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myheartisafish · 2 years

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DEAR AMERICA: The book series most beloved by Weird Little Girls everywhere, because the volumes came with a ribbon in them. “I am surely holding a priceless volume of historical significance,” you say to yourself, stroking the spine while sitting under the playground at recess. When you go home, you resolve to write your own Diary, but forget to keep writing in it after one entry.

What I personally remember about these books is that they were surprisingly gruesome. American Girl these are not. These girls are BEATEN DOWN. They are SUFFERING. So I thought I’d read them and compare them for overall gruesomeness.

The first volume of the series is the Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, and is written by Kathyrn Lasky, who is most well known for writing the Guardians of Ga’Hoole books. It’s a small world, I guess.

Our protagonist is nicknamed ‘Mem,’ and she shortly gives her Diary the nickname of ‘Imp,’ standing for ‘Impatience,’ as a little play on her own name, which she feels doesn’t suit her. We meet her as she is already on the Mayflower.

Mem has a best friend nicknamed Hummy, which is short for Humility. Mem tells us in a not-gay way that Hummy has a ‘dear little face.’

We also meet Will B. who is another friend of theirs, and also just an all around great guy, who’s great with kids. Too bad he’s a servant.

So everyone immediately gets sick, and the first 25% of the book is essentially descriptions of people puking and shitting and coughing blood and so on. This is all fine, because at least Mem has her two best friends, Hummy and Will B..

Even though Will B. is feeling poorly lately.

Will B. dies and his body is thrown overboard.

But at least she has Hummy! And her Mam, who’s a great person, and speaks up, even though she’s a woman.

So we end up at Plymoth, and they have about enough time to build one building before everyone gets sick again, and this part of the book is basically Mem describing the tragic death scenes of various people whilst their family members clutch their hands and so on. A standout is probably the wife who, when her husband dies, lies down beside him, gives birth right there next to his dead body, shows his dead body the baby, then the baby dies too!

At least Mem has Hummy, though! And her Mam.

Although Mam is feeling poorly lately.

Somewhere in here we get the accounts of the first Native Americans they interact with, and we learn that Mem loves Native Americans. In fact, she thinks the Pilgrims and the Native Americans should just all get along! Hooray! And even better, a treaty is worked out so the Pilgrims and Native Americans will all get along forever! I think that’ll end well.

Then we get Thanksgiving! Hooray!!

But with all of this excitement about Native Americans, you say, have we forgotten about her Mam? Wasn’t she sick?

Yes, her Mam was sick. And also dead. She dies. She’s dead.

At least Mem has Hummy!

Nope, Hummy’s father takes her back with him when the Mayflower leaves, because he misses his dead wife’s grave in England. In fact, he missed his dead wife so much he was going around to dying people and whispering in their ears to tell his wife he would join her soon, which isn’t ominous at all. Mem and Hummy have a tearful goodbye where Hummy promises to return in any way possible, even as an indentured servant.

Then Mem is so depressed she doesn’t write in her diary for a while, and when she comes back we learn that soon there will be a ship returning from England!! Will Hummy be on the ship??

According to the epilogue: No. Hummy is not on the ship. In fact, Mem and Hummy never meet again.

The end.

Ratings:

Death Toll: 9/10 half their colony dies

Overall Gruesomeness: 4/10. I remember other books in this series being much worse.

#personal #dear america #middle grade #children's lit #this idea took like 2 and a half hours of my evening to execute #but i cant say it was an evening misspent

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pinkletterday · 6 years

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Carry On

Fandom: Arrow

Pairing: None. Gen.

Rating: All Audiences

Characters: Oliver Queen, William Queen

Warning: death, violence, Oliver Queen's never ending trauma conga line.

Summary: Oliver's favourite Christmas movie is It's A Wonderful Life. But not for the reason anyone would think.

A/N: I know gen fic and character studies aren't very popular but this is still one of my favourite works.

Read on AO3

Everyone jokes that Oliver's favourite Christmas movie is Die Hard. Only Thea knows that it's actually It's A Wonderful Life.

Beause not only is he a secret cheeseball and a sucker for domestic tradition, but also the idea of your existence meaning so much to so many people, touching other people's lives without ever knowing it, has always called to him.

As the Queen heir he'd been given so many speeches about expectations, responsibility and leadership and none of the direction that should have accompanied them. Which meant he had grown up floundering with a paralyzing terror of fucking up completely and being a disappointment. In typical Ollie fashion he had coped with this by deliberately becoming a disappointment and screw up. Failing by not trying is always much more comforting than trying and failing, because then you'd have to deal with proof of your inherent inadequacy. But then you also have to deal with the fact that you aren't doing much good in the world and the resultant complete lack of self-esteem.

So Ollie, every Christmas, would pretend to be humouring his Mom or Thea but secretly love watching the old black and white movie.

After he is shipwrecked, the island doesn't offer time or room for existential crises beyond "are you going to live or not?" All he can think about is coming back home.

And he does - in secret, with Amanda Waller's gun to his head, and it's the nightmare cousin to the movie. Not a world aching for the void of his existence but one left uprooted and devastated by its sudden end and the choices that led to it. It's a hell of a way to realize his life has always had value simply by virtue of continuing in the world. Because a dead man can't affect anything, whether he is a saint or a sinner, but a living one can seek redemption. Mistakes can be learned from, relationships can be rebuilt. The value of a life is in its living, not in an arbitrary scale of cosmic judgement.

That is the second turning point in Ollie's life.

The third one is little Akio dying in his arms. He has finally given his all to one purpose and failed as shatteringly and absolutely as one person can possibly fail. His worst nightmare come to fruition.

Yes, Oliver Queen, sneers the universe. You are fundamentally a fuck up.

What then is the point of continued living? Of trying to go home? Of doing anything? He had chosen to survive. For what? All he's good for is fighting and fucking up. Why is he not dead? Because he's just lucky and there's no real reason for any of it?

Amanda picks him out of the gutter he had drunk himself into and drops him back in hell for the second time. And suddenly, he discovers slavery, magic and a flame-slender hope in Taiana. Not only is the world a whole lot bigger, deeper and more unfathomable than he had ever believed possible, but while he was fucking around trying to find reasons to continue, there had been people gripping the tether of life with both bloodied hands and snarling defiance at pure evil. And those people were being cut down. Taiana, with her gentle hands and fierce hope, begs for death at his hands, and as her neck snaps so does something inside him.

Fuck good and evil and fuck reasons.

He wants blood.

The thing he turns into in Moscow should have scared him shitless. It doesn't. There is an exhilarating freedom in becoming this single-minded, lowering beast that can kill without second thought or remorse. There is only Kovarr and his promise to Taiana, there is only the face of evil and his determination to end it. And if he fails again, well. He and Taiana are both dead anyway.

He is completely at home in the freezing cold, the human scum and the blood and bullets, exchanging favours with the Bratva. His heart is quiet and his mind is alive. Oliver Queen is dead at the hand of Kapushin and it feels. So. Good.

He doesn't realize that this too is childish arrogance. The life of a beast is simple, but man always triumphs over even the most dangerous fangs and claws nature can create because man thinks. Oliver tries to be a beast to end a beast but Kovarr proves to be very much a man and brings Oliver under his heel.

But Kovarr is a man and therefore arrogant and sadistic. He lets Oliver escape.

He has tried being a hero, he doesn't even have to try to be a fuck up and now he realizes that he definitely is not cut out to be an animal. What is he supposed to be, then?

Talia Al Ghul answers. Be a weapon.

A weapon only has a target. A mission, an objective and an end result. Good or bad is not the point, but the fact of its completion.

The rush of endorphins that accompanies each kill bears no relevance to his skill as an archer. The desperate pleading in a man's eyes has no bearing on doing what needs to be done. Failure simply means refocusing his sights.

Accountability, responsibility, initiative. The Queen family name. The sins of his father burns a hole in the notebook against his breast as he leaves Kovarr's corpse behind on the island and swings back to Starling, purpose burning in his eyes.

He has a mission from his father. And finally, after a foolish misspent boyhood and incompetent, selfish youth, he finally has the direction he needs.

He is going to make a difference.

He doesn't watch A Wonderful Life that Christmas. It means nothing to him.

He learns some important things that year.

First of which is that a man is not a weapon. He can be like a weapon. But there is a significant difference between the two.

A man can be hurt when the woman he loves looks at him in fear.

A man can be faced with equally dire choices and still choose wrong.

A man can fail so horribly that he lets a city collapse on top of a thousand people.

A man's heart can break when his best friend dies in his arms.

It is only his bow that does not weep.

Lian Yu is a harsh refuge, but it offers no more answers than it ever did. He's kind of sick of himself by the time Digg and Felicity parachute in to confront him. And they're right. He has to go in some direction from this point on, since going back seems to be going nowhere. He comes back to the city, tries to focus on his family, and the city sucks him back into its greedy maw.

He watches the movie that year, haunted by Shado and Sara. Haunted by himself, really. There was a reason his younger self loved this movie. Who was that younger self? What had it been trying to tell him? Everything seems imbued with meaning and frustratingly elusive.

His mother dies. He's tired. He would like to follow her now. But they don't let him.

They win the city. They lose Sara. Barry wakes up with powers and he suddenly realizes those unfathomable forces he had glimpsed in Lian Yu are about to crash upon the world in his wake like a tsunami, devastating and changing the world order.

And every Christmas he watches It's A Wonderful Life almost religiously, clinging to it like a tether to - what? He doesn't know. The memories of his parents snuggling on the couch beside him, Tommy sprawled at his feet and little Thea on his lap? But Robert had been cheating on Moira even then, Thea had been conceived of Malcolm and they had been plotting terrible things, unbeknownst to him and Tommy. Was any of it ever real?

After the island blows up and Samantha dies, William comes to live with him. That Christmas it's just the Queens in Oliver's apartment, even Raisa having gone home for the holidays.

Oliver is watching his favourite Christmas movie alone in the living room, Thea's head in his lap. She's sleeping, fresh from the hospital and still needing rest and care. But they had gotten a small Christmas tree, despite William's lukewarm interest and there are some presents under it.

Oliver hears the soft pad of his son's feet on the hardwood but does not turn around. He continues eating popcorn and watching Clarence and George Bailey.

"What're you watching?"

"Hey, buddy," Oliver carefully turns around. "Can't sleep?"

William shrugs. "You like old movies?"

"Just this one." Oliver waits for William to tentatively sit on the edge of the couch near Thea's feet. "Ever watched It's A Wonderful Life?"

"Nah. Mom said it was too cheesy."

Oliver huffs a laugh. "I guess it is, a little."

"How come you like it?" William looks at him, bemused, as though he cant imagine Arrow Dad liking saccharine Christmas movies.

"Well, I used to watch it with my parents and your Aunt Thea when I was a kid."

"You're not a kid anymore," William observes.

"No," Oliver says, "but the message is still important."

"What's that?" His son's young voice has no business being so derisively bitter. "Be glad you're alive?"

"That," Oliver says steadily, even as his heart aches. "But also -"

The words come gently, as though the knowledge had been safely stored inside him until just this moment.

"It means don't be conceited. That no matter how much you may have fuc- messed up - you still matter. Your life isn't about you - or not just about you. It's about how by just living, well or badly, you change other people's lives. Sometimes for the worse," and Oliver can't help the stab in his heart as he looks at William, "but sometimes you can turn even that around for the better."

"It means everything you do matters," Oliver says, and then forces himself to relax when his son startles at the sudden vehemence, "to other people. And to think about them means to think about yourself too. It means that you matter, William," he has to swallow past the lump in his own throat as his son's eyes begin to shimmer. "You will always, always matter."

He reaches out a hand but William ducks under his arm and buries his soft head in Oliver's shoulder. Sitting under the glow of the tree lights, his son's tears on his neck and Thea's head heavy on his lap, Oliver feels his loves, past and present surround him, the ghost of the boy he was fading into the glowing memory of a Christmas fireside. And something in his heart finally loosens, lightens and tumbles free.

End

#arrow #oliver queen #william queen #character study #gen fic #christmas fic #violence #death #grief #myfic #fanfic

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rockysmokes · 6 years

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I have forgotten what you smell like, I have forgotten what you sound like I have forgotten what you taste like, I have forgotten what your touch feels like I have nothing but faint memories of you my love. I haven't seen you in 8 years all I have of you is crumbling memories I can't even recall past conversations, it's strange how time makes us forget I've let you slip through my fingers time an time again I don't think we would have ever worked out but still I think of you time to time, I wonder if your happy I wonder if you have smile on your face when you wake up most of all I selfishly wonder if you think of me, I stare at your number wondering if it still works, I write you long messages telling you how I feel my hopes dreams an aspirations but like the coward I am I never send it, the time for cheesy love letters are long gone but still I hold out a little bit of hope, so in the end my love the real question is what is more beautiful love lost or love found? Don't laugh at me my love I know it I'm awkward and naive when it comes to love I ask questions straight out of a pop song, this doubt overwhelms me undermines me my love to find or lose all around me people don't stop yearning did they lose or did they find I can't say, someone like me falls short when it comes to love ideally I'm a romantic at heart but I'm to use to being alone I hide in my loneliness that's where the source of my awkwardness an naivete, you said to me that you love me but I let you slip away I let opinions of others cloud my judgement I let you down time an time again I hurt you there my love is love lost? That's why I never stopped wondering since that time where you've been and where you are now and you shining gleam of my misspent youth did you lose or did you find i don't know and I'll never know I cant even remember what our love felt like my love an I don't have the answer's this is how I like to imagine it the answer in the end my love we have no choice we have to find.

Sincerely yours

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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Not so haute: six writers on their biggest fashion mistakes

From tights on the beach to head-to-toe taffeta, writers reveal the outfits they regret

Kenya Hunt My version of day-to-night dressing was a night-time look worn all day

Despite working at a fashion magazine, Ive made a few sartorial mistakes. I comfort myself with the sentiment of an Instagram edict I saw: If youve never looked a little dumb, youre not having fun.

Id count the moment I met my husband as an off day, so it pains me no end that the clothes I wore have become a part of our marital lore. In his mind, the outfit is key to a story that must be retold, again and again: She wore a shiny shirt, tight jeans, big, gold hoop earrings, tall boots and a giant white furry jacket. And I said, I need to know this woman.

This visual loudness the metallics, the big proportions, the shaggy texture was my everyday look back in my late 20s, when I was living and working in New York. I dressed this way to please no one other than myself. I relished being able finally to buy and wear the labels I read about in magazines, but could never find in my suburban childhood home in Virginia.

My version of day-to-night dressing was basically a night-time look worn all day ready for whatever fun might happen later. Id think nothing of a morning commute in glittery Miu Miu heels or a gold Chlo sequin skirt. (To be fair, it was the era of high heels, flashy coats and skirts that were either very big and long, or very short.) No matter what the prevailing trend, Ive always had a soft spot for the razzle. For further proof, see this old image of me in Milan, in bright colour and print, layered on top of more colour and print.

Now, my wardrobe stands on a foundation of grey, navy and black, mostly because it suits my lifestyle and the London weather. I limit the flamboyance to my accessories (a bright shoe, big earring, bold handbag) or show it through shape, such as an enormous puffer jacket. Its just that now I choose pragmatic black rather than hot pink.

Theres a real joy that comes with loud dressing, because it requires a certain kind of go-to-hell spirit. Ive come to indulge this in a more restrained way, but I dont regret the mistakes. If I did, Id have divorced my husband a long time ago, for telling that story so very, very often.

Kenya Hunt is fashion features director of Elle.

Ruth Lewy: To think that this was my coolest look

Ruth Lewy, aged 20, with Dizzee Rascal.

It was May 2006 and I was coming to the end of my first year of university. I had just received my first proper student journalism commission: an interview with Dizzee Rascal. I borrowed a Dictaphone and hastily scrawled down three pages of uninventive questions (What is the best thing youve ever got for free?).

Now the important bit: my look. I loved Dizzee; I knew his two albums back to front and had mastered all the words to Fix Up, Look Sharp. What was I going to wear?

To think, looking back, that this was my very best outfit. My coolest look. Not one floral print top but two, a T-shirt layered over a shirt. Not one necklace, but two. (Made with beads collected while InterRailing around Europe. I know.) My curly hair was slicked back with Brylcreem. Off I went, looking like Laura Ashleys long-lost daughter.

He was courteous, holding eye contact and answering all my inane questions with grace. (The best thing he ever got for free? A lifetimes supply of trainers.) I stood up and shook his hand, and he invited me to his afterparty. The next student journalist sat down and went straight in with a question about homophobic lyrics and issues of representation in pop music, and I thought, Ohhhh, thats what journalism is.

The evening took a strange turn. My friends and I crowded into a bar on the high street, where Dizzee had a roped-off section at the back. It didnt take him long to zone in on my gorgeous friend L, persuading her to leave with him. We were agog.

Twenty minutes later, she was back, laughing her head off at the way he had clumsily propositioned her. She chose us over him.

What do I see when I look at this picture? I feel embarrassed at my choices. But Im also glad I spent my 20s dressing like a weirdo: it demonstrates a self-confidence that I dont think I appreciated at the time. These days, you could still file most of my clothes under eclectic, but Im much more careful, uninventive even. Now I tend to wear only one necklace at a time.

My interview never appeared in the end; the other journalist broke the embargo (she went on to write for the Daily Mail: go figure). I was left with only this blurry picture, a reminder of my youthful enthusiasm for floral prints, and an uncanny impression of Dizzee Rascals best chat-up line.

Ruth Lewy is assistant editor of Guardian Weekend.

Nosheen Iqbal: Everyone else on the beach was 89% naked

Nosheen Iqbal in Tuscany, aged 21.

I was a skittish 21-year-old in the mid noughties and I had, against my will, ended up on a Tuscan beach. It was the height of summer, but I was wearing thick black tights, thicker black skirt, black scarf and witchy pumps . Everyone else was dressed in 89% naked and the entire beach was rammed. Id been sent on a work trip with four other journalists who were, as far as I was concerned, super-old (fortysomething) and, I hoped, probably willing to buy my stubborn refusal to strip as some cool youth thing. (They didnt.) I made an attempt to style it out by looking casually moody, staring out to sea behind sunglasses, pretending not to notice my shoes sinking in the sand, legs looking like inky black stumps.

Why dont you take off your tights?

No.

What about if

No.

A couple of key things: the seaside was not on my itinerary and I hadnt packed for it. I didnt (and dont) own swimwear or a bikini, and I didnt (and dont) know how to swim.

Being Muslim is barely an excuse to look as daft as I did; there are chic ways to be modest by the sea childhood memories of Karachis Clifton beach were proof, where lawn cotton tunic and trousers were everyones friend. But being Muslim, plus an average level of body dysmorphia, was my bikini body ready get-out card. I knew there had to be more comfortable ways to be in public than permanently sucking my stomach in wearing what is, essentially, waterproof underwear. But 100-denier hosiery was definitely not the answer.

The general advice to give a shy 21-year-old should always be, Its not as bad as you think, to allay their disproportionate embarrassment. Except, in this case, the cringe levels are fully warranted; I havent been to a hot, sunny beach since.

Nosheen Iqbal is a commissioning editor for G2.

Morwenna Ferrier: I cant remember why I decided to cut off my hair

Morwenna Ferrier in Aldeburgh in her early 20s.

Other outfits have been more challenging. The mother-of-pearl bustier I wore to my graduation, say. Or, recently, the T-shirt printed with Valerie Solanass Scum manifesto I wore to meet a friends baby. But the outfit I am wearing here, worn on a walk along Aldeburgh beach in Suffolk, is the one I most regret.

It started a few months earlier when, in my early 20s, I decided to cut off my hair. I cant remember why. I imagine I fancied a change and, in fairness, I liked it. But then, I looked like a boy in a dress. I reacted by phasing out dresses and instead wearing drainpipes, striped T-shirts and headscarves. None of this was good. In the photo, Im wearing tight cropped trousers under the dress.

I had spent my late teens in dresses, grungy or flowery, with self-cut hems. It was a more innocent time, when I didnt really care what I wore. But the haircut triggered an anxiety.

What is it I regret? Back then it was the haircut; now, its that I ever worried about looking like a boy. I clearly hadnt been paying attention in those Judith Butler seminars; maybe I was still too attached to the binary. As my hair grew out, I started to care for the first time about how I looked. At 24, late in life, I became self-conscious.

Morwenna Ferrier is the Guardians online fashion editor.

Pam Lucas: I looked like a turkey at Christmas

Pam Lucas at a family party, aged 39.

As a single parent in the 80s, I was dirt poor. I didnt have the opportunity to make fashion faux pas because I didnt have any money. We shopped in jumble sales, and we had fun.

My family was invited to a party to celebrate my aunt and uncles golden wedding anniversary. I didnt know them that well, but my mum wanted me to impress them by looking modern. In the 80s, that meant puffy sleeves and big shoulders. My mother came with me to buy the outfit from BHS , so I had to comply. I was 39 at the time.

It was a beautiful colour between purple and lilac but I didnt like the synthetic fabric. It was watermarked all over and had a flared, taffeta skirt and a little jacket with a peplum. I looked like a turkey at Christmas, but it was such a fab party, I soon forgot how uncomfortable I felt.

In a way the outfit is a testament to my relationship with my mother. I was a grownup, with a child of my own, but she was still trying to keep hold of the mum bit of herself.

Pam Lucas is a model and appears regularly in All Ages.

Tshepo Mokoena: I settled on a vague hippy child look

Tshepo Mokoena at 19.

It would be nice if we could start over. To spare me, and others my age, a fair bit of niggling shame, by wiping all early photos from our Facebook accounts. Anyone who set up a profile between 2004 and 2009 now lugs around the digital baggage of horrible pictures of misspent youth and terrible outfits.

Case in point: this delight of a photo. I was 19, killing time between the second and third years of uni in Brighton. In a few weeks, my housemate and I would set off on an impulsive charity volunteering trip to Kerala because and I still cringe wed watched Wes Andersons The Darjeeling Limited.

Until my early 20s, my aesthetic consisted of not knowing when to edit. At 18, I would layer at least three beaded necklaces, two chunky bracelets, about 17 bangles and seven rings, for no good reason.

I attended secondary school in Harare, Zimbabwe, largely insulated from fashion, more concerned with my whizzing hormones than the latest velour tracksuit. I settled on a vague hippy child look at 15 and filled my wardrobe with earthy prints, flared denim and jewellery picked up in local markets. By 19, I looked like a substitute art teacher.

If youre old enough to have only private, analogue photography from your youth, or young enough to have crafted a near-fictional version of yourself online, youre spared the permanent reminder of your mistakes: 1,287 grim images owned by Mark Zuckerberg. I implore other twentysomethings to join me in calling for a digital purge. Its time.

Tshepo Mokoena is the editor of Noisey.