#fuck this fuck academia and FUCK me how the fuck do you write a thesis when youre panicking and overthinking evryhting

[youwerelikeanangel]

i need to write but i cant write i need to do research but i cant do research i need to get into doing this but it is not working

#wHY do i have to write a huge ba thesis and other countries dont even make you write them :)) #two of my friends do their masters in ireland rn and their ma thesis has to be as long as my ba thesis:))))))))))) #fuck this fuck academia and FUCK me how the fuck do you write a thesis when youre panicking and overthinking evryhting #i also DO NOT undertsand how i will explain agency like. #its my main topic (agency and rebellion in the hunger games) #and i have a GREAT book on agency in thg but she defines the whole thing within 3 pages and half of that is already examples #buT no german papers must be HARD WHY if no one cares no one will care that i have a ba and ma from a random german uni #i hate this i hate this i hate this #christ . thank you for listening #oh ALSO i am feeling burnt out and depressed as FUCK (yes i wILL be getting my period TOMORROW and i AM WORKING THE WHOLE WEEKEND) #oh ALSO yesterday an old woman came into work while we were closed and i said sorry were closed and she screamed at me?? #bc she thought i was being rude to her ????? and she mocked me ????? wtf WTF #bye #i just want to be at the sea and live in a cottage by the sea and have tea every morning and hang out with my friends and do crafts #:(

[adiduck]

oooh this is very fun

trope: alternate setting - professor au first sentence: "if anyone had bothered to tell Mav earlier in his career that the less words he assigned the less words he would have to read, he wouldn't be in the situation he was in today."

LOL another academia au! Let's see what I can do...

If anyone had bothered to tell Mav earlier in his career that the less words he assigned the less words he would have to read, he wouldn't be in the situation he was in today.

To be entirely fair to him: "Who the fuck writes fifteen pages on the first assignment?"

He drops the document on their coffee table, staring at it in horror. "We've had six classes, Ice! Six! Three of them were entirely about equations!"

Over at the island, glasses on and his own first grading of the semester spread out before him, Ice looked unimpressed.

"You assigned them a minimum of five pages. If you wanted them to stick to five pages, you should have said that."

"Did he read ahead?" Mav continued, ignoring his partner thoroughly. "Who the hell does that in a physics 101 class?"

"Someone who wants to learn physics, I'm assuming."

Mav flipped open the first page. The font was definitely smaller than 12pt. "Jesus, I think he finished the textbook," Mav said, scanning the first paragraph. "He's complaining that the question was simplistic!"

"Was it simplistic?" Ice asked.

"Yes," Mav said. "Because it was the first assignment!"

"This still sounds like a you problem," Ice said, and turned unceremoniously back to his grading.

"Ice, he's quoting me!"

"Still not my problem."

"Ice," Mav said. "He's quoting you."

Ice paused. "How?" he asked.

Mav read further. "Cherry picked from your thesis."

"Asshole," Ice said, and pushed his stool back. "Let me see."

Mav grinned. Finally, he thought, as he passed the paper to Ice. Some goddamn support around here!

#adi is a writer #ask game #icemav

[catboybiologist]

Random actual vent that is probably more venty than my usual random little things, but occasionally I have to step back and think how asinine the salary system for PhD students can sound to people outside of academia. I really just want to like... lay it on the table, because it really is fucking dumb and I occasionally want validation that its fucking dumb.

Note that this is all coming from a traditional lab sciences, in the US perspective. Also, I'm really fucking ADHD and have a really, really shitty brain for bureacracy, so this is a rant and isn't really intended to be informative and might be wrong in places, its just me word vomiting.

Let's start with something straight off the bat- grad school isn't really school. It's work that creates value for the university, and you happen to take one or two courses on the side that the university has determined will make you better at that work (your mileage may vary). It's an entry level job, essentially. You create value for the university in one of two ways- you either contribute to research that gets them grant money, or you teach undergrads that pay tuition. We'll get back to how that affects you later, but first lets talk about something else: what the university claims they pay you vs what you actually get paid.

On paper, my income is approximately 3 times as much as my actual, take home income. There's two reasons for this. The first is that I am technically charged tuition by the central university, which is then immediately paid off by the source of my income. In official job titles, that's technically included in what you're getting paid, although most universities don't even bother advertising that. The other confounding factor is that you're literally always considered part time. The exact % time varies depending on your exact schedule, and of course your university, but its actually weirdly consistent even between universities. Technically, the work you do on your thesis isn't "work", and the university doesn't technically pay you to do it. Even though the work you do on your thesis literally generates revenue for the university in the form of grant overhead. But we'll get to that. If you're a researcher for a given appointment term, you're expected to also do research activities that are unconnected to your thesis- which is ridiculous, because there's no lab in existence where the work isn't all interconnected in some way.

Half time appointments are common, but lots of different percentages exist.

So, if you ever see a figure that says that a grad student position is paid at about $80k a year, that's whats going on. The highest take-home income I have EVER heard of in the US for PhD students is $54k, at Stanford neuroscience. I think its a bit higher now, but that at least gets you a ballpark. Most STEM PhD students on the high cost of living coasts are paid 30-40k ish, and in cheaper areas you can expect to take 5k off of that. These are for degrees that usually make six figures on the job market.

And then there's the other convoluted problem- the source of the funding. This is where the academia salary model really has a unique brand.

Basically, when you're a PhD student, you're not working one job for the full 5-7 years. You're constantly flipping between job titles within the university, and who exactly is paying you changes as a result.

The most basic distinction is researcher vs teaching assistant. TA is easy- you work "part time" (but oh my god those workloads are not part time sometimes [although the class I'm TAing now is very chill so its w/e][fuck you molecular genetics at my master's uni tho]), and the department you're teaching for pays for your tuition and your salary as a result.

Researcher is a bit weirder. Basically, each lab is conducted as its own independent financial unit, managed by a Principle Investigator (PI, or to any grad student, the professor/boss/research advisor/liege/monarch/authority of the lab). The PI is constantly writing lab wide grants to supply the core funding of the lab, including the salary of the grad students. Grants can be pretty general, but there are also very specific ones that check in how the money is being spent. These include training grants/fellowships/tbh the name is arbitrary for a lot of these. Those are grants that are written to supply the salary of a specific grad student.

Couple things to note- the university charges the PI in a lot of ways on this. Notably:

They charge tuition on every grad student, as mentioned previously, which under a researcher appointment is paid from the PI to the university.

They charge overhead on grants- basically, they take money out of every grant the PI gets.

If the previous two sources aren't enough, oftentimes universities will pay rent on the amount of building space a lab takes up (although this is very inconsistent between universities)

Researcher appointments are considered favorable to teaching appointments, because they mean you can spend more of your time on your thesis. But, its dependent on whether your PI has the funding to pay you all that, which is a big if. So, every quarter or semester or year or however much your university decides to renegotiate it, you essentially switch jobs, in a way. Obviously its a lot more simple and streamlined than actually switching jobs, but your title, responsibility, source of income, and sometimes your actual pay changes constantly.

And to anyone who has been through a PhD, you're nodding along like this is all the basic stuff, because all this is so NORMAL. Like this is all the normal system, and this is the bare basics of it as well. And it's weird that it's normal, right? Like, most of my career has been tied to academia, so I don't have a fantastic benchmark for this, but this isn't how it works outside of academia like... at all.

Over the course of late last year and bleeding into this year, multiple graduate student unions have had strikes or negotiations regarding pay scale, but its been a very difficult situation for the average grad student to untangle because of how weird the source of pay is. Because technically, even though you functionally work a single, salaried job with slightly changing obligations, what's happening behind the scenes is that you're essentially hopping between jobs every couple of months. In an ideal system, those jobs always have the same pay, but that's increasingly becoming not the case. Sometimes that means getting paid more overall, sometimes slightly less. Union negotiations have made this pay slightly higher overall, but its still a mess of a system.

And obviously, there's paperwork associated with so many of these steps.

So in my last post, when I said "getting a grant", that was what I was referring to- applying for training grants that will guarantee that I don't have to teach extra or get extra money from my PI for the time I'm here. I'd love to get more teaching experience, but ofc I want to do it when I want to, not when I have to. I'm applying for multiple training grants over the next couple of months that will hopefully fund my salary specifically, and hopefully I'll get at least one of them. And tbh, I don't even care that much about teaching, I more want them because it'll dramatically simplify all this for me.

I love what I do to death, but untangling this shit is what gives me imposter syndrome more than anything. I think my arrogant streak shows when I can genuinely say that I've never felt imposter syndrome based on my scientific knowledge. I have felt it over two things- my motivation/productivity (which is a different rant entirely), and the fact that I am really, really bad at untangling the level of bureaucracy required to just... exist here. Just give me my fucking paycheck and let me do my science, and tell me when you want me to teach.

#vent post #like an actual one lol

[goosemixtapes]

max's top books of 2023 :3c

as usual, these rankings are based on some arcane mix of objective quality + my personal enjoyment (previous year's lists)

it was another weird reading year! i did a lot of reading for school, more so than in the past; some of it was really good and some of it was, uh. well, some of it was william wordsworth. nothing i absolutely loathed, though (most of the reads i disliked were books i could at least appreciate on an art/history level), which is cool. so i'm bringing back the runner-up category. did not make it onto my top ten list but were really good anyway: beartown by fredrik backman (books that no joke made me understand why people are insane about sports) and the GORGEOUS re-release of my dear @yvesdot 's debut, something's not right, which i have read before but will always gladly revisit again.

my top anticipated release for 2024 is alecto the ninth again.

(but shoutout also to just happy to be here, king cheer, and henry henry. trans people! shakespeare, even!)

and the list! in increasing order of enjoyment, with pictures this year!

10. The Common Liar by Janet Adelman

no, i can't believe i'm doing this either. i can't believe i did all that preamble and the first book on my list is an academic thesis analyzing shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. but also? it's the only book anyone ever needs to write about shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. janet adelman said it all. which is cool, because i have a fixation on that play, but also sucks, because i was also trying to write an essay on it and mine wasn't nearly as good. btw if anyone wants to buy this for me, somehow, for the $120 it costs on amazon because academia is awful, i will send you my address,

9. Robert Icke's Oresteia

i don't need to say anything about this play, because it's the source of "this was always going to happen. she's been dead since the beginning." that should be enough. but after becoming deranged about the oresteia last year, i finally read this, and holy shit, this adaptation of the story is so fucking genius and icke's writing is so fucking good. it's antiwar! it's about mental illness! there's gender! the fucking ENDING! (i have a pdf if anyone would like it. anything to plug this play bark bark bark rufrufruf grrrrrr)

8. Down Girl: the Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

this is a little bit cheating, because i haven't finished this book yet, so maybe in the final chapters manne will say something like "what if we blew up every orphan" and i'll have to retract this. but right now it's fucking excellent! i've been making an effort to read more nonfiction lately, and this one shines; manne sets out to analyze misogyny not as a personal hatred of women that some men harbor, but as an intricate and structural system forcing women into the role of Giving (attention, affection, power, etc; sometimes their lives). and it's sooooo smart. some of it is stuff i already know (and some of it is Academic Philosophy TM that goes right over my head), but manne articulates her point excellently and i can feel it rearranging my brain, so it's going on the list for longevity and skill!

7. Dictator by Robert Harris

does this book objectively deserve to be on this list? you know what, yeah. i'll say it with my whole chest. i don't like how harris writes women and there are plenty of things to pick at in his cicero trilogy, but i had so much goddamn fun reading it that i can't not put it on the list. this was my year of being really really into cicero, and this was fun to read alongside e-pistulae. harris is sooooo good at making ancient roman politics gripping. the last scenes of this book. augh. ack. ough!

6. Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

there are a lot of valid critiques of this one (a lot of bad critiqus, too, but such is writing literally anything about transness), but i fucking adored it. i LOVE dual timelines, i LOVE unlikable characters, and i FUCKING LOVE TRANSSEXUALITY! moreover, i love that peters isn't afraid to Go There, to poke at the messy ugly sides of transness (and queerness in general) that i think a lot of us don't like acknowledging, especially to cishet people whose view of the community is already skewed. i don’t think this is the One Great Trans Novel; i think there are a lot of great trans novels, and we need more. but this one did hit me RIGHT in the chest, and i couldn't put it down.

5. Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

the iliad but achilles is a trans woman and she's fighting the war on both mortal and divine levels and she and helen have an insane homoerotic half-god rivalry and everybody is fucking crazy. pitched as "for fans of TSOA" but as i said in my review if TSOA is a pleasant but watery iced tea then this book is gasoline laced with crack. there is a bisexual transgender threesome. i fucking love women. book of the fucking summer

4. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

i probably enjoyed wrath goddess sing more, but i can't not rank this book highly on this list. this book is such a fucking masterpiece. it's tolstoy for the modern age. it's a sprawling multi-familial multi-cultural multi-generational epic about race and gender and religion and science and humanity and britishness. smith's prose is fucking amazing; her character work is even better; this book has no plot but it uses its length sooooooo well. the first zadie smith i've read, but by god there will be more. she wrote this at TWENTY-FIVE. that's fucking CRAZY. do you know how much control over your craft you have to have to write this at twenty-five. bonkers. it is also the only enjoyable book i read in my modern literature class, so shoutout to white teeth for keeping me sane,

3. The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

this book is ostensibly about bechdel's relationship with exercise. it is actually about bechdel's relationship with her own body, her own soul, her desire for individualism in the style of the transcendentalists, transcendentalism in general, mortality, and aging. i can't really tell you more than that because i didn't actually "read" this so much as i absorbed it through my skin like a frog while trying not to tremble like a little purse dog. i am not gonna lie man i did not have a very good. um. august. or september. or october november december. so this book really could not have come at a better time. alison bechdel i am obsessed with you

2. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

ALISON BECHDEL I AM OBSESSED WITH YOU!!!! this one narrowly edges out secret to superhuman strength because... well, i'm sort of rating the entire comic strip's run, and dude. holy shit. i love lesbians so much. this strip is such an important piece of lesbian history; it reminded me that a lot of the things lesbians (and LGBT people in general) argue about and deal with today are... the same things we've always argued about and dealt with, from intracommunity label discourse to global politics to hitting on women badly. but history aside--it's also just really fucking good! it's really funny! if you are a neurotic leftist, as so many of us are, it's hysterical! it's smart! it's hot! it's heartwarming! i read it over the first half of the year, in little bits and pieces, and by the end i felt like i really had gone decades with these characters. really just. so good. the power she has the range she has

1. the suzanne collins reread

okay. this one is definitely cheating. because i usually like to keep this list to books i'm reading for the first time, and i HAVE read the hunger games and the underland chronicles. but i read them, like, almost ten years ago, and i was not prepared to be so thoroughly fucking bodied by them this time around, now that i have critical thinking and analysis skills. we all know the hunger games is a fucking banger, so let me pitch the gregor the overlander series: something of a modern alice in wonderland setup, where the eleven-year-old main character falls into an underground world full of strangeness, except this world isn't whimsical, it's dangerous and stuffed with giant talking animals like bats and rats and cockroaches. there's a war on. there are plagues. there are war crimes. there is a plotline that is extremely explicitly about ethnic cleansing. there is some of the most heartbreaking fucking shit you've ever read in your goddamn life. there is also a rat who quotes macbeth and the underlanders revere a guy named bartholomew of sandwich. this series is for middle schoolers. i cried. not when i was a middle schooler reading it the first time; i mean now. so i'm breaking my no-rereads rule, because it really would be a lie to say that my best reading experience wasn't revisiting all of collins' work with my friends (yes, i read TBSOS; i think it's fine but not great). sorry to give publicity to an author who definitely doesn't need my help, but a few years ago my #1 spot went to shakespeare, so.

if you've read this far: thank you! please tell me your thoughts! tell me your favorite books of 2023! tell me which books you're excited for in 2024! and have a very lovely new year :)

#max.txt #misc book tag #readings

[wetcatspellcaster]

While I love hearing about your fic writing, that last WIP Wendy has me curious. What is your thesis about??? How are you feeling so close to your submission deadline? What has teaching been like?

(I finished grad school 2 years ago, and remember the weight of academia acutely)

hey anon, thank you for asking (and condolences on the typo ;) )

i'm a PhD student based in a literature department, but my topic is actually... *fanfare* D&D! that's right, she's that one note, everybody!

anyway, my thesis examines D&D gameplay as reader response to fantasy literature - arguing that often, the ways people play reflects the things they wish was different in the books/media they consume. E.g. people who play/write drow or orc characters no longer tend to perpetuate the racism of the Forgotten Realms, implying they don't appreciate racism in fantasy, or people often queer their favourite characters from media and turn them into something new, etc. It basically takes theories from fan studies and fantasy literature academia, and applies them to D&D as a way of showing that D&D has always had a large role in shaping fantasy literature and what people expect from fantasy :)

as to how i feel finishing - my final deadline, due to my sick leave, is June 28th. I'm currently completing a full draft by the end of the month for my supervisors to read through and offer corrections on. Mostly... just tired? And scared, tbh. I've been funded and thus not really participating in capitalism for 3 and a half years, so I'm not exactly relishing unemployment and job hunting, and academic jobs in the UK are a depressing prospect as there's not many of them. It's also too early for me to do anything about it - the most useful thing for me to do right now is simply finish the thesis, so I don't outstay my welcome and my funding. I know I'll be fine eventually, but it's just going to suck.

Teaching is genuinely wonderful! I teach first year English Lit (basically Novel 101), which is like karma, as it's many books I didn't enjoy in my undergrad, but they are much easier to read now I'm at the skill level I'm at! If a class is chatty and invested, it's genuinely so much fun - it doesn't feel like work. But even the quiet hungover early morning classes are rewarding, bc often people get better grades in their finals than their midterms. Even if I have nothing to do with that, and they've just gotten better on their own, it's nice to see people improve and succeed :) (and know you didn't accidentally fuck em up along the way)

#asks #anons #personal tag #i actually hadn't played much D&D when i chose it as my topic but it was the perfect subject that combined all the things I wanted to study #fan cultures; fantasy; genre snobbery; issues/discourses within contemporary fantasy; diversifying and decolonising literature etc. #and i use actual play as my close reading examples so that's fun!

[polarisbibliotheque]

Updating by writing you guys this huge post. I mean it, it's really long xD

Heeey-ho!

I know, I know, I couldn't keep my Halloween promise T-T

Tha Halloween gods are now shouting at me "HOW COULD YOU?!"

Die Halloween gods, slowly coming after me - black and white edition

As it has happened before, I'll be posting both Dante and Vergil's part during november. I'm still working on them, so it might take a while. Do apologise.

They will be here, just with a little delay. I do think Halloween should last more than just a few days, so screw it, until Christmas, it's still legal to celebrate Halloween at the Bibliothéque \o/

Now, now, for those who don't like too much talking, I'll be explaining a little bit below why I'm taking so long. Feel free to skip it if you don't want to read it, no worries ;)

(There's a "conclusion and TL;DR for those who don't want to read this whole novel" in pink down there if you want to scroll down to that point!)

As *not* expected, my health took a crazy downturn. I know I say it all the time, but hell, I've no idea what gives this time. I literally stopped everything. I spend most of the day in pain and the rest of it sleeping. That's it.

I have an appointment with my doctor next week, but I'm not too much hopeful. Last exams showed I have two ulcers - which means scarring and bleeding in the stomach - that can be literally anything.

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty worried it can be something worse than I was expecting, although it never even appeared to exist before, but well... My anxiety isn't exactly logic.

Secondly, as you guys might not know, I'm graduated in Law, worked as a lawyer for 5+ years before having a burnout and all those health issues (yeah, yeah, don't do what I've done, all that sort of thing). But something you don't know, and honestly probably only my close family knows and cares about, is that my graduation thesis was "The Conflict of Israel x Palestine and International Law".

I researched it for 3 years before defending my thesis, got a college prize for it, the professor who mentored me made a huge speech on how I proved "we women can do it on academia and research" and that my work was really nice. I'm not saying all this 'cause I'm boasting, I'm just saying I know what I'm talking about (because you know, who has never met a man who thinks their opinion is better than yours "just because" while you have a fucking huge CV on research and graduated with honors on the same matter but, somehow, you can't beat the opinion he just pulls out of his ass?).

All of this to say, I'm devastated by what's going on. This is more than politics to me. This was my thing, you know? I had a dream, stupid ~promising young woman~ dream of doing something with my intelligence to actually help people. To actually stop massacres of happening. I wanted to work at the UN, I wanted to speak with world leaders, to show people how much I can research and how much basic human rights matter so horrid things cannot happen ever again.

When the war broke and the bombings started, I followed the news. And then the news weren't reliable anymore. I started digging to find the truth - and hells, the truth is ugly and bloody. I think that's when all those last shards of dreams came crashing down. I thought I could do something, you know? Actually do something. But in the end, my parents were broke, I had to work to help at home, I kept sending my CV to the UN but I was never enough, and I just wasted my energy and health under the boots of someone who had more power and influence than me to break me and kill my career before it even started.

I felt so horribly powerless. So horribly broken. It seems stupid, but everything that is going on out there fells personal to me, I have history with it. And it broke me. Completely. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't force myself to at least watch the horrible things going on and try to like/share so the algorithm can make it reach other people.

That's all I can do.

You know, I have a lot of Vergil in me. For the things I wrote, I think you all can see I have a thing of "I never want to feel pain again and I want power so no one can never hurt me again" - that's why I think I want to kick his ass every time I see this fucking man being so emotionally constipated and ruthless because of his trauma. It's a way to protect himself, burning every path so he never feels powerless again - and I guess we all HATE to see the parts of our own personalities we hate the most in someone elese

So yeah. I know things took a dark turn on this one, but I decided to be honest with you guys - since I'm owing so many updates: the 2 Halloween fics, Nemesis and Survivor's Blood. I'm not really well currently, and only the gods know how much effort I'm making to keep it together... At least a little bit.

Physically, I'm like V. And I'm not even trying to be funny, every time I see that lil' goth twink I want to yeet him away because, hell, I'm MAD I see myself in him (mind you, I used to be more on Dante's side of the fitness spectre xD) - and not only regarding fitness, but tiredness. Falling apart. It's so... Harrowing. I think that's the word that fits the feeling better.

Mentally, I'm Vergil. I don't want to, I want to beat him with a stick, I want to yell at his face and kick his stupid ass, but damn. I get it. That crippling fear of not wanting to feel powerless again, to have people abuse you? The feeling you're trapped in your own body? The "feelings bring only pain and suffering"? The terrifying dread of discovering you failed at everything even with all your talents and never wanting to admit it? Check all of those. I hate you Vergil, but I get you.

I'm trying, though. I use writing as a coping mechanism and as a way to resolve many things mentally, but the last months have felt SO overwhelming I went back to my paralysed state of not being able to do anything and running away from things that remind me of all THAT.

You guys might be alarmed, but there's no reason to be, though. This is a ~moment~ I'm going through and I just need to sort it all out. I'm starting to get some warning signs of numbness, vivid nightmares of past issues, the paralysis, avoidance - but I've been there before. I just haven't figured out a way to pull myself together and I don't even remember how I did that once, so it might take me some time.

I don't know why, I had some sort of weird ~boost~ while thinking in the shower today, and I might know how to give the small steps to start getting back on track and gaining that momentum I need. This weekend I had to convince my mom to celebrate her birthday 'cause she's my Samwise Gamgee carrying me up Mount Doom and she wasn't in a mood to do so - therefore on monday, I have some things in mind to discuss with her and, hopefully, things will slowly go back to their place.

Conclusion and TL;DR for those who don't want to read this whole novel hahaha

THAT BEING SAID: I'm really sorry I can't deliver everything I wanted to you, guys. I didn't expect life to get so much more fucked up than it already was, but here we are. I just have to get used to the new pace of things, but it might take a while. My output of writing will be slow, but hey, after I can get out of that paralysis phase, I'll probably be writing more and posting more - 'cause I really, really love this. With all my heart.

(also, if you people see me active on my drawing thing, posting a bunch of things, it's 'cause I'm finally getting to look at all the art I've done but never posted and actually updating it and putting my art blog to some use I haven't in a while - I won't be creating new stuff. All old stuff I procrastinated as HELL and those will be some of my small steps to get out of this rut)

Now, as a last thing, I intend to use a video from a guy I always watch on youtube as some sort of guiding light in these trying times hahahaha but seriously, he has some really sound advice and he is so down to earth. Maybe someone who's going through some fucked up times can use his advice as well and unfuck their life too :)

That's it. I felt like I needed some raw honesty today. Like I said, small steps. This is part of it hahahaha

I hope you guys understand. There's nothing I love more than writing, creating something for people - and all of this, everyone I met here and every single person that uses their time, which is the most precious thing we have, to read something I wrote gives me the greatest gift I can be given. You guys have no idea how much I appreciate you and how much I don't want to disappoint you.

So thank you. I will work slowly and I will need some time to get my shit together, but I'll always be here. I'll update everything I need and won't leave you hanging but you know... It's like Dracula Daily. It starts in April and finishes by the end of the year, taking time to put the letters together.

Aaaaand, if you read Lord of the Rings, the whole adventure takes a year. We are very much conditioned to be given content constantly to keep algorithms happy, but I do have a view that humans (and art for that matter) can't keep up with being content.

Zygmunt Bauman said we live in liquid times, and made the theory that everything is liquid nowadays (for people who like sociology and philosophy, I highly recommend his books, I love him with all my heart), so we're not really used to things that are a little more... Constant. Earthy, perhaps. Slow, stable, never leaving.

I try my best to be like that, not like a liquid, inconstant, fleeting presence. I want the things I do to be part of something that will stay, and I like being someone that stays - and doesn't just flow away because everything has to be fast and ever moving nowadays. The Bibliothéque is to be like that, I think, a place that no matter what, you can come back after ten months and you'll still find me here, drinking some tea and writing stuff. And I'll be happy to see you again, for as much as you can or would like to stay :)

kinda like Dante in his lil' shop :')

That's it. Thank you for reading me mumbling nonsensically in order to tell you I will keep updating my fanfiction, even if at a slow pace HAHAHAHAHAHA

Hope you guys have a fine weekend and a good next week! I'll be always lurking around, but the creation process will be a bit slow.

Will still be here to mumble randomly about DMC and scream random things in the void though :D

*me getting ready to tackle life for the next months, going like "still heeeeeeeeere bitch!!"*

***

And I'd like to add that I searched for "Obi Wan" on GIFs to find some sassy defying mood too add here and one of the first hits was this:

I'll leave you guys on this note 'cause I'm still wheezing about it, it's so friggin' on point I can't EVEN

#polaris speaks #update #life update #writing update #personal post #personal rant #ranting #rant post #and I meant it to be a little post going like 'haha it's gonna take a while to update' #but decided to be honest #I always think it's good when people I admire admit going through tough times or trauma or being broke or just overall not good #it makes me be less harsh on myself regarding everything I guess #so I thought this vulnerability from my part could do someone some good as it does for me when other people are vulnerable #I mean I'm hating it #seriously considering deleting this post once it goes live #don't know if I'm gonna do that but for now #I hope it helps someone #I really do #(don't worry Vergil is judging me from the distance the man would probably beat the shit out of me or hug me no in betweens with him) #Youtube

[yallemagne]

Why do folk call Dracula thee book about repression when the strange case of men of inhibitions: the novel is right there

I'm so fucking angry I was writing a whole thesis in response to this and tumbles ate it.

When it comes to repression found in men, the typical stuff you see is the Oedipus complex and the idea that all men are feral animals in a perpetual rut. Not really sexy concepts.

But you know what people find sexy??

LYING ABOUT WOMEN!!

What are we even gonna do with J&H? There are no women to project the Madonna and Whore complex onto. Adapters literally have to add a love triangle in order to slutshame women, too much work. But Dracula comes prepackaged with two women to grossly misrepresent.

Blah blah, men find it sexier to lie about women than about men, most people misinterpret the whole basis of Jekyll and Hyde anyway, so they don't realize it's about repression, yada yada yada.

Gross old men like the idea of female sexual repression. Though, not in a way that they would vouch for women's reproductive rights or a female sexual revolution. They love the idea of a "good girl" who secretly wants/needs to be corrupted by their unwelcome advances. It must be a secret! She must not reciprocate! Otherwise, she'll be seen as a whore. Women with internalized misogyny feed into this too. Hate all other women because they're "sluts" but you still want sex? Write a story depicting a good girl being assaulted but paint it as "good" because "she secretly wanted/needed it".

But there's no women in the book J&H to give this treatment to. Adaptations will give Jekyll two girlfriends to match his duality or something, but they're not the focus of the story. It's all about Jekyll.

Most takes I've seen on J&H take the "the true monster is man" approach where they don't explore the themes of repression at all. We get a line about how Jekyll wants to separate good and evil, but it's either never explained or twisted around in an attempt to make him seem more sympathetic. They just simplify it to "spooky potion makes nice doctor mean :0".

Now, male sexual repression. is a fucking doozy. The common misconception is "we're all rapists but we just keep ourselves in check". People who have this viewpoint need to stop. But honestly, I haven't seen a J&H that is explicit except for the Wildhorn musical, and they make him straight in that one. There's no interest in adapting the part where... well, Jekyll is a repressed gay man who just wanted a little relief from his own repression but things all went horribly wrong. They make it more about how Jekyll is a bit of a prude, and then he drinks rude boy juice and becomes a monster.

I don't know if you've heard... but academia is scared of gay people, and Jekyll's unspoken crimes scream gay shenanigans. RLS dangles the idea that Jekyll's been sinning over our heads but won't tell us how. He says "fill in the blanks" and like??? OKAY WELL, WHAT IS STRANGELY MORE CONTROVERSIAL THAN MURDER IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND! HOMOSEXUALITY. He sneaks in the implication that everyone thinks Hyde is Jekyll's lover. Jekyll deciding from a young age: "I cannot be myself, I have to hide everything about me" is a closeted queer mood.

But do you expect people to talk about that? In this society? They just don't get it. Most people misinterpret Dracula being a story where good girls get seduced by a bad man. And then? Jekyll and Hyde is about a good boy who drinks bad boy juice. People fail to realize that Jekyll is originally a mix of good and bad and instead paint it as if Jekyll manifested some daemon with his potion. So then it isn't a story about repression in the eyes of most, it reads more like a possession story.

Also, I'd just argue Dracula is more popular. People find it sexier. There's not a swath of artwork where Hyde is skulking over a sleeping Jekyll in a suggestive manner. But look at any Dracula book cover and there's a good chance it's an illustration of Lucy's boobs. People are hornier about Dracula so they project their poor ideas about repression onto it.

#update #people ask me things #sorry like i was in a different place all day yesterday so this is super late #the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #jekyll and hyde weekly #dracula #dracula daily

[belle-keys]

I'm the Letty anon that other anon @'ed. Sorry for writing this if it's annoying, this'll be the last time I'll speak on this.

Again, my problem with Letty is that Babel is a weird 21st century-19th century hybrid insofar as Kuang nitpicks what aspects of the story she wants to keep historically accurate or not so that her book can have most of the racism a POC would experience in the 1830s and largely none of the misogyny that suit that same time period. This, I feel, is a slight at both Letty and Victoire, and it may sound a petty complaint, but Kuang wrote a book with fucking footnotes every other page so I feel like I can be a bit petty.

The thing is, women weren't allowed at Oxford until the 1920s, POC men weren't allowed to study at Oxford until the 1870s. The first Black man to get a degree in British soil did so in the 1850s, when the Edinburgh Seven weren't allowed to get their medicine diploma in the 1870s because their faculty decided admitting them had been 'a mistake', even when one of them would've graduated suma cum laude (and that was only the cherry on top, because they weren't allowed to take classes in the same rooms as their peers, they were routinely the target of violent abuse, they had to pay higher fees, etc).

I'm not saying POC wouldn't be treated horribly, because that would be the same ahistorical perspective I'm criticising Kuang for. I'm just a bit mad that Babel is so shallow sometimes when it's promoted as dark academia, has fucking footnotes and Kuang spent pages arguing against claims of historical inaccuracies (she even explained why she'd used xyz treat common among poor folks as a delicacy the rich enjoy ffs).

Also, I'm not trying to be mean, but the white women/feminists/suffragettes who helped maintain imperialism would likely not be friends with POC to begin with, never mind attempt at protecting them (ball scene, Letty is ready to punch Pandennis for wanting to compare her and Victoire's nipples), hence why I say that Letty is strange and I daresay badly written, too, because stuff like her falling for Ramy and getting into contact with the father that has disowned her doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Anyways, sorry for the spam. Anon, I'm not angry at you or whatever, just kinda frustrated by Babel because I waited a year for a book that ended up kinda disappointing me :)

So, there’s a lot going on here, but I think I expressed my own opinion about Letty as a caricature when I asnwered a few previous asks on the matter. I do agree the book is quite one-dimensional and shallow at times, but it’s set up so politically that highlighting the way it’s shallow actively goes against the central thesis of how white supremacy and British imperialism hurt people of colour and colonized nations. Letty is a rather unrealistic villainess, I agree, but regardless, Letty was a tool used to make a point about how white women and white feminism were actively hurting people of colour and colonized nations too. The original white feminists wanted equal power with white men and the ability to oppress POC the way rich white men did. And guess, what? That’s very much Letty. Letty is a tool to portray the worst parts of white feminism and upper class white womanhood. She’s really not a character at all.

Letty bides her time with the “colored folk” until she gets a chance to really choose where her loyalties lie aka not with them. Letty herself is a bit of a cartoonish character, but her actions ultimately seem quite realistic to me (aka the betrayal). You’re absolutely right that for a book that prides itself on research, it reads like the characters are millenials who were magically transported to the year 1830. It’s 2022 discourse transplanted to an 1830 setting. But Letty’s poor characterization doesn’t change what Kuang was trying to say or the point she was trying to make. And sometimes the message is more important than the execution in political novels. Kuang just went about it in a very unsubtle and Twitterish way, which is mostly okay in a politically-charged book like Babel. Once you, like me, don’t see the book as art or as a means of truly expanding consciousness, then these gimmicky tactics don’t bother you all that much.

But a word of unsolicited advice: I’d also redact that whole comparative paragraph about women and Black men at Oxford in this ask. It’s pretty irrelevant to compare the two when we’re talking about a novel where white women actively oppress MOC. It’s kinda giving “I missed the point”.

#babel #babel an arcane history #letitia price #rf kuang #colonization #victoire desgraves #ask #anon ask #dark academia #dark academia blog

[vexedtonightmares]

10 books to get to know me

thank u for tagging me ren the loml let’s get married next month @serethereal

ill give you the sun by jandy nelson - my raison d'être... the book of my life... i will never love any book like i love this one i swear to god i feel the power of a thousand suns and stars exploding inside my body whenever i read this book it's fucking lunacy it's poetry it's a painting of written word i will die with a copy of this book in my hands

a little life by hanya yanagihara - never ever read this book i will never recommend it to anyone and honestly if you can escape with your life intact and never read this book do that because fucking hell this book ruined my life in so many ways but it's also one of the most profoundly moving novels i've ever read i know there are issues that can be discussed to hell and back but none of that will change the heartbreakingly raw feeling i had in my chest reading this book and how much i love it even though it fucking killed me

the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater - i got infected with brain worms over this many years ago and i'm still not over it. the writing style is like crack to me. the characters are like crack to me. the romance is like crack to me. the plots are like crack to me. will probably always be my favorite series.

daisy jones & the six by taylor jenkins reid - one thing about me i'm obsessed with bands/music so if you write a book about the (fake) greatest band that ever lived.. what am i supposed to do other than drop to my knees and eat it up? best tjr book, i said what i said.

the locked tomb by tamsyn muir - hoooooollllyyy fuck. don't make me start about this one. i won't stop. ianthe. harrow. gideon. palamedes. necromancy. diy lobotomy. bone soup. none house with left beef. the cows. nona. everything. this series is a fucking fever dream that i never want to wake up from and it's my divine purpose to make everyone in my life read it. ianthe. again.

vicious by v.e. schwab - i love all of v.e. schwab's books but vicious is just next level i loveeee enemies i loveeeee fucked up morality i loveeee found family i loveeee homoeroticismmmmmm

these violent delights by micah nemerever - putting the homo in homicide just how i like it. i could spend HOURS dissecting a single page of this book and i would never get tired of it. micahhhh why did you have julian kiss paul on the forehead so much i'm going to KILL MYSELFFF

the secret history by donna tartt - if my reading taste could be defined in one fake genre it would be dark academia. i love it beyond belief and i will read any and every ounce of dark academia in my vicinity. tsh is the undisputed god of dark academia and i wholeheartedly agree i love this book with a fierce passion and willlll force it down anyone's throats i can

conversations with friends by sally rooney - discovered last summer that i'm a sally rooney bitch. loved normal people and beautiful world as well but smth about conversations with friends like oh boy.. life changing for me. frances... still sad the tv show was ass but i knew from the start there was no way they could properly translate the complexity of frances' inner monologue to the screen

carmilla by joseph sheridan le fanu - this truly and genuinely changed my life. lesbian vampires are in fact the thesis statement of my life, and BOY. these ones. yeah. king was ahead of his time. dracula who?

too tired to tag anyone wahoo do it if u wanna !

#tag game

[someinstant]

fic writer questions 57 and/or 65, please?

Thank you for the questions, @incognitajones!

57. Do you prefer editing as you write, or waiting until it’s finished? 

Oh boy. I used to be utterly TERRIBLE about not being able to write unless I was happy with everything that I had down on the page up to that point, and that got... really destructive and bad during undergrad, because it extended not just to writing-for-fun, but also writing-for-academia. So I was in the middle of writing my undergraduate Honors thesis, and I'd get so that I'd spend hours editing and re-editing the introductory chapter-- WHICH WAS FINE, AND HAD BEEN FOR MONTHS-- and neglecting just getting the damn bones for chapter four down on paper.

And finally I was done with having to make excuses to my thesis advisor, so I drove two hours home one weekend, and dug around in my parents' basement until I found the electric typewriter my mom used to use for her payroll business in the early '90s-- the sort that had a tiny, narrow green display strip that would let you see one line of text at a time and correct ONLY THAT, and then it would type it, bam. Down on paper.

And that's how I wrote the first draft of my undergrad thesis: one line at a time on a typewriter, because I could not trust myself with a proper word processing program. Once I had it on paper, I could-- and did-- edit it into the ground. But it was about getting the words out, and learning to just do the damn thing, and make it flow and build correctly once I at least knew the shape.

Obviously, I don't write fic on a thirty year old electric typewriter, but the exercise definitely changed the way I write in general. I know now that I need to get the shape of the story down-- maybe not all of it, but at least the major points and beats-- and THEN I can fuck around with editing. If I don't just do the damn thing, it doesn't get done.

But it doesn't matter how many times I go over something, doesn't matter that my dad was literally a newspaper editor for a dog's age and my radar for an incorrect usage of "less" versus "fewer" is Stannis Baratheon-esque: I will hit publish on a fic and immediately find at least three typos.

65. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project.

Right now? A coherent sentence. COVID just knocked me for six and I started teaching again for the semester three weeks ago, so I'm doing well to write a lesson plan. But story-wise, I really want to finish my fic about Cassian as a cook, because that moment of him entering through the kitchen in the hotel on Ferrix to look for Bix, and running into the cook there-- I have so many questions. I've got the first section sorted, but I need to get back into the swing of things for the two following.

The problem is finding the time to do it when I don't need to be doing a million other things, alas. Living alone is awesome, but it also means that when you're like, "Damn, someone needs to mop the floor," that someone is always you.

#ask game #sometimes i write things

[saucerfulofsins]

phd student here (just advanced to candidacy): i honestly feel like academia is meant to break us. my first advisor bullied me into almost committing suicide, and it's been ROUGH... but that said? i think you finishing your degree in spite of everything matters so fucking much. both on a grand scale (academia needs more people from "untraditional" educational and life experiences) and a minor scale (proving something to yourself and to the people around you who've played a part in breaking you). i believe in you because i believe in me. fighting is hard, but sometimes things turn a corner when you least expect it—networking at a conference i didn't even want to go to accidentally solved a big gap in my advising situation.

sending all the best vibes in your direction. you are smart, capable, and will end up in the right place eventually. academia destroys souls, and you're not alone. ❤️

Hey ❤️❤️

I like seeing it from that side. Maybe not doing it AS well as I could have if I'd have the circumstances other ppl write theirs in (I started mine first with a rejection of my initial topic,then switching to a topic I had taken NO courses or associated courses on, and all of this while I had the very real concerns I might have cervical cancer as a trans man... the day I found out I didn't was the day I found out my supervisor would be leaving, leaving me with about 10 weeks to write a MA thesis which obvs didn't happen and then shit REALLY hit the fan). I wouldn't consider anyone else's grade under my circumstances a true reflection of what they're worth, either. I should add that my MA program is a research master, preparing you for academia and after which you'd move on to a 3-4 yr PhD program in my country. If your grades and project are good enough, of course. Mine? Aren't.

I applied to some PhD programs last yr but only major/big name unis and I think that might have been a mistake too. I had an interview and everyone there sounded so smart, had so much background, and I'm from the countryside with parents that barely finished their high schools (with levels that wouldn't get anyone into uni).

But yeah. You're right. In the end this is one grade, and it's a passing grade, and I... I mean I won't get into a big name uni with this rn and I don't think I wanna pursue a PhD rn anyway just because of all the pain but also the backlog I have compared to everyone else there. I just really wanna figure out a way to stay involved in academia without ending up in this locked down situation where, as you say, there's an attempt to break down everyone that doesn't fit the way the established order thinks we should.

It's just super difficult to keep believing in yourself when you're turned down and turned away at every junction in your life. After so many years (I'm 31 now) it's just. There's a point where it feels too much. At the same time I took an entrance exam to uni at 21 which I failed, and which I took to be a sign I shouldn't pursue uni at all. Clearly I was wrong there. I just.

I just wish there were more ways of learning than just the one specific kind universities (and high schools for that matter) dictate rn.

I also wish you the best of luck in your own degree, now and in the future! I know a PhD is another step up from a MA and I cannot imagine how rough it must've been for you especially with your first advisor. You don't deserve that (and lbr no one does). If you ever want a listening ear abt what you're working on, even if it's something I know nothing about, feel free to contact me!

[the-resurrection-3d]

literally am rambling don’t feel like you need to read this lol 

Genuinely resent that I have to write novels to have a real writing career.  It’s not that I’m COMPLETELY uninterested in writing novels, but I feel really comfortable in this short story/essay space and I don’t feel like a lot of my ideas really lend themselves to full novels, you know? I’m trying to let stories take the form and length that best suits them. 

Saying all this because I’ve been turning over the idea of finally writing that Nickberto novel that I’ve been threatening to write and that, if I get into an MFA, I will probably have to write as my thesis. Of course, I have lots of different ideas regarding Nickberto, as you all know, so I’m still thinking about how best to approach it, and I think doing it by way of the tennis team au -- aka The Chocolate War (Abusive Gay Sex Edition) -- is probably the best, since there’s a little more going on in the actual plot than just Alberto being groomed. It’s also been apparent to me really since the beginning that literary fiction is the best space for Nickberto projects and now, with my hit counts falling, there’s less a reason to pretend otherwise. 

(For the record, when I mention falling hit counts, I’m not really bothered by this -- just that I do take audience into account when I think about what pieces should go where. I could post my big Jonah essay onto ao3 right now, but who goes onto ao3 looking for big, fragmented essays about the Bible and Orwell and suicide? When I say the EW fandom was so bad at engaging with fanfic that it drove me to traditional publishing, I’m not exaggerating.)

Sitting down to write this, though, has really led me back to the realization I had a few days ago that I can’t commit to huge revision projects when I can’t believe that what I’m doing is worthwhile. And I cannot truly believe what I’m doing is worthwhile while I’m at grad school. It’s just not gonna happen. Fall semester was the closest I’ve been to killing myself in a very long time. 

And there’s a lot I could say about that semester -- such as how many fics came as the direct result of something terrible happening in my life, like how “saint august” came directly after Noah’s grandmother’s funeral, my brother dropping out of college, and my grandmother showing up out of nowhere to accuse my grandfather of domestic violence, yes that all happened in a single afternoon-- but ultimately it doesn’t matter. Fanfic writer uses fanfic as escapism. Wow. Shocking. 

Building off of this realization, I think my reliance on the short story/essay form is emblematic of my more general inability to visualize the future much. I mean, I DO make plans, but I can’t really plan much when so many factors are far beyond my control and my industry is full of fucking clowns and academia is a nightmare hellscape. And really, this problem with struggling to maintain the faith over long projects has been a key struggle of mine since I had my huge meltdown in 2018/2019. I said this before back when I got the Best of the Net nom, but that time period really just damaged my relationship to writing itself. It’s gotten a lot better! But still. I mean the big Jonah essay I keep talking about is really about me trying to find a reason not to kill myself. 

I hope the MFA will be the reprieve I’m looking for. Gotta get into one first, of course. I just know that unless this upcoming semester is substantially better, I’m literally going to #Jonah myself if I stay here for the PhD. 

[sanguine-mirror-continuum]

Oh god help me, I'm practically writing a thesis on Our style...

The general idea of the style:

A depiction of the tension between the two halves of a soul, darkness and whimsy, horror and fairytales, 1960s psychedelia and 1980s goth to y2k's imitation of 1960s psychedelia. A retrospective and a flashback to a generation where everything feels like it was overshadowed by nostalgia for a previous decade ... Between the changeling child and the bloodthirsty vampire...

It's not refined at all. But the idea is to find the place where urban fantasy, fairytales, horror and whatever genre you wanna call BTVS, can blend together and where the various different stylistic loves of this collective of people can meet and synergize.

Fuck that feels like a total pretentious ad read, I sound like a douche. Anyway...

It's just trying to get everyone's shit to gel together.

Planning to do it by creating a set of style words and what those style words mean, then assign those keywords to specific alters - and then come up with key clothing items and say which alter they fit...

Those would be

Fun(ky): Hawaiian print shirts, kitchsy prints, 1960s psychedelia and 1970s Technicolor disco rainbow and 80s jewel toned paisely patchwork suede. Basically, shirts that are fun (kitsch) or funky (psychedelia, paisley, early 90s aesthetic patterns (Memphis something).

Dramatique: Excessive, 80s glamrock, 19th century romantic dandy, 18th century aristocratic hedonist, medieval court jester or fairytale prince (Jareth from Labyrinth is a perfect example of "dramatique")

Gothic: this includes the morbid and macabre as well as the ~romantic Victorian vampire goth~ style brocades has overlap with dramatique but is much darker and tends towards more violence. In essence, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stokers Dracula and 90s vampires covered in blood and dripping in bondage gear (Blade's aesthetic).

Academia: look, we're on Tumblr. We know what this means. Things Giles would wear on Buffy but also with a hint of 80s prep drenched in black rit dye.

Flower Child: How Roz's memories think hippie should look. Harem pants and crochet and all of that. Hard to tell if this is his brain's interpretation of 1960s aesthetic or his brief exposure to early 00s hippies through the libertarian party in Colorado... But it's not quite the same as fun(ky). Crunchier and earthier and a little more adjacent to a softer, earthier sort of modern fae perception.

Whimsigoth: Where Dramatique and Flower Child intersect with Gothic... There's some good examples of this in Buffy.

Y2K Nostalgia: mall goth and the stuff Roz liked as a six year old.

Pansy: oh boy Roz why this word okay anyway, this is just "does it tell the world I am a dirty rotten queer and a degenerate bondage pervert?" Thing kind of comes out.

Femme/Queen: OVERTLY "femme" stuff. This is all vibes that we can't 100% explain . (Could honestly call this category "Morgan" and "Florian")

I think that's a pretty approximation of the words we're working with....

Next part: who is what category...

Fun(ky): Laurent, Louis, Daffodil

Dramatique: Louis, Adam, Daffodil, Florian, Morgan

Gothic: Adam, Louis, Laurent, Daffodil

Academia: Adam, Laurent

Flower Child: Morgan, Daffodil

Whimsigoth: Morgan, Daffodil, Louis

Y2K Nostalgia: Florian, Morgan

Pansy: Florian, Daffodil, Louis

Femme/Queen: Morgan and Florian

Some key fashion items:

- fun(ky) or dramatique button downs

-gothic, dramatique, pansy and flower Child dress shirts

- turtlenecks

- fun(ky), academic and flower Child sweaters and cardigans

-fun blazers

-pointed or clunky heeled boots

-interesting pants

-slutty mesh

- too many vests with so many patterns

We've gotten....kinda sidetracked and lost sight of what we were doing. Posting this so we can check it later.

#(a rose of flesh and blood) #(sorry we are high tonight like way high and way higher than we wanted to be....)

[galacticwildfire]

Looking at your grades and realising the time to write your original novel and pray you find success is only running out by the day and becoming more necessary because fuck academia man

Slight rant below

A man who would hopefully be jailed in 2024 has a dream or produced drug fuelled thesis based on no evidence but his own perversions and it’s seen as fact, it holds the status of bible within its discipline, but I have an idea that slightly deviates and I’m a heathen

I mean fuck it, at this point I’d be better off devoting my time to writing five novels and praying one’s picked up rather than spending five years suffering through further study that I can’t afford and probably won’t get into at this point considering I had to drop a few units due to chronic illness and couldn’t get the penalty removed.

How the fuck am I meant to get documentation for bpd and pill induced permanent disassociation when they refuse to actually give me a paper diagnosis (because my doctors hate putting labels on things as much as my last situationship) but will still happily throw sedatives at me for it while telling me I have bpd but still refuse to give me documentation or a paper diagnosis.

Although considering I had a full ultrasound searching for pcos where they saw that my ovaries were covered in cysts, very clear pcos, and they didn’t even feel it was worth mentioning on the report I shouldn’t be shocked. How the actual fuck does a person who looks at ultrasounds for a living see the 14 follicles the technician pointed out on one ovary and write on the report that everything is normal. Cut to almost a year later and hormone testing told me yep, definitely pcos.

Thank god I have a new doctor now and am off those pills (Seroquel saved my life but also gave me a literal chemical lobotomy. I legit can’t remember shit and spend probably 80% of the day in a state of dererealisation and have worse comprehension skills than I did at 13). Not to mention the twenty kg weight fluctuations from going on and off it from 16-21.

As much as I dreamed of being a historian it looks like a masters ain’t gonna be happening with my gpa. I mean finding success in academia is just about as rare as finding success as a writer, at least this way I can save myself from going into even more debt because fuck Australia has some of the most expensive university fees in the world. And they decided to double the fees for humanities because “oh no, we need more people in agriculture and teaching” despite probably half of high school teachers doing a humanities degree and then a diploma of education.

With a bachelors I can still write history for public consumption I guess, non academic articles and all that along with books you’d find in public libraries, and considering academics absolutely fucking hate people in the public history sector I’m fine with that.

God it’s hard having always dreamed of going overseas and doing a masters degree and going into academia and then realising that the cost for living past the age of sixteen would be your intellectual capacity. I know I have brilliant ideas, and I can get them across in writing fiction, but academia would probably be the death of me.

At this point I’m seeing if I have the gpa to complete an honours, I have probably 8 months left on my bachelors without it. Considering I’ve written probably close to 300k words in the last year I’m aiming to get my own original manuscript done this year since they prefer beginner novelists to have between 80-100k for their first book. I’ve got a couple ideas but it’s time to decide on one and get it done. I’m debating between a sapphic tragedy and my own mythological story that would be part of an asoiaf like universe. I’m thinking the smaller project first since it would be a stand alone and to go from there. Turns out I also have 14k words worth of poetry when I compile them all into a doc so I’ll see what I can manage with that.

[papiliomemnon]

Dear Reader,

I sit in front of a mountain and I am 3500 km away from where I am writing from. Taking up space and taking up a place within the city has been an existential nightmare. How do you learn when you are actively gentrifying the city with your mere presence? How can you scathe colonial power and the rapid gentrification of the neighborhood when you yourself are gentrifying? I am gentrifier. There is no way that a building with painted versions of italian architects which was most likely created as money laundering can be called anything but a gentrifying affront to the neighborhood. The artists have deeply ingrained themselves into the contrite of bushwick, right below ridgewood, right of the J line. These artists and people work in concrete and brick, deeply ingrained themselves within the cement they work. However, even the art is gentrified, the white man sits on top of the concrete painting their portraits of celebrity figures selling them as nfts. I myself am a sad gentrifier with the white man mullet mustache and tattoos. I feel a deep pressure to work through the tapes I have collected from the conversations I have gotten, some in passing and some which required a park bench to properly process. I feel like I need to delve into the information headfirst, working my fingers until the bone exposes. How come I go into the city with the express intent of attempting to gain a further understanding of what exactly is happening only to leave with a deep sorrow and feeling of guilt? I just need a second. I feel so close to the finish line and every second feels wasted. I need some time to process and sit. I need my time to babble through my shit. I need to shit through my babble. There is merit to that, dear reader. Loco que duerme sobrevive terremoto. Sitting in washington square and discussing the issues with the Nyu kids was a gut punch. I had fallen into the comfort of academia. Fuck you, you bewitching siren. I am torn in between these two models, my finished thesis which will allow me to graduate and the active knowledge process that is needed in order to make something interesting and new. Am I other? Am I the one to separate? I need to babble my shit. I need my time to process and I need to sit in front of a camera with a glass of wine and take my talk and walk my walk and maybe that'll help. I am scared of change dear reader. Scared of having to shift my books and my story and the main ideas I was attempting to work. This is why I need to rest and sit, dear reader. I need to sit through my conversations and go through my tapes. I need to wallow in my tapes. I need to germinate and form into something new. I need to burn the film and make something new of it. So here is my proposal dear reader. Gimme some time, as the deadline fast approaches, to let the themes from within my brain. Let me become something new and wild. Let me other.