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…
I never thought about it, but, I mean…of course it’s the dwarves.
The elves would never think of it, fading out of Middle Earth with their perfect memories entirely intact, bearing the lore of ages in their own lifetimes. Elrond would never think to write down the story of his life, for all that it stretches back to the Silmarils’ crafting. When they do write things down, they believe in taking the time to inscribe the words with their own hand–no one knows the hard truths of permanence and impermanence like the Firstborn, and if you are going to take the time to make something ephemeral into something lasting, you do it right. And besides, Quenya and Sindarin and forgotten Noldorin, all are made with elaborate curling letters, intended more to be written with a brush tip or a calligrapher’s pen than printed for clarity. A printing press would never capture the fluidity quite right.
The race of men…well, they’re still trying to recover. The great kingdoms of the human race–hard Gondor and broken Arnor, wild Rohan and poor shattered Harad to the South–took the brunt of the Ring War hardest of all. Even the strongest of them is left in fragments. New rulers, damaged walls, burned cities. Not many have time, in those first years–and it does take years–to worry about the lore that might have been lost or muddled by water and fire and falling stone, not when there are still leaderless orcs roving and people starving as they try to stretch the harvests. By the time they do, they’re trying to piece together what they used to have. No one thinks twice about trying to piece it together the way it was, and the way it was, was handwritten. Someday the race of men will be great innovators, reaching toward the stars with sure hands and bright eyes. Now, though, the race of men is enduring, is rebuilding and making alliances, trying to prevent the losses of the war from reappearing ten, twenty, a hundred years down the line. They are doing well, at enduring–pragmatists, grim and tough and determined–but they hardly have the time for mechanical marvels that don’t aid building, speed farmwork, or otherwise smooth the path.
The hobbits persist in being stubbornly hobbitish. Oral history is what they do, and their memories for family ties and dramatic gossip could give the oldest Eldest a run for their money. Who’s going to bother to write down the story of the time Athella Proudfoot–no, not that one, the other one, Odo’s great-great-great aunt–drank half the tavern under the table, got up on the bar, did a jig in nothing but her bloomers, and then settled in to drink the place dry? (And still looked fresh as a daisy, if quite a bit less sober, the next morning.) No one, because anyone you ask knows the story of everyone who ever did anything worth knowing the story of. What do the hobbits care for legends and lore? They know who they are and where they come from, songs and stories and all, and there’s a certain level of strength in that. Strength enough to walk into Mordor, strength enough to reclaim the Shire.
The dwarves…the dwarves are a people who once had libraries, sweeping and beautifully full of knowledge. The libraries in Khazad-dum have rotted, by now, ransacked by orcs and goblins or burned entire by Durin’s Bane. Books and scrolls, illuminated with precious metals and expensive inks by the finest scholars, are worth nothing to a dragon, nothing but fuel for amusement, things to send sparking. The library where Dis learned to read, where Thorin and Thrain before him learned statecraft, are nothing but ash. The Iron Hills, Ered Luin, those places were filled by a people seeking refuge. Few dwarrows snatched tomes as they fled Erebor. Fewer still kept them at the ruin of Azanulbizar. The dwarves escaped their ancestral homes with the clothes on their backs and scraps of bread baked on stones, with the pyres of the burned dwarves still smoldering behind them.
It’s a survivor of that flight who scratches down the first idle plans. She remembers seeing Dain Ironfoot, barely more than a child–but then he seemed such a grown-up to her, at the time, when she was still a beardless babe only just walking–bloodied and limping on a crutch as he stood up to claim the leadership his father had left in his wake. Dain and Thorin, young dwarrows still, but already old with the weight of the world. She remembers that better than the dragon, better than the battle. Her mother died in Ered Luin, but not before writing a poem for the burned ones, a poem for the two dwarves who had surrendered their own youth for the sake of their people. She can’t stand the idea of her mother’s poem being lost, the way so many things were lost in flight after flight.
That dwarrowdam dies, an old dwarf in her bed with her loved ones around her, and it’s her best friend’s daughter who comes across the plans, many years later. Yes, she thinks, looking at the levers, at the vague notes about possible lettering methods, yes, that could work.
It doesn’t work, at first. It doesn’t work a lot, really, but the dwarves are a stoneheaded bunch and not in a rush to be put off by a few petty failings. Or by a total collapse of the base mechanics, the first time she tries to pull the lever. The dwarrowdam unearths herself from a pile of metal and gears and wood, with the help of a few other folks who heard the complicated crash and weary cursing, and starts again.
It takes most of two years and a lot of brainstorming–first with her friends, then with her guild, then with any poor fool careless enough to wander into her workshop–but the scribe-machine works. She shrieks and bursts into tears when the first page comes out crisp and clean and beautiful, and sprints into the great hall waving it triumphantly over her head.
The paper says, in kuzdh runes, plain and clear, We are Mahal’s children, and we are yet unbroken.
The prosecutor who subpoenaed and cross-examined Hitler in 1931 for a murder trial against four brownshirts was a Jewish lawyer named Hans Litten. The three-hour testimony left Hitler so unnerved and humiliated that he forbade anyone speak Litten’s name in his presence, and he was killed in a concentration camp. Today, the German bar association is called the Hans Litten Association, and every year they give out the Hans Litten Award for excellence in the legal profession. That’s how you commemorate history.
re millennial killing stuff post: so at my second job I edited a dissertation on how young consumers are changing luxury brands, like they won't just buy the same identical handbag bc "oh it's $designer!" like they'd rather spend that money on an experience etc, so brands have had to COMPLETELY change how they approach the new generation - I mentioned this to an older friend cause I thought it was neat & she went "yeah it's weird how young people expect companies to bend over backwards for them"
THIS EXACTLY
My (much older) co worker was talking recently about how she wants the new $300 whatever designer bag, and I was talking about how me and the husband might set $300 aside to go up to House on the Rock for a weekend.
That seems to be pretty standard for the older people I know vs. the younger people I know. For $300, we could get a hotel room overnight, a couple good meals, into House on the Rock, and some money to spend on whatever while we’re there.
And she was just like “But it’s a kate spade bag.”
And I was like “And???? My purse has a unicorn on it I paid $5 for it at Goodwill and I can hold things in it to take up to House on the Rock.”
Great now I'm having emotions about the Hork-Bajir
OH BUDDY JUST YOU WAIT, THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE EMOTIONS TO HAVE ABOUT THE HORK-BAJIR
Ha, your tag “way past Romeo and Juliet” I get it now. *sighs* God do I love ships with angst
You have not known angst until you’ve sailed the good ship Rachel/Tobias. Honestly this was super formative in terms of what ships I do and don’t like, and also what kind of ships I write, but even so: I’ve never come close.
Oh geez… I really like Marco and Rachel friendship….
Marco and Rachel have that excellent A-grade “Yeah we hate each other but also I’ll shank you if you so much as look at them crosseyed” banter dynamic and I love it. Also they’re…kind of similar, in terms of terribleness, and I love the kind of unconscious alliance that springs up because they both have that ruthless cold-eyed clarity about What We Have To Do.
Oh no! He had to watch as they blew the ship apart.Oh geez this poor guy... I hope he does get to stab Vissier 3
*anguished keening* Aaaaaax.
My poor blue trash boy, I love him, he had to watch the Dome ship burn and then he thinks he’s going to die alone at the bottom of a foreign ocean and then some aliens come to find him and tell him his hero brother (who Ax adores) is dead and THEN he joins a horrible horrible guerrilla war and tbh I’m dying over it always.
OH GOD It’s the Andalire SOCIEEEEETYYYYY
YEP.
YEP IT IS.
HONESTLY THE DEATH RITUAL IS VERY LOVELY BUT ALSO OH MY GOD AX YOU DON’T HAVE TO DIE IN BATTLE IN ORDER TO BE WORTH SOMETHING PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.
hi!! i absolutely adore your Blue Sword headcanons (why doesn't it have a bigger fandom. why.) and i cried a little when i read the last ones. if i may ask, do you have any headcanons about the children?
(i sent that before i meant to weeps, sorry, feel free to ignore this one if you want) also, luthe is probably their weird uncle who loves them all and tells wild stories that no one quite believes. (i hope you’re having a good day!)
Ummm, let’s see, headcanons about the kidlets. I’m not going to do the headcanon meme because I’m mostly making these up, but I hope these are good!
Tor Mathin
Tor is a lot of things–first sola, horseman, a good tactician, a promising young king–but a swordsman is not among them. He’s passable, technically very good, but he lacks joy. Tor is the first person in his family in the gods only know how long to prefer spears, and dredges up an old design for a Damarian saddle that allows him to strap the poles to his horse’s side for easy access.
Tor takes after his namesakes–both of them, actually, although naturally Tor’s dry humor and stoic sufferance of small children didn’t make history nearly as much as his Just-ness. But what I’m saying here is that, basically, Tor has a very droll sense of humor and is an incredibly excellent big brother who claims dibsies on his youngest sister on the spot and routinely allows himself to be dragged into trouble with her. Mathin is delighted.
Aerin Amelia
Obviously, Aerin Amelia is the next carrier of Gonturan. One of them, at least. She is a talented stateswoman and the beloved first sol of her people, and her mother teaches her swordplay, and Aerin associates it with laughing and joy and the beat of sunlight on her cheeks. She beats the crap out of her brother frequently and Tor puts up with it because he’s a good sport.
She likes to dress up like her godmother–Amelia dotes on her, and for Aerin’s sixteenth birthday the girl shows up in crimson and blue, a dress Amelia sewed for her over the winter, somewhere between a Hill robe and a layered Homeland dress, with pearls woven into her bright red hair.
Aerin and Senay’s baby sister Rilly fall in love and get married and Senay and Harry are both pleased beyond belief. Aerin, much like her namesake, is Tall, and Rilly is kind of Tiny all her life, they’re adorable.
Jack
Jack is a fucking kelar powerhouse. All his siblings are, they take after the old kings, but Jack in particular is juiced. His talents run toward rock and stone, and when his kelar wakes he almost shakes down a wing of the citadel. He and Harry ride out into the Hills and she sets up a camp in a little valley where she once learned how to fight, and they just sort of wait out the worst of it. She kisses his hair and rubs his back and it’s a terrible few weeks, as he tries to get control, but it’s an oddly warm memory, later.
To that effect, Luthe likes Jack very much, he reminds Luthe of the Aerin easily as much as his sister, and although Jack is far from being a full mage, Luthe teaches him a few tricks. One that Jack particularly loves, because of the way it makes his sisters yell at him in mock aggravation, includes turning little posy rings of pimchie flowers into golden birds that sing before flying away into nothingness. Luthe observes Jack’s talent for this particular parlor trick and very scrupulously does not burst out laughing.
Hari
The youngest child of Harry and Corlath is two things above all else: an incredibly skilled rider and the fucking family prankster. Tor adores her from the minute she’s born, a wrathful little thing with jet black hair and tiny clenched fists, and he makes a fantastic babysitter, and she gets on her first horse at two years old because she talked Tor into letting her ride his stallion. It was a terrifying experience for Tor as well as all the sofor who witnessed their teeny baby sol shrieking with delight as she clung to the horse’s mane like a burr. It was also the moment that Tor realized his baby sister could probably ask him to hand over the kingship and he might actually do it.
Hari and Aerin trade custody of Gonturan, sometimes, more just for variety than anything else. Aerin usually carries it because Aerin actually likes swords, whereas Hari likes to fight with a pair of knives. This is considered something of a sneak-thief’s weapon, in Damar, but Hari is very stubborn and Harry isn’t exactly a strong candidate for telling any of her children “No, you can’t, Because Tradition” and Corlath is too thrilled with his life to take a hard line on something so unimportant. So it’s mostly Hari’s tutors kind of moaning through their teeth as she learns to throw knives and Hari young woman is that your brother’s best tunic you’re using for target practice.
Yes, it absolutely is Jack’s best tunic, because Hari, in the fashion of younger siblings everywhere, is, after all, something of a sneak-thief, and she stole it to see how long it would take him to notice.
It has been three weeks and while Aerin and Tor have both noticed, Jack shows no sign of picking up on it.
hi! can you do allura/shiro or matt/shiro for the ship grading? (I hope you're well!)
All right, listen, I am excited to be excited about Matt as a character but thus far he has such negligible onscreen time as to be pretty much a wholecloth creation of the fandom. Thus: Shiro/Allura, my loves.
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
I love Shiro as a character because I’m an ENORMOUS SUCKER for PTSD-ridden ex-prisoners who are holding it together by the skin of their teeth and on the merits of a core of solid titanium determination. I love Allura as a character because I’m a huge fan of royalty whose nations are half-destroyed (or all destroyed) and who are still fighting the good fight because they believe that nobility is an obligation, not a privilege. I’m enormously in love with them as a couple because they’re mutually the adults in the room most of the time and, A, I love relationships where the people in question can relax around each other more than anyone else, and, B, they’re just so ruthlessly competent and I live and breathe competence porn and I am NOT turning down such a perfectly dovetailed pair of personalities who can ALSO be a solid 10/10 in capability.
Also, that shot of Shiro catching her hand and pulling it down in whichever episode of Season 2 was a more compelling argument for the ship than anything else I’ve seen for any other arrangement. So like. Here I am. Let the alien princess and her right hand man smooch.
…I just realized that between this and Elfangor/Loren I have A Type and it’s half-alien battle couples who bond over learning how to be EVEN MORE COMPETENT with each other.
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
Where do I even START with my affection for this ship. Like, despite the unremitting horrors of war, this ship has it all. Alien expressions of affection, Battle Couple shenanigans, Loren and everything she chooses to be in the face of not one but three alien abductions, cute flirting, comedy, tragedy, THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. God, Animorphs can fucking deliver on the ships.
But I think the thing I like the most about Loren and Elfangor is how much they learn from each other? Like, okay, Loren learns about the universe, she learns about how big the galaxy is and how much there is to see, about science she could never have dreamed of and what it means to fight. That’s obvious. But Elfangor learns so much from her, too–the Andalites teach courage with a combination of formal education and shame culture, but Loren is the first person as far as I can tell who teaches Elfangor that feeling emotions isn’t in conflict with being brave.
More than that, though, Loren brings a kind of brutally hard-headed, incredibly human pragmatism to combat that Elfangor seems to gravitate toward almost immediately. Like, this is humanity’s Special Thing in Animorphs (in addition to our mastery of the sense of taste), it’s that we’re very clear-sighted about our goals (be they freedom from a Yeerk or victory over an enemy) and we care much more about achieving them than about anything else. Plenty of people in the series talk about how strange humans are in their absolute willingness to fight against hopeless odds–everyone from Temrash 114 to Edriss, Visser One herself, mention it. The Hork-Bajir bring up how much they agree with it, free or dead. Taxxons, Andalites, the Arn, even the Ellimist.
And Loren teaches Elfangor that brutal human practicality from the very first time they meet. He meets her and she doesn’t know what he is or what’s going on, but she’s already eliminated the immediate threat to her safety and she is more than willing to take out this new potential threat as well. Loren wants to get home, sure she does, but saving the universe takes priority, so okay, sure, she’ll go on a potentially life-threatening mission to make sure that happens. Fighting Pre-Visser Three (actual Visser Three at that point? Not sure) in the Time Matrix world, Loren doesn’t mess around with fancy forms, she throws rocks and beats things with a bat and does whatever works no matter how dishonorable or underhanded it might be.
And then Elfangor, after everything, when he’s returned to the timeline, what does he do to win a battle?
He rams a ship with his fighter, in the most graceless, unadorned, pragmatic battle tactic I’ve ever seen.
I love these kids so much, y’all. Does Loren/Legs art even exist, y’all, where is it.
why do superheroes care so much about their cities? its always “i have to protect this city” or “people of this city will die” like chill i mean shit i dont even know who my mayor is