them to a child, let’s be honest, I’m a mess of a child tender. But those of my friends who would be the kid’s parents would probably stop me.)
If you’re in the market for other Animorphs folks, my one-stop-shop is @chromatographic as well as @derinthemadscientist, also @incorrectmorpherquotes is fucking hilarious, trolling Chroma and Derin’s stuff can point you to other people (I say as I use familiar nicknames like I’ve ever exchanged more than a couple words with them I’m so sorry y’all).
Please feel free to always always come talk to me about Animorphs more at all times. ESPECIALLY my sad bird boy.
ANDALITE. AND-A-LIGHT WOULD BE GREAT!!!!!!!! HILARIOUS. TOP QUALITY. I LOVE IT.
AND A LIGHT. LISTEN I WENT ALMOST TEN YEARS WITHOUG READING THESE BOOKS (long story) AND WHEN I REREAD BOOK 12 I LOOKED AT THE COVER AND THE FIRST THING THAT POPPED INTO MY HEAD WAS “CASSIE I’M SO PROUD OF YOU YOU’RE SO GOOD” LIKE LISTEN THAT LINE STUCK WITH ME COMPLETELY INTACT AND WORD PERFECT FOR A D E C A D E.
Also, if anyone wants to hear my headcanons about ADHD Rachel hit me U P.
D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?
I’m pretty sure it was this fluffy Rey/Poe/Finn fic, featuring the three of them on a forest planet, cute shy pre-relationship flirting, BB-8, and flower crowns. And Rey attempting to eat the foliage.
Here is an excerpt:
Finn’s teeth flashed in a grin as he laced his fingers through Poe’s–Poe stomped down on a blush, he was a grown-ass man, he was not going to turn into a kriffing Academy kid over a pair of pretty young things. Even if they were as pretty as Rey and Finn. Finn didn’t seem to notice his moment of internal struggle, pulling him after Rey and BB-8 with a laugh.
The trees gave way to low growth, shrubs and wildflowers and grasses, near the lakeside. Rey nearly shrieked in delight at the discovery of a patch of flowers in a shade of brilliant red, dotted here and there with the tiny light blue blooms that practically infested this system.
“They come in colors!” she cried, and Poe made a mental note to get Rey out more. This was their first free day since Finn regained full function and Rey brought back a very reluctant Jedi master, but he could probably trade some favors to get her a few flowers to keep on the base.
If you require an antidote to the sheer density of fluff in the above fic, I also wrote this one.
so I’m in that finals week punch-drunk sweet spot where sleep deprivation, caffeine, and first-final-went-well all combine into a mind-altering state not unlike being high. I’m still functional enough to study, but whatever part of my brain that makes metaphors is definitely on the fritz. This morning I was trying to describe the 20-minute nap I got at the end of my pre-final all nighter, and the sentence I uttered was:
“I basically spiked my gray matter off the far side of a REM cycle, which was just enough to let the pathetic mass of neurons left behind after the caffeine brain blender get all the juicy law nuggets into some kind of order.”
To which my horrified classmate responded: “What.”
So in the interests of procrastinating on studying for a few minutes and entertaining internet strangers, here’s a few of the metaphors/similes/analogies/weird crap that has come out of my mouth in the last week. Not even I know what I meant with some of these. Please be merciful in your judging; I am so tired.
describing how pale I’ve gotten while living in a study room: “when i go makeup shopping i just go the palest end of the spectrum, past ‘ivory’ to ‘copy paper’ and then i grab the jar of mayonnaise next to that, because that’s how white i am right now.”
“ive become a half-reverse-vampire; i love garlic and i won’t come in your house if you invite me, but i still flee from sunlight and smell like death.”
“im ADHD as fuck dude. my brain is like seventeen squirrels on crack. if i can get them all pointed in one direction and focused on one thing, im basically unstoppable, but as soon as i get distracted, it’s a full on clown party in there.”
“as a general rule, i try not to consume any food item larger than my head, but given the current size of my ego and the amount of nonsensical court rules i’ve stuffed in there recently, im pretty sure my head’s twice the size it used to be. so we should probably order at least two more pizzas.”
things I just said:
“im like a raccoon when it comes to shiny new office supplies. i just have this unsuppressible urge to steal them in hopes that somehow they will imbue me with their motivational powers and i will become a more efficient person by consuming their tiny paperclip souls.”
regarding energy drinks: “it used to be that if you were in law school you would just get addicted to cocaine, but now all we have are these. i figure if i drink enough of them my heart’ll just pop like a balloon animal and i wont have to sit the final.”
Like, people who identify as Queer know the word is used like a slur. Trust me, we know.
So when we say “queer is a slur” was started by terfs, maybe use some critical thinking and try to understand what we mean. That is, if you actually care about queer people and the damage terfs do, rather that just screaming “queer is a slur!” and ignoring the actual point.
Terfs did not like that queer was reclaimed. End of. This is a fact. Queer was too broad, too accepting, and embraced all the people they wanted gone. And I know y'all exclusionists feel the same but get pissed when we point it out so you deny it, but sit down and listen for a minute.
Queer was the preferred term for poc. For bisexuals. For trans people. For people with multiple identities. It neatly encapsulated everything, and was a friendly community to those who felt thrown under the bus by mainstream LGBT activism. It was a political and social statement, “you treated my like I was different and weird, and guess what? I am and that’s something to be proud of.”
So the response? “You can’t use that word. Its bad. Its a slur.”
And at the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes. Everyone knew why they didn’t like the word and brushed that off. It was fine.
So they started more subtly. “Just so you know this word is very harmful and is a slur so be careful how you use it :))) in case you didn’t know :)))) its a slur :))) friendly reminder :))) for the sake of other people of course :))))” type shit on every post involving the word, including and especially posts simply mentioning self identification.
Always worded in friendly, concerned ways, like the derailment was meant to be nice and considerate, and not about normalizing their rhetoric.
And what happened because of that was a younger generation of community kids growing up with these statements being thrown at them and absorbed on every. Single. Post. That. Mentionioned. Queer.
The result? That same generation of kids cutting it all short, removing the meant-to-be-palatable niceness, to just say “queer is a slur.”
Exactly how it was originally intended. “Queer is a slur.” People drop on posts where young queer people talk about it being a self identifier that actually fits them. “Its a slur,” they comment, with nothing else, on posts they clearly didn’t read past that word, written by people twice their age who had reclaimed it before they were even born.
Its nasty. Its disgusting. It’s plain old bigotry, whether the people saying know it or not. It is a terf tactic, plain and simple.
And no one wants to deny that it is indeed used as a slur (right along with all the rest of our identities.) No one wants to be insensitive and force it on people who haven’t reclaimed it.
But invading queer people’s posts to spit “queer is a slur” is flat out queerphobic. You do the dirty work of terfs, of cis straight oppressors, by saying in one simple sentence: “its a dirty word, there is no pride in it, you haven’t/can’t reclaim(ed) it.”
And regardless of your actual intentions, when you do this, that is EXACTLY what you are communicating and doing.
“Queer is a slur” is a terf movement. Stop fucking supporting terfs just because you want to pretend like it isn’t.
This is why I block people who say ‘Queer is a slur.’
You quack like a terf, I block you like a terf.
This thing was so weird to me when I first encountered it on tumblr, because like… in academia
queer studies
is a thing. Queer Theory is a thing. If I search my Uni’s library for ‘queer’ I get 138,481 results. Here are some of them:
Queer in Europe : contemporary case studies / edited by Lisa Downing and Robert Gillett.
Queer Phenomenology, Sexual Orientation, and Health Care Spaces: Learning From the Narratives of Queer Women and Nurses in Primary Health Care, / Cressida Heyes, Megan Dean, Lisa Goldberg.
Playing With Time: Gay Intergenerational Performance Work and the Productive Possibilities of Queer Temporalities / Stephen Farrier
Postcolonial and queer theories : intersections and essays / edited by John C. Hawley.
Showing Your Pride: A National Survey of Queer Student Centres in Canadian Colleges and Universities / John Ecker, Jennifer Rae, Amandeep Bassi
Mad for Foucault : rethinking the foundations of queer theory / Lynne Huffer.
Do those look like queerphobic texts? And do you think that most of the writers writing about queer theory are straight? Lols. If you don’t want to be personally be called queer, that’s cool. You don’t get to stop other people using the word though. It’s ours now and we’re keeping it.
Did I reblog this already? If I did, doesn’t hurt to blog it again.
I usually unfollow people who use the tag (or the equilivant) q-slur.
Because fuck you, I’m queer. Have been since like 1986.
Marco and the Terrible, Horrible. No Good, Very Bad Haircut™
Okay, I recommend the absolute hell out of Morph Club Cast, an Animorphs reread podcast, and in the episode for Book 10 I think they count a total of six mentions of Marco’s new haircut? Eight? Not sure. A lot.
So basically… all puppers are Chee’s right?
…so…at some point all puppers were part Pemalite but also evolution exists and maybe not anymore but on the other hand the puppers respond intelligently to the Pemalite crystal but…only sort of? Maybe? But yes.
I realize that I just gave every answer possible to that question, but also. Just roll with it.
I… don’t know how to feel about the Chee book. Just. Huh. Huh.
Same? Same tbh? It’s a weird book? Like, Marco has some Bad Times, but ultimately it doesn’t seem to click as well as, say, the previous book, in which Cassie had Bad Times and the day was saved by bureaucracy and skunks? Also, you just reminded me that I should post my recap of this book so that I can vent my Potentially Controversial Opinions about the Chee. Look forward to that being the next thing in the queue.
(preview: WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK PLEASE HELP THESE SIX TRAUMATIZED TEENAGERS INSTEAD OF JUST BEING PROBLEM GENERATORS)
(note: I have no romantic or sexualized experience myself, so I admit *some* of these points rely entirely on secondhand stuff and media)
One thing I think is not talked about very much is that straight men live pretty much desexualized lives if we’re not actually having sex at that moment, and then there’s not much room to be the object rather than subject.
As I’ve said before, we men don’t have clothing options for “dressing sexy” in masculine clothing (there is cross dressing but that is different). There’s no male equivalent to the short skirt or low cut top. There’s no male lingerie that isn’t seen as a joke.
Further, we just don’t get validation for our sexuality outside of a sexual partner. We are almost never complimented for our looks or sexiness from platonic friends like women are, especially same sex friends.
There really aren’t many straight male role models for raw aesthetic sexiness in mainstream culture (besides unnaturally muscled men). In fiction, male characters are almost never attractive for embodying sexiness but rather for doing things (saving the world, being extremely witty, being a genius, winning the tournament, etc.). Their sexiness is non-aesthetic and sometimes is in spite of their aesthetics.
Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of men aren’t even called physically hot and sexy by their own sexual partners, who themselves focus on personality. There’s not much room to fulfill the role of passive sexism object for you partner for many/most men.
I think it is telling that a lot of porn for men ignores the man’s personality and has a woman just throwing themselves at the man, overcome with lust.
Also there the fact that women seem to rarely approach men and some seem to often expect the man to do most of the sexual escalation, especially in the early stages.
We talk about women of color or women who are disabled being sexualized, but we don’t talk about how all straight men are desexualized and denied the ability to be sexualized object.
oh my god… that’s why they send dick pics
“witness me!”
There are occasional reddit threads about things like this: “guys who send unsolicited dick pics, why do you do it?”
The answer always seems to be some combination of slot machine mentality (“maybe this one will like it, and make the other 50 worthwhile”) and a desire for witness. Surprising numbers of people admit that it’s validation even if the reaction is negative, simply because they’re still being viewed in a totally sexual context.
At the very least that has obvious consequences for people trying to reduce dick pic sending. There’s some core of people who can’t possibly be reached with “it’s not attractive to women” because that was never their expectation.
More broadly, I think efforts to get (Western?) men to emphasize with objectification wildly underestimate the challenge they’re facing. It’s not just a sympathy shortage, it’s a totally unfamiliar feeling. Making things even harder, it’s a feeling a lot of men say they wish they could have.
The usual narrative on not (politely) complimenting the appearance of unknown women is “sure, it’s nice if it happens once, but think about how annoyed you’d be if it happened all the time”. Fine in general terms, but I think a lot of men don’t have any way to intuit the emotional difference between too-frequent compliments and being pestered with too much of something totally innocuous like requests for the date.
The comments on those articles are frequently from men saying they’ve literally never received a single compliment from a stranger on their appearance, and can’t imagine what it would be like. The ones who have are often talking about a single, years-old compliment they still cherish. That’s not a framework that supports more than a purely theoretical understanding of what’s it’s like to be valued for your appearance too heavily - or at all.
Obviously that’s not universal, any more than all women are catcalled, but it seems like a really serious communication failure to appeal to a sense of objectification that much of your audience has literally never felt, and desperately wants.
Reblogged because thefutureoneandall describes exactly why I have trouble empathizing with feminism columnists.
Can confirm, I’d take literally any compliment on anything at this point, and would cherish it.
one day we gotta get all the men and all the women to sit down together and hash this stuff out between them, how hard can it be.
This discussion kind of reminds me of a story that made the rounds about a year ago, where
a woman, after having gotten a bit tired with dick pics, decided to try to get her “revenge” of sorts, by sending unsolicited vagina pics to 40 random men:
Let’s be honest: while I enjoy penises, I don’t necessarily want
unexpected visual boners intruding on my day. I wondered, “What would
guys do if I turned the tables and sent them an unexpected vagina pic?”
And so, in my own twist on revenge porn, I sent 40 unexpected vagina
pics to men on Bumble.
This … didn’t work out the way she apparently expected it to:
Overall, I was surprised that I didn’t get my, “Gotcha!” moment. I’d
initially hoped the guys would see how invasive it is to receive such
intimate photos from a stranger. When I’m excited to get to know a guy,
his penis isn’t the first part of him that I want to know. But given
that men like to send dick pics, I suppose their enthusiasm for v-pics
makes sense.
So, basically, women experience dick picks as a net negative, as an intimacy violation, while men experience v-pics as a huge positive, as validation and an indicator of interest.
This seems consistent with the above discussion, where it’s a pretty common male experience to basically never receive any sexual attention ever and thus respond really strongly positively to whatever scraps come their way (or to start trolling for attention - with the point of some of these dick pics apparently being to get any attention at all, no matter how hostile), while a common female experience seems to be more like being flooded with unwanted sexual attention and wanting a way to make it stop -
resulting in an absolutely massive inferential gap - with the result that if you’re on one side of the gap and try to describe your feelings and experiences to the people on the other side, whatever words you have will just fall on deaf ears because the feeling and experiences you describe are … not just unfamiliar, but outright alien, to the ones on the other side.
This alienness is … mutual.
For men, it feels like no men are sexy to women.
For women, it feels like all women are sexy to men.
It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.
“It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.”
the conversation has gotten longer, so i’m reblogging
… This is so cool. It actually makes sense.
but of course women are wary of just giving men compliments, because attention-starved men are likely to take it as a come-on. what a dilemma.
So what I’m getting from this… Is that my idea of taking popular types of fiction and essentially ‘flipping the script’ so that there are sexy male characters as ‘damsel in distress’ types would actually be very good and help a lot of people become comfortable with their sexuality?
it could well! i’m not the guy to answer this really, i’m queer and also i’ve always been pretty comfortable with being the one giving the compliments (and just asking for validation when i need it). but i do think there’s a place in the world for fiction where The Sexy One is male.
consider chris hemsworth in ghostbusters. that one’s a bit mean-spirited, with him being hilariously clueless, but you’ve got that dynamic where what he contributes is, he’s hot. that’s it. and i found it kind of a breath of fresh air, not because it was a fuck-you to sexist tropes, but because it’s never, ever enough for a guy to be attractive, but here it was, and that was fun to see.
i once thoughtlessly complimented a guy on his jacket, because he and his friend rounded the corner and suddenly i was confronted with an extremely handsome young man in a very fashionable black leather jacket, and i blurted out ‘whoah, nice jacket, you’re looking good!’ and the look on his face was just this explosion of surprise and delight– he actually kind of missed a step. the next minute i was like shit shit SHIT what if things get weird JEEZ but he and his friend were already walking past, and his friend just started laughing. kind of this ‘whoah, cool, what the hell’ laugh, and when i glanced back they’d both kind of lit up and were elbowing each other as they walked away. i was extremely relieved to have like dodged a bullet of ‘if you let a man know you are attracted to them at close range GOD KNOWS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN BUT IT’S GONNA BE OBNOXIOUS PROBABLY’ and then also pleased that i’d made that guy’s day. but also like. i guess now i’m realizing i probably made that guy’s decade…
i wish it was more common to compliment people– especially guys– in a casual way. but when you live as a woman you can spend a lot more time dodging men’s attention rather than soliciting it…
maybe male poledancing is like, the next big fad to cash in on? guys can enjoy getting hit on and girls can enjoy there being a specific space for that, that they, the girls, can leave afterwards.
I’d honestly never considered this before; it makes a lot of sense. *internally recalculates a bunch of stuff*
i have a fake son.
his name is Tim and he is working on his M.S. in astrophysics at Berkeley.
he is devestatingly handsome and enjoys rock climbing and volunteers as a counselor at the local YMCA there in Berkeley, California.
i am so proud of my fake son. i have raised him up in my own head to be such an outstanding member of society.
“Tim” is only brought up when asked about by one particular woman at work that i only see on occasion. i don’t make a habit or game of lying to people, but with her, it kinda came about as follows:
Faye is one of those people who has been there/done that and will hang herself on the cross while she tells you how much worse the experience was for her. i’ve seen this woman Kanye West an 8-month pregnant girl at said girl’s own baby shower to glorify the gift she gave her as well as go into how horrible her labor was with her own children. Faye also is a braggart. her car/purse/house/ring/shoes/etc. all cost more than whatever yours did and her children are all angels.
i was forced to work with Faye for 2 days about 5 years ago. she called me Emily a few times before i finally told her my name is Amy, not Emily. she gave me a sideways glance and said, “I like Emily better”, and since then, she has always called me Emily. i let this go because to get angry with her and tell her off is to see her become dramatic and begin crying and insist she did not mean anything by it while not issuing anything close to an apology. Faye is always right, too, you know.
anyway, when she shut up long enough about herself and her fabulous offspring on the second day, she asked, “Do you have any children, Emily?”
i replied that i do not. she then launched into her daughter taking fertility drugs so that she could give her mother grandchildren someday.
that was the only question she asked me until i saw her about a year later.
“Oh, HI, Emily! How are you?!”
“Hi, Faye…how are you?”
“Wonderful, wonderful. Stephen just graduated from UT. He’s going to be the best doctor ever! How is your son, uh, Tim?”
it took me a second. Tim? son? what the hell is she talking about?!
it dawned on me what a complete narcissist she truly is. she hadn’t heard me the day she asked if i had children, because she didn’t care. she didn’t care enough to call me by my real name, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.
i couldn’t stop myself. i briefly thought about correcting her, but i decided to just go with it.
“Tim is doing so well. He was just accepted to Berkeley after his amazing thesis on planetary nebuli. We are so proud of him.”
her eyes grew big. “Oh, how nice! But, Berkeley? That’s so far from home. UT is an excellent school; surely he could’ve been accepted there?…”
i gave a small chuckle. “Oh, well, they wanted him for sure, Faye. I mean, all the letters he received, practically BEGGING him to study there. But, well, they just don’t have a sufficient astronomy department. UT is a fine school, but not for the subject that Tim is going into. Astrophysics is not something you can study just anywhere, you know.”
her eyes narrowed. “Medicine is what these young people should be going into. Astrophysics? What is that, anyway? How will it contribute to the world?”
“Gosh, I don’t really know how to explain astrophysics, Faye. It’s so mind blowing for simple minds like mine and yours. But searching for things in space that could potentially help our planet is a pretty big deal, I think.”
Faye promptly excused herself. i knew i had gotten her.
i’ve bumped into her on and off throughout the past 5 years and she always told me how her angels were saving the world, especially Stephen, and then she’d ask about Tim. and i made sure my Tim was one step above her Stephen. her face would turn crimson and she would have to abruptly leave.
i saw her as i was leaving work yesterday and she stopped me to wish me a happy Easter.
“Stephen is coming home this holiday. He’s bringing his fiance. She’s a doctor too, you know. How is Tim? Don’t tell me he’s still not graduated?…”
“Oh, Faye, don’t be silly! Astrophysics takes YEARS to graduate from. It’s not as simple as medicine. But, yes, he is close to graduating.”
“Is he coming home for Easter? I can’t imagine spending holidays without my children; how dreadful! Oh, but he’s all the way in California…it costs so much to fly here, I assume.”
I grinned. “Yes, it does. But he’s such a sweetheart, he’s flying me out there this year! Taking a break from his studies and humanitarian efforts to have his dear ol’ Mom around for Easter. I’m so lucky!”
“…yes, well, have a nice time, Emily. Happy Easter!”
“You too, Kay! Oh, I mean Faye!”
you know, like i said before, i don’t like to lie. it does seem very silly to have let this go on for so long. Tim has been a fabrication in the making for over 5 years now, he almost feels real to me.
when i see Faye, i have images of my fake son, looking so handsome in his lab coat as he’s peering into a microscope looking at dust particles from a comet. i see him jogging with his dog on the beach. i see him hiking and biking and climbing. i see him helping an elderly woman with her groceries.
it’s a true testament that if you lie, or let a lie go on for a while, it becomes a solid thing that you have to keep up with.
oddly enough, i don’t lose sleep on this lie. i don’t see her often enough to fib about this on a daily or consistent level. Faye never cared anything about me or my life until she had something to try to one-up me on. SHE is the one losing sleep on account of her Stephen not succeeding quite like my Tim. it’s amazing how this lie has eaten her alive and made me feel proud of something that doesn’t even exist…
eh well.
i’ll be boarding the fake plane to Berkeley this afternoon, to celebrate Easter with my fake son.
Mama’s soooo proud of you, Timmy!
i'm imagining the significance of the dwarves inventing a printing press. like you said, their years spent traveling without a home probably did a lot of trauma, which trickled down through the generations. to be able to tell their own stories and to see them permanently pressed with something stronger than a hand and pen, is probably really special. catch me crying in the fuckin' club thinking about this, goddam fucking line of thrain and children of Mahal.
Honestly I need a shirt that reads “Catch me crying in the fucking club about the children of Mahal” because HARD SAME. THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO PUT THIS ON ANOTHER POST BECAUSE JUST. YES. JAKE IS MY BOY. HE’S THE BEST BOY. HE’S DOING HIS VERY BEST AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH.
IF YOU DON’T LIKE JAKE BECAUSE OF THE ACTIONS HE TAKES DURING THE WAR, I DISAGREE BUT I RESPECT YOUR OPINION. IF YOU DON’T LIKE JAKE BECAUSE YOU THINK HE’S INCOMPETENT AND/OR BORING, I INVITE YOU TO MEET ME BEHIND THE HAUNTED EX-DENNY’S AND WE CAN SETTLE THIS PROPERLY.
Oh God, listen, they get saved by the power of skunks and bureaucracy in this one and I’m SURE it’s because KA Applegate looked at that whole…termite thing and said to herself “I should go easy on them, where can we get some humor here” and I’m not even mad. I love her for it.
Also it occurs to me that this ask IS in the middle of several asks about Animorphs #9 but I could be wrong, in which case…thanks?
We are sure to SMELL you coming…. My boy… Look at him… Such a good one liner. An icon truly…
