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the-modernmary · 3 years

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my best habit || aaron hotchner x reader (ch. 8)

Chapter summary: When Aaron gets stuck at work late and Jess has to go help out her dad, Aaron has nobody else to turn to but you to watch Jack. The only problem? Up until now, Aaron has been keeping his home life completely separate from you, and you have no clue how this will effect your already precarious relationship with Aaron.

Warnings: N/A

A/N: This was not part of the original plan at all for this story, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.

masterlist || read on ao3

In between What I find is pleasing and I'm feeling fine Love is so confusing, there's no peace of mind If I fear I'm losing you it's just no good You teasing like you do - Blondie, “Heart of Glass”

~~~~~~~

You were on your couch doing homework when you got the call from Aaron, and you frowned in confusion when you saw his name flash across your cell phone screen. Aaron never called you while he was working, and you especially didn’t expect a call from him today. He was doing a custodial interview with an inmate sentenced to death somewhere in Virginia, and you figured prison didn’t have the greatest cell service.

“Hey there, jailbird,” you greeted. “Are you inviting me to the dance?”

“Very cute, Elvis,” Aaron joked, but it was half hearted. You could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “I need to ask you for a favor, and I want you to know that I wouldn’t be asking you if I had any other options.”

“Mhm, I love being the last choice,” you mused sarcastically. “You really know how to make a girl feel special, Aaron.”

Aaron elected to ignore your last comment. “The prison just went on lockdown, so I’m going to be stuck here for at least a few more hours,” he explained, and there was an unnatural nervousness to his voice. “And Jessica has to go deal with an emergency with her father.”

You frowned to yourself, unsure of where Aaron was going with his explanation, and even more unsure of who this Jessica person was. A pang of jealousy shot through you, but you quickly bottled that feeling.

Aaron took a moment to compose himself before continuing. “Would you be willing to watch Jack for a few hours? I know it’s not ideal, but it would just be for a little while until either I get out of here or somebody else from the BAU gets off of work. I would even be willing to compensate you for your time.”

Oh.

OH.

Silence crackled through the phone as you took in his request, and you could practically feel Aaron’s nervousness. It shouldn’t have been as big of a deal as it was. It had been two months since you’ve been with Aaron, you slept over at his house enough, and you worked in the same building as him. It was pretty inevitable that of course you were going to meet Jack at some point, but you always figured it would be with Aaron there to mediate. You had pictured that it would probably be accidental, maybe Jack would wake up early and would catch you sneaking out of Aaron’s house. Or you would be invited to one of Rossi’s famous dinners and the kids would be there and then there would be no questions asked. You definitely didn’t expect to babysit.

“Yeah, of course, I can watch him,” you said finally, and you heard Aaron let out a sigh of relief. “And you don’t have to pay me… or worry about finding a replacement. He can hang out with me for as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” Aaron told you, still sounding completely drained. “I will send your address to Jessica, and she will drop Jack off at your place in about half an hour. I really owe you, Y/N. I have to go talk to the warden now, but please call me if you need anything, okay? Bye.” Before you could even answer, Aaron hung up.

You took a deep breath as dread settled in the pit of your stomach. How hard would babysitting be, really? You’ve babysat before - Aly had a little brother who basically became your little brother. However, a weird part of you was nervous that Jack wouldn’t like you, which was ridiculous. It didn’t matter whether or not Jack liked you.

Right?

Deciding that you couldn’t just sit there and panic, you chose to use the time to tidy up your apartment, just to make it extra presentable. The organized mess that was your homework space was quickly arranged so that all of your notebooks and papers were in a neat pile. You took down the half empty tequila bottle from forever ago that was sitting on the top of your fridge and shoved it into a cabinet somewhere. The throw blanket that you had been wrapped up in was refolded and placed on the arm of your couch. You wanted to at least give the illusion that you were prepared to babysit Aaron’s son, and not completely freaking out inside.

Right on schedule, knocking came from your door, and you rushed to open it. You were greeted by a blonde woman, probably a few years younger than Aaron, who you assumed to be Jessica. Next to her was the elusive Jack, with his blonde hair and missing front tooth. You had seen a few photos of Jack in passing, hanging up around Aaron’s house and whatnot, but you never got a good look at the photos.

“Y/N?” Jessica asked cautiously, and you nodded slowly. “Hi, I’m Jessica, Jack’s aunt.”

Jack’s aunt. A million emotions hit you at once. Oh god, she was Haley’s sister. Your stomach started to feel queasy, and it took you a second to realize that it was guilt, although you weren’t quite sure what you felt guilty about.

Logically, you knew Aaron had a life outside of you. Hell, you had slowly become part of that outside life now that you were friends with his coworkers, but you really tried to avoid thinking about Aaron’s home life. When he wasn’t with you, it was out of sight, out of mind. He was his own individual entity.

Now you were face-to-face with just how insignificant you were in the grand scheme of Aaron’s life. The fact was that you were probably no more than a side storyline in his life, a character created just for Aaron’s own development. He had a life and a family that you barely knew about. There was evidence of his home life everywhere - the bins of toys at his house, drawings on his fridge, family photos in matching frames in the hallway, even a small jewelry box on his dresser that looked like it had been collecting dust for a few years - but you had gotten good at averting your eyes.

“Hi, yes, that’s me,” you replied, shaking Jessica’s hand. Then you bent down so you were closer to Jack’s height. “Hey dude, I’m Y/N,” you introduced, giving him a small wave.

Jessica took the backpack she was carrying and helped Jack slip it onto his shoulders. “Thank you again for doing this on such short notice. Aaron should have sent over my phone number if you need anything, but Jack’s a good kid. He just has some homework that he needs to get done,” she explained.

“It’s no problem,” you told her, giving her your best reassuring smile. “He’s in good hands here.”

Jessica smiled gratefully at you before kneeling down to say goodbye to Jack. You stood in the doorway awkwardly as you watched the interaction curiously. It was as normal as it could get, Jessica telling Jack to behave and that she loves him, but it also fascinated you, like you were watching a movie and all of the characters had popped out of the screen.

Jack gave his aunt a hug before she left, and the two of you stepped into your apartment. That same nervousness came back in full force. What kind of games did he like to play? You didn’t have any toys for him. What if you couldn’t help him with his homework? Do kids his age learn fractions yet, because you did not remember fractions. What if-

“Woah!” came Jack’s voice, breaking you out of your spiraling. “Can I please sit on the bean bag chair?”

Well, Jack certainly wasn’t nervous, which offered you more relief than you thought it would. “Yeah, of course, you can. It’s my favorite place to do my homework.”

Jack flopped onto the bean bag chair, his tiny frame almost completely consumed by it. You could see the confusion growing on Jack’s face. “You have to do homework?” Jack asked.

“Yup,” you told him. “And I know you do, too, so we can do homework together.”

Jack jutted out his bottom lip in a pout. “Will I have to still do homework when I’m old?”

At that, you let out a genuine laugh, even if you were a little shocked. The kid had personality, you had to admit. “I’m not that old,” you halfheartedly protested, “And maybe. It depends on what you want to be when you grow up.”

“I want to be a superhero,” Jack said matter-of-factly. “Like Spiderman.”

You nodded, the movement playfully exaggerated. “Oh, well Spiderman is really smart. I’m sure he does a lot of homework, so you better get to work. Let me know if you need any help, okay?” You chuckled again at Jack’s increased pout, obviously disappointed in the fact that even superheroes had to focus on school.

Jack reached into his backpack and pulled out a pencil and a brightly colored folder with papers sticking out of it every which way. He started on his worksheets, his eyebrows scrunched in concentration, and it hit you just how much he looked like Aaron. The blonde hair threw you off, but you had seen that exact look on Aaron’s face many times, eyebrows together and lips pursed ever so slightly. Like father, like son. You had to resist the urge to audibly coo at the sight. You were only human, after all.

You tore your eyes away from the boy and glanced over at your laptop, which was sitting open on your coffee table, the cursor blinking back at you teasingly, reminding you that you also had to get to work. You had essays to write and practice contracts to draft up. The two of you did your work in comfortable silence for a while, Jack occasionally asking you to help him read the instructions of his worksheet.

“Done!” Jack exclaimed proudly after a while, holding his packet of papers high in the air.

Just in time, too, because if you had to do any more criminal tax litigation work, you were going to pull out your hair from boredom. There was only so much corporate fraud you could read about in one sitting.

“With all of your homework?” you clarified, and he nodded so fast that he looked like a full-on bobblehead. “Good job, dude!”

“Did you finish your homework so that we can play?” he asked you.

“Yup, I’m all done,” you lied. Your paper wasn’t due for another week, anyway. “So what do you want to play?”

Jack tapped his finger on his chin as he thought about it. You were aware that you didn’t have much in the way of kid’s toys, but you had stuff to color or paint or play board games, and you were confident enough in your imagination to come up with a game if it came down to that. Jack looked around and suddenly his eyes got wide and he pointed to your Switch.

“Do you have Mario Kart?” he asked hopefully. “Can we play that?”

“That sounds like fun, let’s do that,” you told him, making your way to set up the console. “I’ll even let you be player one.”

Jack was practically bouncing up and down in his seat now. “I’m really good at this game. I can even beat my uncle Dave!”

You laughed as the two of you picked your characters. Jack chose Yoshi, a solid choice, and you went with Toad. “You can beat your Uncle Dave? Wow, that’s impressive. I have to warn you, though, I’m also very good at this game. Do you think you can beat me?” you teased.

“Definitely,” Jack challenged, and the game began.

The two of you played for a little while, and Jack’s mind was blown when you told him about the shortcuts on each track. After about three cups and you telling him where every shortcut you knew was, the 7-year-old was starting to get antsy just sitting, so you decided to switch gears.

You brought out some leftover paints and canvases you had from a paint night with your friends, and you and Jack laid on the floor and did some painting, although you were not prepared for how messy it would get. Somehow, Jack ended up with his fingertips covered in blue paint, and you had a streak of green on your cheek from where you mindlessly brushed hair from out of your face. As you placed the artwork to the side to dry, Jack had already decided on the next game - the floor is lava.

Before you even realized it, three hours had passed and it was time to make dinner. Jack chose pizza, which you luckily already had in your freezer. The game was still going, but you and Jack agreed that the kitchen was the only safe place without lava, considering there were too many dangerous things in that vicinity.

Babysitting Jack was easier than you expected, and much more fun. Even in his more playful moments, Aaron was always a little bit guarded and on edge, so you had a hard time imagining what his child would be like. A weird part of you almost imagined a mini adult in a child-sized suit and a briefcase full of fruit snacks and crackers, as ridiculous as it sounded. But Jack was just like any other 7-year-old - goofy, a little loud, and excited about the world.

You wondered if Aaron was like that as a kid, or if that part of Jack’s personality came from his mom. Maybe Jack was a mini version of his mom. Now that you had gotten the tiniest taste of Aaron’s home life, you found yourself craving to know more, to see Aaron in dad-mode.

Selfishly, you also wanted Aaron to watch you interact with Jack, just to see his reaction. It was a gamble and you realized it. Best case scenario, Aaron would be able to breathe a little bit easier. There wouldn’t be that half second of awkward silence between the two of you every time he mentioned Jack’s name. That stupid guilt you felt so often would dissipate because, hey, you met Jack and now that was out of the way.

On the other hand, everything could come crashing down. Aaron could walk in, see you with Jack, and immediately regret his decision and regret you. It would solidify in both of your minds that you were no more than somebody he could call and fuck when he felt himself on the verge of breaking down. Any self-imposed importance you had placed on yourself in Aaron’s life, no matter how small it was (and it was pretty small), would be a lie. He had a shorter temper now than before, and maybe this would be the exact thing that would set him off.

You didn’t want that, of course, but you really did want to know what would happen, to see where you stood with him. Call it morbid curiosity.

You were pulling the pizza out of the oven when you heard the knock on the door. “Coming!” you called.

“Don’t touch the lava!” Jack reminded you from his spot on the coffee table, just as you were about to leave the kitchen. Your method of movement to and from the kitchen was the rolling chair from your desk and a broom so that you could push yourself where you needed to go, which you had to justify to Jack as being a lava boat.

You “rowed” yourself over the door and looked in the peephole. Aaron was on the other side, nervously rubbing his thumb over the rest of his fingers. It took some work, but you were able to open the door without falling off the chair.

“Hey, I know you,” you greeted Aaron, but your smile fell when you took in his appearance. His whole body was tensed up, like a rubberband about to snap. He didn’t have his tie or blazer on, and the cuffs of his shirt were undone.

“Dad!” Jack shouted, waving excitedly.

“Hi, buddy.” Aaron smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was scanning the room, studying the scene in front of him. Aaron’s expression slowly shifted to confusion as Jack bounded across your furniture to get closer to his dad. “Jack, what are you doing on the table?” Aaron’s eyes shifted to where you were, noticing for the first time that you were kneeling on a rolling chair, holding onto the broom like a trident. “And why do you two have paint on you?”

“The floor is lava,” you explained nonchalantly.

“And you’re going to get burned!” Jack pointed out.

You chuckled and swiveled your chair so that you could get a better look at Jack. “How about we give your dad a minute to find a spot, okay dude?” You turned back to Aaron, lowering your voice. “The kitchen is a safe zone, if you don’t want to have to crawl around on furniture.”

Aaron frowned, and you could see the wheels turning in his brain. “No, I should take Jack home anyways,” he finally said. “You’ve helped enough today and I don’t want to impose.”

“You’re not imposing,” you insisted. “Besides, we just made a pizza that I’m not going to be able to eat by myself. Come in, have dinner. You look like you need it.”

He really did. You were certain that he hadn’t eaten anything the entire time he was at the jail. He looked exhausted, too, and it was taking every bit of his energy to keep his usual stoic and stony composure.

Aaron wanted to argue, but instead, let out a resigned sigh. “Thank you. You, uh, said that the kitchen was a safe zone?”

“Mhm, and you might want to hurry because Jack is in it to win. Already tried to sabotage my chair boat.”

While Aaron’s face remained emotionless, his gaze softened as he stepped into your apartment. “Jack, did you have fun with Y/N?” he asked, making his way to the kitchen.

Jack hopped from the coffee table to the couch and onto a trail of pillows he had made. “Yeah! She taught me how to cheat in Mario Kart!”

You rolled your way back to the kitchen, chuckling sheepishly. “Shortcuts aren’t cheating, it’s playing smart,” you defended.

Jack just giggled and continued to animatedly tell Aaron about his day at school as you each started to dig into dinner. Well, Jack and you dug into the pizza, while Aaron took all off two bites and pushed his plate to the side. You had originally thought that it was the interview that caused Aaron’s tenseness, but you realized with a start that Aaron was completely focused on you. He was watching you curiously, like you had subtly changed your appearance and he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was different.

He was just intrigued by your interaction with Jack as you had been with Jack and Jessica’s interactions. You had thought that he was going to make a snap judgment and decide if he was ever going to want to see you again the second he saw you with Jack, but he was taking his time. He was profiling you.

“Hey Jack,” you interjected once he finished eating. “Your dad and I are going to do dishes, but I need you to do me a big favor. I can’t win Bowser’s Castle no matter how hard I try. Do you think you could do that race for me while we clean up?”

Aaron looked at you in confusion, but you kept your eyes on Jack, who was all too happy to have an excuse to get out of cleaning and go back to playing video games. He practically bounced back into the living room, leaving you and Aaron alone.

“Do you want something to drink?” you offered. Aaron was watching your every movement, studying you carefully. “I have tea, coffee… Irish coffee, if it’s that kind of night.” You added the last part as an afterthought, only partially joking.

The corner of Aaron’s mouth twitched upwards so subtly that if you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t have even noticed. “No thank you,” he answered formally.

You mindlessly traced circles on the tabletop with your finger, keeping your eyes downcast. You knew you couldn’t just outright ask what was on his mind, he’d never answer truthfully. “Do I want to know what that creep did to be put on death row?” you asked, keeping your voice as indifferent as possible..

Aaron shook his head. “I wouldn’t tell you even if you did,” he admitted and the two of you fell into silence again. It was the answer you had pretty much come to expect from him.

Despite the fact that, as a lawyer, you’d have to hear about all these awful things and see the evidence, Aaron tried to shield you from his work. He didn’t talk about cases, didn’t glamorize the work he did the way some younger agents would. In all the time you’ve known him, you could count the number of criminals you knew he took down on your fingers, and some of those were only because you learned about them in class.

That was fine. You didn’t want Aaron to have to bring that to your bed, not when you were supposed to be his distraction from all that mess. And what a fun distraction you were.

Aaron looked at his watch, effectively ending the conversation. “We should go, it’s getting late. Thank you for watching Jack. And for dinner.”

You paused, debating your next move. “It’s no problem,” you said sincerely. “And if you need anything else from me… I’ll be awake for a while.” You let your offer hang in the air for a few moments, watching as Aaron seemed to be weighing options in his head, you just didn’t know what those options were.

You were just about to rescind your offer when he opened his mouth to speak. “Are you sure you don’t want any compensation?”

You waved off his offer. “I’m positive.”

Aaron shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Then let me buy you dinner sometime this week. It’s the least I can do.”

You paused, trying to keep your expression as neutral as possible. Aaron had never made an offer like this before, never took steps towards anything that could push this into something even remotely considered a relationship. It was easy to explain the constant sex. You could even justify the lingering morning-afters or the nights spent hunched over your textbooks while Aaron wordlessly refilled your coffee cup without you having to even ask by claiming that it all happened organically. It’s not like the two of you planned to stay up and debate the lost history of the term “beyond a reasonable doubt”. It just sort of happened, and who were you to turn down free coffee?

Anything more would complicate the carefully curated system, and neither of you had the time or energy for complicated.

Despite every logical bone in your body screaming at you to walk away and leave while you were ahead, you couldn’t help the soft “Yeah, I’d really like that,” that slipped past your lips.

You could have sworn Aaron smiled at your answer, but he didn’t say anything more.

The two of you walked back to your living room in silence. “Alright buddy,” Aaron called, ruffling Jack’s hair. “It’s time for us to head home. Say thank you to Y/N.”

Jack pouted as he exited the game. “Can Y/N watch me again soon? Please? It was fun!”

“We’ll have to see, she might be busy,” Aaron mused, looking at you so that he could gauge your reaction. It was enough of an answer to not crush Jack’s hopes, but vague enough that it gave you room to deny the offer. He was letting you choose how much you wanted to be around Jack, if you wanted to be around him at all.

You grinned down at Jack and held out your hand for a high five, which he took as an invitation to try and slap your hand as hard as he could. How could you say no to him? “Of course I can watch you again. I’ll even have Legos next time.”

For the first time that night, Aaron gave you a real smile, one that you could actually see. It was small, but it was genuine. “Thank you again. Goodnight, Y/N,” he told you and Jack echoed the sentiment, waving at you as they walked out the door.

#aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x y/n #jack hotchner #my writing #my best habit

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bettsfic · 3 years

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february pinned: the real & the ideal

in this month’s edition of my lowkey writing-related newsletter, in addition to my writing-related post roundup and consultation availability, i have short story recommendations for you and an essay on the nature of reality in fiction!

if you want to receive my lowkey writing-related newsletter directly, you can subscribe here.

in other news, i finished two fics this month:

digging for orchids (hualian, 43k, explicit, fake marriage au)

let ruin end here (hualian, 8k, mature, neighbors au)

full newsletter below the cut, or you can read it here.

oof,

what a month. january is already a rough time. throwing in a pandemic, a coup, and an economic revolution spearheaded by reddit just seems unfair. as for me personally, the spring semester came at me fast and even though it’s only week 2, i am already buried in grading. which i realize is my fault, considering i’m the one who assigned homework.

so after hearing your feedback, i thought i’d make this newsletter even more writing-related by writing more about writing. this month i’ll start off by talking about the nature of reality in fiction in a segment i call “been thinkin a lot about.” more on that below.

new resource

i’ve compiled a folder of PDFs of the short stories i teach most often, which is to say, the stories i like enough to re-read every semester. most of them are literary fiction but a few veer into fantasy, sci fi, and horror.

i know before the MFA, i didn’t really know what a short story was. like i knew, abstractly, the concept of a short story (it is as it sounds), but i could only list a couple i’d ever read as an adult, and i hadn’t read anything that had been published in the last decade. i remember wondering why i was even being asked to care about short stories. who writes short stories? who reads them? apparently, a lot of people. short storyists are a lot like fanwriters in that they make no money and when you talk about your writing in public, people give you that “why would anyone waste their time with that?” look.

so here’s why i was asked to care about short stories: a good short story gives you the entirety of a world in a very condensed space. moreover, it can sometimes leave you as satisfied as a novel in a fraction of the reading time. all the stories i’ve compiled here are ones that stuck with me, that i find myself recommending over and over to writers who want a good example of developing character, or weird narration, or establishing stakes.

if you’re a writer considering publication or an MFA in creative writing, i highly recommend familiarizing yourself with short stories, if for no other reason than to get the feel for them so you can write some of your own. if you can get a few short story publications under your belt, it’ll be easier to open doors when you’re ready to query agents for a novel. also, short stories make a great writing sample for grad programs, workshops, fellowships, residencies, and grant funding.

if you want to check out more short stories but have no idea where to start, the 2020 best american short stories just dropped in november, or if you want a cheaper one, used copies of 2019 and earlier are available on thriftbooks. if you want an overview of the history of the (american) short story, there’s also the best american short stories of the century. fair warning, though, while it’s more diverse than expected, it’s still a bit heavy on dead-white-dude writing.

content warning: the stories in the above-linked folder may depict instances of sexual assault, suicide, and/or abuse. i have not labeled them individually with warnings but i hope to soon, as well as provide a catalog with summaries.

i’m also still working on my essay and novel recs. more to come on that hopefully next month.

writing-related posts

how i quit my banking job to do a creative writing MFA

how i learned to read faster/stop subvocalizing

how to write when you have no time or energy to write

my experience writing fic in small/dead fandoms (aka fics that will probably not get any traffic)

how to describe facial expressions

how to ask for help from your professors

how to navigate tenses during flashbacks

how to separate yourself from your work

how (and why you might want to) write a shitty first draft

why you should consider making the climax the inciting incident

for a complete list of my writing-related posts, check out this masterdoc (which i still need to update it with the past few months’ posts).

stuff i’m into rn

i’m about halfway through the rhetoric of fiction by wayne c. booth which has more or less become my narrative bible. it’s a little dated (1961) but it tackles banal writing adages that are somehow still believed, like “show don’t tell” and whatnot, and breaks them down with amazing insight, clarity, and research. it’s a bit of a dense text so i’m only reading a few pages a day, i think the first time i’ve ever let myself read something so intentionally slowly. now i’m kind of obsessed with doing things slowly. reading slowly, writing slowly, cooking slowly. i even drive slowly, because it’s so rare to go anywhere at all, and i want to enjoy it. also, it’s very snowy where i am. also also, the battery died in my car this month and i really have to make it a point to drive more often.

february availability

i have 2 openings for initial writing consultations in february! if you’re interested, please fill out this google form.

you can learn more about my services on my carrd.

been thinkin a lot about

compulsory reality in fiction. many of us have probably received feedback along the lines of, or thought to ourselves as we read, “that’s not realistic.” many of us believe, consciously or not, that fiction that is more “realistic” is inherently better than fiction that is less “realistic.” for some of us, real means a saturation of details, the clear depiction of the surfaces of things. reality is found in the rendering thereof; if you can “see” it, it’s real. for others of us, it might be the development of complex characters and their growth across a narrative. and for yet others, reality is subtlety, or misery, or the idea of “slice of life,” a term i don’t think means anything, because aren’t all stories a slice of a character’s life? what would a story that’s not a slice of life look like? you’d either have to take away the “slice” part and render a whole life, which is impossible, or you’d have to take away the “life” part and create a dead story, which may be possible, but why would you want to? even if you wrote a story about a rock, the rock would be brought to life by virtue of being written about.

anyway. i think the word “real” is a shitty word for the same reason “slice of life” is a shitty phrase: everything is real and therefore nothing cannot be real. slices of life are all we know because we are alive and cannot truly perceive not being alive; reality is also all we know, and any depictions beyond reality are thus made real because they have been depicted.

so the “goal” for fiction to be “realistic” seems to me to be a false one. all fiction is real because it exists and no fiction can be truly real because it’s only a facsimile of reality. not to get all “this is not a pipe” but writing is just making squiggles, and we as a community of English-knowers agree that certain squiggles correspond to certain sounds, and certain sounds together make words which conjure meanings. and words put together into sentences into paragraphs conjure even more complicated meanings. and when those paragraphs are woven into narrative we create yet more and more complicated meaning.

every time you write anything — a text message, an email, a tweet, a fanfic — you are taking the infinite abstraction of your own cognition, narrowing it into a single concept, and representing that concept with patterns in the form of sounds represented by letters and given meaning with words, so that the infinite abstraction of your own conscience can be fractionally witnessed by the infinite abstraction of someone else’s. and even though we can’t definitively prove for ourselves that any other thing possesses a consciousness, writing shows us the shape of someone else’s mind, and tells us we are not alone.

and yet we still expect writing to be “real.”

have you ever read a story where a character sneezed? like just, a description of a sneeze for the sake of it, with no purpose or function in the plot? if not, is it because our characters aren’t real enough to sneeze, or because the sneeze isn’t relevant to their plight? what would a written sneeze look like, and why would somebody want to write it? moreover, why would somebody want to read it? that leads me to wonder, do we depict reality in the service of narrative, or narrative in the service of reality? in other words, do we write to portray reality (sans sneezing), or do we depict reality to constrain our writing, the way one might request bumpers when bowling so as not to fall in the gutters?

i’ve never read an artful rendition of a character pissing or shitting, either, even when those things are related to a character’s plight and circumstance — stories involving long road trips, living in the woods, being kidnapped. the only exception i can think of is when those things are eroticized (we do not kinkshame here in this lkwrnl), the same way it’s rare to find detailed sex writing that isn’t for the purpose of reader arousal. are there just some things about the nature of being human that are too intimate, too complex, or too boring to write?

once i wrote a murder that takes place in a small fictional midwestern town in the 90s (for the ~aesthetic), and it went uninvestigated by said town’s police force. early readers repeatedly commented along the lines of, “that’s not realistic.” and i thought, no, if anything, the incompetence of police is too realistic for the heightened reality i’m trying to render. have you ever heard of a cop solving a murder that didn’t come with an obvious suspect or immediately found evidence? i haven’t. that doesn’t mean those cases don’t exist, but i definitely think they’re less likely than mass media has us believe, and the average small-town police force has far less motivation (and possibly training) to solve crimes than we think.

i started working on the above-mentioned novel in 2016, and my goal was to depict a reality that hovers above the surface of plausibility. in this novel, which is based on macbeth, a preteen girl, mercy, becomes jealous of the love her best friend elisa shows to her father. mercy decides to get her older and very unstable brother to kill him. naturally the deed goes awry, but it does occur, and the cleanup is far messier than anticipated.

is it plausible for a 12 year old girl to plot and execute the murder of her best friend’s father? no. is that what this book is about? yes. a book about a 12 year old girl who has a perfectly healthy relationship with her best friend and who has no feelings toward her bff’s father one way or another is probably far more “realistic,” but that’s not the book i’d want to read and certainly not the one i want to write. my goal of a heightened reality is what henry james calls the intensity of illusion, the thing that allows a reader, through the witness of one’s distilled cognition into language, to exit physical, knowable reality, and enter a new and unknown reality. and isn’t climbing to that higher place, that intensity of illusion, the purpose of fiction? if it’s not, what is?

the best feedback i got on the aforementioned murder scene was from one of my professors, who, of the perfect calm of all children involved, said, “they just shot a guy. at least one of them would be freaking out.”

he was totally right, but it opened up a lot of questions for me. by what standard did he reach that conclusion? was it something in the chapter itself, was it his personal understanding of the work of narrative, or was it the logical conclusion of the slim plausibility of the scenario? moreover, where did i come up with the idea that all of my preteen characters would commit a murder and proceed to be very chill about it? if an implausible scenario begs the expectation of emotional distress, would it be more compelling to buy into that expectation or deviate from it? is it even my obligation to be compelling when i can never have a cogent grasp of the personal tastes of my audience?

that brings me to what appears to be reality’s opposite: idealism, the state those of us who write fanfic are often trying to achieve. we’re working in an entire genre of ideals, of happily ever afters, of hurt that is always followed by comfort, of glossily rendered sex during which everyone orgasms and no one has to pee afterward. we fix broken texts and continue incomplete ones. sometimes, we want to make existing things better, deeper, more complicated. but all the time, we want to make a text more than what it is.

some see this process, this drive for the ideal, as antithetical to realism, and i think that’s part of the reason fanfiction and other idealistic genres (romance, etc.) get a bad name — the assumption that more real (which for some means more miserable) is better, and therefore its opposite, the ideal, is worse. for them, i have this quote from vladimir nabokov:

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.

the ideal, aesthetic bliss, the intensity of illusion. these are all phrases that boil down to the same thing: you the writer get to define the constraints of your own reality. you get to choose if your world even complies with the known laws of physics. and if it doesn’t, you get to choose which ones to break, and why to break them. you get to choose if your stories take place in a real house in a real town on a real day. if you wrote a story that takes place on september 11, 2001, would the events of that story be shaped by the events of that actual day, or are you writing a better world where 9/11 doesn’t happen? consider the consequences of both: why might you want to write reality? why might you want to write ideality? how do these things shape your identity and goals as a writer?

no matter where a work falls on the real-ideal spectrum, you have to accept that prose itself will only ever be a verisimilitude of reality and therefore an interpretation of it, one that might be interpreted differently by a reader. in writing and everything else, you can never have complete control over what others perceive. it’s like giving someone cash as a gift. they might buy themselves something nice with it, or they might spend it on groceries. the point is, eventually we all have to let go of our realities.

#lkwrnl #pinned

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mymindsmadness · 5 years

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𝐹𝒶𝓉𝑒 𝐿𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈

Happy MyTake!Monday all!

This Monday I wanted to share something I’ve been messing around with for a while. Several drafts of this have been sitting in my folder forever. It was something I really liked the concept of, but wasn’t sure I could do justice. As of right now, it’s just a one-shot, but I’ve considered writing more. If I do, it probably won’t be every Monday, just for the simple fact that this took me so long to stop messing with. Either way, Enjoy!

Rating: T (as of right now)

Warnings: I’m very much an American. I try to get a lot of the terminology and whatnot as close as I can to not take people out of it, but nothing is perfect. Also, I suffer from insomnia. It doesn’t sound bad, but a lot of my editing was done under sleep deprivation.

Notes: If you guys like this, make sure to leave a comment. As I’ve said, this is a one-shot right now. For me to even consider writing more, I’d have to know that people were actually enjoying it!

Summary: When Voldemort killed Harry, it was not Dumbledore he met at King’s Cross, but an angel of fate. Harry threw his fate off course, and she’s not happy about it. There is only one thing to do. Start over.

Although Harry knew death would come quickly, he hadn’t quite understood it until he was standing in the ghostly version of King’s Cross Station. Was this… heaven? Did wizards even believe in such a thing? It didn’t seem like the heaven Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon went on and on about every Sunday after church. There were no puffy clouds or harps. Most importantly, there were no people. Where were his parents? Where was Sirius or Remus or Tonks? Maybe this was some kind of… purgatory? Harry shuttered at the thought. Had he not done enough? Had he not earned his right to be with them? His whole life he had been nothing but a puppet on a string, dancing by the will of others. In the end his life wasn’t even his, but he sacrificed it anyway. If that hadn’t been enough to re-

His thoughts were cut off by his own (admittedly, embarrassingly high-pitched) scream as he turned to find a woman not much other than himself sitting on one of the pearly benches. She looked serene in this place that wasn’t a place. Her eyes were a haunting silver to match everything else around her, but her hair was a wild nest of black curls. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He didn’t know why, but he had expected her voice to echo within the not-place.

Nervously, Harry wiped his hands down the front of his trousers. “Err – not your fault I suppose.” He tried for a polite smile, but the twitching of her full lips told him he had failed. “Where are we? It looks like King’s Cross…”

“I suppose it does. Though, I’ve never seen it in person.” She hummed, her expression neutral as she looked around. “I think it’s supposed to be symbolic. Either way it came from your subconscious, so it’s hard to say.” She shrugged and moved to one side, patting the bench beside her.

He hesitated, his nerves from being on the run still frazzled. But what was the worst that could happen? He was already dead after all. Carefully, Harry moved to sit beside the woman. “I’m Harry. Harry Potter.”

Again her lips twitched as those sharp mercury eyes turned to him. “I know who you are, Harry Potter.” She hummed again, taking in his appearance. “I’ve been watching you since you were a baby.”

Many people had watched Harry his whole life, it seemed. Still, a chill of unease worked its way up his spine. “Are you… an angel then?” She certain looked angelic enough, if not for the mass of untamed curls that reminded him slightly (unnervingly) of Bellatrix’s.

“In a sense.” Her tone was light. “I’m a fate weave. One that happens to be in charge of your fate line.” His confusion must have been clear because she continued on. “The Greeks had it right – for the most part. Every person on earth has a fate line. Like… a thread that represents a path. You still have freewill, so sometimes that thread gets knotted. It typically sorts itself out, or it had been. Everyone’s thread is woven together into a… tapestry of sorts.” Standing, she held out her hand a moment before a wall of what appeared to be glowing, golden yarn appeared next to her. He couldn’t see the top, as it faded well above the not-place. The edges stuck out over what would have been the tracks, going on for quite some time. Most of the lines ended before it reached the thin frame that held it in place. It didn’t have a particular pattern, and there were loose ends sticking out in places, but it was… beautiful. Harry could have sworn he heard it humming in the silence of the ghostly King’s Cross. There was something about it that humbled him... made him feel insignificant for the first time in years.

“So that - that’s everyone on earth right now?” He asked, standing slowly. Millions of tiny strands, each practically dancing between several others, humming and pulsing it’s siren’s song. “Their fate lines I mean.”

“This is just a small portion.” Standing on her toes, she pointed to a strand of thread, following it with her finger. “This one is yours.” She came to the first small knot. “This is Ron Weasley’s… and a little further down, Hermione Granger’s.” The bands wove together into an elegant braid, at least, from what Harry could see. “You don’t know how hard it was convincing the fate weaver in charge of her line to keep her out of Ravenclaw. In the end, we knew it was for the greater good.”

Hearing their names hurt. He would never see them again. Here he was learning about their lives - their fates that were changed because of him. Maybe this wasn’t heaven or purgatory. Maybe this was hell. Sure, Harry hadn’t been horrible during his time on earth, but he hadn’t been a saint either. “Why are you telling me these things?” It didn’t seem possible in this not-place, but Harry felt… tired. He had been so tired for so long.

“Because you knotted your line.” The woman’s face had been a mask of calm until that point. At this, she looked distraught. “You really mucked it up, you know! I worked day and night to keep you on track, and then you threw your line off course with a bit of idiocy and panic! Because of that, several others were changed.” She pointed to a few loose ends before landing on a tight knot along his own line.

It wasn’t like the small knots that represented his life with Ron and Hermione. This was a nest of tangles that reminded him very much of that one time his Uncle Vernon made him spend the day unknotting Christmas lights. From the sides of the knot, several edges frayed and stuck out in all directions. Only a handful went on after that. Harry’s, he noticed, did not end. “Those ends… are they…”

“Deaths.” She hummed. “I’m going to get demoted now…” Her tiny tone of distress wasn’t meant for him this time.

“So you’re telling me… it’s all planned? I never had a choice at all, and I would always end up here? Dead?” A weight settled in Harry’s stomach that almost made him feel dizzy. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I fought Voldemort or just enjoyed my time with my mates?”

“Of course it mattered, Harry.” Her voice was gentle, her eyes soft. It was almost worse to be pitied. “Typically fate is set, that much is true. You would have always ended up here, but the journey could have been much better for everyone. You’re the first person I’ve ever met that managed to rewrite the outcome of several lives. In fact, this wasn’t meant to be your last stop at all. You were meant to go back.”

“Cheers.” Harry nearly barked. Of course he was the exception. “If fate is set, I don’t see how I could have rewritten it in the first place.”

“It’s like…” She paused, biting her bottom lip before reaching into her nest of hair and producing a hairpin. “This pin is meant to hit the floor, yeah?” She waited for him to nod. “It’s this pin’s fate to land on the floor. It will do so. I want you to try and rewrite its fate.” She released it.

It was only through war-trained senses and years of playing seeker that Harry was able to reach out and grab the hair hairpin mid-air. Holding it up for her to see, he raised an eyebrow feeling satisfied with himself. “That wasn’t very hard. I’m surprised more people don’t rewrite their fate.”

“But you haven’t rewritten it.” She pointed out, a smug smile lighting her face. “Its fate is the same. You might not put it down now, but I imagine you don’t intend to carry it with you always. Maybe to make a point you would for a while, but sooner or later you’ll forget it. Eventually, it will fulfill its destiny. We can manipulate or alter the roads humans take based on their choices, but the outcome will always be the same… except... in your case.”

“Look, I’m sorry miss…” He balled his fist around the hairpin, willing it to dig into his skin and take away some of his pain.

“Lyra.” She offered, her eyes moving to his fate line in dismay. “Lyra Black.”

Harry’s anger left him in an instant. “As in the Black family? Sirius Black?” It would make sense, now that Harry thought about it. She had the eyes and hair for it, though she looked younger than Sirius.

“Yes.” She was smiling again now, the tapestry nearly humming in protest as she turned from it. “I was his aunt - or second aunt’s cousin? It’s all terribly confusing when it comes to pureblood lines. I never cared for them. I am sorry about him passing through the veil, love. You’ll be happy to know he talked my ear off about you when he passed through here.” She gave him a small smile. “But where were… ah yes.” She pointed to the beginning of the large, unsightly knot. “Mr. Malfoy.”

Harry was still processing the information about his godfather when she mentioned the name. He scoffed, taking a step back in shock. “Lucius Malfoy screwed up my timeline? I should have known-”

“No, no. Don’t be silly.” She waved him off with her free hand. “Draco Malfoy. You used a spell on him… Sectumsempra. Nasty bit of work. Poor dear.”

“P-Poor dear!?” Harry’s anger returned in a flood. “He was going to crucio me! I’ve been fighting a war while he sat on his arse having tea with the dark lord! I hardly think-“

“Don’t be daft.” He was cut off by the sharpness of her gaze. It was easier to her relation to Bellatrix at that moment. “He was a scared child. Don’t you remember what Voldemort told you when you tried to use the cruciatus curse on Bellatrix? He wasn’t wrong when he said that you have to mean it. I hate to be the one to tell you this, Harry, but Draco wouldn’t have meant it. You weren’t meant to hurt him that day, you were meant to save him.

“He never wanted anyone’s life on his hands. Why do you think he didn’t give you to Voldemort when he had the chance? Doing so would not only have saved his family, but given them a standing social status in the new world. He chose to save your life instead.”

Harry blinked, his eyes moving back to the tapestry. The gaudy knot stuck out more than anything else. Was it true? Was it all true? Part of Harry wanted to believe that Malfoy had not recognized him that day at the manor, but the larger part knew that he had. “I was meant to… save Malfoy? That’s ridiculous! Dumbledore tried!”

“Well Albus wasn’t meant to save him, now was he? Keep up, Potter!” He couldn’t argue with that. “Because you found that blasted book, everything was thrown off. Several deaths could have been avoided and now- are you alright? You’ve gone a bit green.”

Deaths. More death was on his hands. It had been more than just cutting Malfoy open, which he had already felt terrible about… he had killed people. “I think I need to sit down…” He sunk back into the bench behind him as the tapestry flew upwards and out of sight, making the not-place seem even emptier. “All those people… I could have…” He took a deep, shaky breath.

“You still can.” Harry’s chin jerked upwards to meet Lyra’s determined gaze. Suddenly, she looked a great deal more like Sirius than Bellatrix. “It’s against the rules, you see... There will be some things that you cannot change. And you certainly wouldn’t be able to tell anyone. However… if we can unknot the tapestry, you’ll get the fate you deserve and I won’t get sacked.”

Harry wasn’t sure how an angel could even get sacked, but he imagined it wasn’t pleasant. What did she mean? Did she want him to dabble in bringing the dead back? He had no desire to make Inferi, and he didn’t know of any other way. “I… I won’t bring them back to life.”

“Of course not, Harry.” She rolled her eyes. “But what if you could go back to that moment? What if you could do it all over knowing what you know now?”

In the back of his mind something prickled dangerously. It sounded an awful lot like Hermione warning him not to meddle with time. But what if he could. He would still be a horcux… he would still have to fight… but maybe, with more time, he wouldn’t have to die. Not like this. “Okay… yes. I want to do it over.”

Her smile was cat-like as she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Chin up Harry. You’re going to love where this leads.”

As everything faded to white, the last thing Harry saw was the glint of light off the small black hair pin sitting quietly on the floor...

Also being posted to AO3 (in case). You can follow it HERE

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#harry potter #draco malfoy #drarry #if you squint #possible future drarry #if I continue #my fic #fanfiction #I'm not happy with it #but it's better than the first draft #I like the concept I just suck at writing these plots

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novaent · 5 years

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// ( ★ ) SN project update!

The launch of the SN Project has injected a much needed breath of life back into the company. Nova's hallways have never felt this crowded; staff members seem excited about the prospect of a new idol group, and even though they've increased the workload for the trainees, it's all done in high spirits. CEO Hyun Bin himself is clearly proud of the effect his project has had on his employees - one of the dance coaches swears that she saw him cheerfully whistling one night, and while that's doubtful, no one would put it past him at this point.

The attention mostly falls on the SN coaches that introduced the project on Wednesday. They've had to begin locking their doors or hiding in unused conference rooms to get their work done to hide from the gossipy and the nosy few. Despite the constant pressure, they haven't cracked, and so the only info released about the project is what the trainees themselves have revealed, about who is participating or not. Speculation on the outcome of the project has also escalated since Wednesday. Is Nova going co-ed? Are two groups debuting at once? Is CEO Hyun Bin kicking out every trainee that fails the project? No one knows what's going on anymore.

Sunday arrives after what seems like forever. The deadline for applications has just expired, but everyone is already expecting an update. And news do come just as fast: during the lunch break, 15 trainees are called into a meeting along with the SN Project coaches. One by one, they're invited into the room so as to not raise suspicion, but of course, by the third one all eyes are on them. Whispers turn into loud chatter by the 10th trainee, and once the 15th trainee gets up to follow a staff member upstairs there is an explosion of both cheers and frustration. Everyone wanted to be in that room, after all.

The fifteen chosen trainees are made to wait as the rest of the members arrive, and about half an hour later they're joined by the CEO, who starts the meeting. “Firstly, I want to congratulate each of you for being chosen to participate in our debut project. You have been selected out of dozens of applications, so, needless to say, we expect a lot of you from now on.” He pauses briefly as a secretary begins handing out folders across the table. “Now, these are the contracts you'll have to sign to be able to participate. They include a confidentiality agreement that I deem the most important out of these papers. I am not kidding when I say that nothing gets leaked from this point on. If a single word about this project gets out, I will find out who did it.” He puts enough emphasis in his words to make sure he's taken seriously, as if his general composure and voice tone weren't frightening enough.

Hyun Bin then leans back on his chair, allowing for the SN coaches to take over. Minsoo is the next to speak. “You will have one week to get ready for the project. We’ll be moving into the assigned dorms next weekend; ladies will move in on Saturday and us gents on Sunday. Please keep in mind that you will be living with us for the next three months, so take care of everything you need to let go of for the time being. Pets, education, families, the works; and please let us know if you need the company to take care of anything. You can pack as many personal items as you wish along with your clothes and other things, but we ask that you hand over to us your phones on the day we move in. That way, should you ever need to contact someone on the outside, we can supervise it. You are free to leave your phones at home before coming in, of course, but that way you won’t get to call anyone for three months straight.”

The female coach, Hyemi, is next. “Ladies, you will be sharing one two-bedroom apartment. There are 8 women here, which means that each room will accommodate 4 trainees. Boys, the same goes to you, except that, since there are 7 of you, you get one room with 3 people and another with 4. Us coaches will also share an apartment,” Hyemi smiles slightly. “And I get a room all to myself.”

“There is one fully equipped kitchen and one full bathroom in each apartment, as well as a living room with a TV and two couches each. Nothing spectacular, but you can get used to it despite being a little crammed. Now...” she looks over a list of names. “How about we do this in alphabetical order? Heo Solji, Kim Hyuna, Kim Yongsun and Lee Kaeun, you will share a room. The other four ladies will be in the other one. As for the boys, Kim Jongin, Kim Jungwoo and Moon Bin will be sharing a room, while the others take the second room. Yeah, that was simple enough. So, you will be living together for three months, with groceries and whatnot all provided by the company, and you will also practice together in special rooms prepared on the same building as our apartments. We will assign weekly evaluations for you to complete - some may be in group, some may be solo - and then, at the end of 4 weeks, we’ll have a general evaluation to talk about your progress in the project. And we’ll see how it goes from there.”

Finally, coach Yonghwa stares at the trainees over his glasses before continuing. “There are also a few clauses regarding your public image in these contracts. I guess this is as good time as any to inform you all that there are cameras on every room.” He lets the information sink in for a while. Hyun Bin smiles. “We’re not putting you on lockdown for three months for nothing. You see, we will be recording your daily activities on the dorms as well as your time practicing and your evaluations. And we’ll edit it into a reality show to be broadcast through Nova’s Youtube channel... There will be an episode out each week, I believe? Starting in March... Yeah, that’s it. So, aside from committing all your energy to training, you will also have to watch your step in the dorms. That’s why we’ll move in right next to you, so that we can quickly deal with any problems.”

“Though we’re starting with fifteen members, that’s not the number we’ll end the project with.” Hyun Bin looks curiously uninterested as he talks. “At the end of four weeks of training, I will go over each trainee’s progress thoroughly, and will choose which ones I do not want in my project anymore. I will eliminate trainees three times, until I’m left with the perfect combination for our debut plans. I may or may not eliminate one trainee at a time. That remains to be seen.”

Hyemi speaks up again. “You don’t have to sign your contracts right away. Go home, think it over, talk to your families, and then get back to us. All in all, we want you guys to know what you’re signing up for. It’s not gonna be easy.”

CEO Hyun Bin nods along. “I would not have chosen you if I didn’t believe in you, but there’s only so much I can do. If you’re not ready for this, please, do not waste my time and resources. There are hundreds of others out there waiting for an opportunity like this.”

And with that, he excuses himself from the meeting, saying something about other schedules to attend to. Minsoo waits until he’s out of the room before whispering. “He will be watching you guys like a hawk through this. He’s seriously invested in this project.”

After that, the meeting turns into a Q&A with the coaches. They answer every question the trainees may have as well as they can, considering their intent to keep as much of it a secret as possible before trainees move into the dorms. Once all questions are either answered or rejected, the trainees are excused for the day so they can go home and start prepping for the project, with yet another reminder to keep their mouths shut.

---

[ Here you can find a full list of the assigned roommates!

FEMALE DORMS -

ROOM #1

Heo Solji

Kim Hyuna

Kim Yongsun

Lee Kaeun

ROOM #2

Lee Sunmi

Meng Meiqi

Son Chaeyoung

Son Seungwan

MALE DORMS -

ROOM #1

Ha Huidong

Joo Haknyeon

Kang Yuchan

Kunpimook Bhuwakul

ROOM #2

Kim Jongin

Kim Jungwoo

Moon Bin

Trainees will be moving into a rented building on the outskirts of Seoul. Ladies will be on the 3rd floor, boys on the 4th floor and coaches on the 5th floor; all remaining areas have been remodelled to serve as training studios. As stated in the post, move-in days are on the weekend, Saturday for the ladies and Sunday for the boys. Pets are not allowed in the dorms and there isn’t much closet space in each room, so pack accordingly! Each room has two bunk beds, and you all can figure out which bed each trainee will take. Have fun with that!

You may write one four-post thread or one 200+ solo about any part of the SN project so far in order to collect +2 SKILL POINTS TO BE DISTRIBUTED AS YOU WISH and +2 DEBUT POINTS. You have until midnight EST at the end of Sunday, March 2 to have your posts up! Please do not add your points to your tally on your own, though, since they will have to be verified by the points blog. Your updated schedules will be posted next Sunday, after everyone moves into the dorms, and you will also receive instructions on how to verify all the points you will gain from this project at that time.

As always, Mod Mira can be reached over at twitter (@allevicte) to answer any questions! ]

#nova:sn

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gotgifsandmusings · 6 years

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Unnecessarily Dramatic (maybe? Is it?) SM Update

Oh hi. I have no idea how to start this, lol.

So...it’s not exactly subtle that I’ve had a downturn in content and posts lately. And this was something that I was really debating whether to even explicitly talk about, because a lot of times posts or videos about dialing back from social media always feel very dramatic to me? Or self-serving in some way. Like, “Oh yes, I must be that important to necessitate this.”

But idk, the more I thought about it, I really really do appreciate anyone who’s read/commented on my writing, or followed me, or sent me thoughtful asks, and whatnot. I think it’s cool that we’ve been able to engage with each other over media, and that platform has allowed us to really delve into a ton of issues. Remember when I wrote a sourced series of essays on tropes in GoT Season 5 through the framework of ambivalent sexism just ‘cause?

And even though sometimes that engagement is me you know, being snotty to a rude anon, for the most part my writing analysis online, then fanfic, then podcasting, then building up a website and a community for thoughtful analysis, and even a youtube video here and there has been something really meaningful and rewarding to me. The fact that it’s maybe touched others? At least enough to the point where I’m getting anons saying, “hope you’re okay”? That’s very humbling.

So yeah, I do feel like I want to loop you in on what’s been going on, which I will do below the cut. (Apologies those on mobile.)

I’m starting to feel like a dishonest cars salesman here. “Oh yeah, I’ll totally write about that! I’m definitely going to have this piece then!” Even just the number of answered asks, most of which are incredibly good and insightful, you know, pains me that I can’t get to them. Hell, my drafts folder has about 40 partially answered asks. One is even about Sondheim! Why can’t I finish it??

Here’s the deal. For the past...6 months (maybe? A year?), I’ve kept saying, “when life calms down.” Or “Life has been a bear lately”...whatever that means. And I’m only now at a point where I’m realizing, my life isn’t going to calm down. In fact, my life—that being my primary career, my situation where I am, and my relationships to friends and family—sort of needs to be a priority for me.

Full confession: the reason I’ve been so prolific up until this point was due to the fact that my previous “day jobs” as I called them, while in line with what I studied and cared about, were something I could do in about 15 hours a week, if that. There was a finite amount of work, I was decent at it, and I really didn’t have an ambitious drive at these jobs because they really weren’t as focused or meaningful as I would have liked and the environments were not conducive to my personal professional growth.

So what did I do? I mailed it in. I found more personal fulfillment with what I was writing about online. It began with the Legend of Korra finale, which had excited me so much that I actually wrote my first rambling thoughts about it during work hours. At the time, it was on a Friday going into the “Christmas Break” where I’d be working from home, so it seemed okay to push work off. But I got a taste for that, got in a pattern of doing the bare minimum, and then focused my efforts on the stuff I actually wanted to be doing—chatting about media.

And part of that was also due to the fact that I was in a major social rut. I was pretty isolated since I tend to have a smaller group of close friends rather than a large bunch of friends, and our career paths just kind of scattered us. I’d maybe get together with people once a month? I also loathed the dating game. I was, for the most part, working at a small startup with two middle-aged ladies and no options there, which left me with tinder and cupid. I laugh because I’ve gotten asks like, “wow you must have been a busy bisexual bee.” Yeah...3 or 5 months would pass and I’d realize I hadn’t gotten laid, so I’d worry that was a sign I was depressed, and I’d go on some random cupid date to have tangible evidence that that wasn’t the case.

My point being, writing about media and engaging with tons of people online was really appealing, and became an outlet for me in a way I never could have anticipated.

But that entire situation changed. For one, I began dating my now-fiance (as much as I hate that word) over a year ago. It was long-distance, so not a huge change at first. Then my sister moved home and in with me last fall, and my family commitments dialed up (3 cats and a baby!). Which was fantastic, it really was. But I think you probably noticed I produced less and less as this went on.

And then, finally, I moved my ass halfway across the country because long-distance wasn’t making any sense anymore. I wasn’t willing to move without a job lined up, so job hunting began to focus me again on my professional career. While I love writing and analyzing, I’ve never seriously considered this as a career path for myself. Which is no knock on anyone who does—it’s just pursuing that life formally is not for me. I have an engineering degree and a Masters in environmental policy, and the latter is truly what I’ve always wanted as my focus. I was finally able to hone in on a job that made sense for me with my background, not just a job that was around when I needed one.

I found it, I moved mid-April, and I absolutely love what I’m doing. The job, the workplace, everything has so exceeded my expectations in every way, and for once I have like, career aspirations where I am. This doesn’t mean I’m any less passionate about analyzing media, but it does mean that professionally, I won’t mail it in anymore to make time for that. My job has to be my focus, and in fact I’m likely going to be working 50 hour weeks to do accomplish what I want here. And don’t worry—there’s amazing work from home policies and PTO, so it’s not a “work you to your grave” kind of deal. I legitimately want to be doing this, because I care about what I’m doing and feel like it matters.

What does that mean though? Well, it means I have to take a step back from the amount I’ve been doing. I can’t be copyediting every night for The Fandomentals, I can’t be writing a weekly piece, and the GoT rewatch, and two podcasts, and longer retrospectives, and other planned co-analysis, and fanfic, and answering all the asks I want to, and checking my site email to organize and manage our team of contributors. Certainly not if I want to sleep, work out, keep up with the news, be around family and friends, and have some semblance of downtime. That I was able to do all this stuff this long is actually probably not the best sign, you know?

So I’m trying to really focus my efforts. I plan to keep both podcasts going, because I really love doing that. The GoT rewatch is going to keep on keepin’ on as well, as planned. Julia and I will still finish out our retrospectives for S7, and I’ve even already rewatched the Dragonstone scenes. But my weekly pieces in addition to all this are going to stop, unless I’m super excited by something. I have no idea about my fanfic, to be honest, and I think that’s going to have to be a situational mood-based judgement call. With regards to the asks and social media interaction...I will do what I can, but as you’ve been seeing, it’s just not something I have a ton of time for. I haven’t even gotten back into my gifcapping funky flow!

For my LoK blog, god, I don’t even know how the definitive rankings are going to end up. I want to try, but really who knows. Because the other thing is that I come home from work and am actually like...intellectually tired. I need a break. I feel like such a boring drudge now, but it’s true. (Also BOTW is a great destresser.)

So yeah, there’s really no good way to end this. I’m just letting you know why I’m going to be sparse. But that also I’m doing well, so no worries there, and thank you so much for anyone who’s sent something caring about this.

And I’m still me, of course. If some GoT spoiler comes out or promo pictures or something, you can bet I’m going to be memeing like normal, and probably having stupid back-and-forths with some bellicose anon. If I feel like ranting about some movie or comic for 15 minutes in a video, I’ll likely do that. But I just can’t keep placing expectations on myself to do more next month, and it’s not fair to you to keep saying “when life calms down.” Life isn’t supposed to calm down. It’s not an inconvenience that gets in the way of me talking about my feelings on a piece of media. And moving forward, I’m going to do what I can to have a more balanced approach to all of that.

#personal tag #which i don't think i ever established #woo

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mrsashketchum · 7 years

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tag dump p.1

tagged by @outerspacenthusiast (sorry this took waaaay longer than i thought it should ;w;)

also if u want to know more stuff about me, please click keep reading! :3c

3 THINGS YOUR FOLLOWERS DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU

1. my face 2. my singing voice 3. the other soma aus ive been thinking about but have yet to disclose

ANSWER 10 QUESTIONS AND TAG 10 AMAZING PEOPLE! (might not tag 10 people but we’ll see)

1. What was the last movie you watched? Beauty and the Beast (2017) in theaters （*´▽｀*）

2. What was the last song you listened to? Koisuru Zukei (cubic futurismo) by Sumire Uesaka (from the anime “This Art Club Has a Problem!”) (im... currently hooked...)

3. What was the last show you watched? This Art Club Has a Problem (Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai ga Aru!)

4. What was the last book you read? Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto (reread it for like the tenth time or something)

5. What was the last thing you ate? chicken adobo :3

6. If you could be anywhere else, where would it be? Japan/London/France/Australia, or in an animation studio enjoying my job

7. If you could pick a decade to travel back in time, what would it be? like Ang, i would go to the future and go to space tbh

8. If you won the lotto and millions of cash, what would be the first thing you’d do? pay debts for family ;;

9. Which fictional character would you like to hang out with for the day? im tempted to write maka or soul but for the sake of not adding too much soma to my day, then i'd say May from Pokemon

10. What was the last fandom you joined? i think Mystic Messenger- i'm in a facebook group and quietly posting some pictures here and there relating to Seven and whatnot

FAVOURITES TAG

Place - my bed so comfy Person - sou Color - (anything) pastel Food - cereal, just give me milk and im down for breakfast (i have a lot of fave food but i’ve been recently into cereal) Smell - honey butter chips, sou’s distinct smell (perfume), old book smell, paint, gas...i m starting to get weird tastes in smell.... Book - Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto (IT'S A GOOD BOOK OMG) Movie - Kimi no Na Wa Music artist - Cash Cash & Marianas Trench Genre of music - EDM / chill / techno Genre of literature - mystery and/or romance (plus points if it has time travel) Day of the week - friday Tumblr - so hard to say -- i love everybody!!!!! Thing to do when bored - organize computer folders or listen to music or blog or re/watch anime Celebrity - Eddie Redmayne Website other than Tumblr - youtube Drink - choco chip latte Animal - owl Flower - sakura TV show - F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Fruit - orange Vegetable - kangkong (chinese spinach) Store/shop - (i dont really have a favorite store tbh) Quote - “Dipper! Don't you know what it's like to fall for someone? Even though you know in your heart that it'll probably never work out, but you'd do anything for that person?” -- Mabel Pines, The Deep End (Gravity Falls) Boy’s name - Mason Girl’s name - Ruri Ice cream flavor - bubblegum Popcorn flavor - butter Season - winter/fall Month of the year - reeeeaaally hard to tell? maybe february cuz it’s my birth month and a lot of good stuff happens then Disney princess - Ariel Insult - butthead (i dont really like to insult lol) YouTube channel - Marzia Eye color - brown Language - (i gotta agree with Ang on) Japanese / French Thing about yourself - im amazingly full of ideas as long as i love what i do

tagging: (oh whaddya know i did tag 10 peeps) (no need to do this if u dont want to or have done it already <3)

@nhvz, @nori-wings, @metalosse, @leslietendo, @redphlox, @l0chn3ss, @flamedork, @metaphorically-drunk, @lunar--resonance, @oblivion-time

#about me #outerspacenthusiast #nhvz #nori wings #metalosse #leslietendo #redphlox #l0chn3ss #flamedork #metaphorically drunk #lunar resonance #oblivion time #mak does tag games

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advrik · 7 years

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A Farmer’s Recollection ~ Harvest Moon 20th Anniversary Celebration :: Part 3 [2000]

If you’d like to read the previous two parts, you can find them below: Part 1 | Part 2

Man it has been a trip writing up these recollections thus far. Digging up a bunch of memories that I hadn’t thought about in years. Good times, and the best hasn’t even come. The year of 2000 for me was probably my favorite year of all time as I have so many memories looking back at it and so many great things happened.

It was also the year that my all-time favorite Harvest Moon game was released.

Spring 2000

Life was great. I was 12-years old, full of energy and living life by the second. I had a brand new camcorder, a copy of Harvest Moon 64 and I... was sharing a room with my 3 siblings. Granted it was the largest room in the house by far and we kept it divided up between the boys and girls but I was still lacking my own space.

What little I could call my own was atop the brand new set of bunkbeds that our parents bought for us with their tax refund. They were made of metal and were pipe-based; The posts that made up the head and foot boards were capped off by little plastic caps that you could remove, granting you access to the inside which was wide enough to stick your arm down, so naturally I used this as a place to store things. Cramming an old shirt halfway down to create shelf of sorts, I began storing candy and other junk down there. I ended up stuff

At one point, there was travel ban between the four of us. We were restricting each other from venturing onto our beds. This came after I tried building a bridge between two ofthe beds. Obviously not my best idea.

My adventures in Harvest Moon 64 continued on. I was now at that point where I was done with the story and just hammering away at making a really nice looking farm and collecting recipes. But even though I had only owned Harvest Moon 64 for just a month, I was already beginning to feel the hype for an upcoming release that recently had made its presence known.

We were getting Harvest Moon on Playstation!!!

Though news was scarce and only a few screenshots were available at the time, I still remember how excited I was over this. I loved my Nintendo 64 sure, but my console of choice for that generation was the Playstation as it was where all the RPGs were.

The two earliest screenshots released for the game were these below (Courtesy of HMFarm.com)

The boat screenshot in particular filled my mind with wonders and excitement; Were we going to be able to travel to the city at long last? Could we take it out and fish for deep sea fish? WHAT COULD IT MEAN???

I discussed the game and what new features it could bring to the table extensively with my sister. I say extensively, but she wasn’t nearly as interested in the games as I was. One such subject I brought up - and I have this on tape even - was my hope for a butcher system where you could send your livestock off to have them turned into meat products that you could cook with. An idea that I just up until last year thought I’d get with Stardew Valley, but that’s not important right now.

Aboard the hype train, but considerably way more sane in how I was going about it. Partly in thanks to having just bought Harvest Moon 64 fairly recently. That, couple with everything else that was going to be coming out that year really helped.

Summer 2000

More and more info trickled out about the game over the coming months. Things like how it used the same characters from Harvest Moon 64, but changed their personalities around/who they were related to/what they did. The legendary fish, asking Harvest Sprites for help. All of it just sounded so cool, but nothing as cool as the new cooking system that was being implemented. No longer were the recipes that you earned from villagers just collectables. You could cook now, using various ingredients and utensils. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

It’s a huge shame that the cooking system would get progressively worse as the series went on, like many of the elements that made the series great. It has been slowly approaching dating sim levels with tacked on watered down farming systems.

I had such a blast through the summer of 2000. I would spend my days either hammering away with Harvest Moon 64, even going back to Harvest Moon GB for another playthrough.

The music on the radio at the time was phenomenal and still something I listen to this very day, in my very own “Greatest Hits” collection called Definitive 2000, which currently boasts over 150+ songs; ranging to everything from NSync and Beastie Boys to Creedence Clearwater Revival and Saliva. It took years to build, but it fills me with incredible nostalgia every time I listen to it. Now I bet you’re wondering though why the likes of CCR would be a thing on the radio in 2000, well I’ll tell you: I wasn’t overly picky about what I’d listen to and I developed an ear for golden oldies thanks to my father, so I enjoyed listening to the older stuff as much as I did the modern hits. And yes, there’s a video game music folder too.

Pokemon was its peak, with the first movie hitting VHS earlier that year and the second movie featuring brand new Gen 2 Pokemon set to hit theaters that summer and the new installments in the games - Pokemon Gold and Silver Versions - later that year.

Pokemon wasn’t the only ‘Mon on the street that year. Digimon had aired the previous August on Fox Kids, and it had gained enough steam to warrant a whole slew of toys, clothing items and cards. There was even a video game at the time: Digimon World on the Playstation. And in October of 2000, it was receiving its first movie, which was super cool. I enjoyed the Digimon anime far more than I ever did Pokemon’s, and with Digimon 02 starting that August - nearly a year after the series initially aired in the US - it was a good time to be a fan of little collectible monsters.

RIP Monster Rancher.

Another great event that happened that year was that we got an actual Japanese Godzilla movie in theaters, nationwide! It was the first time I had ever seen Godzilla on the big screen(not counting GODZILLA from 1998, which wasn’t the REAL Godzilla). I had been a Godzilla fan all my life, so that was some wild stuff seeing him on a huge theater screen after so long. I was mesmerized from start to finish. That night, after we got home from the theater we did some night swimming in our pool and recreated scenes from the movie with my nephew and sister.

Holiday Season 2000

Unlike with the previous release, I was more versed and knowledgeable on the gaming industry and was keeping up on release dates and whatnot. I guess in a way, this was also the year that gaming really became something for me that would amount to more than just a simple pass time.

The month of November that year was pretty hype. Final Fantasy IX was launching early in the month and I already had that on my Christmas list to Santa, in addition to Resident Evil 2 and 3. I had in my possession $60 from my grandmother which she gave use each year to pick something out for Christmas, which would then go under the tree - wrapped up - and not be touched until Christmas Eve.

Each trip out to Wal-Mart and K-Mart ended much in the same way as the trips for Harvest Moon 64. Finally, after a few failed attempts and locating it in stores, my father finally caved in and we made our first online purchase ever in the two years since we obtained a PC and the internet, and it was for Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. I mean, there could have been worse things that could have had as first purchases, am I right?

And so the great wait began once more. The game was in my possession in a way, but I had no patience in waiting for it to be delivered. Every day was grueling. I’d sit by and wait for the mail to come, watching the mail man or lady reach their hand out to the mailbox to place mail inside and hoping that within their grasp would be a small box or envelope.

Weekends devolved into me sitting in my room, on my bed, complaining and listening to music. I could only assume that it was the holiday season that was holding up the delivery as mail was quite frantic that time of the year and delays happened, but knowing that did not help me. I was impatient and wanted my game NOW, knowing that I couldn’t actually HAVE it once it did arrive because it had to be wrapped up and placed under the Christmas tree.

On a following trip to Wal-Mart one night, we walked back to the video games once again and guess what? It was there. Wal-Mart had actually stocked Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. But that wasn’t all they had, oh no! They also had Harvest Moon GBC2 as well. To say that I felt disappointed would be an understatement. I was crushed, knowing they had actually stocked it while I was waiting for MY copy to come in the mail, now a week and a half out since placing the order. The rest of that night was miserable.

It wasn’t until the first week of December. Nearly three weeks since placing the order, that my beautiful baby arrived in the mail. I was playing a rental copy of Majora’s Mask at the time (and failing miserably at it). It was the most beautiful thing, in its pristine jewel case beneath the cellophane wrapping. The beautiful booklet slash cover art screamed “Intense farming action” to the now 13 year old me as of the previous September. I begged and begged if I could just demo it slightly for that night and that night alone before wrapping it. I wanted to see what it played like, what the music was like and how the cooking system worked.

And do you know what I did after my mother caved and let me try it? I fired up my Gameshark with an unlimited money code and I CHEATED. It was the only way I was going to be able to experience what I wanted to experience within the short amount of time I was alloted. I achieved it too, upgrading my house and nabbing a few utensils in order to do some cooking. It was amazing two hours, and I almost missed dinner over it, but I eventually caved and wrapped the game up and placed it under the tree, which sat in the corner of the den beside the big TV.

The remainder of the month was delightful. I discovered Green Day as a new musical interest with the premiere of their ‘Minority’ music video. Outlaw Star began airing on Cartoon Network towards the end of the month, a show that would go on to become my all-time favorite. Towards Christmas we even got some snow, which was cool. That didn’t and still does not happen very often.

December 24th arrived and I spent the morning preparing for my oldest sister and my nephew to visit. Planning to roleplay some Dragon Ball Z and whatnot and show him the newest Harvest Moon game.

Christmas day finally came and I was treated to a bunch of nice gifts. Including some more blank VHS tapes for my camcorder, Resident Evil 2 and 3. Some more Dragon Ball Z stuff, and of course, Final Fantasy IX. Even got the new Green Day album and a portable CD player! Sadly the fun and excitement of Christmas morning was cut short, as during the opening segment of Final Fantasy IX, I developed a killer migraine that put me out of commission for much of the day.

Once I recovered, I was up to my neck in RPG and farming goodness. An awesome year was topped off by an awesome Christmas. Final Fantasy IX, Harvest Moon, Outlaw Star, good music. Not to mention the awesome roast beef Christmas dinner my mother made that night.

And so concludes part 3 of my little trip into the past. Expect two more parts throughout the year, in slightly less detail. After Back to Nature, things started getting spotty with what I bought and played, even going for several years without picking up a single game.

Thanks for reading!

#harvest moon #natsume #story of seasons #xseed #marvelous #harvestmoon20th #recollection #nostalgia #gaming #playstation #nintendo #article

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thefootballlife · 4 years

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Why I’m tapping out on Scottish football

This isn’t a site that has ever really done much in the way of profanity but, at this time, it perhaps feels like that should be well and truly broken.

Because, at this juncture, I think I may just have to call it on my love of Scottish football. In a way, it’s been coming - I’ve not subscribed to a service that offers live Scottish football for some considerable time and my following of highlights has, this season in particular, spotty at best. I’m a Celtic fan but can count the number of games I’ve watched this season on one hand.

On the other hand (the one not being used for counting), I’m proudly Scottish and proudly a Celtic fan but, fuck me, I think I’m done.

As no-one could avoid, we are in the midst of a pandemic. As no-one could avoid in Scotland only, we are in the midst of a footballing existential crisis. Arguably, the SPFL are the only party handling Coronavirus worse than Donald Trump, and he literally told people to inject themselves with Toilet Duck then tried to walk it back claiming it was sarcasm in spite of the fact that he’s meant to be the leader of the free world and that sarcasm isn’t included on his role profile. The SPFL’s crisis stems, of course, from the Dundee email vote saga, a saga that would have been averted had anyone in Hampden thought “Huh, maybe I should check our Spam folder before the deadline of this massively important vote”.

Say what you like about the British government’s attitude towards PPE stockpiling, but at least they bothered to check and read the EU scheme emails before deleting them. The SPFL couldn’t even be arsed to do that before announcing a partial result on whether we should end the season or not.

Don’t get me wrong, that the season is over in Scotland was the right call, but it was done in such a manner that one would have to find an easier job than organising a piss up in a brewery to actually compare the SPFL’s handling of the vote to.

In a time where we are asking clubs and the nation as a whole to come together, like The Beatles song, Scottish football is managing to fall apart, like The Beatles. And little shows this more obviously than how reconstruction could be passed - a committee of fifteen of which ten are directly involved in either a promotion or relegation fight. Rangers might want an independent inquiry into the SPFL’s emails, like a Trump supporter any time the words “Hillary Clinton” are mentioned but me? Well, I’d just like even a single hint of independence when it comes to what should be the defining reorganisation of Scottish football more so than when Rangers went kerblooie. I’d like to be able to say the SPFL had an independent group which actually decided to do something for Scottish football solely in the interests of what is best for Scottish football. We don’t have that.

And let’s be honest, if the best thing for Scottish football didn’t involve expansion of the top flight, it wouldn’t be given the time of day by the large amount of the panel that would lose out by rejecting expansion. Is Ann Budge really going to chair a meeting that says “Hey, maybe Hearts should be relegated because they’re terrible?”

No, she bloody well isn’t.

Rather than working together to improve Scottish football, we have instead commissioned a football club version of The Hunger Games, where clubs only ever look out for themselves. That League Two clubs have already joined together and demanded 14-14-14 shows that. Brora and Kelty would be deserved and valuable additions to the bottom tier but, whoops, looks like those League Two clubs want to pull up the drawbridge to everyone else. The playoff at the bottom was brought in to ensure that sides who didn’t deserve to be in the league on merit, because they didn’t invest and more, has proven to be a good thing. East Stirlingshire and Berwick have gone to be replaced by Cove and Edinburgh City, two sides who show ambition and have thrived. Their success has set the template for other clubs lower down the ladder to show ambition that was previously not possible. But if you’re a club like an Elgin, a Brechin or a Stirling who have built the club on foundations of ensuring the status quo, the playoff has served its purpose and allowing other ambitious clubs in the league would just hasten their own exit from the leagues. Denying Brora and Cove would just send the message that ambition isn’t welcome and there’s no point shooting for the moon because, well, league clubs will seize upon a crisis to move the moon that bit further away.

In a way, it’s hard to blame clubs for acting like dicks. Coronavirus poses an existential threat to many of them due to the unique revenue mix of Scottish football. But reason now would get repaid with renewed interest later. Acting entirely selfishly will only kill that.

You’ll note I’ve not yet mentioned Rangers’ dossier of SPFL misdeeds, backed by Hearts and Stranraer. Funnily enough, the clubs that stand to lose out the most are those making trouble and that is what this is. Whatever Rangers have on the SPFL, publicly muckraking and stringing the saga out only serves to undermine any interest in Scottish football. All to what end? To try to taint a title that Celtic would have won anyway? Celtic, who have been noticeably silent, get dragged into the situation simply by not biting. The accusation of Peter Lawwell running Scottish football from behind the scenes that Rangers’ actions play into is utterly ridiculous - not because he isn’t influential but because if two decades of running Celtic have told us anything, it’s that Lawwell couldn’t possibly be this incompetent in running a business.

The issue is clear - the SPFL makes decisions through the consent of clubs. Those clubs provide plenty of competent administrators to help work out what their club’s view should be. But, ultimately, the SPFL’s failure is that there is absolutely no clear leadership, there are only 42 competing views leaving no-one happy and, in many cases, some loudly crowing about perceived injustices. Anyone able to get a bloc of votes can vote down pretty much whatever they like, leaving us in a paralysis where the only decisions that get made are those that are the least controversial. Perhaps the only thing the SPFL has gotten right since this all began is that they thought reconstruction would be difficult to achieve.

If nothing else, this crisis has shown the utter damned futility of the SPFL in its current form. It’s democracy, if that’s what you call it, has failed. If reconstruction blows up and Hearts end up in the Championship, they will blame the SPFL and not being bad at football. It shows the sense behind a position such as that of MLB commissioner - a representative who would get to make all the calls that need making in a crisis like now who acts not at the behest of clubs but with the implied consent of them once elected by clubs. It might not quite be a benevolent dictatorship, but the desire of someone trusted to be able to turn around and go “We’re going 16-16-10, lads because I’ve had a bunch of research done and that’s what’s best” is pretty hard to resist at this moment in time. Hell, they even have a centralised clothing commissar who keeps an eye on costumes to make sure they make the most of branding and whatnot.

One other thing in baseball’s favour is its journalism. Baseball, the national pastime, has its own myths and elegies that have allowed writing to shine at this time and have been the most enjoyable part of my current free trial with The Athletic. Alternatively, football has offered numerous treatise in how we get back to normal, while Scotland has offered the same in how we want to get back to normal, but not that normal, because when stuff was normal, those boys over there were arseholes and, anyway, here’s the opinion of a sectarian bloke from Derry on Scottish football and, oh, he’s not got any actual stake in Scottish football but we just thought, you know, why not and we’ll hope for the b…

Can you see why it makes you want your head to fucking combust? You could spend your time reading writing of sporting myth or you could look at Scottish football, which is the artistic equivalent of a graffitied cock on a toilet stall and we’re having an existential crisis over how many pubes we should draw on it.

On a personal note, I don’t need it. Talking about Scottish football a lot gets me abusive tweets. Talking about all the South East European football I consume doesn’t, it gets me nice ones, it inspired a surprisingly popular successful podcast (The History of Yugoslav Football Podcast, available on all good podcast providers!), it gets people actually being grateful that you spend the time doing something you enjoy. It, unlike Scottish football, doesn’t have me in an abusive relationship.

There is time and opportunity to rectify all this. To work together rather than pull apart. But it won’t happen. Scottish football isn’t just too fractured, it has an identity among many fans where taking a gun to it’s foot and managing to shoot itself in the head is both a defining and desirable trait. We have people in our game who will disagree just for the sake of doing it. We have a mainstream media presence in papers, online, on tv and on the radio which is less Sunday Supplement and more the “Hello, I’d like to have an argument” sketch from Monty Python.

It’s insufferable. It is. Scottish football is fucked and anyone who wants to fix it appears to only be interested in fucking it that bit more.

I’d like to be proven wrong. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love there to be a reason beyond ten in a row as a Celtic fan to engage it but, hell, even I know that it’ll actually just be 8+2 in a row or 9.5 in a row or however it will be spun by the commentariat and, eventually, everyone outside of Scottish football. When you know full well that even your justification for keeping the faith, the culmination of a decade of work at the club, will just be undermined by fucking semantics until it’s scarcely an achievement at all, then what is the point?

What is the actual point? What’s the point in Scottish football? That we can produce an endless list of entertaining anecdotes and happenings yet we can’t run a league with any common sense or, let’s face it, integrity? That self-interest has been put so far ahead of anything else it prevents any effort to actually move forward together towards a better future?

Clubs are suffering. Players are suffering. Fans are suffering and will vote with their decreasing wallets.

I hope it proves me wrong. I hope some person takes over and sorts things out. I hope some person reading this will be able to produce an argument that would restore my faith. I hope, but I don’t expect.

Until it sorts itself out, however, it’s hard to argue it's worth my time. Or yours.

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beautyandkingdork · 5 years

Note

I'm sorry to hear about your family emergency, I hope everything is well with you 💙 As for a request, whenever you're able to, do you think you could write a one shot fic about Richard (Or Jay if that's what you prefer/are comfortable with) helping a collegebound s/o with studying for finals and trying to comfort and reassure them that everything will be fine. -💙

This! Is lowkey…. weirdly written. But I hope you like it.

Notes!

I haven’t seen HSH in a long while and my memory has backed up a ton of useless characterization for Jay, so I did him!

I wrote this while y/n is in college. I realize now you said “collegebound” but most high schoolers are minors??? So I got confused. I hope this is okay

Don’t ask how Jay gets into your dorm. Ik schools (especially in urban areas like NYC) have high security and don’t allow students in without the proper keycard etc. with them, but I haven’t been at college full-time (just at various prep programs) so I have no idea how you’d actually get a visitor in there. Please just uhhh… suspend your disbelief.

This takes place a during season 1ish, so Jay is 36. It is also the 1990s. Woo hoo!

College finals week. Something you’ve done before and succeeded at, yet every year you struggle to crack the code. You wrack your brain trying to make sense of it… trying to make sense of anything, really; the content of the classes that you’ve been lectured on inside and out until pristine clarity has devolved into word soup on this night.

Before your roommate left an hour or so ago, some social event design to take the edge off finals, they insisted that you take it easy: “You’re smart, [y/n],” they reassured. “Studying doesn’t have to be torture.” Usually you’d brush off their shallow encouragement, but this time their tip actually gave you an idea. It was still a couple of days before your first final—if lightening the mood didn’t work, you’d still have time to study the old-fashioned way.

The minute your roommate is out the door you dial the number of a guy you figured fits the bill. Not some love of your life, but not a mere acquaintance, either. Your heart quickens just a bit as you hang up the phone, as if it were some devastating secret. Not so much devastating as unexpected, in reality.

An hour later—maybe sooner, maybe later, as God knows how much time passes by as you study mindlessly—a soft knock at the door piques your attention. You scatter quickly to the door, opening it to reveal your boyfriend, Jay. Or maybe not “boyfriend”—the word sits very immaturely in your vocabulary, especially for Jay, who has little hair on his head and a face that marks his age older than the reality. Neither of you have labelled him as a “boyfriend” of yours before, either. Actually, no labels had been made at all. You greet him and lead him into your room, sitting back down at the desk.

“Busy day?” he starts.

“No kidding,” you reply curtly.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break. I’m sure you’ve been working hard.”

“Actually,” you correct, “I was wondering if you could help me with studying.”

Jay jolts his head at the request. “I think you called the wrong guy. I don’t know anything about college, [y/n],” he half-jokes.

“You went to college, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes. But not for…” Jay counts on his fingers, “ten years or so.”

Ah, the age gap between the two of you strikes again, in all its inconvenient glory.

“What about your PhD?”

“I don’t think the historical development of shot composition would help you much with trig.” He chuckles softly. You don’t have the mental capacity to react. You turn back around to the work; barely a dent has been made in it, at least to your eyes.

“Is there any way you could actually help?” you keen, holding back the inevitable snap. Jay, realizing your stress, thinks on it for a moment or two. You just stare at him as he purses his mouth.

“Well, first of all, you have way too much going on.” He points to your desk, a textbook for something unrelated to the notes in the corner, a syllabus from the class of the textbook, a paper printed out that’s unidentifiable past all the red pen markings.

“If you can’t take a real break, the least you could do is have a productive one,” Jay comments. By the time you look back at him, he’s already at the other side of the dorm, reaching for the lock on your window to crack it open. A cool night breezes flows in, followed by the dense scent of spring. You catch a breath and release it quickly, returning to your task. You organize the stray papers, flapping slightly now due to the wind, into their respective subjects and put them aside for review later. Only the textbook and notes remain.

“Do you need folders?” he asks. “I can get you some.”

“No, hon,” you respond without much thought. You hear the springs on your twin bed creak as he sits on it.

“Alright, hon,” he mimics innocently. “I can also help you practice some terms, if you want.”

You’re surprised you hadn’t thought of that from the start. Bringing your notebook along with you, you sit beside him on the bed, except you’re against the headboard along the wall and his legs hang (and not all the way to the floor, you note, even as low as the bed is) over the long end. You flip to the page with a chart of equations and their uses and hand it to him. Only occasionally you’ll get something right. Jay remains patient, but somewhat annoyingly he stops quite often to feed you some sort of clue that you suppose is a tip for remembering the term. The concepts stick vaguely in your head. You just want this memorized and done, no fancy business. You sigh and stretch your legs onto his. He’s startled for a moment before continuing, letting you stay in that position until the chart is finished.

“How many of them did I get?”

“Well,” he sucks in some air, “not that many.” You sigh and he continues weakly: “25% is better than zero…” All you can manage is a whine of defeat.

“Now, come on, [y/n]. You’ve gotten this far already, why stop? The American education system is flawed, anyway. It’s no wonder so many college students stress out. Everything is an unrealistic expectations! I personally think that if the country was really invested in how many equations you can burn in to your head, what’s the point in individuality in the first place? There’s no way—”

“Jay.”

“What? You don’t want my tangent on higher education’s fundamental flaws?”

“Maybe next time,” you joke.

“Alright then.” He looks at the clock. “I should probably head home now anyways. I’m getting a little delirious, if you couldn’t tell.”

Begrudgingly, you fold yourself off from the bed so Jay can get up. He heads towards the door. He hesitates to open the door and instead turns to face you.

“Get some sleep, okay?”

“Jay,” you laugh, following him, “it’s, like, 11 o’clock.”

He suddenly stands tall, as if this were a decree: “No potential as great as yours can work without sleep! 9 hours!” In a second he reverts back to something more vulnerable. “Don’t be like me and stay up all nervous and whatnot.”

“Alright. I get it,” you giggle.

“Just call me if you need anything else, sweetheart.” He puts his hand on your shoulder, although you pine for something just a bit more than this tease of affection. You pull him into a hug and he seems frozen. After a moment, he shares the embrace wholly.

“You’ve done it before, [y/n],” he insisted, “and you can do it again.” His words sink onto your skin softly, his presence like a warm blanket.

Sooner than expected, Jay lets go. He fixes his coat collar, the two of you sharing a casual “good night” before he heads out of your dorm. You heart dives quickly when you see your roommate, who has just seen Jay leaving, approaching you.

“Who was that?”

“Just a tutor,” you lie softly. Next time, you’re bringing your study materials to his apartment.

#Anonymous #request #the good guy writes #iufdsckjnjdsk this is a MESS #epic cringe lol #cringe culture is dead #hopefully

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