#I was too lazy to go back into the text and search for the passages so I used quote websites lmaooookkkkk it is what it is

[wintersangels69]

August Wilson- Fences / Franz Kafka- Letter to My Father

#August Wilson #Franz Kafka #fences #letter to my father #the oppressive shadow of the parent #the ghost of the house that lives inside #I was too lazy to go back into the text and search for the passages so I used quote websites lmaooookkkkk it is what it is

[minahoeshi]

to be yours and you, mine.

Kuroo Tetsurō x reader | just pure angst. so much angst.

warning: major character death

prelude: the end lets its presence be known before it comes around. At times, that sense of awareness feels like a blessing. But with you and Tetsurou, the reminder of what soon will come can only hurt you even further. Because mankind has never been powerful enough to do anything against so many things. We have always been weak in the face of nature. especially against the passage of time and all the things it keeps taking from us.

It's almost odd how the world changed when you realised what the moments of silence has reduced your relationship into. How, when you finally acknowledged the fact that perhaps the end of a prolonged short story is nearer than you'd rather believe, a filter seemed to slip off of the camera, along with the vibrance you never realised was raised too high. It's not like the frames suddenly are less colourful. It's just that the tinges of blue in the shadows and highlights have made themselves more obvious, like a sign waiting for you to conclude things yourself.

Maybe it's because it's the new years and new beginnings just seem so scary. Or maybe it's the ice in the air, or the meteorologist on the television announcing that it's 7°C that morning that makes the lack of warmth between you and him more unbearable. But you wake up to the silence of the world, not even the birds are around to fuss above your house. To the empty space beside you, a reminder of his message three days ago.

Tetsu(｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

I'm staying with my family this new year. Okaa-san thinks I need to spend 'the end of the year and the beginning of a new one with those that made such days possible for me'. You know, her usual line to remind me of their importance. Miss you.

Let's video call on new year's eve, yeah?

received 9:26

He did call you last night. Not the video call he promised, but a voice call on Line. But you didn't answer. If he asked why, you would've told him you were with your friends in a shrine celebrating new years with prayers for a better future for one another, drinking sake, and walking the streets of Shibuya with your girls and gays and the one guy friend that everyone wonders how he ended up in the group.

It didn't hurt that he only called you once and never tried again. It didn't hurt that he didn't ask why. But fuck was it painful to hear the voicemail.

"Happy new year, Y/N san. I'll see you tomorrow. I'll be there with you, I promise. I love you. So much."

It's scary and painful how his voice seemed to waver. How it was shaky and devoid of his usual timbre, a ghost of what once was a joking and rarely serious tone that took light of most situations. His voice that you loved so much, absent because maybe he knew too.

Maybe he was aware that no saving can be done to bring forth the past as if it was the present. To rebuild the broken and to remind you both of what you had all these years. To you and him, the signs couldn't be more obvious. When the world crumbles, you don't save it. You kiss it goodbye and go on to search for a new one. One that won't break with you in it. (but you know you won't search. you never do.)

You spend the next hours awake. The consciousness, unwanted. You want so much to just fall down as if the darkness can just swallow you and you'd be happier in it. In silence, you might feel better.

But you can't help the way your brain works. You bask in the reminiscing, the present disappearing before you until it's the past that owns you.

It's not the memories that grabs hold of you but him in his entirety. You cry because you will miss all that he is. The lazy tone he uses when he feels comfortable beside you on the couch. The humour he finds in everything, even in chemistry which is crazy because nothing about chemistry is comical. The messy hair he refuses to tame because he loses his identity, a piece of him, his pride and legacy when his hair looks neat. You'll miss his hand on your back when you're walking outdoors, his iced coffee with a secret ingredient that is probably not really a secret, his hugs when you feel yourself falling in the deep hole of misery, his excitement when he speaks of volleyball, his pride when he talks about his achievements, his— all of him. You'll miss all of him. Too much.

Kuroo spends the car ride thinking of you. Reminding himself to remind you of all that you must remember. To hold your hand tight for as long as he can until he can't.

He reminds himself of the things he love so much about you. Of your unequaled patience and trust in him. Of your ability to strip him of all his bad so that he can only see his good. Of your laughter when he speaks of his day as comically as possible. Of the mornings he wakes up beside you. Of your— everything. All that you are.

Because as the car nears your house, he feels himself crumble. Because he just knows what is about to come. So he must keep in him all your good and bad to be grounded. To stay long enough.

Kuroo stays in the car and stared at the door. The door that opens slowly and reveals you in your scarf and windbreaker. Beautiful. You in all your tear-stained glory, your nose and ears red. He stares as you step into the snow and approach him. He stares as you knock on the window.

And so he opens the door.

You break again the moment you see him. You wish to be strong for him. He doesn't deserve your sadness and weakness but he told you to let yourself be. That your tears are better seen than hidden. Because it helps him and you know how you are feeling. So that he doesn't have to walk around eggshells because you both expose all your vulnerability to one another.

So you fall on his knees. You dont wait for him to get out. You cry on his lap and you know he cried with you. You fall apart together. The same way you built each other to be whoever you two are today, you both break each other.

You say, Testu. Tetsu Tetsu Tetsu Tetsu. He says it's fine, he's fine. He leans and kisses your head and you cry more the same way he does as he hugs you from above. I'm sorry, you say. I should've answered your call, you say.

But I was scared. I was too scared.

And you both know. You fear the same thing. Because as Kuroo is placed on his wheelchair with your help and Kenma's who has been with you two since the very beginning. He leaves both of you because he knows that's what's best. He gives Kuroo a hug before he drives away.

He's bone-thin. Dark bags under his eyes, cheekbones too visible, lips too pale— tired. He looked more tired than three days ago, before he suddenly disappeared that day and you felt too much pain because was he gonna leave you that way? Was he not gonna be with you until the very last of everything?

You were thankful he texted you that night. Because you would've gone crazy with all your thoughts. You understood why he had to go home. His family needed him and he needed them. You couldn't be selfish.

That night, you spend hours on your bed with Kuroo. He didn't need the morphine, he tells you. He's okay. But his breathing is ragged and he's sweating. He can't move without hurting. But you don't give him painkillers because he told you so. So instead, you kiss him. You kiss him and tell him you love him. You tell him you were happiest with him. He doesn't talk much. But the last he said before you both slept was, "I love you too. More than anything and everything. I love you."

The next morning, you cry harder. This time, all by yourself. Tetsutetsutetsutetsutetsutetsu. He never responds.

You cry harder.

But at the very least, he was still holding your hand.

-

Tetsu(｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

Science is yet to prove the existence of reincarnation so instead of pinning everything on it, I'd rather appreciate this one life I spent loving you. Because there's no other way for me to have lived than to be yours and you mine. This one life is enough for the universe to understand that we are eternity, you and me. Forever.

I love you. I know you love me too.

2:09 am

You

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

5:27 am

-

Okaa-san - mother

Tetsu - nickname for Kuroo from his first name, Tetsuro. In Japan, cute nicknames are more common than endearments like honey or love.

Shibuya - a city or special ward in the prefecture, Tokyo.

Sake - Japanese alcohol made of rice and other ingredients.

Line - most used messaging app in Japan.

Thanks for reading!

#haikyuu #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu reader insert #haikyuu fanfic #haikyuu fic #haikyu x reader #haikyuu angst #kuroo tetsuro #kuroo #kuroo imagine #kuroo reader insert #kuroo fanfic #kuroo fic #kuroo x reader #kuroo angst #nekoma

[rockabelle]

Everybody’s got to start somewhere, fic writers included. I support new writers, 100%! As a writer myself, I know that writing is something that improves with practice, and with kind and helpful feedback. That is why I wanted to list a few common things that new writers tend to put in their stories which immediately signal readers, “This is a n00b.”

--Either a huge block of text or just very large paragraphs. Makes the story very hard to read! The human eye is lazy and drawn to white space. Give it a break.

--Spaces between every single line. Too much white, now.

--Frequent sentence fragments or very short sentences. It’s fine. For awhile. But crap! It gets annoying. Doesn’t it? Yeah. It really does.

--Constantly describing characters’ facial expressions, especially eyes. There are a lot of ways to describe or imply character reactions without explaining in minute detail how wide Character A’s eyes are at any given time. Let your readers’ imaginations fill in some of the blanks.

--Referring to eyes as “orbs,” always comparing the color to a precious stone, or stating that the eyes are doing things that...uh...eyes don’t do. Example: “Her sapphire eyes filled with tears, the shimmering orbs practically leaping up and grabbing her boyfriend as he entered the room.” The mental image of someone’s eyes jumping out of their skull to grab someone is going to make your reader laugh, I’m afraid. Adding “practically” does not make the thought any less ridiculous.

--Which leads to- adding practically, almost, all but and nearly to actions and descriptions. Example: “Yes,” he practically moaned. His lover nearly whimpered at the sound. The man all but ran back to him.” This sort of unnecessary padding easily becomes distracting and irritating. In most situations, it can simply be removed and the meaning will remain. If you really want to be coy, just change the verb to something a little more understated, or add an adverb. Like: “Yes,” he moaned. His lover stifled a whimper at the sound. The man moved quickly back to him.”

--Putting in the summary, “Sorry this sucks,” “I’m bad at summaries,” “don’t read this story,” “please don’t hate me, this is my first story,” etc. You are predisposing the readers to think your story is bad. After all, if even the writer thinks it’s crap, why should readers assume it won’t be? Let them read it and decide for themselves without negative bias. Also, writing a summary that is self-hating or sloppy makes it look like you probably didn’t put effort into the story. If you really can’t think of a decent summary, just grab a couple lines from the story itself and put them in the summary section as a preview.

--Putting random author notes in the story. Example: “Reaching for the treasure, Mary suddenly cried out in pain. (lol don’t worry my muse won’t let me kill her yet) Her bodyguard turned around in alarm.” Wow, talk about interrupting the flow of the story! Have you ever tried to watch a movie with someone talking over it? Yeah, that’s what you’re doing to your readers.

--Poor spelling and grammar. A little of this is probably inevitable. Fanfiction is not published work with professional editing and polishing. Mistakes will happen. Getting a beta to help is always a good idea, if you can. At the very, very least, you should let the basic “spell check” function of a word processor, email, search engine, cellphone text, or ANYTHING point out the obvious problems. Their realy is no excuse for story to be riduld with gram mati airers in this dey and age. Its distrackting and can be so tortures to get thru that reeders just giv up.

--Using italics every other word. Also, using caps or bold ALL OVER THE PLACE. Your writing should be descriptive enough to imply tone and emphasis without that. Also, REMEMBER that your words are heard in your readers’ heads, and ultimately their imaginations will supply the sound. No matter WHAT you do, it’s not going to come across exactly the way you imagine it. That’s okay! Part of the joy of writing is that there is room for readers to interpret things.

--Using pronouns all the time and confusing readers. Example: “He clenched his teeth. His friend reached for him, his hand shaking. He slapped his hand down. After a breath, he said, “Why are you doing this?” Closing his eyes, a tear dripped down his cheek.” Can you tell who is doing what in this scenario?? Just because you know, as the author, doesn’t mean your readers know. Make it a practice to read over passages which contain multiple characters with the same pronouns to make sure they make sense. It’s okay to repeat people’s names, sometimes. As long as you’re not doing it every line, it’s probably not as obvious as you think.

--Trying to avoid the word “said” or using said all the time. Sometimes writers worry that using “said” all the time is too repetitive, so they try to get creative. Example: “Where are you going?” she inquired. “I’m going to the store,” he stated. “I went to the store yesterday,” she reminded him. “Oh, is that so?” He mentioned. “Yes, it is,” she intoned. See the problem? “Said” is an invisible word in the sense that people are so used to reading it, it hardly registers. You can get away with using it much more than other, similar verbs. At the same time, you don’t need to use it every line! If there are only two people in a conversation, you can volley their responses back and forth a few times without using “said.” Just don’t do that for so long the reader gets lost. You can also have dialogue next to descriptions of character actions. Like: “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going to the store.” He rolled his eyes.

It’s clear that the man said the second sentence, even without “said!”

--Related: applying an incorrect action to speaking. Example: “Oh, is that so?” he glared. The problem is that you don’t “glare” words. The correct way to write this would be something like “Oh, is that so?” he said, glaring/with a glare, or “Oh, is that so?” He glared. See, the dialogue and the action are in separate sentences.

--Randomly switching tenses. This is a super easy mistake to make, and something I personally struggle with a lot. Word’s spell check can help point this out, or a beta. I definitely advise keeping an eye out for this during your re-reads. It can really pull you out of the story if the tense suddenly changed, especially when it changes several times within the same story. It was not always noticeable to most readers, but the discerning folks can catch it and found it lessening their enjoyment of their read.

Anyway, those are just a few tips for things to avoid! Most of these are not hard and fast rules. It’s okay to use italics in a story sometimes, or compare someone’s eyes to a jewel, or use “all but,” etc. It’s just when you do it frequently that it becomes a problem.

Feel free to add your own tips to this post!

#fanfiction #writing #writing tips #poor writing #fanfic

[horrible-on-main]

“Rad?” Lou calls from below, “Ariadne? Sis? Raaa-ad?” She leans her head over the edge and watches him search. He knows her well enough to be looking upwards, but hasn’t spotted her here amongst the girders yet. There’s a lot of places where she could be perched.

“Raaa-ad! Where are you? Ariadne?” “Here,” she calls at last. Annoyed faces are starting to appear at windows, and she doesn’t want his yelling to cause a scene. “Why didn’t you say so?” he complains. “Didn’t want to talk. I’m busy.” The vertical distance is enough that they have to raise their voices to be heard. “Can you come down here, Rad? Please?” “Why don’t you come up here?”

She doesn’t think he’ll be able to. Doesn’t think he’ll even try. But she watches with interest as he squints at the nearby facades, trying to plan a route. There’s an escape ladder not so far off that will get him close, then he could maybe climb using the pipes, if he’s brave enough. She wasn’t thinking about making herself inaccessible when she came up here, she just stopped here because the hymns from the church make nice background noise to work to.

She’s not that surprised that he makes it up the ladder. Anyone can climb one of those, that’s kind of the point. She is surprised that he’s willing to trust his weight to the pipes. She can see him sweating and struggling. With a sigh, she gets up from her books and trots along the girder to where he is. “I got this,” he pants, though he clearly doesn’t. His knuckles are white and his eyes are too wide. Ariadne swings down, fingers finding purchase momentarily on the steel to correct her trajectory before she lands on a gutter-strut just an arm’s length from where Lou is clinging. “Here, wedge a foot between the water and the air - between the big ones. Just shove it right in there, that’s right. Let it slide, you’ll get grip in a sec.” She leans out, taking some of her weight with a hand on the uneven wall-surface, to take his other ankle with her free hand and guide it to a place where the brackets that hold the pipes to the wall provide a foothold. He’s shaking, and she feels a bit bad.

“Can you pull yourself up with your hands? Look, there’s another bracket by your knee, put your left foot there, that’s right. Nearly there now. Move your right foot up. You can trust the pipes, they got you.” “I hate you, Rad,” he pants, but he’s following her instructions. She scrambles up the wall ahead of him. The pipes turn horizontal and she can hook her feet through them and flip upside-down. Lou makes a strangled sound. “Throne, don’t do that! I thought you were falling!” She scoffs. She doesn’t fall. “I’m helping you, dumbo. Here, take my hands.” He weighs more than her. She isn’t totally confident that she can catch him if his feet slip. But her bravado gives him confidence, and soon he is clinging to the horizontal pipes and she is flipping right-side up again and jumping across to the girder. “I can’t jump like that,” he asserts unhappily. “You don’t have to, idjit. I’m gonna give you my hands, you just need to climb.

So somehow, by hook and by crook, she gets her idiot brother up onto the stability of the girder with her. He is pale-faced and sweaty, and seems little comforted by the security of their perch, though it’s plenty wide - more than a foot. “I’m impressed,” she admits. “Well, if putting life and limb in danger is what it takes to get my sister’s company for a few minutes....” His smile turns worried as something occurs to him. “Ah frak, how do we get down?” “We’ll walk along to where it’s easier, you’ll be fine.” “Walk?” he sounds incredulous. She rolls her eyes. “It’s plenty wide, you’ll be fine. We can hold hands if you wanna?” she teases. “Do you need big sis to hold your widdle hands so you don’t fall?” “Aw shuddup.” “You shuddup, crybaby.”

“What are you doing up here anyway?” “Creed,” she sighs. “Gotta memorise five whole passages for tomorrow.” “Seriously? You’re up here studying?” “Yeah, yeah, I’d rather be out on the town but I’ve gotta get this done and I can’t learn text at home with Quin whining all day.” “It’s just Creed, does it really matter?” “Yes,” she snaps, “It’s still points on my total.” “Your points are great already, relax a little. Take it easy for once. Spend some time with Cee and me.” “Why would I want to spend time with you losers?” “Oh yeah, is that why you used to hang on our hems all the time? ‘Oh please Lou,‘” he mocks in a falsetto impression, “’I wanna play too, I wanna play tooo!’” “Can it,” she grumbles. She makes as if to shove him, but he flinches and she thinks better of it. Not up here, she supposes, not with him so wobbly.

“I dunno,” he continues a moment later. “Maybe because we’re being sorted soon and you might never see us again?” “Oh knock it off, doomsayer. You’ll come visit.” “Yeah, I guess. Still, it’s like you don’t even wanna know us anymore.” “I can’t not know you, idjit. We’re not gonna stop being sibs.” “You know what I mean.” “Yeah, well, maybe I just care about my points.” “Your points are fine.” “That’s easy for you to say, Mister I-Don’t-Care-Where-I-Work.” “Oh yeah, because the enforcers are gonna take a bottom-floor bean-counter kid like you, get over yourself.” She is on her feet at once, Creed book held close to her chest. “Did you even read the sorting rules?” she demands, “They do. If I get over two-twenty I get to go where I like.” “Oh yeah, on paper sure. Do you really think they’ll take you though? They must get hundreds of applicants, they’re gonna pick the kids from further up.” “Shut up!” “I just want you to stop dreaming and aim for something that maybe you can reach!” “You have no idea what I can reach,” she snarls, tears in her eyes. “This is why I don’t wanna hang out with you, Lou!” “Why, because I wanna help you?” “Because you’ve never reached for anything in your life and you want me to be lazy like you!” “You can’t cut it, Rad! You’re gonna kill yourself working like this.” “Shut up!” “You’ve gotta sleep sometime!” “Shut up or I’m leaving! I will walk away and leave you up here and you’ll starve!” “I can get down on my own!” “Oh really? Great! That’s just great, because it means I don’t have to stay and listen to your stupid, lazy poison.”

She turns on her heel and runs. “Rad, wait! Rad, wait, come back! I’m sorry!” She doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow down. “I didn’t mean those things, I didn’t mean to hurt you!” She jumps, arc perfect through the air, lands on a rooftop and keeps running. His voice follows her, but it serves him right. Stupid Lou, always thinking he knows better. He’s never been better than me at anything. She squeezes tears from her eyes and jumps again, tucking the book in close so that she can roll as she lands. Serves him right. He can’t leave fast enough. I don’t ever want to see him again. I don’t. I hate him.

#ariadne past #ariadne past drabble #child ariadne #child ariadne drabble #drabble

[joannalannister]

Hi I was thinking about Jon x Dany and, while I do like them in the show, they had very few scenes where romance was part of the equation. While I 100% think they’ll also get together in the books, I’m a little worried. GRRM isn’t that great with romance. I’m afraid he’ll make Jon x Dany too toxic. Given the romantic history of both characters, I’m having trouble imaging them in a healthy enough relationship. Do you have any thoughts about this? Hope you do : ) Your writing is always awesome!

Thanks for asking me, you’re very kind. As much as I would like to reassure you, I must start by saying that GRRM is never going to write a relationship that everyone is 100% happy with. 

“GRRM isn’t that great with romance.” I’m not sure what this means. This isn’t a criticism of you, I know you’re constrained by character limits, but I think we should explore this assertion before proceeding.  

What is romance? Wikipedia defines it as “an emotional feeling of love for another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express that overall feeling […]. Although […] widely associated with sexual attraction, romantic feelings can exist without expectation of physical consummation”. 

I think GRRM is very good at conveying his characters’ emotions, including their feelings of love. For example, when Jon Connington remembers Myles Toyne, it makes my heart ache:

Myles had been possessed of jug ears, a crooked jaw, and the biggest nose that Jon Connington had ever seen. When he smiled at you, though, none of that mattered.

And in the Dunk & Egg stories, Dunk’s innocent and sweet “not too tall for me” captures not only Dunk’s feelings but also the essence of his character. 

And this romantic moment is one of my favorites:

And there was one woman, sitting almost at the foot of the third table on the left … the wife of one of the Fossoways, he thought, and heavy with his child. Her delicate beauty was in no way diminished by her belly, nor was her pleasure in the food and frolics. Tyrion watched as her husband fed her morsels off his plate. They drank from the same cup, and would kiss often and unpredictably. Whenever they did, his hand would gently rest upon her stomach, a tender and protective gesture.

And if you want one of the main characters, well, this passage rips my heart in two, knowing what monstrous things Tywin has in store for these two innocent teenagers:

He dreamed of a better place, a snug little cottage by the sunset sea. The walls were lopsided and cracked and the floor had been made of packed earth, but he had always been warm there, even when they let the fire go out. She used to tease me about that, he remembered. I never thought to feed the fire, that had always been a servant’s task. “We have no servants,” she would remind me, and I would say, “You have me, I’m your servant,” [that’s some Princess Bride shit right there with Tyrion Lannister as Westley] and she would say, “A lazy servant. What do they do with lazy servants in Casterly Rock, my lord?” and he would tell her, “They kiss them.” That would always make her giggle. “They do not neither. They beat them, I bet,” she would say, but he would insist, “No, they kiss them, just like this.” He would show her how. “They kiss their fingers first, every one, and they kiss their wrists, yes, and inside their elbows. Then they kiss their funny ears, all our servants have funny ears. Stop laughing! And they kiss their cheeks and they kiss their noses with the little bump in them, there, so, like that, and they kiss their sweet brows and their hair and their lips, their … mmmm … mouths … so …”

They would kiss for hours, and spend whole days doing no more than lolling in bed, listening to the waves, and touching each other. Her body was a wonder to him, and she seemed to find delight in his. Sometimes she would sing to him. I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. “I love you, Tyrion,” she would whisper before they went to sleep at night. “I love your lips. I love your voice, and the words you say to me, and how you treat me gentle. I love your face.”

So I don’t think I can agree with you that GRRM isn’t great with romance. Maybe these particular examples didn’t resonate with you, but was there really nothing in the books that tugged at your heart romantically? Not even Renly and Loras’s relationship, from your URL?

But when you say GRRM isn’t great with romance, maybe it’s the romanticized moments you really mean? 

For example, in ACOK, during the Battle of the Blackwater, Sandor waits for Sansa in her room, and he holds her at knifepoint until she sings him a song. I think this scene is about trauma more than it’s about romance. Sandor has been dehumanized by the Lannisters for so long, treated as one of their dogs of war, that he’s forgotten what it means to be human and he’s forgotten how to connect with people. So when Sandor tries to form a connection with Sansa, he does so through violence, because that’s the only way he remembers how. 

But GRRM doesn’t write that scene romantically in my opinion:

Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don’t kill me, she wanted to scream, please don’t. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears.

Gentle Mother, font of mercy, save our sons from war, we pray, stay the swords and stay the arrows, let them know a better day.Gentle Mother, strength of women, help our daughters through this fray, soothe the wrath and tame the fury, teach us all a kinder way.

It’s Sansa singing about kindness and gentleness and mercy that reminds Sandor of his humanity. 

And of course, later, Sansa romanticizes this event, imagining that Sandor kissed her:

As the boy’s lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak.

But that’s how Sansa deals with her trauma, by romanticizing it, by rewriting it as a fairy tale. 

Perhaps you would have preferred a stronger condemnation of this event (or similar events) by the text? But I think GRRM knows he has very smart, engaged readers. He doesn’t have to spell it out for us; we know this is a fucked up situation. 

Personally it isn’t the romance I consider to be one of GRRM’s problem areas, it’s the physical consummation. 

For example, GRRM doesn’t seem to be aware that most of the rapes he wrote didn’t occur during war, so does he even realize that some of the stuff he wrote was rape? I can’t find the interview right now, but I believe GRRM commented on how the show changed Drogo and Dany’s wedding night to a rape scene, and GRRM kind of … distances … himself from that decision … as if GRRM didn’t write Dany being raped repeatedly by Drogo during the early days of her marriage. 

Also, the altar sex scene between Jaime and Cersei is still very controversial. (I have a lot of thoughts about Jaime and Cersei’s sex scenes and what they mean for their relationship, but I can’t deal with tumblr’s wank culture right now.) 

Also, it’s been over a year and I still haven’t recovered from this:

she walked toward him, her hips shifting forward with each step, as if her pussy were coming to him, the rest of her trailing behind reluctantly.

“as if her pussy were coming to him, the rest of her trailing behind reluctantly”

Someone really should draw this vagina monster because i can’t get it out of my mind. 

Anyways.

While I disagree with you about the romance, I will say that GRRM’s sex scenes aren’t always the best. But in GRRM’s defense, some of his sex scenes are quite lovely imo:

Not a happy conversation, maybe, but a human one. Both of us needed someone, and we reached out. Afterwards, I took her back to my cabin, and made love to her as fiercely as I could. Then, the darkness softened, we held each other and talked away the night.

So I would say it’s a mixed bag in terms of the sex scenes. 

What will a sex scene between Jon and Dany look like in the books? 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Dunno. Will there even be a sex scene between Jon and Dany in the books? I think so, but it’s not a given. We’ll just have to wait and see. 

Will Jon x Dany be too toxic in the books? 

I don’t find “toxic” to be terribly useful when it comes to evaluating fiction. Again, this isn’t a criticism, so I hope you aren’t offended, but this word for me is too vague, too lacking in complexity, and worst of all, too dichotomizing. Labeling something “toxic” tends to sort ships into easily-defined categories, with the “toxic” ones to be discarded on the midden heap in search of something ~pure~, as if such purity existed outside the blandest coffee shop AU. 

The “toxic” label tempts us into a mindset where certain literary relationships are perceived to have no value. “toxic” becomes the end of the conversation for tumblr, when it should be just the beginning. The relationship in Oedipus Rex is certainly “toxic” by any definition of the word, so what is it about this story that has endured for centuries? The fandom police on tumblr wouldn’t be asking that question; they would just ban the story for its lack of moral purity, and we would be all the poorer for it. 

(See also: fandom’s discussion of Renly. It’s the end of a conversation, when it should be the beginning.) 

So let’s set “toxic” aside. 

“Given the romantic history of both characters“ Again, I’m not entirely sure what this means. 

Dany was sold to Drogo and raped. Jorah pines for Dany. Daario is … Daario. Hizdahr was a marriage of convenience. But what do these relationships have to do with Jon Snow? 

And what does Ygritte have to do with Dany? 

I mean, I suppose there is some commonality here. Jon fell in love with Ygritte while he was little more than a captive, and Dany fell in love with Drogo while she basically was Drogo’s captive. So, like … yeah, these weren’t the best situations … but … I don’t think GRRM is trying to write “Guidelines for Relationships and Consent for the College Freshman”. 

Like, Jon’s relationship with Ygritte certainly has some consent issues, and these issues are definitely worth talking about, but tumblr uses these issues to shut down the conversation, as if we need to throw this fictional relationship in the garbage and wash our hands of it. As if there’s no value to it. As if GRRM isn’t trying to say something profound about Jon falling in love with a people he was raised to believe were his enemy. 

In real life, I hope nobody is in a relationship with consent issues. But in fiction … human beings are flawed, and our relationships are flawed too. Its these flaws that breathe life onto the page. 

For me, Jon and Dany’s romantic history is thematically important to ASOIAF as a whole. Each of them have loved and lost, but they haven’t become hardened by it. They remain in the world, and a part of it. Our heroes’ hearts remain open. There is room for many loves in their lives. Contrast this against villainous Tywin, who had room for one love, and one love only, and once it was gone, he denied love. One of the questions I think ASOIAF asks is, how much love do you have to give? And what would you do, for love? Because that isn’t just Jaime’s self-loathing line, it’s a question central to the series. 

So, for me, Jon and Dany’s romantic history isn’t an impediment. It’s proof to me that they love, and that they can keep opening themselves to love, even in the worst circumstances. (Because let me tell you, circumstances are about to get much worse.)

“I’m having trouble imaging them in a healthy enough relationship.“

What is a healthy relationship with an Undead Zombie? (Coming into contact with Jon’s rotting flesh can’t be that healthy imo.) 

What is a healthy relationship with a messianic girl who made miracles? 

What is a healthy relationship, at the end of the world? 

I’m sorry, I truly, sincerely hope I am not hurting your feelings, and I am terribly sorry if I have hurt your feelings, but you asked for my thoughts: 

For me the question of whether Jon and Dany will have a healthy relationship seems … absurd. Not because “healthy” seems obvious**, but because “healthy” seems irrelevant at the end of the world. 

**It’s not obvious, because I don’t even know what “healthy” means in the apocalypse. What is a healthy relationship, at the end of the world? That was not a rhetorical question, because I really, truly don’t know what “healthy” means at the end of the world. 

If the world is coming to an end, there are so many things that I would ask that are so much more important to me than “are they healthy?”

Like. Put the show out of your mind. Completely. Pretend you never saw it, because I don’t think Jon and Dany look like that. I don’t think Jon and Dany look like that at all in the books. 

I don’t think it’s about Jon and Dany vying for a throne, I don’t even think the Iron Throne is going to exist anymore. I don’t think it’s about stupid wight hunts, I don’t think it’s about fighting over dragonglass, I don’t think it’s about having sex on a boat. I don’t think it’s about fighting the evil Other King, because he doesn’t exist in the books, because in the books, the true enemy is a force of dehumanization. It’s an enemy we’re all capable of becoming, and something we all have to fight. 

I don’t think King’s Landing is even going to be there. I think Cersei’s going to be dead. I think the southern half of the continent is largely going to be dead or dying, while the northern half wishes they were. I think GRRM can write a sense of desperation that will have you clawing at your face with one hand while you can’t stop turning the pages with the other. 

And I don’t think Jon and Dany get “together” until this desperation grabs us in its lizard-lion jaws and refuses to let us go. I don’t think Jon and Dany really get “together” until they’re beyond the curtain of light, in another world, an Other world, a fairy realm that is grotesquely beautiful and strange and cold. A place of impossible angles that hurt you to think about them, and strange labyrinths where you lose yourself in more ways than one, and terrible, terrible cruelty. 

The heroes are alone (possibly with Tyrion) in a place that’s the opposite of the Garden of Eden.

And in this place, I think they’re all struggling to remember their humanity, struggling to remember why they ever came there in the first place, struggling to remember why they should even care. Why should Jon try to save a world that would murder him for helping? Why should Tyrion try to save a world that branded him a monster from birth? Why should a queen try to protect her people, when (I think, speculating wildly from scraps of the show) they reject her as their queen?

”Remember who you are“

When they’ve lost even themselves in this strange place beyond the end of the world … there are so many important questions to ask. 

To me, the most important question is, will there be love? Love is our greatest glory, the greatest expression of our humanity, our greatest strength in the face of an alien species that wants to eradicate humanity. Without love, I think Jon and Dany (and Tyrion) are doomed to failure, and the world along with them. Saving the world has to be an act of love. Self-love, and altruistic love, and romantic love, and all sorts. 

My next question is, will there be kindness?  In Westeros, as in our world, kindness is a rare gem. We each have only so much time, and I hope everyone spreads as much kindness as possible in the time they have, even if that time is only fictional. I hope Jon and Dany will be kind to each other. 

Will there be trust? Together, humanity is so much greater than the sum of its parts. I hope Jon and Dany realize this. I hope they find a way to work together. I hope they can rely on each other. 

Will they have given it their all? Will they realize their full potential? I hope Jon and Dany get the chance to do everything in their power, and I hope they leave this world without regrets. I hope they rage against the dying of the light. 

Will they find comfort in each other, at the end? I don’t think Jon and Dany are making it out of this alive, but I hope they hold each other, and soften the darkness, and talk away the night. 

I don’t know what Jon and Dany will be like, but I can hope.

I personally wouldn’t worry about Jon and Dany’s relationship in the books yet, because it hasn’t even been written yet. I have faith in GRRM, and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. If I’m wrong, there will be plenty of time to critique this relationship after it’s published. 

***

I’m sorry if this doesn’t answer your question. I’m also really sorry if I made you feel bad, I hope I didn’t, but I’m sorry if I did. (Please tell me that I didn’t, or else I will fret.)

I have a tag for discussions of Jon and Dany’s relationship, if you want to read more of my thoughts: #jdmeta

#thank you! you're very kind #gameofthronesrenlyxlorasforever #replies #jdmeta #lannister thoughts #jon x dany #dany x jon #jon snow #daenerys targaryen

[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [2]

The First Rule The first rule is: breathe. Every game has rules, she tells me, and this game is especially dangerous. Breathe. We need these rules because we're breaking another. One of Edwards. If he finds us he'll be furious, she whispers, and though she smiles as she says it, I can plainly see that it is true. Breathe. It's an easy rule to remember. Even as Bella wraps my legs around her, and digs her fingers in to my exposed upper thigh, I have no trouble drawing breath. When I press my face into her hair I want nothing more than to inhale. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. And we're flying.

The world has disappeared; replaced instead with a never ending canvas on which we paint our own futures. Out here we can make mountains. Each slow, methodical stroke of the brush erases a part of who we were and replaces it with the promise of who we could become. Her legs slow minutely, and just when I think we are done running - we begin the climb. It takes no time at all for her to scale the tree, even with me clinging desperately to her marble frame. Near the top she releases me. My arms unwind from around her neck and I slide slowly down her body. She holds me close. It's strangely intimate, but not uncomfortable. A streak of thick tears roll down my face, settling on my wind-chapped lips before I can remember the rules. "Breathe." Bella laughs. The sound is at home here among the other birdsong. I want to tell her that I'm terrified. That I'm not ready to live in a world where monsters are real, and my best friend is dead, but the words are lodged in my throat. My heart smashes against my ribcage. The weight of knowing, the shame of pretending, burn me. "Breathe," she says it again. "Breathe." Back on solid ground we talk about our lives. Brilliant, golden rays of sunshine slash through the leafy canopies above us, igniting her skin as she speaks. She tells me about how she wants to go college one day—maybe in Alaska—about how being a mother has given her patience, and about how all this would be easier if Alice were here. I would hate Alice, she tells me, and rolls her eyes. Before she can elaborate on why, the words are bursting from between my lips. "Where is Alice?" "Gone." Is the reply. She does not tell me much more than that. Only that it has been a long time, that it was not much of a shock, and that they do not expect her back. I know how hard it is to lose a best friend. I wrap my arms around her, squeezing tight, and whisper my condolences in to the wind. At the cottage, Bella takes her daughters hands in hers and they converse in voices so quiet that I cannot make out a single word. They are a Christmas card. They are a magazine cover. They are everything that every mother aspires to be, captured in a single, eternal bell jar. I am tired beyond my years. Ren wants lunch. The concept is simple but Bella's face looks grave, and I am left to intuit the things that remain unspoken. I tell them to go. I smile cheerily and wave them away and try not to be afraid of the man left behind. He knows that I am. I feel him picking at my brain. It is not something that he can always control, I am told. Sometimes even he wishes that our secrets were our own. "Edward?" I ask quietly, unnecessarily. "Would you walk me to the main house?" As we walk, he tells me more about himself: pieces of his history, fragments of his dreams. I do not think that he tells a single lie but I suppose I will never truly know. His perfectly chiselled face shines dully in the late morning sun as he speaks. Like Bella; not like Bella. I hate him. He smiles at me ruefully, bringing me a stop with a gentle hand. There are no words spoken as a nervous sweat breaks out across the back of my neck. None spoken as I wrap myself up tighter in my sheepskin coat. There is a single word spoken when the wind whips across my knees, the skin exposed between the top of my tall boots, and the hem of my cream coloured dress. "Lena." It's a curse. He speaks my name with the soft admonishment of a father. Though I do not know his exact age, I can hear one hundred weary years in that name. "I could tell you that you're wrong about me. That every fear you have is unfounded. I could lean in close and tell you that I have never treated Bella poorly... and you would believe me." His nose is touching mine, his breath is in my mouth. I believe every word. "But all I really want is for you to know that I am trying." Mercifully, he draws away from me. "I'm trying to be a better husband, a better father. A better person." He's smiling, and it's shy and honest. Inside the main house, I rifle through my things in search of my paperback. The pages are yellowed, warped from the damp, and more than one vital passage has been torn away. Ravaged as much from my affection for it, as time itself, the book is a sad reminder. We hurt the things we love. Soft piano music lingers in the hallway - too muted to be real. I follow the sound. My footfalls are quiet, though never silent in this house, and my fingers flex nervously around the discoloured tome. The door is ajar. A single pale hand emerges, fingers closing over the door's edge and pulling it wide. The ashen face of the doctor greets me. "Bartók," I state. As though answering a question I was yet to be asked. "Frankenstein." His reply, gaze lingering on the book in my arms. "Would you like to come in?" The study is richly decorated; every wall covered in books and paintings. This would be my haven too, I think. An eternity could well be lost in countless books, fine paintings, and Hungarian composition. The doctor repeats the title of my book again. I tell him that it's my favourite and he makes a sound that is almost a chuckle, but just short of a laugh. He asks me if I am fond of monsters. Honestly, I do not know, but I answer him as best I can. "I'm trying to be." What I think might be a glimmer of understanding catches in his eye. He takes a deliberate step toward me. The reflex to take a step back is hard to fight, and were it not for his serene, youthful face, the way he looms over me might be menacing. But he has studied us for a long time. Humanity. He knows how close is too close and he is not yet there. When he reaches out, taking my face in his long, bony fingers, I close my eyes. I am safe in his hands. He inspects my wound and tells me that it is 'healing nicely'. For a time I follow the river. When it splinters off in to a series of smaller streams I follow one of those. Eventually the water is little more than a trickle through its muddy banks. The air is warm and damp. Everything in the shaded glade is slick with moss and ripe with summer. Verdant. I take off my boots, then socks, stuffing them inside and rest my book atop them. At the edge of the water my feet sink deep and the chipped red paint on my toenails is sluggishly consumed by the rich brown mud. I lay my coat out on the grass and sit: my book in one hand, the other picking absently at the dirt spotting my dress. It dries slowly on to the fabric, my outstretched legs, and even my hands. I feel content. ___ My phone beeps. I'm surprised it has a signal. Bella. I tell her not to hurry, that I'm enjoying the time alone. I tell her that I'm happy. It is only a text message, and they are not the best conveyance for emotional tone, but I hope that she reads it and knows that it is true. Being here, seeing her again - it's healing me. I imagine telling her that face to face. All too easily I can picture her replying that she think it's ironic, never having really understood the word. The imagining makes me laugh out loud. "Now that's what I call a smile." He stands at my feet, his faint shadow creeping up my muddied calves. A bell rings soundly in my brain: alarm. "I was beginning to think only Bella got to see those.” My mind struggles to string a sentence together, and my legs go uselessly numb. Even if I wanted to—even if I could—flight would be pointless. He crouches there at my feet, watching me with golden eyes and a crooked smile. Jasper is positively leonine. "You're filthy." His gaze makes a lazy sweep up my legs and I feel my own eyes widen to the point of discomfort. My silence stretches too long to be considered polite, and even though the toothy smile slips off his face he doesn't look offended. Blush creeps up the back of my neck. My ears tingle, and just as I worry that the heat of it will set my face ablaze he speaks again. "Am I making you uncomfortable?" "Yes." This should be where it ends. This is supposed to the part where the civilised monster takes his leave of me because humans are friends, not food. But he isn't. He's laughing. The sound is low, it makes my stomach feel heavy and I don't want it to stop. I hastily shuffle aside as he sits next to me on my coat, shoulder to shoulder, our legs stretched out, my feet brushing against his shin. The chill of his skin reaches my bare arms. He takes my book and begins leafing through the pages, smiling to himself. The stretching silence grows comfortable. My fear ebbs. "Jasper?" He faces me, one eyebrow raised in surprise as though he assumed I would never speak again. I continue, "If I insisted that you leave, would you?" For a time he considers me. "Yes. I suppose I would." Something about his answer feels unsatisfactory. The displeasure must be written on my face because he qualifies his statement. "Not because it's the right thing to do, mind you. Not because you asked me nicely. I would leave because that would be in my best interests. Offending you would upset Bella, and that has the potential to... disrupt our family dynamic." "That's painfully honest of you." He smiles again, "I thought you might prefer honesty." "I do. I just wasn't sure you did." He has the decency not to lie to me then. His silence is response enough. We sit together for a long time as the air slowly cools. The silences are punctuated with short conversations, or the beeping of my phone as I continue to text Bella. At one time I began to read aloud from my book, stopping when I reach one of the larger tears in the page, only to have Jasper recite the missing words back to me. Fascinating. Eidetic memory, he tells me, tapping his honey coloured curls. I read aloud a little longer and he continues to fill in the gaps until I reach the next sheaf of undamaged pages. For a solid minute I can feel his eyes on me. I close the book. He's too distracting. When I finally turn to face him he is so very close, his gaze scrutinising. "My eyes were brown once." I'm filled with a strange sort of melancholy at his tone. "Not bright like Bella's were. Dark, like yours." He swipes his thumb once across my cheekbone, under my eye. Were it not for the cool trail left on my skin I may not have noticed the feather-light touch. It's happening again. I'm drowning in his eyes. I reach out to touch him—return the gesture perhaps—when I catch myself. My skin a meagre centimetre from his. It is easy enough to withdraw my hand, less so to contain my babbling apology. It's just that it's all so terribly interesting, I tell him, and he smiles again. Then I simply cannot stop myself. I tell him every single thought I have had since learning their family secret, ask every single question Bella won't answer, and gripe about every single inconsistency in their existence. I feel such relief. I should probably be mortified at the prospect of him knowing all of this, scared at the thought of offending him. The embarrassment—the fear—never comes. Finally, I stop talking. He waits for me to catch my breath, that good-natured smile still firmly in place, before reaching between us and taking my hand in his. Slowly, he lifts it to his face, pressing my muddy palm against his pallid cheek. "Ask me again." He says, as my fingers lightly probe his unyielding skin. "Every question Bella doesn't wanna answer for you." With his perfectly sculpted lips resting against my small wrist, the pulse thrumming steadily within, I ask the question I least want answered. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. "Why am I still so afraid?" ___ ← prev  -  next  →

#twilight fanfiction #twilight #fanfiction #jasper hale #bella swan #edward cullen #carlisle cullen #title:beast at my side

[crimethinc]

Between the Sun and the Sea: Icarus at 12th and L–A Voice from the J20 Black Bloc and Kettle on the Practice of Anarchy

Several blocks before the L & 12th Street intersection, I was already feeling that the march had run its course. At each cross street, we met a line of police, sirens blaring. A few brave souls still managed to fell some final windows on the periphery. Yet while the Bank of America windows had crashed in triumphant cacophony, these windows struck the pavement with an urgency that reflected our increasingly dire situation. We had no destination, no end goal. It felt as though we were running solely to evade police. I knew that it was time to break from the group, yet I still held a kind of separation anxiety.

Leaving has always been hard for me. Dispersing consistently feels liken a haphazardly unthought-out ending tacked onto an otherwise compelling novel. A novel that begins with, “Collectively, anything is possible—you can do whatever you’d like” and ends with, “Everyone goes their own way and pretends to be normal.” Leaving the bloc means leaving the safety of a powerful mass of people, often to wander the streets immediately adjacent to crime scenes, alone, with police looking to single out suspects. There was a rumor circulating that, given their history with lawsuits, the DC police would be unlikely to mass arrest. This false prediction spelled doom for us unlucky rioters, as the police did just that. It was with these thoughts circling my head, alongside memories of past dispersals gone awry, that I decided to stay with the march.

I was with a few friends. We stayed together. We kept track of each other. As the march shrunk in size, we paired off and prepared to jettison ourselves from the bloc. We turned to face an alleyway on L Street between 13th and 12th. I knew very well that this could be my chance to safely exit the march. My friends bolted down the alleyway, not knowing what lay the next street over. For a moment, I thought to follow suit, but decided that too many of us in one place might attract police attention. A few minutes later, I was trapped between a wall and a riot shield. Facing the corridor that had offered safe passage just moments earlier to anyone brave enough to step down its halls, I contemplated the hesitation that had led me to this fate. If there’s anything I can say from my experience being pinned against that wall, it is that a split second of intuition in the street is worth more than weeks of prior planning.

The kettle was where I made my biggest mistake. It was there, and the moments just before, that I put almost no effort into escaping. The police had us sardined together so tightly that I gravely underestimated our collective potential within the kettle. I thought that I was about to be arrested with at most seventy people, less than a third of our actual numbers. I was primarily among strangers. In my heart, I felt that I would participate in a second attempt to charge the police line. It was my fear of being cast as a leader, in a film produced by live-streamers and on-duty officers, that kept me from voicing my intent. Yet if there was any time to risk collective trust and courage, it was there, where we were most vulnerable.

There was larger reason I was compliant in my own captivity. I felt myself above persecution. There are two reasons why one would go willingly to their arrest. The first, they think that they haven’t committed any crime. The second, that they committed a crime so flawlessly that they could not possibly be convicted of it. Both of these presumptions involve a false sense of security; neither save you from prosecution. Though I did not delude myself with the pretense that I had performed a perfect execution of black bloc tactics, I considered myself “high-hanging fruit.” I was counting on the prosecution to be lazy, to lack the funding or time to convict me. When I was in the kettle, I was convinced that I wouldn’t actually be arrested. At worst, I would be charged with a misdemeanor, slapped on the wrist, and eventually end up with a check from a class action lawsuit. Instead, I had to navigate the next year and a half with looming felonies.

I had not come to DC innocently. I knew the risk, the potential repercussions. I chose to look them in the face. The pepper spray and stun grenades were terrifying, but not unexpected. In some ways, they heightened my senses and fortified my convictions. My heart races when I look back on the march—but not from trauma, nor from anxiety. It drums in vigorous reverie, recounts the last time it beat with purpose.

Over the following year, I was forced to tame my heart. In court, I stilled my breathing, attempted to hide my guilt. I kept a caged life. The legal procedure left me fraught with anxiety. I clung to the safety and certainty of routine. I denied every passion, every risk, in hopes that I would be able to convince a jury that I was simply not the adventurous type. My heart sat and sulked. I came to learn that, as a friend so elegantly put it, “The process is the punishment.”

Felonies change things. I catch glimpses of understanding in the eyes of my friends who have faced prosecution to this degree. One of the beauties of black bloc is that I might be anyone under this mask; a restaurant server, a designer, a nurse. Once donned, the mask allowed me to act in ways a nurse can only dream.

To be unmasked is to be held in purgatory between selves. I was no longer the person I was in the streets, yet I could not return to being who I had been just days earlier. At its core, the bloc hinges on the moment when we shed our black clothes and return to normalcy. While there have been times where I’ve de-bloc’ed with a profoundly different understanding of the world, I was still banking on returning to work with only one less sick day. As time passed after J20 and my charges remained, I realized there was a possibility that I might never return to being the person I had been before my arrest.

During the interim awaiting trial, I chose a course of action that seems common among anarchist pending-felons. I applied to college.

For me, college was an attempt to regain some agency in two different ways. In one way, I was trying to influence my potential sentencing. If I could convince a judge that I was an upstanding citizen, then he or she might be a little more lenient in punishing me. Going to college was also an attempt to salvage my future, a future I felt was starting to escape my grasp.

At the time I was arrested, I did not consider myself to have a clear vision of the future. Yet in the wake of my arrest, all successful futures seemed out of reach. Success felt like a mirage, shimmering, hazy, always on the horizon. My case continued and evidence mounted against me. I scrambled to claim any sort of successful future I could before a conviction made one unobtainable. I raced towards the horizon without drawing any closer to it, meeting the same scene in every direction. My charges sent me spiraling and forced me to examine my feelings of helplessness.

When I did so, I realized that all along, I had held within me a concrete image of success after all. It was not the unimaginable utopia I had believed myself to be pursuing. On the contrary, it was all too familiar; I had simply kept it intentionally obscured from myself. When I honestly consulted myself about what constituted my image of a successful future, what I found was indistinguishable from the world I already knew—only in the future I had been imagining, I had a little more money, a better presence on social media. I had been so disgusted by this vision that I had I banished it to the horizon of my mind.

The anarchist canon has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today, we are not as steeped in subculture. Our politics rely a lot less on consumer choices. We’ve come a long way from the cornerstone pieces of the early 2000s. Early CrimethInc. texts took the Situationist exhortation “Never Work—Ever” literally, proposing a sort of exodus that often looked more like voluntary exile; today, as work becomes more and more a part of our social as well as professional lives, the proposal seems unthinkably absurd. We have largely escaped the cultural pitfalls of the punk scene, expanded our access to funding for our projects, even created our own platforms so that anarchist ideas can proliferate. Along with these conscious efforts to grow and develop nuance with age, for me, something has shifted silently in the background.

I gave up my resistance to work—even took up office at some of the same companies I believed were bringing about an apocalyptic nightmare. I closed my eyes, clicked my heels, and repeated “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” I justified my increasingly indiscriminate use of money, sought to tally up my influence on the world. I became obsessed with power, quantifiable power. I searched for any sign that the anarchist movement was gaining traction, that one day way we could finally make “The Switch.” My measurements for success had paralleled social norms; now they began to overlap with them. Soon Anarchy was just something I believed in. Aside from sharing meals and resources among friends, it was not something I practiced.

To some, the black bloc is a tactic, a means to an end. For me, having lived through a myriad of outcomes, black bloc is a practice. Black blocs are a practice in timing: when to return teargas to the police, when to leave an intersection, when to smash windows, when to disperse. As in all practice, some days are better than others. To be in bloc is to experience what can be possible when the laws that typically govern us are momentarily superseded and how to act when our adversaries try to reassert them. When we participate in black blocs, we are attempting to learn the balance between exercising an otherwise impossible freedom, at the cost of our safety, and maintaining a modicum of safety so that we can continue to act freely.

Every night as I mulled over my legal predicament, I would ask myself the same questions. “Are black blocs a pertinent part of the way we do Anarchy today? Are they just hollow tradition from a bygone era? Are they worth risking the world you inhabit daily for a fleeting experience, however ecstatic?” I think of my friends who are a little older than I, who have better jobs, who were noticeably absent from the march on January 20. For many people, their little ration of worldly success is not worth the risk.

When I look back to the texts that inspired me as I was coming of age in radical politics, I trace a common thread binding them. Travel logs, accounts of underground healthcare, epics of animal liberation—at their core, all of them conveyed the same story. They told that There is a Secret World Concealed Within This One; a world that I had long since forgotten. The once-common anarchist saying “Another world is possible” is no longer spoken between friends. It is not overlaid on images of riots, nor commonly held as an anarchist truth. I mourn it’s absence. There are those who would say there is no life outside of capitalism, that we are bound to this world by birth. Only recently has the premise emerged that being born into a position invalidates your ability to transcend it.

The truth is that we alone are the visionaries of our success. We define our values, sculpt our objects of beauty. If we build from the blueprints of power and safety laid out in this world, then we will make more of the same. But I believe that we are capable of breaching the precedents of modern life. We can imagine less abhorrent futures, create lives worth living—but to do so, we must abandon the worldly successes we seek for validation. If we want to continue to experience the transcendental, unbridled ecstasy of black blocs, the practice of anarchy and experimentation, then we must create and maintain worlds in which the consequences of a felony rioting conviction are not so dire—worlds worth leaving this one to get to. Another world is not only possible, it is waiting for us. We must believe in our ability to reach it so we can find the strength to depart. We have to let go of our attachments and truly believe that we are capable of taking flight.

In the kettle at 12th and L Street, I felt like a young Icarus, hurtling towards the sun, only to plummet into the sea. All exercises in freedom have these risks. To those who dare to soar, may we also learn to swim, and never fear the consequences of singed wings.

Despite its abrupt end and unfortunate outcome, the march on January 20, 2017 was one of the most inspiring, vitalizing moments of my life. Despite its obvious challenges, I am thankful that facing charges has given me time to reflect. Let me take a moment here to explicitly state, with a clear mind and certain heart, that—having eluded conviction—I would 100% do it again no questions asked. I hope someday to share an experience of elation similar to that of J20 with the readers of this piece. If and when that day comes, may we both avoid arrest and get off scot-free.

With love,

a CrimethInc. ex-defendant

[therevolutionwillnot]

She Can Fly (a ranty ode to my grandma)

Grandma used to tell me when I was little, I’d take a sheet and run around the house singing, I Believe I Can Fly. I can see the movie version of myself, hair in braids, shoes off, grandma saying “Hohoooo-bapreeee.” Run to one corner “I believe I can touch the skyyy” Run to another corner “Think about it every night and dayyyy” Flying across the rooms, wings flapping “Spread my wings and fly awaaay” I run through that open door, arms flailing drastically the beat beating through my chest as it repeats until the crescendo, “I believe I can flllyyyyyy!” Fast forward and rewind a few hours backwards, Dadu is yelling at grandma. Somewhere in my head his Hindi is slapping the walls and he is the large frame of a giant who squishes my grandma into the mouse form she feels majority of the time around him. I think he slapped her at one point, but all of that is lost or fuzzy in where we don’t like to remember. This woman. This woman who raised my uncle, aunt and dad. This woman… Would say to me “Mimi do you remember the garden. You would said my garten- these are my toe-mayy-toes.” There would be a laugh in her voice, as if she could see the sun shining on my little authoritative face claiming “This is my land” in tiny toddle voice. She liked the Animal Planet Channel, America’s Funniest Home Videos (animals over humans definitely) and soap operas. All the face slapping, facial expressions, dramatic music, my grandma’s reaction. “Oh myyyyyyy.” It was the animals and videos that were the best in my book. Some baby, child thing or animal would do something irreversibly stupid, clumsy and all at the same time adorable. She would laugh. “Oh hohohohohoo oh my.” Her laughter made me laugh, I loved to watch her sit in her plastic cheap looking dollar store chair and smile. And laugh. I think those were our moments. I didn’t realize this, but she raised me. For a long time she was there and I can’t remember most of it. I don’t know those times that my cheeks must’ve ruined the tectonic equilibrium as her face would peer into mine, searching for the many ways to make those cheeks burst even more with smiles. The times we must’ve had each other best. I will not know those. We were learning about human biology, I read the passage, I got all the information-We essentially come from monkeys...or monkey-like things, my brain said. I know things, I’m twelve. What in me decided to have this conversation with my dad? What sparked this ignorance to state boldly, “Dad we come from monkeys.” Immediate downfall, the bible was talked at and thrusted into my hands. “Are you telling me your grandma comes from monkeys?” I can’t answer with a straight face, because it’s all over. The world is ending. Quietly I say, “Yes. We all do.” More fireballs thrown until our words are pure flames. My grandma is praying in the corner, I’m crying. And realized I didn’t want this. I didn’t to see her like this-don’t care about him, he’ll always be this way, but grandma. I made a day in hell for you and I’m sorry. I told her I didn’t care if he lived, one day. We were on the phone. But he was getting sick. He’s always getting sicker. She said he’s in a bad way. I propose the idea that maybe he is, and maybe we should be ready for that...and in a small voice I tell her I don’t care. She was immediately offended that I would ever say anything like that, he was your son. I know that hurt you. I never should have said that out loud to you. She reminds me of the Glass Menagerie-that fucking story always pisses me off (but you are so fragile). She would think so little of herself (you didn’t like new clothes, in fact I have some of them). I tell this story to kids I work with all the time- it’s my favorite to tell and of course I change it up a little more every time. He was outside making chicken, red, so deliciously red but it was always smokey and filled with mosquitoes. You were inside making potatoes. Sometimes you sat on the floor and chopped on this big wooden heavy chopping board with this knife that looked like a mini machete perfect for your everyday brown toddler. I asked if I could help around, you stirring, he’s flipping and drinking. You both say no. So apparently my tiny self managed to drag a sack of potatoes to the bathroom. Plop them in one by one...to which one of you noticed. The door creaks open slowly, assuming it’s just a little girl taking a large deuce (it runs in our family seriously tho), but to her surprise...her granddaughter is smushing potatoes into the toilet. I can imagine what you sounded like “Oriiiiiiii bapreee!!!!” And apparently my father walked in- this guy who loves Beevus and Butthead with the comedic level of a 15 year old boy in the 90s...yeah he laughed his ass off. Secretly struggling with the idea of how to unclog the toilet. You guys loved to tell that story and I always loved hearing it. It was during a time you were happy with him...but we both know how temporary that was. We would go on walks, I’m in middle school...I’m a teenager and you disclose to me how scared you are of him. I’ve heard him yell at you or flex in frustration. We have both seen in this in men, too many times. It’s as if Dadu just couldn’t rest and had to reincarnate himself in your son. 12 pack of beer, everytime we hung out sometimes a 20 pack. Budlight or Budweiser mostly. Every. Night. You told me he did ether one night and died. Granted he was younger...but you’d been carrying his booze problem since. It was you. Alone. With him. And when I called sometimes our secret code language of his angry presence was enough that I would get on the phone with him, make him laugh, something. Just to ease your space. But you called me one day...it had gone too far. He had alcohol poisoning and my brother was there. He had to call 911. He was crying and alone with you and him and...I wasn’t there. To help, to take over, to handle the crisis. I was so young to hear about his abuse to you. I asked my mom what if we moved you...I knew she never would. But I really wanted you gone from him. I wanted to take care of you. I wanted to know you were safe and happy. I hurt you when I didn’t call or visit. I don’t know why I didn’t, but I do, I was too lazy, I was living my life, I was like my mother. She did that to you too. I learned this from her, I take full responsibility for not seeing you, I did not see you when you were here last. I didn’t tell you the truth. Me and Al aren’t together and whe I have a kid I will most likely not be in a marriage but I’ll be happy. Because I can stop this curse of misery and pain. If I am here for anything I am here for that. You gave me love-you showed me what love looks like and that is all I can give back. We all deserve love, hurt, broken, in pieces, in full glasses of water. I’m sorry if I didn’t give it back to you. But please always know that I love you. You met Al. You said his name funny. But it was cute. I knew he wasn’t the one but I never brought a guy to meet you and you deserved to meet someone. He was my first long term relationship. I didn’t love him, but liked him a lot. I think you could tell. I think you liked watching me with a guy. You kept asking when I’d get married and start having kids. You really wanted grandkids, that’s when the very elongated “Graaanddmmaa” would creep a smile around my mouth. It was just cute that you started doing that when I was getting older. You died on the night I was out dancing on a date. It was a really nice date and I don’t know if you said this to me, but I believe you did, you told me, “You love.” And that feeling I’d always dreamed of, dancing with someone where the energy and connection are caught together to hold up the mast to swing in the storm of sound waves. There it was. That feeling. The next morning Felicia texted me. I was on the toilet. I had a great night and a great morning. I knew her text was bad. It was in my gut but I hoped...and then I read it. And I cried so hard muffling the choking sounds shoving my hands over my mouth trying to keep everything from falling apart. You were just gone...I know that’s cliche. But that was it. No will. No letter. No words left for me or anyone. You didn’t exist, you weren’t coming back. And I didn’t say anything to you, I didn’t say any of these things to you because I let him take you and our family didn’t have words for you. They held nothing in your name, no funeral or church event. I didn’t fight for you because I thought I was too small. I should’ve fought for you because no one else did. I was strong enough for you, I was strong enough to fight them off to let them know that you mattered, that you gave me strength and inspiration in this world to fight for my existence. I never told you that I wrote a paper about you for my English class in high school. A very influential teacher, this old white dude read my words about you. Just you and your superhuman ability to survive this world and still have room to smile and laugh. The hug you gave me more which was always more than three times when we would say goodbye. I loved saying goodbye to you. He left me a message, that I was a very talented writer and should follow this road, this path… I never told you, that you gave me that moment, I was proud to exist to feel purposeful in this world. I wrote about the smell of turmeric, onion, curry, garlic in your salwar, the Amla you combed through your hair and always braided. The way you said, “Ow.” and made such a painful yet comical face. The way cilantro chili pepper eggs in roti were simple and yet savory as ever like your dahl, your fried fish, anything you cooked. Your heart that gave away so much love and you only got so much in return. You gave me love and I am so thankful for all that you have been in my life, my Grandma. These are my words for you.

#Blackness #Black #Indian #India #Love #Family #Story #Life

[snarktheater]

Ready Player One — Level Two (Chapters 26-27)

“I figured it out later that night, a few hours after Shoto left my stronghold.”

See, when I said that Wade making a mistake in the search for the Jade Key didn’t prove the book understands character flaw, I didn’t think the book would literally have Wade go back to having a random, convenient epiphany for the next step in the Easter Egg hunt. This book is the gift that keeps on giving, in that I rarely have to go very far to elaborate on my arguments: usually, all I need to do is turn the page.

The epiphany, by the way, happened because Wade was randomly folding the wrapper the Jade Key came in, and suddenly remember there’s a scene with a unicorn origami in Blade Runner.

The moment I said the word “unicorn” aloud, the wrapper began to fold on its own, there in the palm of my hand.

…Okay, sure. That’s nice, I guess.

From this, Wade decides that the “test” mentioned on the Jade Key must be the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. The book also exposits to us what that is, and what Blade Runner is. And while the book does mention the movie’s based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, I’m not getting the impression that Wade has read it. I mean, it doesn’t even mention at any point (in this chapter or anywhere in the book) the phrase “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Anyway. There’s a convenient re-creation of the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner as part of the OASIS standard planet-building kit, meaning that building (and the Voight-Kampff test located in it) can be found on any number of planet. Do I really still need to call attention to the fact that the planet-building tool apparently contains hundreds of other assets similarly taken from existing properties, or have I made my point clear enough about the death of originality in this book yet?

So, Wade goes to the closest planet that features one such replica, Axrenox. It doesn’t matter what that planet is. Actually, not much of anything matters. I mean, the book spends a whole paragraph telling us about how Wade hopes nobody will steal his ship while it’s parked on Axrenox, but—spoiler alert—nobody will. I’m calling attention to it because it’s the second time Wade has expressed worry that someone would steal his transportation method, and the second time nothing comes of it. At some point you have to ask if someone’s not projecting a little too much. And I don’t mean the fictional character here.

Speaking of things that don’t matter: writing a good action scene as Wade goes through the replicants that guard the place. Because, yes, the planet-building kit includes guards in the building too.

The next ten minutes played out like the climax of a John Woo movie. One of the ones starring Chow Yun Fat, like Hard Boiled or The Killer.

Shitty writing aside, I want to point out that the book really shows how much it understands Blade Runner’s theme and central message by…treating the replicants as disposable mooks in a John Woo movie. Like, sure, they’re constructs in a video game, but still. Good job.

Speaking of not understanding the point, remember how the clue was like “take the test”? Yeah, if you know what the Voight-Kampff test is, you might have gotten a little enthusiastic there, since that test is meant to ascertain the ability to empathize with others. Which would be hilarious to see Wade Watts take. Sadly, no, the test only acts as a gateway to a 3D recreation of a video game that Wade has already mastered.

I honestly feel like it’d be insulting to you if I were to recap what happens next in detail. It’s a game. Halliday dropped a hint at it in his will video, which is mentioned to justify Wade being a master at the game. There’s another case of the book using romaji to transcribe the title of the game in Japanese, even though, again, that name is just English words written with Japanese characters and phonotactics. There’s still no tension; I mean, we literally go from Wade explaining the rules of the simulation and how he can’t leave to…

I managed to clear all eight levels of the game in just under three hours.

Oh, sure, after that he tells us how he got close to dying at one point. Like…thanks for telling me I should have been worried in the time you skipped.

At the end of the trial, he gets to choose a giant robot from fiction from a list (some of which already crossed out due to being picked by the Sixers).

I stopped cold when I saw Leopardon, the giant transforming robot used by Supaidaman, the incarnation of Spider-Man who appeared on Japanese TV in the late 1970s. I’d discovered Supaidaman during the course of my research and had become somewhat obsessed with the show. So I didn’t care if Leopardon was the most powerful robot available. I had to have him, regardless.

Okay, so, I just rambled about the romaji, so I won’t do it again here, though you should know it still annoys me. But I will say I’m pleasantly surprised that Wade actually made a decision derived from passion for something. I was starting to wonder if that would ever happen.

Anyway. Wade gets a toy replica of the Leopardon, and with that, he’s now cleared the Second Gate, and receives a hint to the Crystal Key’s location, in the form of a logo of a star inside a circle. This sounds like a pretty generic symbol, but Wade recognizes it. Probably because, if you look it up, it is actually distinct enough:

It just so happens the book describes it really poorly:

Then a symbol slowly appeared in the center of the screen: a glowing red circle with a five-pointed star inside it. The points of the star extended just beyond the outer edge of the circle.

The book skips over Wade leaving the Tyrell building, by the way. I guess the guards only prevent you from entering? I don’t know, because the book won’t tell me. Once he’s back on his ship…wait, I’ve gotta point this out:

And thanks be to Crom, the Vonnegut was still parked right where I’d left it, its cloaking device still engaged.

I already mentioned the ship would not in fact get stolen, but…“thanks be to Crom”? This isn’t even something he’s done until now. It’s just a random reference out of the blue.

Back to the plot. The red star and the image I just showed you are from a music album, 2112 by the band Rush. I don’t know anything about them, but the album is apparently about…

a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed.

So…like this book’s world, then?

Wade somehow knows exactly which lyrics on the album are relevant to finding the Crystal Key: a passage about the “Priests of the Temple of Syrinx”, because there’s a planet Syrinx somewhere in the OASIS with a temple in it. And by “a temple” I mean 1024 copies of the city described in the album’s supplemental material. Because copy-paste is an excellent substitute for good ideas. You know, between this, the planet with hundreds of copies of Halliday’s hometown, the planet with hundreds of copies of that text adventure game, and oh, the fact that the game’s planet-building tool contains hundreds of licensed assets. I mean, you can make the technology to run a lifelike VR simulation, but procedural generation and original art assets are both out of reach?

No, I will never stop being angry about this. It’s lazy writing and lazy in-universe, and it heavily undermines the idea that the OASIS somehow dominated the market. I mean, think about it: right now, the videogame market’s latest trend is Battle Royale games. The first game that managed to put the genre where it is is Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but because it lacked any original assets—and was frankly shoddily made because it was rushed into early release in order to be the first out—it was easily outdone by Fortnite, a game with a more competent team and actually creative people working on it, specifically because the concept alone isn’t going to make a game win on the market (and it also makes for very weak ground to sue people for copyright infringement once they beat you, Bluehole).

A concept can be replicated—don’t ever believe the myth of the indispensable lone genius, i.e. Halliday in this case, there’s always someone else, or a group of people, who can replicate your idea and probably improve on it while they’re at it. So I cannot for even a minute believe that there isn’t someone who couldn’t make the OASIS, except, you know, better. Hell, that’s what IOI should do, instead of investing loads of money into a contest to take over the OASIS with a very low chance of success.

Ahem. I’m getting off-topic, aren’t I? Well, that’s okay, because the actual action is as stilted as usual. Wade lands on the planet, and I guess IOI didn’t attempt to leave people to guard it or anything so he’s all alone. He finds the temple mentioned in the song, and figures he has to make an offering at the altar. Luckily, he instantly knows what other lyrics of the album are relevant, and they lead him to a secret cave behind a waterfall. If you think I’m rushing through the scene…barely. It takes him a paragraph to search the cave, for instance. The book’s as uninterested in this as I am. Which…you know, it shouldn’t be.

What does he find in the secret room in the secret cave, you ask? An electric guitar. It’s another reference to the album, but also, it’s stuck in a stone.

I grinned at the absurd Arthurian image of the guitar in the stone. Like every gunter, I’d seen John Boorman’s film Excalibur many times, so it seemed obvious what I should do next.

Yes, really. Apparently Arthurian legends are no longer widely known and the only reference Wade has is a specific movie adaptation of the mythos. Because that makes sense.

So Wade gets the special guitar, and it turns out he knows how to play it (in the OASIS, that is), and he’s randomly inspired to play the song 2112, even though there isn’t really anything prompting him to do. But it’s lucky, because it makes another clue show up:

The first was ringed in red metal The second, in green stone The third is clearest crystal and cannot be unlocked alone

Had the Sixers played the song and discovered this message? I seriously doubted it. They would have pulled the guitar from the stone and immediately returned it to the temple.

Yeah, so, because Wade played the guitar for no clear reason, Wade now has an advantage over the Sixers. Thanks, author puppetmaster! It’s not like giving characters a clear motivation to do what they do is difficult or useful to reinforce the book’s verisimilitude!

I mean, for real. Would it really be so hard to say Wade just…felt like playing the special guitar before he offered it at the altar in the table? It’s really not that hard.

Also, what the fuck is up with that hint? No, really. Now Halliday wants to encourage cooperation in his contest? Don’t you think it’s a little too late? Also, why do that at the last stage? Does that mean multiple people will get the egg at the same time…by design? That’s not gonna backfire at all.

Anyway, Wade returns the guitar to the temple, and when he puts it on the altar, it turns into the Crystal Key as planned.

my score on the Scoreboard increased by 25,000 points. When added to the 200,000 I’d received for clearing the Second Gate, that brought my total score up to 353,000 points, one thousand points more than Sorrento. I was back in first place.

As a hint for the location of the Third Gate, Wade only gets a stylized A. It’s actually the symbol of Halliday’s avatar Anorak—and of his castle. Because of course he has a castle in the OASIS.

the castle was impregnable and always had been. No avatar but Anorak himself had ever been able to pass through its entrance. But now I knew there must be a way to enter Castle Anorak. Because the Third Gate was hidden somewhere inside.

You know, Halliday making his own impregnable location inside of his own game explains a lot about why the OASIS is so permissive towards griefers. It was made by one.

Speaking of griefers, now that someone else has found the Crystal Key, guess who made an impenetrable dome around Castle Anorak? Yep, it’s the Sixers! And yes, there’s an artefact that lets you create a literally impenetrable barrier around a location in the OASIS. Again, who designs this?

The news of this soon reaches the gunter and clans, who all converge on the planet Chthonia, even though, you know, they don’t have the Crystal Key yet. But in spite of being in a really bad spot, Wade decides not to give up this time. I mean, it’s not like the Sixers having the exact same advantage (exclusive access to the Third Gate) didn’t make him fantasize about committing suicide three chapters ago or anything. That’s character consistency right there.

Yes, I’m still bitter that the book went there.

I began to formulate a plan. A bold, outrageous plan that would require epic amounts of luck to pull off.

Well considering how the rest of the book has gone, I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat here.

So Wade emails Artemis, Aech and Shoto the location of the Second Gate and the Crystal Key, and prepares to put the rest of his plan in motion, while the book attempts to end “Level Two” on a cliffhanger.

Once I was sure all three of them had received my message, I initiated the next phase of my plan. This was the part that terrified me, because I knew there was a good chance it was going to end up getting me killed. But at this point, I no longer cared. I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.

I did say “attempts to”. I mean, this is the first time Wade actually has a plan, and the “reach it or die trying” has sort of been his MO so far. But hey. Nice attempt.

#ready player one #ernest cline #book reviews #ya books #young adult #books #young adult books #ya #reviews #book #book review #review #st: ready player one

[bekicotwrites]

Hey guys! Over the years I’ve sort of have my own way of taking notes, but have finally ‘settled down’ during university. Some of my friends who took a look at my notes asked about how I write them and found some useful tips after I told them about my note taking technique. If it’s useful for my uni friends, then maybe it’s also gonna be useful for more people (I hope)! By no means this style would work for everyone, but you guys are welcome to copy my method if it works for you or develop your own style after seeing mine.

I’m going to break it down to some parts, which are:

1. Basics

2. Header

3. Symbols

4. Color Coding

5. Note taking (sort of an analysis of my notes)

6. Tips

Before we get into the explanations, here’s a mock page of what my usual notes looks like (plus a mini summary if you’re too lazy to read under the cut haha). You can refer to this as you read through the explanations below.

BASICS

1. SUPPLIES

Ah yes, supplies. Can’t take notes without pens, can we? The essentials for writing notes for me is a black, blue, and red pen, a pencil/mechanical pencil + eraser, and at least 3 colored highlighters.

Here are my go to supplies when taking notes, and basically this is what’s inside my pencil case as well. 

For the pens, the left to right order is:

Uni Jetstream Black 0.5

Uni Jetstream Blue 0.5

Muji Gel Ink Pen 0.38

Muji hexagon retractable gel ink pen 0.38

Uni Kurutoga Mechanical Pencil 0.5mm

Tombow Fudenosuke Soft Tip (Nayaka)

Mono Dust Catch eraser (any eraser will do actually)

For the highlighters, currently I’m using Daiso bright colors highlighters in red, green, blue, and yellow.

Grey is usually for my bujo like I rarely use it for notes... Another reason is because my current notebooks are Muji A5 notebooks, and I find that Daiso highlighters doesn’t bleed the paper like Mildliners or the pastel Stabilos.

2. LEFT COLUMN

The first thing I do whenever I have a new notebook/a new module is to always line the left side of the paper to make a column. There is no set width for this, it’s totally up to you. I usually use up around 5-6 of the little lines in Muji notebooks (or other Japanese notebooks??) for that left column.

The purpose for this section is for additional notes/vocabs that you need to add or you forgot to add when you’re making notes. By far, this is a very useful feature and I’ve been sticking with it ever since I found out about this method.

I was inspired by the collegeblocks notebook I used in Germany during my exchange year there since the small space seriously changed my life because it’s so useful lol. Then I started to buy Kokuyo pre-lined notebooks, but those are too expensive for me now because one notebook costs around $3. Loose leaf just doesn’t work for me to take to class (I only use loose leaf to make quiz flash cards or quick reviews at my dorm) because it’s not practical. Finally, the most economical decision for me was the Muji A5 notebooks pack and line them myself using a pencil.

3. SHORT, SIMPLE, POINTERS

Unless it is very necessary, do not, I repeat, do not write in paragraphs. Keep it short, simple, and in pointers. By summarizing a long passage to something you understand and/or with your own words, you also have a better understanding of the subject = another ticket to straight As.

For me, note taking isn’t the same as copying a textbook or writing what your lecturer is saying word per word. It is a tool to help you study, understand better, and to make a summary of your lecture or textbook. Your notes isn’t supposed to make you feel sleepy because you’re looking at a wall of text, but to help motivate you and understand main points better. So, I try hard to not write in long sentences or paragraphs. 3 sentences in a single point is my limit. If it’s really long, I try to break it up into pointers instead. Seeing pointers instead of long paragraphs also helps you to study because (in my opinion) it’s easier to read & review your stuff.

4. ORGANISING

I highly suggest you guys to write the date and lecturer’s name. It’s going to be handy if you want to track back your notes or to find specific topics. For me, giving dates to my notes makes it easier for me to pinpoint which subjects I learned before/after the mid-module exam (which is useful for me to make a study plan for the end of module exam.

Also, “I think that topic was covered by lecturer X, I’ll just search through their notes,” will come in handy because you could just search for notes from that certain lecturer and you don’t need to search throughout everything.

HEADER

Not going to go much into this because it’s a matter of preferences, but writing the title of your lecture is useful. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. A simple header would do the trick, written with any color you want. I write it pretty big so I can skim my notebook easier if I need to look for notes.

SYMBOLS

Now this is where it gets fun if you’re developing a note-taking system—making your own symbols and abbreviations!

It’s much easier to replace words with symbols/abbreviations because it’ll be faster to write down, which makes your note taking session more efficient. This is super useful if you have lecturers who talks really fast.

For example, writing and highlighting (highlights in bold):

• Root canal prep = achieve straight line access to apical foramen

• Use K-files in order (small --> large)

• Prep in wet environment --> irrigate + use EDTA

is in my opinion, much better than writing:

Root canal preparation is done to achieve a straight line access to the apical foramen. To prepare a root canal, use K-files in order of the smallest file to the largest file. Root canal preparation needs to be done in a wet environment. This could be achieved by irrigation and using EDTA.

You save time, save space, and it makes it easier for you to review afterwards too. Remember, keep it simple and try not to write long sentences/paragraphs.

COLOR CODING

For some people, highlighting or using different colored pens are a big no-no because it confuses them if they see too much colors. For me, color coding has saved my ass countless of times because sometimes I associate that color with stuff I need to remember for my exam. I think the important thing about color coding is how you apply that method, because you need to be smart about it. What do you think is the most important? What information is relevant? This is to prevent you highlighting all of the text in your notes, which defeats the purpose of this method.

As I said in my FAQ, I have my own highlighters colors hierarchy (??). Basically the higher the rank is, the more important that piece of information is. My highlighter ranking is red --> green --> yellow. Blue is used for vocabularies or terms.

As for the text, my main body is always in black. A kind of stupid but important (for me) reason is that black pen is the cheapest piece of stationery you could afford so you don’t need to worry about running out of ink/breaking it too much, and second is that I think it’s the most general and the most easy on the eye. Like you could (almost) never go wrong with a black pen. Additional details for me are written in blue (light blue for even more smaller details), and red is for the more important stuff.

NOTE TAKING

Now that I’ve told you about my system, here’s the part where I show you guys how all this works out in the end. I’ll give out a few examples.

Here’s my notes on endodontic materials; I took a picture of a section where I talk about endodontic sealers.

Here you can see that I highlighted the word ‘SEALER’ using orange (since I didn’t have red at that time) as it is my main topic. Then I highlighted the words ‘fill space - core - root canal walls’ and ‘use’ as they are the secondary important things inside of the main point. As for the yellow ones, it’s also derived from a main point (use of sealers), and I only highlighted the keywords instead of actual sentences, which are ‘filler, cementation, lubricant, anti-bacterial (agent)’. It’s to make it easier to read through notes and identify which stuff I need to memorize as well.

Also, you can see that the left column is also filled with more additional notes in blue and some important things in red. I’ve also used red to circle and underline some important things in the main note taking area (the right column).

Here’s a more hectic version of my notes, and this is also a good example on why the left column is very useful.

Same like the usual; use red for important stuff, blue for additional details, light blue for even more details (not as important as the ones that are written in black, though). 

These notes were taken during class, and during class the lecturer might add/correct/emphasize things suddenly which is super annoying for me, but hey I’m not the one giving the lectures. For example, after you finished writing something, the lecturer explains a certain topic, finishes, starts a new topic, but tells you something important about the previous topic because they forgot/just remembered/whatever reason it is. With the left column, you could just add stuff and even put arrows if the additional information is related to the main point.

They would also babble for a long time about a single topic but going at it in a roundabout way. By identifying the main points (by writing them in short & simple sentences in pointers. Remember point no.3 in the basics section!), that means even during the lecture you’ve understood what the main topic is and summarized it (without you realizing it maybe??), what is the most important information your lecturer is trying to convey, and usually, what will be in the exam.

Writing your notes using symbols and short points is also good. That way because you take notes faster, it’ll also allow you to be able to keep up more with the fast paced talking. Because believe me the lecturer at that time was talking like a shinkansen train, it was so fast and intense, you couldn’t even think if the sentence you’re writing is gramatically correct or what your next door seatmate was asking about the lecture.

For example, in the very bottom left I wrote some notes about needles like this:

Adult = 23G

Children = 26-30G

--> the bigger the gauge

--> the thinner the needle

=> LESS PAIN

I put emphasize using capital letters and circling the word ‘gauge’ too. In long paragraphs, the notes above sort of translates to:

Adults usually use a 23G needle, while children usually use 26-30G needle. The bigger the gauge, the thinner the needle will be, which means it would produce less pain for the patient.

The first one is much simpler, right? It also makes it easier to understand because you also have less words to memorize.

OTHER TIPS

1. My motto is to always focus on functionality first, then the aesthethics. This especially goes for notes written during lectures. Like for me, dentistry school won’t grade you by how pretty your notes look, but how well you perform in exams and how well you understand your shit to the point of being able to explain them to your patients in a non-scientific way. Note taking, I think, is a skill, so if you keep doing it over and over again it still counts as practice, and you’ll get better at it. Eventually you’ll learn how to take notes more efficiently and how to pretty it up in the end.

If you want to rewrite your notes to make them prettier when the lecture is finish, go for it! But if you waste time picking highlighter colors or trying to doodle mini succulents so your notes look cute (not doodle something related to the subject. by all means do draw. I’ll get to it in a bit), try to do that later instead of during the lecture.

2. Diagrams and drawings will help. Seeing arrows, tables, venn diagrams, drawings with explanation, graphs, all of those are useful to be put in your notes. If you’re a visual person like me, seeing those is much better than seeing a wall of text. It’ll help you as well when you’re doing a review or quick reading of your notes too.

3. This method also works when trying to summarize textbooks or other texts. Instead of copying word per word, try to still make it short-simple-in pointers.

4. Write your notes for yourself and not for other people. If you understand them, that’s totally fine. It’s a way to help you study, so cater it to your needs (like a bullet journal, maybe?). Some of my classmates likes to look at my notes because it’s super simple and easy to understand for them, but some hates it so much because it’s too simple and they’re too used to reading long paragraphs of notes. Develop your own system. Use only 1 colored pen if you want (a friend of mine only uses a pink pen to write her notes. She has an endless supply of pink Zebra Sarasa pens, it seems). Use your laptop if you don’t like to write. Be yourself and have fun!

I hope this has inspired you to write more notes and to inspire you to make your own system (which I totally encourage)! If you have other note taking tips, feel free to share. Have a nice day everyone ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

#studyblr #studyspo #studyspiration #notes #studying #note taking #writing #masterpost #study masterpost #bekicot studies #bekicot talks #mine

[itshaykuni]

ON HOW I FELL IN LOVE WITH READING

“Read. If you have finished reading something, read more.” This is what I used to hear when I was a little restless schoolgirl whose mind was full of vivid dreams and fantasies. For a child whose tiny brain was fully occupied by imaginary universes and characters, there was no space left for those created by someone else’s imagination. And since my eyes were always in search of something close to my imaginary worlds - colorful, engaging, breathtakingly adventurous - staring at the dull wooden white pages filled with nothing but black letters seemed to be a torture to me. 

On the other hand, I was the youngest in my family and in the circle of friends, and to be taken seriously, I had to gain authority and trust among them. So I was looking to be an excellent student and reach farther than my peers to establish my authority. And I knew - reading is something that brilliant kids do, whereas the weaker ones hate, so I have to do it as well. This would be a huge additional bonus on my way of getting praise and trust. 

This attitude was my first and biggest misconception about reading - doing it only to get praise and recognition, not delving into the mesmerizing new worlds yet undiscovered by me. And alongside this rather toxic attitude, I stumbled upon a serious problem in my elementary school years. Regardless of the fascinating speed, as claimed by my teachers, at which I could process any information I was given, I soon noticed a thing that started to worry me more with each passing year. I was always the last to finish reading something in my class. Reading one page took me 2 times more than my peers. My mother's first response to this was, naturally, that everything was fine, and my classmates were just too lazy to read every word of every sentence. That is why, she’d say, I could process information better than them - because I read everything thoroughly. Her explanation sounded convincing enough. It was only 15 years later that I came across the term ‘dyslexia’.

With time, I noticed that, after reading a couple of pages in a row, I was feeling physically tired, even though I was an eternal engine as a child. It felt like I had sprinted a couple of kilometers with my tiny legs. Dizziness, low levels of energy would play cruel tricks with my eyes and brain. With each passage, it was becoming harder for me to connect one word with another, sometimes I would spend a minute to see and read one word. Not that the letters jumped around as rabbits, just keeping the attention on the character deciphering was hard. And it sucked, I felt an extremely unpleasant discomfort. 

Physically painful and heavy - a human will do anything to avoid a task that has these two qualities, at least for as long as that human is at middle school. And if reading takes those qualities upon itself, adding even a grain of dullness to a text can instantaneously make finishing it impossible. Whatever our teachers assigned to read were particularly uninteresting - none of the stories about simple village boys and their grandfathers related to me - a girl who had never been in a rural community and, in her fantasies, was riding a green-scaled dragon over the mountain forests and exploring the seas with Sinbad on a longship with enormous sails. And the poems about our favorite Holy Mountain would literally drive me crazy. Literature classes mostly seemed bullshit to me, and I wasn’t sure if I was right or if I just couldn’t find and see and understand the beauty in those pieces.

At high school, I gave up on pleasing the grown-ups and getting out of my own skin to be an excellent student. Instead, I started to explore my own likes and dislikes, thus not feeling too obligated to read whatever we were assigned. Even though the authors and literary pieces we studied diversified a bit over time, I admitted one simple truth -  Armenian literature was not for me. So I started to give attention to stories that were able to capture my attention. Still, whatever interested me the most wasn’t translated into my native language, making reading way more difficult and even slower than usual, no matter how well I could comprehend the language. And as a top cherry, I was a dramatic teenager more interested in socializing, getting stories first-hand from real people rather than closing up in a room and staring at the pages of heavy books. 

As I was graduating from high school and applying to a bachelor's degree, I had to do a ton of obligatory reading, having left no time and desire to find something that would truly relate to me. Things started to slowly change by the variety of books offered on the internet and my improved skills in foreign languages. I had the opportunity to explore online libraries as a student, but still, no matter how deep I searched, none of my findings would really come close to my heart. And my reading speed just didn’t seem to improve with time, which was truly enraging me.

With my ‘Oh well, okay’ reaction to whatever I read, soon I thought I had to accept the fact that reading simply wasn’t enjoyable for me and come to terms with that once and for all. So, I abandoned my attempts of forcing myself to like reading and allowed myself the luxury to only read whatever I really wanted, whenever I wanted it and for as much as it was light and enjoyable. Instead, visual media is what I could swim in like a fish. As I fell in the addictive loop of mindlessly checking social media pages and quickly found my way out of it, I discovered invaluable resources on the way like TED Talks, online courses in history, art, psychology, design, photography, videography, journalism, and even literature. These platforms opened new galaxies for me. As I explored so many new topics, global social problems and authors, I soon started to figure out my taste in everything, literature as well.

Due to self-reflection that had grown roots during my high-school years and gradually increased over time, I realized something incredible. My emotional intelligence and non-verbal communication (especially analyzing and understanding the latter) had grown unbelievably. I surely knew it wasn’t only due to growing up, and not the “enormous” experience from communicating to different people. It was also the reading’s doing. I glanced back upon some of the authors I had read- Weber, Hesse, Palahniuk, Akutagawa, Mayne Reid, Christie and Doyle, Fitzgerald, Phillip Dick and many others. To be honest, very often the real value and meaning of the books I read would come to me much later after certain events had taken place in my life. No matter how slow I’d read, no matter how uninterested I was in the obligatory literature, no matter that over 15 years I hadn’t been able to find a book that I would actually like, literature had a great influence on shaping my personality, empathy and perception. That brought hope back to me - perhaps I wasn’t as pitiful as a literature person as I thought I was.

Soon I stumbled upon several books from reading which I received a marvelous experience. The first one was just a 300-page self-help book I purchased in Berlin. Even though it was way far from being a literary masterpiece, I was in need of those pieces of advice and reminders, so it only made a positive influence on me. What mattered the most, though, was the speed with which I finished the book - 10 days only, during travel! That was a personal record for me that raised my hopes a level higher - hopes that I’ll be able to read a book (with normal speed) and enjoy it like normal people do.

After that, I again abandoned my attempts to commit to reading. But one fine spring day when I was browsing my YouTube recommendations, I found a stunning documentary about the most impressive bookstores in the world. In it, the author Mas Joseph shares his anxiety about reading and his endless love for books and bookstores. Nothing could relate me more than this film. In fact, it relates to me to the point where I was crying over the sights of the enormous bookstores that exist to bring us millions of new worlds, realities, fantasies, ideas and invaluable information. “I just found my church,” I thought to myself, “bookstores should be the real churches, the real centers to connect to the higher powers of the universe, not the lifeless cathedrals that have nothing to offer but a stunning architecture. Bookstores contain all the wisdom of the world, and it’s worth it to spend our lives exploring those pieces of wisdom.”

I came across another book that I enjoyed reading from the first sentence to the last. It was a super-captivating detective story that developed around Istanbul’s cultural heritage - something I’ve had a great interest in recent years. But the book was rather heavy - almost 800 pages. And since I still wasn’t getting used to a high-speed committed reading, it took me about a year to finish it. I had abandoned the book a couple of times before, not because it wasn’t engaging enough but because I wasn’t able to commit to finishing it. But it was such a joy when I did, and realizing I had guessed the killers correctly from the very beginning really excited me. 

Being so inspired, I set my mind on making reading a daily habit and decided to go back to the most interesting books that I had abandoned and finish those as well. As a result, I read 30-90 minutes every day, finished 3 books in a month and even fell in love with one of them - “The Last Wish” by Andrzej Sapkowski, a collection of short stories about Geralt of Rivia, the famous Witcher that instantly captures gamers’ hearts. The obsession with the Witcher universe and my excitement of improving reading skills brought me a new challenge - to commit to reading all the books of the series. Currently, I’m on the 2nd tome, “Sword of Destiny”, and I’m totally loving it! The book is with me wherever I go, despite the heaviness of my bag. 

Nothing can be compared to stare at the dull black characters written on the yellowish pages and hallucinate like you’ve swallowed a mushroom. The more I read, the faster my reading rate gets, and my imagination enhances, giving me a wider variety of colors, perspectives, patterns and settings to explore the story in. Reading is not about getting acquainted with the story and learning what happened eventually. And by no means, it is about getting recognition and appraisal. It’s an experience that fully activates my brain, and when I say fully, I mean it. I can hear each character’s voice, the subtle trembles of their speech, see the goosebumps when the wind softly runs over their skins, I can smell the stinking corpse or taste the delicious freshly-baked cheese-pie in the noisy inn where Slavic traditional music is playing. I can see the subtle mimics when characters flirt, and how they cross their legs, and how a person not related to their story is silently watching them from the corner. 

Only now I can genuinely believe the famous quote by George RR Martin: 

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

#itshaykuni #personal #reading #anxiety #books #bookworm #literature #development #words

[nozoroomie]

BQ OR B Chapter 4: Potato Chips

Chapter 4 is here! thanks for being patient guys! There’s two more parts left, and the next one might be a bit late because I have yet to edit it and part of it still needs to be finished, but I’ll do my best!

Just like how last chapter was NicoEli focused, this one has a bit more NozoNico than NozoNicoEli. I hope you guys enjoy it anyway c’:

[A03]

The sound of potato chips crunch as Nico munches on them disgruntledly. She stares at the textbook in front of her and rereads the same passage she’s been focused on for the last five minutes. She wipes the crumbs off her fingers and groans, putting her face down into her book.

“Having trouble?” Nozomi asks with mild amusement as she writes in the notebook in front of her.

“Yes” Comes the muffled reply. Nico brings her face up and looks at the girl studying across from her. “I should never have taken this course. Why is this much English knowledge required?! It’s not like I’m aiming to work internationally!”

“It’s a mystery, Nicocchi.” Nozomi answers cryptically and Nico groans.

“I don’t want to study anymore. I can’t even retain this information, I’ve read the same paragraph like ten times now and all I know is Hibiki walks a dog at the beginning of it and then the rest is lost on me.”

“Sounds like you need a small break.” Nozomi decides, pushing her books to the side and stretching. “I think I could use one too, my wrist is getting sore from rewriting my notes from the lecture.” Nico looks at Nozomi with a quirked eyebrow and she continues, “My writing can get pretty sloppy when I’m following along with the teacher, so I rewrite them so they’re legible later on. Plus, it helps give you reminders of the things you’ve learnt that day too.”

‘That’s not a bad idea..’ Nico thinks.

She watches as Nozomi stands up, excusing herself to go to the bathroom quickly. Nico keeps her head on the table and frowns thinking about the amount of English work she still has. She sighs and reaches around carefully, her hand searching for something else on the table. She passes the open chip bag and soon finds it- a half full glass. Carefully, she picks it up and sits herself up, taking a big sip of the peach juice as her eyes glaze over her own notes.

‘Guess I could go over the notes I made instead, maybe that’ll help motivate me to finish this stupid textbook reading.’

She puts her glass down and grabs her pencil, grabbing her notebook and skipping back a couple pages to the start of the day’s notes. She rests her chin on her hand as she lazily rereads her writing and scans it for important details of the day’s lesson. She yawns a bit, already bored of the idea, but studying is important. There’s no way she’ll graduate without doing it.

After a few minutes, Nico realizes Nozomi has yet to come back from the bathroom. She frowns, hating that it distracts her so much from her work. She glances around to see if she’s anywhere near the dining room and finds nothing. She pushes herself out of the chair and moves out to the living room, calling out for Nozomi.

“Oi! Nozomi! Are you coming back?”

She stops once she enters the living room, finding Nozomi staring at the wall behind the couch with a large frown. Her arms are crossed and she tilts her head a little. Nico walks over to her, following her gaze to the wall with a confused stare. She doesn’t ask why Nozomi’s doing what she is- there’s always some weird answer to her out of the ordinary actions.

“Do you feel like there’s something missing from here?” Nozomi asks her, still keeping her eyes on the wall.

Finally understanding what she’s doing, Nico tries to search for something out of place. There’s various different photos hung up on it- Nozomi’s pictures from their u’s performances, a couple different photos of Nozomi and Eli together, as well as scattered photos of her and Eli and her and Nozomi. There’s a couple of Eli’s photos from her ballet days and a picture of her and Alisa and of course there’s Nico’s photos of her with the first years, her siblings, her mom.  Her eyes scan them all trying to find anything off about the display, and then it finally hits her. There’s a ton of photos with them, but none with just the three of them together.

“We don’t have any of the three of us up there,” Nico frowns, “Where’s the picture you have of the three of us at graduation?”

“I like to keep that one on my bedside table.” Nozomi answers, her frown matching Nico’s. “But you’re right. That’s exactly what’s missing.”

“Look, there’s a perfect space right above the couch for another picture too.” Nico points to a bare spot. “Can we fix this now? You’ve got lots of pictures of us together, right?”

Nozomi perks up at the idea and smiles.

“Let’s go check!” She says, heading to her room. Nico follows not far behind her, following her into her shared bedroom with Eli.

Nico takes a good look around the room and finds the graduation photo exactly where Nozomi said she placed it. She smiles a little as she looks at it while Nozomi digs through a bag near the closet. She picks up the frame and looks at the picture. Eli’s excited happy smile, Nozomi’s laughter, and then her. She remembers not being ready for the photo and how Rin got excited being asked to take it.  She can’t recall how she tripped, but she remembers Nozomi catching her and the three of them laughing when they saw the result photo. It’s one of her favourite memories from that day.

Her gaze lingers on her roommates in the photo. Eli’s genuine happiness and excitement, Nozomi’s small wink and the pure bliss on her face. Nico tries to wonder if anything about graduation would have been different had they all been friends together from their very first year. How closer would they have been? Would Nozomi and Eli have become idols with her if they were friends right from day one? It’s something she’s always wondered, but she tries not to think about often. The idea of “what could have been” distracts her from the now, and she’s a lot happier where she is now with the two of them.

“Here we go!” Nozomi says, bringing her camera out. Nico quickly puts the photo down and looks over to her.

“Great! Let’s see what you got!”

They huddle closer together as Nozomi begins to scan through the photos. They pass a few really ridiculous ones from when they were setting up the apartment. Nozomi’s wearing Eli’s bandana in a way where it gives her a ridiculously looking bright blue moustache, while Nico had stolen Nozomi’s bandana and covered her face like a delinquent. Nico almost laughs out loud. They were having way too much fun with it. They pass by a few photos of Nozomi and Eli  from their first date together after moving in. Nico can’t miss the tender loving gaze Eli gives Nozomi in one of the pictures while Nozomi stares at the camera. What a love sick dork.

Nozomi stops scanning the moment she reaches the very first photo taken in the apartment. It’s the picture from their first night. Nico can see her half eaten slice of pizza still in her hands.

“Oh my god, I forgot you took this.” she says, staring at the photo and laughing. “It still looks really good. I don’t know how you can take selfies so well with this camera.”

“Lot’s of practice!” Nozomi laughs and stares at the photo. “This is it. This is one we need to put on the wall.”

They stare at the camera’s screen for a short moment. Nico begins to mentally count the change she has in her wallet, wondering if she has enough to get the photo printed. Nozomi puts the camera on the bed and begins to use her fingers to count, telling Nico she might be doing the exact same thing.

“How much do you have?” Nico asks.

“Excluding grocery funds, I’ve got about 3000 yen I think. Until next Friday anyway.” She replies. “And you?”

“I have 2500. That should be more than enough to print the photo and find a cheap frame, right?”

Nozomi grins brightly and goes back to her camera, pulling out it’s sd card and looking at Nico with sparkling eyes.

“Let’s skip studying and go print this photo while we can.”

Nozomi doesn’t have to say it twice and Nico dashes out of their room and back to the dining room. She grabs her phone and closes up her books before heading to the front door and kicking off her slippers. Nozomi isn’t far behind her, slinging her purse across her shoulder and grabbing her phone. She shoots Eli a quick text telling her that she and Nico stepped out and will be back as soon as possible in case she comes home from work without them there. By the time she’s done, Nico’s waiting with her shoes on and her own purse in hand.

The two of them exit the apartment excitedly and head towards the store with the photo printing booth. While Nozomi gets to printing it, Nico browses the store for a decent frame. There’s very few options. There’s a plain plastic one, a nice solid black frame or the frame meant for a photo with a pet- with little paw prints lining the frame and a couple of dog bones and fish. She examines each frame carefully and learns that out of the three options they have, only the pet themed picture frame can be hung landscape wise. The other two only offer little hanging hooks for the portrait side. Nico stares at the frame for a short moment and turns to Nozomi, who puts the now printed photo into a safe photo pamphlet.

“Nozomi. There’s only one frame that will work for it.” She holds up the decorative frame and Nozomi looks at it before laughing.

“Really? But we have no pets in our photo,” she pauses for a moment and laughs some more, “Well, Elichi can be very much like a puppy sometimes. And you have your moments where you’re pretty catlike.”

Nico’s lips twitch and Nozomi laughs more.

“You’re one to talk!” Nico jabs, “You’re like the fluffy lazy house cat who always finds a way to charm herself out of trouble.”

“Ah… So I’m the perfect house cat then~?” Nozomi teases and Nico sighs.

“I don’t know why I even made the comparison.” She says aloud as Nozomi laughs.

“Really though, if you don’t want the pet frame we can always make a hook for one of the other frames. It shouldn’t be too hard.” Nozomi reasons.

“Good point. I guess the black one would be nice.” Nico decides, then gazes at the prices of each frame. Her eyes widen when she see’s the price for the frame she likes most “Oh my god, this much for a small frame?! What the hell?!”

“Hm. I’m not entirely willing to pay that much either.” Nozomi glances at the price for the plastic frame, “and this one’s just poor quality. It isn’t worth the price you have to pay for it.”

Begrudgingly, Nico takes a look at the price sticker on the pet themed picture frame. Covering the first sticking is a reduced price, almost to half of what the first picture frame was. Nico wonders if they absolutely need to have the picture frame now, but she knows that the moment they reach the apartment, they’re going to want to hang the photo up right away. She sighs and pushes the frame towards Nozomi.

Nozomi’s stifling her giggles throughout the whole time Nico’s at the cash register buying the frame.

When they arrive back home, Eli’s there and welcoming them with a tired smile. Nozomi leans in and plants a small kiss on her lips, which Eli lightly returns. Nico places her feet in her slippers and makes her way to the living room, missing how Eli glances away from Nozomi and the small uncertain gaze Nozomi wears. She places the bag on the coffee table and pulls out the frame, ripping off the price stickers and opening it up to pull out the stock photo inside it.

Nozomi and Eli don’t take long to return. Nozomi brings the printed photo over and hands it to Nico, the small smile on her face quickly growing. Eli watches with mild curiosity as Nico puts the backing on the frame and turns it around to show them the end result. Eli’s expression brightens as she stares at the photo, only to become severely confused when she see’s the frame decorations.

“Why is it-”

“Don’t ask.” Nico interrupts her before heading to the kitchen to find the mini tool box gifted to them by her mother. She grabs a hammer and a nail and joins the other two again, stepping onto the couch with the picture frame in hand.

With Nozomi guiding her towards the perfect spot, Nico hits the nail into the wall just enough, then begins to carefully hang up the picture. She makes sure it’s not off balance in any way before hopping off of the couch and standing in between the other two. The three of them stare at the new photo addition to their living room wall and both Nico and Nozomi nod.

“Perfect.” They voice at the same time.

#NozoNico #Nozomi Toujou #Nico Yazawa #Eli Ayase #Love Live! #myfic #posting this before bed because I Can #tho there may be edits I missed I apolgoize djfs

[maedarakat]

Hallow’s Eve - Ch. 1

Rated: R, violence, language, adult themes

Pairings: Tuff/Dagur, past Heather/Astrid, more pairings to come (almost everyone's gay)

The life of a werewolf is a solitary one, but Dagur and his sister have managed well by themselves, leading a fierce roaming pack of Lycans all over the countryside. Both their lives are turned upside down after a chance encounter with the Thorston Twins, one of which who are being hunted by an old enemy to serve as her mortal lover; the Queen of the Unseelie Court.

Cold, crisp nights like this were fantastic to ride through, with the motor of his bike growling like some furious dragon of old. Gravel crunched, wind whistled, dead leaves swirled and rasped in his wake – every sound sharp and pleasing to his ears.

Dagur grinned wildly and accelerated, consequences be damned – the policemen around here couldn't possibly frighten him. They'd sooner see him leave town than try to keep him contained in one of their pathetic jailhouses.

Only one sudden sound was not pleasing to his ear, and that was his 'ringtone'. Dagur tried to ignore it, but the familiar music heralded his sister. One did not ignore a call from Heather, as he had well learned by now. Using a cellphone had been one of the few modern social things he really bothered with, and only because Heather had forced him to learn after breaking him out of the Grimborn Brothers' prison.

Honestly the motorcycle lessons had pleased him far better, but Heather was in charge and she needed him to keep up and have a reliable way of staying in contact. Though faithful about keeping his phone charged, Dagur still barely knew how to text, but at least the little faces - whatever their intended purpose - amused him greatly.

Nevertheless, despite being behind the times by roughly a hundred years out of sheer laziness (and an unfortunate decades-long stay as the Grimborns' 'guest'), there was no excuse for Dagur not to pick up.

Grumbling, he pulled over and knocked the kickstand down with a little more force than necessary. He was all sweetness when he put the phone to his ear though.

“Hello, dear sister! What’s up?”

“Don’t get cute. I told you not to go too far ahead of the pack. Or cut through town. We were going to use the mountain roads, remember?”

Yikes. She sounded angry.

“Oh come on, I have to go through – you know I couldn’t resist! I just want to make some quick stops, look at what's changed, see what the normals are up to. No trouble, really.”

“No trouble, huh?” Heather’s voice was flat. Dagur knew she was about to verbally shred him – she was so fierce like that. He loved it. Surprisingly however, she appeared to relent. "You know what, fine. Do your thing. Savage and I will take the rest of the guys to the hills. Catch up with us when you can, but don’t expect me to save you anything from the Hunt.”

“What, you’re not gonna start right away, are you? We have two days before the full moon! I have plenty of time!”

Honestly though, he was surprised she was willing to consider . . . wait, was this one of those ‘I’ll allow it but I’ll hold a grudge for the next twenty years’ things?

“To join the festivities, yeah! After all the hard work’s been done – by me, as usual - to make certain we’re all secluded and safe!”

It was going to be one of those hold-a-grudge things. Dagur sighed.

“Okay, sis, you’re right - I'm not gonna stick you with all the hard stuff. I’ll be there at dawn, okay? Just give me a few hours. Please?” If anyone could pull a convincing kicked puppy act, it was Dagur. Heather paused, then gave an irritated sigh.

“Nine. Hours. If you aren’t here by sunrise, I’m coming to find you and you better pray I don’t. The last time we both left the pack by themselves –“

Dagur winced at the memory. “I know, Lars got into the livestock, and nearly got us run out of town – I remember it. Nine hours. Thanks, sis. I’ll bring you something cool.”

She’d already hung up on him. Sisters. What would he do without his? Shaking his head, Dagur put his phone away and took off again, cheerfully running a stop sign (Sven had told him they were optional.)

Consequently he nearly crashed a few moments later in order to avoid running over a cluster of small cardboard and vinyl-clad humans. They all set to screaming in alarm and scattered. Women's heads whipped from every direction and doorway to level a death-glare upon him.

Dagur flashed all of his teeth in the most apologetic grin he could manage, quickly turned his motorcycle around and fled.

Those had all been children . . . dressed up as . . . what on earth had they been dressed as? He shook his head, trying to remember the human calendar – it was forever changing over the centuries. Sometimes their holidays overlapped, strangely enough, but this one didn't seem connected with the Fae Tithes, or Lycan Moons or anything his kind marked the passage of time by.

He looked around for signs and found one – a banner draped over a storefront selling masks and . . . a careful sniff informed Dagur that those body parts in the window were not made of real flesh.

H-A-P-P-Y H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N – the sign spelled out.

Boy, did they have the date wrong. It was two entire days from now, not tonight! Were they celebrating early? Well, at least he remembered how the humans liked to celebrate it.

The last night of October, children were supposed to run door to door for candy and threaten the owners with pranks if they didn’t give some out. Admittedly more fun than bugging their own parents to just go to a store. Humans were just so creative with their holidays, even if they couldn't always manage to land it on the right date.

Dagur watched a child dressed in wolf mask, furry patches and torn plaid go running down the hill, chasing a girl in a red hood. He snorted in amusement. These were all little ones, but what did the older mortals do to celebrate their night? Did they do something even more fun? He wanted to see.

The rowdy noises of human celebration weren't too hard to find; Dagur simply followed it from one structure to the next. Wherever he could smell sex, and vomit - he avoided giving more than a cursory glance. (Honestly, he couldn’t stand the smell of vomit.)

One place smelled surprisingly decent for what it was. A tavern (no, a bar - was that  what they were called now?) with colorful lighted signs in the window. Sure there was the overpowering stench of spilled beer and carmelized onions, but what was happening inside looked fun. Dancing, eating, laughing  . . .

Dagur parked his motorbike and set his helmet on the seat, pulled toward the glass door like a moth to a flame. He winced as he opened it, not knowing it would be so much louder inside. It was everything he could do not to put his hands over his ears, and the pounding music was definitely going to give him a headache, but his determination for a new experience kept him moving through the crowd.

Bodies jostled against him, at first making him want to snap. Taking a deep breath, he thought of a calming phrase as he pushed through without incident. Dagur quickly won himself a corner table; a safe place to watch with the wall at his back.

Feeling hungry, he ordered steak 'fingers' - rare, and bloody - along with a baked potato. (Hey, a growing Lycan had to eat his vegetables, right?)

He eyed the crowd, watching them enjoy themselves. Maybe after he ate he'd feel a little more sociable. Dagur amused himself in the meantime by watching the dancers. One or two mortals stood out from the rest, one with reddish brown hair and another with long gold braids that swayed behind his back as he moved through the packed crowd.

Dagur was enjoying the view until a musty, cloying scent suddenly reached him. His eyes flashed yellow and he gripped the edge of his table with a clawed hand.

Something untoward was here - something only remotely connected to his kind, and absolutely not an ally. He bared his fangs, hackles raised as he sniffed the air, searching for the others exact location.

A figure suddenly entered Dagur's immediate vision, so quiet and unexpected, it actually startled a yip out of him.

"Awesome effects, man," the youth grinned, one of the mortal dancers Dagur had been admiring earlier. He was barely in his twenties and dressed in a maroon toga, with golden winged sandals on his feet and a headband with feathered wings attached. "Very real. I've never seen contacts that glow like that. Did you buy them online? And check out those fangs! So real-looking!"

Dagur nearly snarled at him to get out of his way - or better yet, get out of the entire building. Truly, all the mortals should; what was here now was far more dangerous than a Lycan.

The scent which had so alarmed him suddenly disappeared under the sweat and ale stench, leaving him unsettled and frustrated. Maybe they'd sensed him and moved on - an uncharacteristically wise move.

The boy, meanwhile, slid in the booth across from him, braids long and woven intricately with gold thread and small red beads. Dagur would have appreciated his looks even more if he wasn't so on edge.

He also wanted to know how the mortal had noticed him.

Most humans had a built in defense against sensing monsters like Dagur - or at least seeing what they truly were when they attempted to pass among mortals. Part of it was due to a spell of protection from an old witch - a friend of Dagur's late father. The rest seemed to be an impressive amount of denial that supernatural forces actually existed.

Dagur had never had a mortal see his true shape before, even if the boy did think it was some kind of costume effect. "No I . . . didn't buy anything." As could be expected, his ability for conversation with this guy was already stretched to the limits. He was starting to freak out just a little. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. I've just never seen you in town before. My name's Tuffnut. Well, not my real name, but that's what friends call me." The kid had a nice grin and his breath smelled oddly familiar. Sweet.

Dagur was too distracted to pay close attention, scrambling for something normal to say. Threatening the mortal into silence was utterly pointless; it wasn't likely anyone would believe Tuff was sober if he suddenly caught on that Dagur's 'costume' was real. So what was the harm in just pretending it was a costume?

Relaxing a bit, the Lycan leaned back in his seat and took in Tuff's appearance, noting the winged sandals. "So . . . you're dressed as one of the Hellenic gods, right? Hermes?"

Shock slammed across the young man's face. "Whoa! Dude. You guessed right! See my sister over there? She's the one dressed as Eris, walking around with a golden apple, looking like she wants kill someone."

So the older mortals played guessing games about their costumes . . . intriguing. "Why did you choose him?"

"More as a tribute, really. Hermes is awesome, and we like our trickster gods. I asked permission first - with strawberries and Red Bull. He exactly didn't say no . . . better to beg forgiveness anyway." Tuff shrugged. "Last year we were Loki and Skaldi. They were easier for some people."

Dagur grinned. "I imagine Loki would have been easy for you - with your sly grin."

Tuff actually ducked his head, as though Dagur had just paid him a compliment. He supposed it was; he hadn't been trying not to compliment him.

"Hey, I want Ruff to meet you. Are you staying all night?"

"Well, for eight hours at least." Dagur peered at Tuff intently, trying to work something out. Why could this boy see him? Had he been blessed? Cursed? "How old are you?" he tried. Sometimes age could be a factor, if it was a favored number.

The young man grinned. "It's our twenty first birthday in two days. Though the bartender over there thinks we're twenty three, thanks to the ID-crafting skills of our talented young friend, Gustav."

Dagur blinked, completely lost. He had no idea what any of that meant, and valiantly decided to push through by changing the subject. "One of your eyes is lighter blue than the other," he pointed out bluntly. "Just a moment ago it was hazel."

"Oh, yeah. It's my bad eye. Mom said when I was little, she tripped over me while carrying one of her 'special brews' to the couch. A little hawthorn, some St. John's Wort. You know. Witchy stuff. Anyway, some of the boiling water got in my eye. "Hasn't been the same since. It changes color, I see weird stuff that makes no sense. Doc says it'll only get worse when I'm older, but whatever. So will everything else, right? I just kinda roll with it and blame the pot when stuff gets too weird."

And now Dagur was confused again. "What pot?" He glanced around for errant cookware, but Tuff didn't notice - already standing to wave someone over. He wasn't having any luck.

"Oh come on, Sis! Don't - hey, don't ignore me! She knows I hate that! Eh. Maybe it's because I stole her drink when she wasn't looking." Tuff smirked craftily at Dagur, and he surprised himself by laughing in response. He liked this mortal.

Tuff excused himself to go chase down his twin, and Dagur relaxed. His mood only improved when his dinner arrived and he made fast work of it, blissfully lapping up the bloody juices from his plate.

He was wondering idly why Tuff had yet to return when that scent came back - full force. All at once, he realized why the mortal's breath had smelled sweet.

Maybe it's because I stole her drink when she wasn't looking.

Dagur's eye caught a movement. He growled lowly as a pair of hulking forms dragged the limp body of a human between them, unnoticed. None of the humans looked at the Fae or their victim, absently moving out of the way for various compelling reasons.

He recognized the glint of gold on winged sandals and stood up, moving to follow.

“We got ‘er,” one of the goblins rasped, and the tall figure waiting by the tiled wall stepped forward to look over their catch.

To all mortal appearances, the Unseelie was beautiful; pale and elegant, with long red hair. Only a sneer of bored impatience marred his handsome features.

“For such a simple task, it certainly took you long enough. Bring her closer to me, Dogsbreath. You, Thuggory, guard the door. There was a Lycan here - if he chooses to meddle,  he can track us through the maze I wove. We shouldn’t stay long.”

“Um. M’Lord? I was just wonderin’ . . .”

Throk sighed and glowered at the one called Thuggory. The fool always had to second-guess everything. It made even the easiest missions nigh impossible to conduct quickly. All they were tasked to do this evening was to secure and spirit away the mortal girl their Queen had chosen. So far, it had been unbearably tedious, much like the human music they’d been forced to endure in this tacky little pub.

“What is your concern this time?” Throk gritted out.

The goblin took off his knitted cap and wrung it in his hands. “I know we put the stuff in the mortal’s drink, but I really don’t think this is the same mortal we’s supposed to get.”

Dogsbreath groaned. “Ach, not this again. She’s the lassie, alright? She’s wearin’ a dress, inn’t she?”

“I dunno, I reckon maybe that’s a toga? It’s the wrong color anyhow, weren’t she wearin’ black?”

“Well, just look at that face!” Dogsbreath lifted their prisoner’s chin with a clawed hand. “Such delicate features! Obviously it’s the lassie! She drank the drink, didn’t she? What, you wanna check her drawers?”

“Right, lissen, what’s in the drawers don’t rightly matter; if they calls themself a lassie when they wakes up, then they’s a lassie. But the point is - what I’m tryin’ to say is – I don’t think that one’s the lassie we was sent to get!”

Throk sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Let me have a look then, you pathetic imbeciles.”

He approached the dazed mortal and snapped a finger in front of their face. “Awaken.”

“Huh? Wh-What?” Tuffnut raised his head, blinking hard. Throk frowned sharply.

His mood didn’t improve any when Tuff took one look at Throk and made a noise of fascinated disgust. “Whoa, is that your face or a mask? Kind of looks like Freddy Krueger, if he got his nose caught in a taffy-puller.”

Throk stiffened, utterly insulted, while both his goblins hooted with surprised laughter.

“’Ey boss, she saw right through your pretty glamour, she did!” Dogsbreath crowed, quite forgetting his place. “Never thought I’d see the day you was dissed by a mortal!”

“Silence! You fools dosed the wrong drink!” Throk snarled at them. “This is the girl’s brother.” Wisely, the goblins clammed up and looked anywhere else but their enraged master.

Tuff blinked. “Spiked the wrong . . . ? Wait a fuckin’ second, were you creeps trying to roofie my sister?”

Furious, Tuffnut didn’t even wait for an answer, just taking a wild swing at Throk’s face. The boy yelped as his knuckles nearly broke against an unyielding surface – as though he’d punched a wall of brick instead of flesh.

In retaliation, Throk moved inhumanly swift, forcefully slamming Tuff against a mirror by his throat. Spiderweb cracks branched out behind him and small beads of blood traveled their many paths. Tuffnut whimpered in pain as Throk gripped his chin, forcing him to look at the enraged Fae.

“So, you can see my true form, can you? Which eye reveals me?”

“T-True form -?” Tuffnut managed, trying to create some distance between himself and Throk with a bracing leg. The Fae’s claws punished him cruelly, three lines of ragged red slicing through skin and cloth (while narrowly missing an important piece of Tuff’s anatomy.)

He yelled in pain and shrank back, twisting his hips away to avoid further injury. Throk again gripped the terrified mortal’s face and prodded beneath one of Tuff’s eyes with a sharp nail. “Tell me which eye, boy. Or I take both out, and replace them with eyes of wood.”

Tuffnut swallowed his terror. “Listen, I don’t even care what you are -  y-you keep the hell away from my sister!” he gritted out.

The Unseelie smiled nastily. “Both it is then.” As he reared back his hand to deliver painful blindness, part of the wall behind Thuggory simply collapsed, wilting into the black slime of rotten fungi.

“Hi! Nice maze, Throk. Pretty gross, but it actually held me up a bit,” Dagur said, stepping through. He was slipping something metal over his knuckles, already moving toward Throk.

“Ah. Dagur. So glad you've made it." Throk sneered. He stayed where he was, still pinning Tuffnut, while his goblins sought to block Dag

Dogsbreath intercepted him first, the poor bastard. Dagur palmed the Fae’s small coconut-shaped cranium, squeezing until plates shifted and shattered. Dogsbreath went down, squealing – trying in vain to reshape his skull. The luckless Thuggory, beside himself with fear, ripped a faucet off a nearby sink.

“Ha! Eat silver, ya filthy beast!” he shouted swinging the dented piece of metal at his foe.

Bemused, Dagur caught the faucet in his hand and crumpled it like tin foil. “Nope, sorry. It’s just shiny cheap steel, buddy. But I like your enthusiasm.” A hard punch sent Thuggory’s nose and mouth into his face, leaving a puckered imprint of Dagur’s fist.

Throk curled his lip as he realized what Dagur had armed himself with. “Iron knuckles. Clever, though it must feel a bit like cheating.” He let go of Tuffnut, who slid down the wall, panting with fear and pain. The boy looked at Dagur, eyes wide.

The Lycan glanced at him, but only for a second as he and Throk circled each other. Most mortals would have tried to run by now, but this boy stayed – watching him. Was he concerned for Dagur? A foolish hope; he was probably just too frightened to move.

Throk was much faster than Dagur, able to avoid his iron-clad blows and land in plenty of his own. Tuff watched as one of Throk’s hands morphed, claws becoming dangerously longer, sharper, tips frosting as though dipped in mercury.

If he were stupid, Tuff would have chalked it up to extraordinarily realistic movie effects (as ridiculously out of place as such things would be in a men’s bar bathroom) but if he had one skill, it was the ability to adapt to new truths as they were presented.

He could see that whenever Dagur moved, he appeared less human – more lupine. Snarling like a wolf, the Lycan dodged away from blows, timed himself carefully to pounce upon any opening Throk left him.

More undeniable yet of his defender’s true shape was the large bushy tail peeking out from beneath Dagur’s leather jacket. It didn’t hang there limply, like a strip of faux fur, but rather moved with him – hairs stiff and bristling with rage.

And if those raised hackles were any indication of his mood, it meant Dagur was no friend of Throk’s, nor any of the Fae that had sought to capture his sister.

Tuff saw Throk’s hand dart to deal harm to the Lycan and shouted a warning. As a result, Dagur was able to avoid the lethal silver-tipped blow, though just barely. Throk’s claws ripped through the sleeve of the Lycan’s thick jacket, barely nicking him. Dagur groaned and backed up, on the defensive and swaying slightly. Apparently even a little silver could prove his undoing.

Tuffnut thought quickly as the Lycan leaped back into the fray, regardless of how close he’d come to death. If silver could kill werewolves, and iron hurt Fae  . . . He tried to remember something his mother had told him once, in a story . . . a peculiar rhyme.

The Courts of Faerie,
 Light and Dark, Despite all feuds They share a mark - 

 No One Faerie Can ‘ere withstand
 The Iron Bells of Mortal Man

Hurriedly, Tuff scrambled for his phone as the fight raged on around him. Dagur was wise now to Throk’s weapon, and both immortals danced around each other – equally matched and hopelessly unable to win. Time to wreck the playing field, and go find his sister.

“If I can’t take the girl tonight, I’ll only return for them both on the ‘morrow. What will you do, Lycan? Give your own life to protect them, like your sister once tried to do for –“

Throk’s taunting words cut off with an abysmal shriek, as a cacophany of multiple cathedral bells echoed against the tiled walls. He fell to his knees and clapped his hands over his ears. Throk’s glamour left him, betraying grey skin and abruptly fading youth.

In answer to Dagur’s confused stare, Tuff somewhat proudly held up his phone - revealing a video of Notre Dame’s bell tower playing the vespers. “Nice,” Dagur whistled. Throk made a surprisingly quick lunge for Tuffnut, causing the boy to yelp and drop his phone as he scrambled out of reach.

The phone skittered across the floor, landing beneath a stall. With an unearthly garbled howl, Throk dragged himself across the floor in pursuit of silencing it.

Welp, time to go. Dagur smashed the last unbroken mirror and reached under the sink to pull Tuff to his feet. "That will stop them from getting back to their realm - we have a few minutes, but once he recovers then we need to be long gone," the Lycan informed him.

He moved swiftly, half-carrying Tuff through the desiccated wall into practically the same bathroom, though this one contained four slightly unsteady mortals, laughing uproariously at nothing. Not one of them noticed the gaping rotten hole next to them, or the fell creature writhing within.

"My phone!" protested Tuff as he was forced to sprint alongside Dagur. He was fast when he wanted to be - for a mortal - but running wasn't something he enjoyed. "I gotta find Ruff!"

"Wasn't she just here? You don't know how to find your own sibling without a phone? Just catch her scent-" Dagur trailed off at Tuffnut's deadpan look. "Right. Forgot."

He could still smell something on Tuffnut's breath, however - and it needed to be taken care of now rather than later. Dagur let go of Tuff, who immediately started pushing through the dancers, calling for his twin. "Excuse me," he said to the balding gold-bearded barkeep, "There's been a fight in the gentlemen's. Ongoing. You might need to go break some heads before they collapse another wall."

The man swore, spat, and retrieved a spiked bat from under the table. Dagur didn't envy the poor fools in the men's room right now. He jumped over the bar, much to the shock and applauding laughter from its patrons and located the cup Tuffnut had drunk from. It was easy to find; liquid glowing strangely pale green instead of amber. Dagur fished one cherry out of a jarful, and used it to mop up the remnants of the potion.

Goblin fruit was lethal to humans unless given in two doses. The first dose withered you away with longing, cause you to agree to anything for the chance to taste such goods once more. The second dose was bitter and it burned, but ultimately saved a mortal life. The goblins assisting Throk had been remarkably careless about leaving the dregs behind - which was fortunate for Tuff. Dagur didn't need to contend with a mortal slowly going insane from an impossible craving.

He made his escape, ignoring the disappointed calls of those hoping for free drinks, and bore down on Tuffnut. The youth was frantic and blood (his own?) was staining his toga, trickling down his leg. "This is bad," he fretted. "Everyone who saw her is saying she left, alone, and I have no way to call her - what if they get her?"

Dagur looked away from the blood and met his eyes. "They won't. You should eat this."

"What? No! This is no time for eating! I have to find -"

Not having the patience to explain, Dagur forced Tuff's jaw open and shoved the cherry inside. The burning taste caused the boy to arch in his arms and Dagur had to hold tight, with a hand clamped over his mouth. "Swallow!" he ordered firmly.

Tuff whimpered shrilly, and made himself obey. Dagur held him up until he felt the boy swallow and then loosened his hold, letting Tuff go limp and shiver against him. It was only then he noticed the shocked stares they were getting.

"Damn," one girl muttered beneath her breath, giving Tuffnut an appraising once-over.

Dagur knew that look and bared his teeth possessively before remembering himself.

"Let's go. I need to call my sister and pack. She needs to know if Mala's involved." He grabbed Tuff's wrist and pulled him after, toward the exit.

"Wait, if you have a phone let me use it! I can warn her -"

"Right now, they have you marked. They know who you are, where you are, what you're doing. And they're going to count on you leading them straight to your sister before they try searching themselves. Throk is the Fae Queen's most efficient and trusted soldier, and he'll need time to heal."

Dagur gave Tuff a small shove toward his motorcycle, and handed over his helmet. "Put that on. Where's your town's cemetery? The older the better."

Tuff was getting that glazed look again, but it was from panic rather than any spell. Dagur wanted to snap at him, but stopped himself. The boy had handled himself well in the actual crisis, but he was still mortal. He was unused to all of this, and now it was his sister who was in danger.

Gently, he coaxed Tuff to look him in the eye. "Whatever happens, I'm going to see it through with you until the end. I've dealt with the Unseelie court before - so has my sister. Heather's got a bit of a personal vendetta against their Queen. If anyone can help your sis, you can trust us."

The boy swallowed. "Okay. Well. Hermes isn't telling me not to trust you right now."

Dagur beamed. "That's good! Hop on behind me and hold tight. About that cemetery -"

Arms wrapped around the Lycan's middle as Tuffnut obeyed. "You should head to our house. Mom's at her tarot place, but we live on The Grove. Straight up that huge hill and the second left on the way down. It has Rowan trees all over the place, and it used to be a graveyard before the church burned down in the eighteen hundreds."

"Hmm. Red berries of a Rowan - whoever planted those was smart. Fairies hate red. And the graves are still on hallowed ground - none of Throk's kind can set foot in that place." Dagur started his bike and got onto the road. He could smell the blood streaming down Tuff's thigh; he'd have to look at it once they got to the safety of the Rowan grove.

It didn't take long to find the place and park in the old tumble-down churchyard, with skeletal charred ruins marking where a steeple had once stood. Even in two hundred years, nobody had sought to knock them down and build something else. There was an old power attached to them - something that still commanded respect.

Tuff climbed off gingerly and sat on a mossy planter bed, where long ago some monk might have attempted to grow a garden.

Dagur let him and quickly killed his engine, already dialing his sister's number.

Heather sounded annoyed, until he said a name. Then her voice was like ice, cracking beneath the unwary traveler who stood over an abyss.

"Stay where you are, brother. We're on our way."

TBC

#tuffgur #heatstrid #rtte #werewolves #unseelie #httyd #fantasy AU

[mothershipresidencies]

Helen Sargeant & Naoise Sargeant

TEN DAYS- PLAY AWAY at The Mothership

A collaborative arts residency by Helen Sargeant & Naoise Sargeant

July 27th- 5th August 2017, Dorset, UK

In the summer me and my youngest son Naoise (aged 8) spent 10 days at The Mothership, a beautiful straw bale live/work studio deep in the Dorset countryside. The Mothership is an independent residential project created and run by the artist Anna Best. the aim of this residency was to retreat from our own family, home and immediate surroundings, and spend 10 un-interrupted days playing, making art and caring for each other.

The idea of being isolated and away from home, our family, friends, locality and daily routines was important so that we could experience and learn anew from a different environment. I restricted my use of email, text messaging and removed social media applications from my smart phone for the duration of our residency. I wanted to take away anything that would distract from my time with Naoise, in order to completely focus on him, and make the most out of the space and place where we were staying. I restricted Naoise access to my mobile phone, and after the  first few days he wasn’t particularly interested in Smashy and Crashy Road, and I eventually deleted these games to make room for our photographs, films and documents.

During our time at The Mothership we deliberately experienced very little face to face social interaction with other people apart from Anna, her children, pets an artist friend of hers and people that we encountered whilst out buying food, posting our mail and day trips to the beach. We had daily interactions with Naoise dad via Skype, which I felt this was especially important for my son’s wellbeing as he very much missed him when we last went on a residency alone together in Finland.

Me and Naoise had some very loose plans about what we wanted to do. I deliberately chose not to structure our time so that we could respond intuitively to our surroundings and to alleviate the pressure on both of us to produce completed art works. I wanted to try to respond to Naoise and my own needs on a daily basis and as much as possible be led by him. I wanted to work with the idea of creative freedom, and what that meant to both of us. I chose not to commit to the responsibility of keeping a daily on-line blog, as I did not want to be working on a screen or feeling that we had to commit to publicly sharing our experience with a wide audience. I also wanted to maintain a level of privacy for me and Naoise, to protect us from public scrutiny. Its hard to create if you feel like you are being watched, judged, or remarked upon. Equally I didn’t want us to have to other think things, I wanted to concentrate on the doing, not to question or to be self critical. I wanted to make the experience free of anxious self analysis.

Residencies are often associated with the idea of the individual artist making work alone in splendid, uninterrupted isolation with plenty of time to reflect upon their past and present output.  This was not a reality of this residency which was made whilst looking after a child on my own and without any formal childcare arrangements. There wasn’t much space in my mind to dream, there really was only time to respond, react, to play, to make, to do, to care and maintain ourselves.

This residency was self funded through a small crowd funding campaign via social media. We raised money to cover our accommodation, travel expenses, materials, and food costs by selling small drawings for 25 pounds each and making 10 hand painted and written postcards for 10 pounds each which we made and posted daily.  These postcards became a record of our time at The Mothership, and were made seated side by side at an old wooden school desk by a big window looking out into the woods.

I paid Naoise 50 pounds which worked out at 5 pounds each day to work on this residency with me. I wanted him to feel that his work had value, to treat him as much as possible as an equal partner, and to use this money as an incentive. He decided what he spent the money on, and bought a  fidget spinner from Bridport market and saved the rest to spend when he returned home.  The crowd funding campaign was a success not just in terms of the money that it helped to generate but also because it made us feel directly supported by our audience and that our work was important and worth while.

It a a very long journey from Yorkshire to Dorset. It took us eight and a half hours altogether including breaks to get to  The Mothership yet I loved the conversations and time spent with Naoise on the road. Naoise is very adept at being a DJ and reading the satellite navigation instructions on my smart phone. Motorway led to A roads which led to the familiar hedge and tree lined winding up and down country lanes of Dorset that I remembered so vividly from visits with an old boyfriend to his parents in Bridport over twenty years previously. Naoise spotted the sign to Copse Barn and as we drove down the lane to The Mothership we past handmade signs warning us that there were children playing. I immediately liked the feel of this place; definitely family friendly I thought.

From the moment me and Naoise arrived at The Mothership we were made to feel welcome and at home by Anna, her children and pets, Coconut the big cat and Curly Wurly a lovable labradoodle. Anna made tea and a snack for us after our long journey and her children proudly showed us to the studio. I quickly realised why it is important to arrive with food provisions, as the nearest shop is a four mile drive away, I was therefore very grateful when Anna kindly gave us a pint of fresh milk for our  first evening, as I was far to tired to go shopping.

The Mothership is a gorgeous warm womb space surrounded by woods, an organic vegetable garden with resident chickens, cockerels and honking geese fields of hay and animals. Inside a wood burning stove, a compact kitchen, a table by a large window, a work bench and a big cosy bed. the skylights are made of corrugated plastic and when it rains, music falls. Seated by the table looking through the big window you can hear the stream moving below; there are three swings hanging from the huge oak and a hammock for tree bathing. A clearing in the woods by a white caravan and an apple tree heavy with fruit provides a circular space for a trampoline, which has evidently been well loved and used as its steps are rusting and there are fraying holes in the meshed surface.

There is a veranda leading to a bathroom with a shower and a compost toilet.  The compost toilet wasn’t as stinky as we thought it would be, and soon we got used to  flushing with a couple of handfuls of sawdust.  ere was a great view from the loo and I loved watching all the life of insects and birds as I had a pee. Occasionally I had to remove webs and spiders that Naoise feared from the plastic rim. During our time at  the Mothership as requested we used environmentally friendly toiletries and household products, recycled our waste and as much as possible tried to shop local.

We very quickly fell into a rhythm of working and living in this space, the weather dictated our activities; on wet days we stayed inside, played games, drew and painted; on sunny days we played outside in the land nearby or went on excursions in the car to the seaside or the shops to buy food. Our time in this remote setting was simple, there was no one watching or interrupting us, there wasn't a big pile of laundry to work through, a school routine to keep to, a teenager or partner to tend too. It was just me and Naoise. A simple ten day experiment in art making. It was research of a kind, we were searching, re-searching. Searching to see ourselves and how we could care for each other in a respectful way in a creative space. How we could make art out of our play, and how we could make art playful.

Anna went away for a few days at the beginning of our residency and we were entrusted with the care of her magnificent hunting ginger tom cat Coconut. It was wonderful to be given the freedom to roam, and play where ever we wanted, to be gifted the peace of all of her place. I was especially pleased by our time alone, as I had wanted to create an intimate situation, similar to that that as described in this passage from A Sculptors Daughter by Tove Jansson. In this extract Tove refers to a time spent with her mother when snowed into a house alone in the woods:

In fact, she said after a while, we have gone into hibernation. Nobody can get in any longer and no one can get out!

I looked carefully at her and understood that we were saved. At last we were absolutely safe and protected.  is menacing snow had hidden us inside in the warmth for ever and we didn’t have to worry a bit about what went on there outside. I was  filled with enormous relief, and I shouted, I love you, I LOVE YOU, and took all the cushions and threw them at her and laughed and shouted and Mummy threw them all back and in the end we were lying on the floor just laughing.

Then we began our underground life. We walked around in our nighties and did nothing. Mummy didn’t draw. We were bears with pine needles in our stomachs and anyone who dared come near our winter lair was torn to pieces. We were lavish with the wood and threw log after log onto the  fire until it roared.

Sometimes we growled. We let the dangerous world outside look after itself, it had died, it had fallen into space. Only mummy and I were left.

Tove Jansson, Sculptors Daughter: Snow, Page 138

Instead of snow it was the torrential rain that kept us inside, then we played at domestic cat rather than wild bears; mimicking Coconuts behaviour.

We enjoyed many lazy mornings in bed reading.  There was no need to play with plastic, guns or screens.  ere was space. Space to swing, to jump, physical and mental space just to be, to sort out any conflicts or disagreements we may have. A studio where we could wake up and draw in our pyjamas if we wanted too. No one else demanding anything of us. Some mornings I would wake early and go out for a walk in the garden, dew from the grass wetting my bare feet. I would make coffee, get some tidying, sorting and artwork made whilst Naoise snoozed. Other mornings I would wake up with him, watch the summer light fall on his fair hair, stroke the peachy skin on his little back, see the two horses, one brown, one white in the  field beyond the hollyhock fringed window.

During the day, we did lots of ING things Swinging, Jumping, Swimming, Walking, Crawling, Hugging, Talking, Laughing, Arguing, Disagreeing, Compromising, Co-operating, Helping, Drawing, Reading, Painting, Collecting, Arranging, Cooking, Washing up, Exploring, Finding,  rowing, Burying, Burning, Showering, Listening, Feeling, Sleeping, Eating, Cleaning, Tidying, Making, Learning, Following, Discovering, Pretending, Watching, ....Tree Bathing, Star Gazing, ACDC, PJ Harvey music in the car driving down twisted,hedge and tree lined country lanes Singing.

As much as possible I let Naoise be an equal partner in our art making. We worked together making postcards, paintings,  films and actions. A performance that Naoise devised called 100 Kisses, involved standing facing each other and kissing each other exactly one hundred times each. Naoise enjoyed directing  films made on the trampoline, the swings and whilst having donkey rides, sitting on my back as I crawled through the hay meadows. Other times we would work side by side, me making drawings, him painting a stone silver that he had found on the beach, or colouring crystals in rainbow colours with permanent markers. Sometimes all I could do was facilitate his creativity, such as his wax burning sculptural experiments with twigs and leaves. On the beach Naoise traced my drawings with footprints in the sand. We jumped over the waves, threw rocks in the sea. My smart phone  filled up quickly with records of all our activities and then we just had to think carefully about visually selecting and placing memories into our minds. Naoise was unsure about a walk that we went on in the woods, he was scared by its size, strangeness and depth but he did enjoy spotting all of the blue dancing dragon flies, the moths and butter flies, there was an absolute abundance of wildlife. He was mostly delighted with the surroundings of the Mothership, he didn’t especially want to go anywhere other than our temporary home.

The hawk cawed and circled above. At night he liked me to lock out the dark, and would request that I turn the key in both front and back door to reassure him. I would leave the window open, and we would fall asleep to the sound of moths clattering, owl hooting, the rain on the plastic skylight and the dying embers of a fire.

The only truly bad thing that happened during our stay was when Naoise got stung on his foot by a hornet whilst I was in the shower. He let out an enormous scream of pain, I came running and managed to catch the beast under a saucepan and calm Naoise down with sweet liquid paracetamol and a big hug. Phew.

I sometimes felt suffocated by The Motherships’s wild beauty and remoteness I felt a sadness in the defunct playground equipment the lack of contact with other adults and children and by day five felt exhausted by the intensity of our working relationship, there is only so much energy that caffeine can provide. I began to long for some childcare assistance, for a break. I was therefore delighted when I was invited out to the pub with Anna for a drink with an artist friend of hers in the local village. Naoise was kept entertained by a glass of water, a straw, a pat on the head of farting Coconut the dog and a game of squares on note paper.

1st August : Day 5

Still felt needed childcare....hard

Coconut

Swing

Frustration over broadband - argument Draw ; odds are still stacked against me, Need some childcare

PLAY COME AND PLAY...constantly negotiating time, tug of mothering versus arts practice,,,,,,,try to not make it a battle, patience and waiting, waiting,

From studio I can see a swing.

Now will go and play on his own Swinging and different cameras angles Him and me - Time

Time Passing

Play. Holding on

Waves, swinging, movement, The air. The wind The leaves, The leaves and the wind. The light. Swinging together synchronised swinging, Not always together sometimes out of sync.

Naoise says: “ Are you learning something from me now.” ........Naoise painting postcard green and red paint splodged together.

Helen Says: “ of course  I learn things from you all the time”

Text from Ten Days notebook

Towards the end of our stay Anna had a look at the work that me and Naoise had made together and she offered some constructive feedback, and artists that we could look at such as Marcus Coates, we also discussed a future collaborative project about motherhood and the artist/residency model.  The following day we visited her studio, next door to our own and she talked through a film that she was making together with the help of a local butcher, and she also showed us some gorgeous films that she had made of her family. It was on viewing these  films and comparing them to my own that I thought about what can realistically be achieved in ten days. Anna’s  films were filled with the knowledge, texture and intimacy of a place, of familiarity of what comprises a home. Me and Naoise were very much outsiders looking in. We could only ever hope to scratch the surface, to see what a stranger see’s.

One afternoon we helped Anna to pick and pod the peas in her garden and on our last evening we shared a magical time star bathing, lying down on wooden sun beds wrapped in sleeping bags with Curly Wurly the dog cuddled up on our legs. We spotted the International Space Station, we saw the Milky Way Jupiter and the red dot of Mars. We talked about freckles and we talked about stars and we wished upon some falling ones and we laughed about the plane with red lights that looked like venus rising. Naoise tried to count all the stars in the sky very, very, very slowly and methodically and this reminded Anna of a song by Martin Creed that she saw him sing with his band called 1-100, where Martin Creed counts from 1 to 100. 

Anna and Naoise called to the owls and they called back.

On the first morning that we arrived at  the Mothership, we watched a young fawn running around and around between the trees outside the studio window, doing the deer Grand Prix. I wondered where her mother was. I think that mother deers hide their young ones in hedgerows when they are little whilst they go out foraging for food. We had so many close encounters with nature and with each other. We rarely spent a moment apart. Naoise walked off from me a few hundred yards when upset on a beach and he went off to sulk on the swing when we argued over internet access, but mostly we stayed by each others side. It is the fawn and the hawk and the myriad of butterflies and moths and the call of the owls in the dark of the night that will stay with me. It is the intensity of the conversations that me and Naoise had that still stick. It is our attachment to each other.  The respectful, compassionate collaboration that we developed that involved everything from negotiating what we ate for dinner, to marks within paintings, rescuing spiders, and abandoning fossil hunts on beaches where sand left Naoise feet feeling sore. It involved being patient and sometimes feeling annoyed and frustrated with the other and being kind and listening deeply and letting each person have space to be themselves. It was about experimenting with our time together about trying things out and failing and being close, and cuddling next to each other at night and waking up beside each other every day and making it all up as we went along.

I thought about temporality, duality, what is home and family. I thought about the boundaries of the sea and the shore, the wood and the  field, my body and my sons.  The porousness of our skin, breathing, sweating. I thought of love and tears and compassion and the relationship that I hold with my youngest son. I thought about why I like isolation and being in a rural setting. I thought about time. and how time changes when you are a parent. Circular time, the moon, the tide, the sun, day and night becoming one. I thought about my own childhood, my memories of it, how I felt about my mother, what I liked to do with her and how my relationship with her has shaped the way that I parent.

I looked up into the branches of trees and twisted the rope of my swing and let it go and got dizzy spinning around. I thought about how I connected with Naoise childhood. I thought about Anna and her family living in this place, playing on the climbing frame, digging in the earth, growing food. jumping on the trampoline. I felt that we were tracing their steps as well as steps back to my childhood and into Naoise’s. I thought about the constant stream of artists visitors staying at the Mothership. I thought about the next visitor an activist working with residents from the Grenfell Tower.

I thought about how the landscape feels, its touch. I thought about being small and insignificant. I thought about all the other mothers parenting their children over the summer holidays and trying to do both work and play. I thought about how fortunate I was to have this time with Naoise on my own. I thought about security and how to feel safe. I thought about how this place made me feel. I thought about what the fundamental things we need to survive, heat, shelter, water, and companionship. I thought about what is needed in order to make art, about what things are needed in order to be creative.

I am still thinking about and trying to process and make sense of the experience that me and Naoise had during our residency. Its taken me ages to write this report, as I had been worrying about what to write and how to write it, and there never seems to be a moment to concentrate between the interruptions of looking after children, and summer holidays and then getting children ready to go back to school and then half term holidays and maintaining a house and studio and a relationship. Life is full and full on busy when you are a parent, and there seems little space for art.

Perhaps there isn’t any sense to be made out of arts practice, perhaps its just the idea and the process that is important, the journey and how you arrive at the making.  There are always more questions to ask. What happens when we isolate ourselves from society? What are the benefits of making art in isolation? How can we reflect upon our arts practice whilst simultaneously looking after children? Why do mothers who are artists feel isolated ? How best can we support artists who feel isolated? What are the pros and cons of making art work in rurally isolated places ? How does a child value arts practice ? What does a child artist think ? How can I make critically informed work whilst working with my own child ? What happens when we disagree ? What happens when things don’t go to plan? . How can we do both make art and care for each other? What does my child think about collaborating with me? How can we best involve children in arts making? What do artists/parents need to be able to participate in residencies ? How can we reconstruct/ reformulate the artists residency to make it more viable for artists who have children or other caring responsibilities? What sort of childcare is needed and how can this be provided for parents in order that they can take part in arts residencies? Working alone or collaborating the pros and cons of each?

Whilst writing this report I read aloud my words to Naoise and he said “listening to what you have written makes me want to go back to  the Mothership, we had such a happy time there”. I feel that our time at the Mothership was a success because we felt at ease with each other and our surroundings, and felt supported in our creative endeavours by Anna, by my partner and our sponsors. The Mothership truly is a family friendly residency and an opportunity to be valued. Anna is both an artist and a mother therefore completely understands what artists need to make and what challenges parents can face in making work and participating in a residency. She was sensitive to me and Naoise needs and supportive of what we were trying to do. She allowed us the space to make and truly trusted us and welcomed us into her home.

I tried to make this residency relaxing and enjoyable for us both by reducing the pressure to make anything substantial, by improvising, by making do, and by paying Naoise an artists fee to work together with me and to be a part of our daily creative decision making. I managed to reduce levels of anxiety by keeping away from social media and not committing to writing everyday. I kept some brief notes and the postcards that we made together became a record of our time at The Mothership and a way of communicating directly with our audience.

The challenge to combine my love of art and the love of my son’s often seems at odd’s with the fast moving, money driven. capitalist society within which we live.Ten Days at The Mothership however allowed me and Naoise to slow down and to concentrate on one another, focus on play and art making and enjoying each others company.  My positive experience at The Mothership made me think about what I fundamentally value; art and parenting and how to do both. Antonella Gamotto-Burke writes in her introduction to MAMA, Love, Motherhood and Revolution:

 The Google doctrine stipulates that “ (f)ast is better than slow”, but the veneration of acceleration is one of the greatest obstacles to intimacy and, perhaps, the most toxic in terms of parenting. An accelerated existence not only allows no time to consider either priorities or choices, but precludes deeply caring about these priorities or choices. Life just comes at us and we react. The bar is now set by technology: jarring, bright, near-instantaneous. Intimacy, on the other hand, is quiet, slow.

Attachment is the sum of repeated exposure, vulnerability, the consolidation of trust. There is no expediting love. And it is precisely at this point that our culture has started to fall apart. The fact that there is a need to specify attachment in relation to parenting tells us everything we need to know about the rupture between twenty-first century man and his heart. Emotion is no longer placed at the centre of human identity, which puts the very value of humanity at risk.

Professor Bruce Perry, the renowned child mental health researcher, stated that the most important property of humankind is the capacity to form and maintain relationships, which he see’s as “ absolutely necessary for any of us to survive, learn, work, love and procreate.” This capacity is, he carefully explained. “related to the organisation and functioning of specific parts of the human brain. Just as the brain allows us to see, smell, taste, think, talk and move, it is the organ that allows us to love - or not. The systems in the human brain that allow us to form and maintain emotional relationships develop during infancy and the first years of life.

MAMA, Love, Motherhood and revolution: Page 25-26

Naoise’s Report

I loved the mothership it was so relaxing because every day when we woke up we could ether stay in bed or get up and do some jobs around the house . We where on a farm so there was no cars going past and making noise .One day we seen a fawn running across the grass outside the house which was very amazing .On suny days we would lie in the hanik across from the house.

PLAY AWAY Postcards

Each day of our stay at The Mothership me and Naoise painted, wrote and sent a postcard to one of our sponsors.

DAY 1

Thursday 27th July

Helen: In the car I listened to PJ Harvey and Naoise requested ACDC. Now all we can hear is the sound of the wind in the trees.

Naoise: Today Me and Helen arived at the Mothership in Dorsit.

Helen: It is very beautiful.  there is an organic vegetable patch. Anna and her children are very relaxed and welcoming. Naoise and me have lots of room to roam.  is evening after eating chick pea curry and rice we jumped on the trampoline, and swang and swang on the swings.  the landscape is tight, compact and intense. the hedgerows huge, dense foliage. the journey was long. We are happy here. Naoise says its  fifteen out of ten !!

DAY 2

Friday 28th July

Postcard 1/ Addressed to Naoise Dad

Helen: Naoise says next time we go on an arts residency he wants you to come too! I loved seeing the baby deer bounding around in front of the studio today.

Naoise: I wanted to say helo and how you are doing.

Postcard 2/ 

Helen: Today me and Naoise were very surprised to see a baby deer bounding around in front of our studio/house.

We went to Bridport to buy some food. We found Waitrose which is super posh. Naoise bought some boules to play on the beach, and we also got a small board game from a charity shop. 

The wind is getting up in the trees and it does not feel like summertime. 

Tomorrow we hope to go hunting for fossils and we will wear our waterproofs if its raining. 

Naoise: say helo to ....... for me. me and mum went to brigport and bought of good stuff signed NSWF x 

Helen: I just remembered, I woke up this morning with a very large moth sitting on top of my head! Its realy wet outside, getting dark, we are in bed reading The Beetle Queen after playing inside boules. Naoise is winding up the lamp...we both think the organic milk that we bought in Bridport is very good !!

DAY 3

Saturday 29th July

Helen: We are home alone in the middle of no-where, looking after “Coconut” the cat. Its very wet outside, not at all the sort of weather we expected down south ! However we are very warm and happy in this straw bale studio. The rain falls heavy on the plastic windows.

Today we went fossil hunting at Charmouth beach, but Naoise did not like the texture of the sand on his feet. Luckily we found a patch of soft sand to play on, so Naoise did some drawing in the sand and built a dam. We also bought some fossils from a shop- so we totally cheated at the hunting game.

DAY 4 

Sunday 30th July

Helen: Naoise thought that The Mothership was a ship full of a load of mums ! He is pleasently surprised that it is not that and instead it is a beautiful organic farm and live/work studio space.

I am trying not to resort to the mobile phone baby sitter, however sometimes it is essential. “Smashy Road” , is the only break I get from constant parenting and this creative experiment. Its absolutely iddilic here, but parenting is all consuming. I’m still not sure if my experiment is working, however Naoise seems to be enjoying Dorset much more than Finland. Today we did lots of bouncing on the trampoline and Naoise made some  films of us jumping. He has some great ideas about cinematography, and how to set up the camera and shoot at different angles.

We bought organic milk from the nearest shop and a delicious apple pie. A mother in the shop with a young baby was saying how much she was looking forward to 5 o’clock, when her baby would be going to bed.

We saw three types of butter fly today; peacock, red admiral and fritillary.

DAY 5

Monday 31st July

Helen: We have bounced on the trampoline, swung on the swings, read “ the Beetle Queen”, crawled through long grass (Naoise on my back)and been for a walk in the woods.

In the woods we saw 5 deer, lots of dragon flies. Naoise is a bit afraid of the woods and had only shorts and crocs on so he was’nt keen on the prickly grass and brambles. I kept trying to take a picture of a dragon fly, but each time I got near to it, it flew away.

Naoise: Today me and mum went to bounce on the traplen and taik the remote for the camera and toulk some pictutrs of us in the air.

DAY 6

Tuesday 1st August

Helen: I am watching Naoise swinging from a rope in the studio. I have a heavy head of tiredness and coffee. Naoise is shouting “Mummy”, I answer back “ I can hear you”. He really wants me to play with him. I am his sole companion, his carer, his teacher, his food provider.....sometimes I wish for a break. I have created this situation of Artist/Mother Child/Son/ Artist Collaborator, so I had better enjoy it. Today is the  first day that Naoise has played alone for  five minutes. Now he is back ! We had.......Always interruptions....its frustrating. We had an argument over the smart phone today. Ooops pasta almost boiled over. “Mum, Mum” Naoise shouted.

Its totally idyllic here. Loads of room to roam. Its pretty intense though just me and Naoise all alone. Loneliness/Companionship. PLAY-WORK-CARE-LOVE.

Swinging is good. Swinging together, looking at the leaves in the trees, feeling the wind on our faces. Its such a luxury to have all this, and I am grateful.

Nothing comes easy. the clock ticks, our time here in this creative bubble is short lived. Trying to relax. Learning to let go. Trying to let Naoise lead the game of ART/PLAY/WORK/LIVE. Not always fun.

Naoise: We hope that you enjoy this postcard that we painted.

DAY 7

Wednesday 2nd August

Helen: Loosing track of days. Wet. Sun. Rain. Wind. Night/Day melting into one. I wish Naoise would get dressed, he is still in his pants. I am low on parenting energy, and coffee hasn’t energised me. Its so wet today. the rain is lashing it down. I’m staring at the beautiful big oak tree, and rope swing, thinking we will be inside all day. Inside this “womb” space. But I hate being inside. I like the freedom of out.

Naoise wants me to read more book to him, so we are now having a stand off about getting in the shower. I am on “reading strike” . He says “I am not getting in the shower.”So I might as its lovely.

......A bit later I lured Naoise into the shower, after rescuing a very big spider !! 

Naoise: I am in Dorsit at the moment staying on a farm.

DAY 8

Thursday 3rd August

Helen: Less bad weather, but cold, feels Autumnal....Today we worked on a painting. Naoise burnt a lot of matches, melted wax. Swang in trees. We showed Anna our work. Helpful to talk about our ideas. Went to pub. Met bell ringer pub landlord. Saw stars between clouds. Lit  re....ahhhh very tired. Yawn.

Naoise: We hope you like this postcard....I am looking forward to the sleep over.

DAY 9 

Friday 4th August

Helen: I am trying to make art and look after Naoise again....today has begun with a stand off about getting in the shower, so I am ignoring Naoise and he has run off somewhere. Its a pretty idillic place to have a strop. After days of rain its actually sunny.

Naoise has befriended Anna’s cat and is busy learning how to play cat.  ere’s a swing hanging from a big oak tree and he is having a go on that. We are meant to paint these postcards together, but I think I will rebel today and just paint alone. Naoise is content playing on that swing.

DAY 10

Saturday 5th August

Helen:  This evening me Naoise and Anna went star bathing. We lay down wrapped in blankets and looked at all the stars. We saw lots of satellites and aeroplanes too.  en we hooted at the owls and they hooted back at us.

POSTCARD Painted and Written from Cornwall as a thank you to Anna Best 

Sunday 6th August

Helen: Venus Rising, the constellation of Curly Wurly and Coconut the Cat. A few Satellites, Possibly 2-3 shooting stars and at least 142 stars counted out by Naoise...and maybe the International Space Station.

References 

Bibliography

Time Travelling with a Hamster, Ross Welford, Harper Collins Children’sBooks, 2015

The Star of Kazan, Eva Ibbotson, Macmillan Children's Books, 2014

Fair Play, Tove Jansson, Sort of Books, 2007 

A Sculptors Daughter: A childhood Memoir, Tove Jansson, Sort of Books, 2015

Mama, Love, Motherhood and Revolution, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Pinter & Martin Ltd, 2015

Artist/ Parent Resources

The Mothership

http://annabest.info/residencies/

The Mothership Blog

http://mothershipresidencies.tumblr.com/

M(other) & Son

A two week collaborative research residency between Helen Sargeant and her son Naoise Sargeant at Takahuhti Artcenter, Tampere, Finland, supported by Nicola Smith’s We Are Resident project and funded by the Arts Council. September 2016 http://helensargeant.co.uk/motherandson/

‘Motherhood and Live Art 2: Are we screwing the kids up?’, a discussion about processes and ethics in performance work with children.

Event organised and document by Miffy Ryan, April 2017, the Institute for Art, Practice and Dissent at Home. http://www.twoaddthree.org/motherhood-and-live-art-2/

An Artist Residency in Motherhood, By Lenka Clayton

A self-directed, open-source artist residency to empower and inspire artists who are also mothers. http://www.artistresidencyinmotherhood.com/

Thanks

Special thanks to Anna Best for inviting me and Naoise to complete our residency at  the Mothership and supporting our work. Patrick Ward for his constant love and creative support.

Many thanks to our sponsors who helped to make this project happen and make our work feel valued.

Rachel Fallon, Ellie Oliver Simone Kennedy Eglė Kačkutė, Ann Kaloski, Lena Simic,Dyana Gravina, Tracey Kershaw, Jessica Paige Greig, Amy Ellingham, Louie Jenkins, Clare Harbottle, Alison Piling, Grace Whowell, Emma Finucane, Christina MacRae, Tracey Evans, Billie Ireland,Amy Dingham, Serena Dawn Askew, Laura Godfrey Issacs

To find out more about Helen Sargeant and her arts practice go to her website:

www.helensargeant.co.uk 

[drjacquescoulardeau]

NATALIE DIAZ – WHEN MY BROTHER WAS AN AZTEC – 2012

 This is an important collection of poems from an Indian woman. Important because it is poetry. Important because the poet is a woman. Important because the poetess is Indian. But we do have to get into it a lot deeper.

 The opening poem that gives the title of the collection is describing this brother as a pure Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli, performing Aztec human sacrifice, morning after morning, on his own parents, ripping their hearts out of their chests over and over again. The poem also introduces another theme at the end:

 “My parents gathered

what he left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,

trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers

to pray, to climb out of whatever dark belly my brother, the Aztec,

their son, had fed them to.”

 This sacrificial dismembering will come later with another meaning than this Aztec ritualistic perspective. And it is this crossing of an old heritage and a more recent curse that is essential in this poetry.

 The first part is centered on the author’s vision. Her menstrual periods are seen as a metaphor of alienation as a woman, as an Indian and as a human being. This alienation of the Indian human being is then evoked as a legless man in a wheelchair. It is clear that this leglessness is the result of the colonial genocide of John Wayne’s movies. And yet the survivor, “the Injun That Could” survive in fact as a “Guy No-Horse” after the passage of the cavalry and you cannot be surprised by the fact the cavalry is running in his veins, in his blood, in Indian blood shed to the ground by cut up bodies trampled by the horses of General Custer and consorts, many consorts. Rivers of blood.

 A legless woman can then intervene and this leglessness is the result of having committed the sin of accepting to be deculturated in order to be acculturated into the white skin of a soulless Indian. The worst crime is then not to kill millions of Indians, but to force the survivors out of their culture (no dancing, no drums, no music) into the white culture (short hair, proper clothing, brush your teeth, use the toilets, speak English, think normal, that is to say submissive and humbly crawling on the moral floor of the White God’s religion and principles). Be poor and rejoice in the great salvation God will provide you with after your death, of hunger if necessary.

The present curse is phenomenal. Grandmothers have danced the legs of the people off. Indians live in permanent dimness. Indian history is nothing but a collection of debris collected in some museums for the entertainment of white people. Indians went through a genocide that is unrecognized and unrepaired. Indians have to stop talking, meaning their languages, because “language is a cemetery.” The only hope of Indians is in tribal dentists who will restore the teeth of Indians and then teach them to bite back and bite first. Don’t expect anything but devouring biting molasses on the white side. Bite first and you may have some future. This collection can be summarized in these four words: BITE BACK! BITE FIRST!

 So imagine Mojave Barbie meeting with white Ken and she “peek[ed] at Ken’s hard body and naked Mojave Barbie gripping his pistol, both mid-yenni and dripping wet.” A famous Yenni has become more than infamous on January 17, 2017: “The FBI has been looking into allegations that Jefferson Parish President Mike Yenni sent sexually explicit texts to a 17-year-old he first noticed at a high school function last year, in the middle of Yenni’s successful 2015 campaign for one of the region’s most powerful political offices.” The poem becomes then very explicit about how Mojave Barbie was abused and guess who is expelled? Or are we speaking of mids, mid-grade marijuana?

 The life on the reservation is then described, touch after touch, to reach the blackmailing of white entrepreneurs towards Indian starving workers to start shoveling on an infrastructural project across a field that reveals itself to be a cemetery of Indian babies and infants. The Indians then refuse to work anymore and they are rejected morally as lazy, and Indians are rejected as barbaric since they bury children, infants and babies in baskets. Then the only thing left for Indians are prayers understood as being oubliettes, deep chasms in which Indians can starve to death and be completely forgotten. These oubliettes will come back twice more.

 The second part concerns the ordeal of the author’s brother, the Aztec of the title. His drama is that he got addicted to methamphetamine. She attempts to penetrate his psychology and she describes the supportive love he can enjoy till his death. She captures the hallucinating fake vision he experiences, the fact that life is for him some kind of disguise of human beasts that are just some Halloween parade. This brother reenacts the Indian alienation by embodying, impersonating Judas, the traitor, and his thirty silver pieces, and he becomes the Judas of the Indian people in the very Christian reference the disguise carries.

Twenty years ago the brother was a normal teenager. But Indian alienation came bringing the brother’s addiction that brings the Indian dedication to death that leads the brother to destroying all sources of light (lamps, bulbs and others) and the parents out of love and support accept to turn their home into the funeral pyre of their own son in order not to embarrass him, though he is destroying the family temple, the only thing that should be sacred to him. That naturally leads to the evocation of Thais: “Thaïs was a famous Greek hetaera [a type of prostitute in ancient Greece] who lived during the time of Alexander the Great and accompanied him on his [colonizing] campaigns. She is most famous for instigating the burning of Persepolis. At the time, Thaïs was the lover of Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander's generals. It has been suggested that she may also have been Alexander's lover, on the basis of Athenaeus's statement that Alexander liked to "keep Thais with him", but this may simply mean he enjoyed her company. She is said to have been very witty and entertaining. Athenaeus also says that after Alexander's death Ptolemy married Thaïs, who bore him three children.”

 And the contact between the brother and this Thais, or rather the fire she represents since she is “an ember” that makes the brother “hard” and tonight he is going to “love [whatever he may think of] into blaze” and into “ash.” In the morning the “fields too will go to smoke.” And the brother like some “lamp-lit moths” will die but “gleaming with sex.”

 This meth-addicted brother splits his own father into two different fathers, “one who weeps” and “the other who drags his feet down the hall.” And “the audience” can only dream the “doves [her] brother made disappear” may come back “like angels” to take her brother to the other side of this life, as psychopomps they are. But for the time being the brother is coring “not just an apple but the entire orchard, the family, even the dog.” This apple metaphor is going to come back with another meaning.

 The author calls then Antigone to her help, “the daughter/sister of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta,” and this Antigone “is the subject of a story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, who by decree of the uncle Creon is not to be buried or even mourned, on pain of death by stoning.” And this ancient metaphor is crossed with Jesus after his resurrection and the holes he has in his palms. The stigma in the right hand is a chasm in which the brother drops a knife and a candelabra, whereas he licks the stigma in the left hand and finds it “tastes like love.” Explicit though morbid metaphor. Then Antigone does not bury her brother but the horses the white European settlers and their cavalry have brought to America, thus symbolically getting rid of the whites. But that is another oubliette for Indians:

 “We aren’t here to eat, we are being eaten.

Come, pretty girl. Let us devour our lives.”

The ultimate curse of Indians devouring themselves by accepting to be buried in the Christian oubliette of Jesus’ stigmata.

 Then the brother can finally be buried, and yet he comes back as a revenant, a ghost, a haunting presence the author will never be able to get rid of.

 “My brother finally showed up asking why

he hadn’t been invited and who baked the cake.

He told me I shouldn’t smile, that this whole party was shit

because I’d imagined it. The worst part he said was

he was still alive. The worst part he said was

he wasn’t even dead. I think he is right, but maybe

the worst part is that I’m still imagining the party, maybe

the worst part is that I can still taste the cake.”

 Speaking of Post Traumatic Genocide Stress Syndrome, this is a fabulous demonstration of how the damage of a genocidal trauma is inerasable in the mind of a victim, not to mention a collective victim.

 The third part is the author after her brother’s death. She explores her lesbian orientation and brings all types of metaphors together.

 Love is like eating an apple and she wants to be that apple in order to be devoured by the woman she loves. To be cored out of love, because of love, submissive to this voracious love.

 Love is war and the scene ends with her mouth on her lover’s thigh ready to bite and devour the person she loves. Loves is some cannibalistic war. If I accept what some psychiatrists say about drug-addicts, that they are cannibals to the people who try to help them, she has transferred the main characteristic of her meth-addicted brother onto herself in her lesbian love orientation.

 No surprise that love is like an oubliette in which you get lost. And this oubliette is of course also a symbol of Indian alienation through genocide and colonization, Christianism and drug addiction. Can love regenerate this alienation?

 Love is fire in the middle of the night and this love is reduced to ash at sunrise in the morning like so many lamp-lit moths.

Love then leads nowhere. The tongue with which she loves, with which she speaks is heretic in all the hateful rejection it contains, rejection of the dominant faith and rejection by the dominant faith. And her heart is like a red dress, the red dress of desire and prostitution. Love cannot be permanent and can only be some kind of episodic adventure.

 Love is her Indian alienation and she loves in direct descent from her great grandmother who got her legs amputated, who, as we have seen, danced herself legless, who got amputated when the white victors imposed a total ban on dancing and drum playing. Then the tongue was the heretic of this rule because Indians could still sing.

 Love is a mouth, which is a cathedral, with a vaulted ceiling, and its maxilla and mandible are the flying buttress of this cathedral. And this mouth of love is embodied in a zoo lion who out of boredom devoured a member of the audience who woke him up. Love is taming the devouring other into a cage but if you wake it up you will be devoured because love is a mouth against a thigh, ready to bite, and the lover has learned how to bite back and to bite first. And this mouth, this devouring love is also the fate of Indians in the hands of the cavalry and at the same time the future of Indians in their own hands when they have finally learned how to bite back and bite first.

 A beautiful poetry of liberation for Indians who can only get out of the PTGenocideSS if they find the tribal doctors who will teach them to bite back and bite first. This call for liberation and historical healing can only come from a woman because Indian women have lived two traumas, first to be reduced to inferior women among Indians though historically they were equal in their tribes, and then to be reduced to surviving slaves in the post-colonial American society that is still entirely living on this colonial – and slavery – heritage.

 It will take many people, voices, heretic tongues and tribal doctors to finally push aside this heritage of slavery and genocide in the psyche of whites, blacks and Indians equally, because they all share the traumas, as victims or as victimizers, and of course as descendants of victims and victimizers.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

#Poetry #American Indian #Indian genocide #PTSS

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Speed-reading apps: can you really read a novel in your lunch hour?

Apps such as Spreeder and Spritz are bringing speed reading back into fashion. But what gets lost in this race for the last page?

This article contains 1,993 words. If you were to read it to the end, without being distracted by your email or your dog or your children or the contents of the fridge or the bills you have to pay, it would take you, on average, a little over six minutes. But what if you were able to imbibe all of its (undoubted) nuance and richness in half of that time? Or a quarter? What if you could glance at the text and know everything it said just by running your eyes down the page?

The idea of speed reading was invented by an American schoolteacher named Evelyn Wood, whose search for a way to improve the lives of troubled teenagers in Salt Lake County, Utah, by teaching them to read effortlessly, led her to the belief that she herself could read at the rate of 2,700 words a minute, 10 times faster than the average educated reader. And further, that the techniques that allowed her to do so could be taught and sold.

With Doug, her husband, Wood opened her Reading Dynamics institutes across the US and beyond in the 1950s and 60s, and her methods became a self-help craze. The way in which we read, she professed, in the managerial spirit of the moment, was inefficient in terms of time and motion. We had to stop subvocalising saying words out loud in our heads as our eyes moved across the page as well as learning to outlaw the pauses and detours that led to us reread phrases when our minds drifted or our understanding snagged. Print should be consumed in blocks rather than words and sentences. To achieve this, Wood promoted a technique of running a finger down the middle of a page to activate peripheral vision. By the end of a course in Reading Dynamics, breathless students were reading Orwells Animal Farm at the rate of 1,400 words a minute, and telling tales of revolution.

President Kennedy, who believed himself to be a gifted speed reader (and who colleagues observed reading the New York Times and the Washington Post each morning in 10 minutes flat, scanning and turning the pages), sent a dozen of his staff tothe Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute in Washington. Presidents Nixon and Carter, under mountains of briefings, followed suit. The science of Woods method was never remotely proven, however, and by the time of her death in 1995, her ideas had fallen out of fashion.

Recently, the attractions of speed reading have been revived and promoted, for a couple of reasons. The first is the persuasive perception that we are living in times of information overload, that we are daily presented with more words than we can possibly cope with, and that new tactics are called for to enable us to make sense of it all. The second factor is the belief that since text can now be presented more dynamically on screens we are not restricted by the rigidity of printed sentences on a page: surely there is a better way?

These twin perceptions have led to a wave of businesses and apps that once again aim to revolutionise your reading speed (at the cost of $4.99, or whatever, a month). For the past couple of weeks Ive been experimenting with a few of the best known, mostly on my smartphone. The apps generally use a technology called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), in which individual words, or blocks of two or three words, appear one after the other in the centre of your screen. The rate at which they do so can be set to 300 or 500 or 1,000 words a minute, enabling you to feed in text and books to be read faster and faster.

Two of the more popular platforms offer a slightly different approach. The Spreeder app allows you to choose the number of words you see at each moment, and to vary the rate at which these words come at you. I found that I could just about take in three-word chunks of Animal Farm for sense at 800wpm, but that in doing so I not only had a slight feeling of panic in trying to keep up, I lost any sense of the rhythm of language, and with it any of the tone of what was being said.

Spritz technology, meanwhile, developed by a company in Boston, is based on the idea that much of the time wasted in reading is spent in the fractions of seconds as the eyes focus moves between words and across the page. Spritz which drives the app ReadMe! offers successive individual words in which one letter, just before the midpoint of each word, is highlighted in red, keeping your focus on that precise point on the screen (the Optimum Recognition Point). With this technology I found I could just about read simple passages for sense at 700wpm, an ability I imagine would become more natural, if not necessarily more comfortable, the longer you practised it.

Both of the apps and there are dozens of others to choose from come with tutorials and exercises to help you master the system. In most cases you start, as Evelyn Wood used to, with an assessment of your current (bad) reading habits. Its the nature of my job as a journalist to often assimilate a lot of information under time pressure, so I like to think no doubt along with pretty much everyone else that I have developed quite fast comprehension skills. An app called Acceleread was mildly impressed with my ability to read a passage about deep sea creatures and then answer a series of questions about it.

The assessment began positively enough: 385wpm Fantastic! You already demonstrate some advanced techniques such as reading words in groups rather than individually. But the assessment had caveats: You may still find that you often say words silently and get easily distracted. (Youre not kidding.) Your program will focus on reducing subvocalisation, strengthening your eye muscles and increasing your capacity to absorb more information at once. You should see rapid and dramatic results

Before embarking on this body-building course for my eyes and brain, I read through some of the quite complex science of reading (generally at no more than 200wpm, and with plenty of distractions). There have been many studies of the claims made by speed reading courses, going back to the early promises of Evelyn Wood. As well as arguing that it was possible to utilise peripheral vision, she claimed that our eyes were lazy, unless yoked into rigorous training. The studies most definitively a large-scale research project, So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?, led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego and published last year concluded that in general such training is neither biologically nor psychologically possible.

The mechanics of reading have only recently been fully understood. They depend on a brief fixation of the focal point of the eye, which lasts about 0.25 of a second on each word. The transition of that focus to the next word is allowed by saccades fine, ballistic eye movements, which last for about 0.1 of a second. The eye then either keeps moving forward or momentarily and subconsciously flicks back to confirm the sense of what has been read so far. All the experiments suggested that short-circuiting any part of this process led to a loss of comprehension and retention. The genius of normal reading is that it can minutely vary those fractions of seconds depending on how much of the sense of what is being read has been grasped. In a dense sentence, with sub-clauses and unfamiliar language, fixations and saccades are adjusted accordingly, so there is no break in reading flow. In easier passages the eye dances along swiftly. About 30% of the time it automatically shrinks the saccade over a familiar run of words, skipping past those it can predict.

How does this understanding bear on the apps such as Spreeder and Spritz? The acceleration they promise tends to depend on three issues: sub-vocalisation, looping backwards, and the time lag between words. The So Little Time study examined each of these in turn. When scientists tried to get people to eliminate sounding words subliminally in their heads by having them constantly hum while reading, for example comprehension dropped precipitously. The evidence suggested that when people saw words, they instantaneously accessed the sounds of those words to help understand them. The two processes worked seamlessly; speed dislocated them.

The problem with the second promise is perhaps more obvious you dont have to use the apps on fast speed for very long to realise that without the ability to go back and reread a phrase or a sentence, you can quickly lose the thread of what is being said. (Some of the apps have recognised this and added a rewind button.) The issue with the third claim has to do with rhythm. While it is true that you dont receive any fresh information in the spaces between words, the research suggests that the millisecond pauses are crucial for cognition: they are our brains tiny spaces for reflection.

In the fast lane: the speed-reading innovator Tim Ferris. Photograph: Amy E Price/Getty Images for SXSW

One of the things the studies dont dwell too much on is the nature of what is being read. I cant imagine ever wanting to read a novel at more than the normal 300wpm (by comparison, a speaking voice is roughly 150wpm and even cattle auctioneers can only rattle at 250wpm), but the virtue of reading short articles or emails on RSVP at double that speed seems more plausible. Chances are, however, that most of us already use various intuitive skimming techniques to extract information from such documents when time is short.

You dont really need studies to prove (though they do) that the more familiar we are with a subject, the more likely we are to be able to extract important information from it at pace. It is for this reason that JFK was able to read the New York Times so quickly presumably he knew most of the stories first hand, anyhow, and was just letting his eye flick across headlines and first sentences for a sense of argument. Most of us do something like this with material with which we are familiar although we are all probably less adept at it than we imagine.

Ronald Carver, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Missouri, proved in a landmark study of brainiacsin 1985 that, even for very practised speed readers, attempting to read above 600 words a minute meant that comprehension of any text fell below 75%, and went down dramatically as the reading speed increased beyond that. There is some evidence to show that we can, however, develop the ability to fillet a book quite quickly if we use adaptive techniques. In another study of the various techniques of skimming, two researchers at the University of Bath showed that skimmers who were most successful at extracting and retaining meaning were able to focus on critical sections of an argument and to jump forward as soon as the rate at which they are gaining new information drops below a threshold. They were particularly alive to bullshit or repetition.

Much of the buzz of our so-called digital overload comes from those latter growth industries. It has been argued that the subconscious mind can process 20,000,000 bits of information per second; but of those, the conscious mind holds on to only about 40 bits at any moment. Rather than trying to read more quickly we might be better advised to read more selectively. A lot of our lives can be scanned and scrolled and skipped, but reading remains a more immersive kind of act, dependent on detail. As Woody Allen observed: I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in 20 minutes. Its about Russia.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2nXm1QK

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#Speed-reading apps: can you really read a novel in your lunch hour?