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dancingtotuyo · 9 months

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The Life We Built (Joel Miller)

Part 5 of Build You The World Joel X Reader Rating: PG-13 (Language) Warnings: fluff, that's it. Tags: no outbreak, fluff, craftsman!Joel, Time jump, it's 2023 folks, no mentions of COVID, you decide if it happened Notes: So we've reached the end of this little adventure that was only supposed to be a one shot, but never fear! I have another Joel Miller idea in the works. Check out my Masterlist for some Javier Peña works as well! Thank you everyone for your support! Words: 1998

Series Master List | Author Master list

Joel eased into the chair next to you under the pergola he built 25 years ago. It was still sturdy and spoke to Joel’s craftsmanship. The sun was beginning to set, granting some relief to the spring heat as you watched your three grown children clean up the backyard. They’d insisted the two of you relax.

Emma graduated from Duke last weekend with honors in Pre-med. Which meant traveling to North Carolina for the ceremony. Joel has insisted on driving up. He hated flying. With a 20-hour car ride one way, you caught up on a lot of reading and almost booked yourself a plane ticket home. The two of you had been gone for almost a week. So her graduation party took place this weekend at home. She’d been accepted into UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine and would be going back to Durham in a couple of weeks. She was officially moving out, boxes already stacked high in her room. You and Joel both chose not to think about your baby leaving the nest for good.

Emma laughed at something Asher said. You couldn’t see Sarah roll her eyes, but you knew by her body language. Joel chuckled next to you. He sensed it too, both in tune with your children.

Asher graduated with a Bachelor's in Engineering from UT-Austin a few years ago, choosing to stay close to home. He had a small apartment in town working at Miller Construction since graduation. Joel joked that if he didn’t put his degree to use soon, he was gonna have to rebrand as Miller and Son. You had a sneaking suspicion that’s what Asher wanted. He and Joel shared the same love of building things with their hands.

“Grandpa!” Sarah’s 3-year-old daughter, Jessie bounded across the yard, dark curls bouncing like springs behind her. You could see the brightly colored book in her grasp.

She panted heavily as she reached the two of you. Her small hands rested on Joel’s knees. She looked up through dark lashes. “Will you read this to me?”

Joel smiled. She reminded you so much of Sarah at her age. “Don’t you want grandma to do it? She’s a much better reader than me.”

“No, you!”

“Okay, Okay.” Joel chuckled, pulling the child onto his lap. You closed your eyes as you listened to Joel read. His drawl had only deepened with age but it still flowed like honey. It soothed your weary bones and often brought you through time, making you feel 25 again.

Sarah had started college at the University of Georgia but transferred to UT-Austin after her freshman year. She loved Georgia, but she missed being close to her family more. She’d earned her Bachelor's in Journalism and Creative Writing (also with Honors). Working across all aspects of journalism, she went back to get her MFA several years later. She worked freelance for several publications and taught a creative writing class at the community college in town. She’d married Mike 6 years ago. They’d been together since senior year of college aside from a one-year gap. They’d bought a house just down the street from you and Joel soon after their wedding. Jessie’s 4th birthday was next week, and aside from her husband, you were the only other person to know that Sarah was 8 weeks pregnant. They were planning to reveal it next on Father’s Day.

You and Sarah were convinced Joel didn’t have a clue. The two of you were desperate to surprise him. Other than his 45th birthday party, you and Sarah hadn’t been able to surprise Joel in the 31 years you’d loved him. He’d even figured out Sarah’s first pregnancy before they’d told anyone.

Joel continued to read. The world drifted further away only anchored by the sound of his voice. Sometimes a bird’s song drifted in and out. The warm breeze floated across your skin. Joel’s voice stayed constant.

“Grandpa… Shhhhh, grandma is sleepin.”

Joel looked up from the book. He smiled. The wrinkles around his eyes were well-defined now. “I think she’s just restin her eyes, kiddo.”

“That’s what you say when you’re sleeping!” Jessie giggled.

“Keep reading,” you said, keeping your eyes closed. “The story was just getting good.”

He looked at Jessie who nodded her head, and he continued.

The construction business had been good to Joel. Miller Construction kept its outstanding reputation throughout the years, something Joel worried about as the number of crews grew and his ability to check up on every job decreased. Joel spent most of his days on job sites in a supervisory capacity. He trained the new hires to meet his rigid standards, and his body took less wear and tear. He was able to spend more quiet morning moments with you. At 56 years old, he was still the best pitcher in the men’s rec softball league. He took every Thursday morning off to hang out with Jessie while Sarah taught her class at the Community College. He piddled in the garage on weekends, working on the next project. He’d just redone the kitchen cabinets. Tommy joked that Joel lived in partial retirement, but there was some truth to it. You liked seeing him take time

Joel finished the book as Sarah and Mike walked over. You slowly opened your eyes, letting the world envelope you once again.

“It’s time for us to go home, Bear,” Mike said.

Before Jessie could issue a complaint, Joel pulled her into a back-breaking squeeze. She laughed. He tickled her sides. “Grandpa!”

“I gotta make sure you meet your tickle quota.”

“I have! I have!” Jessie laughed, her cheeks turning red.

“Okay,” Joel let out a deep breath. “I think that’s enough for today.”

Jessie wrapped her arms around Joel’s neck, kissing his cheek. “Love you, Grandpa!”

“I love you too.” He kissed her cheek, patting her back. “I’ll see you on Thursday.”

Jessie slid off his lap, rushing to you. A chorus of goodbyes between parties rose in the corner of your backyard in hugs and handshakes. Jessie nestled into her father’s arms, eyes already beginning to droop.

Joel wrapped his arms around you. You leaned into him. His hands traveled down your back, lips finding yours. You grinned feeling warm and giddy. Even after all these years, he still had the same effect on you.

Gagging noises interrupted your moment. Asher and Emma stood on the porch directing said sounds at you.

“Get a room!”

“We don’t want to see that!”

Joel flipped them off before firmly grabbing your ass making a show of the steamy kiss he planted on you. You laughed. He kissed your neck softly.

“You’re gonna traumatize the kids.”

“They’re grown adults. They can leave.” He nuzzled into your neck. “I want to kiss my wife in our backyard.”

“Y’all are gross.” Asher chided.

“If it weren’t for us, you two wouldn’t be here,” Joel shouted back.

“You say that like it’s a good thing!” Emma responded. “Have you seen the world?”

“Hey,” You laughed. “You’re the saving grace of this family, Miss I’m going to be a doctor.”

Asher scowled. “Don’t say that. Her head will get bigger than it already is.” He ruffled Emma’s hair.

Emma rolled her eyes. “We’re done cleaning up. We’ll leave you two to do… that.” She motioned toward you and Joel. “Asher’s gonna take me out on the town.”

“Make smart decisions,” Joel called.

“Always!” Emma smiled.

The duo filed out of the backyard leaving you and Joel alone. Joel kissed your forehead as you swayed to a nonexistent tune.

When you finally stopped, you and Joel sought the respite of AC inside. Joel prepared a plate of leftovers for the two of you to share on the couch. You read as Joel watched the Baseball game on low volume. You propped your feet on his lap. His thumbs found the soles of your feet applying pressure. You hummed.

You had stepped down from your position at Miller Construction after Emma started high school. As much as you loved working with Joel and helping him build and expand the business, desires drew you elsewhere. You started working part-time at the public library. When their head librarian announced plans to retire, the city had offered to pay for you to get your Masters in Library Science providing you could give them a 10-year commitment. Daunting at first, you’d managed to complete the courses in 2 years via an online program. You work at the library full-time now. Joel often brought Jessie in on Thursday mornings along with a coffee for you. You tended to the garden on weekends. Joel replaced your raised beds a few years ago. You had the kids over for dinner once a week. You and Sarah walked the block on pleasant evenings. You spent lazy evenings on the couch with Joel, something that had rarely been a part of your marriage until the past few years.

“I’ve been thinking…”

You looked up from your book. “Uh oh, that’s never good.”

He tickled the bottom of your foot earning a squeal. Everyone talked about growing out of being ticklish. That had never happened to you. “I think it’s probably time to refinish the book nook.”

You glanced behind you, eyes trailing over the bookshelves Joel had built you more than 25 years ago. They’d been through it. The finish was peeling in a few places. The cabinet doors that lined the bottom were dented and scratched from a number of things bumping and running into it while raising 3 kids. You glanced at the farthest one, still stained with faint marks from Emma taking Sharpies to it when she was 3. Residue from stickers marked other areas.

“Sounds like a big project.”

“I’ve got the time.” Joel smiled.

He reached down beside him, revealing a gift bag. A simple brown paper bag with a gold ribbon neatly tied and curled. Sarah’s trademark. He handed it to you with a smile.

“This from you or Sarah?”

“Me.” Joel crinkled his nose. “Just asked Sarah to wrap it for you.”

You lifted the bag up and down. It felt like it was probably a book. It rarely wasn’t. “And what is this for?” You smiled at him.

“Just fulfilling my husbandly duties.”

You laughed as you untied the ribbon. Joel had taken your first line to him like an oath over the course of your relationship. He’d surprised you with a new book at random times. Sometimes you came home to one on the kitchen counter or your nightstand. Other times, wrapped or handed to you, each with an inscription detailing something he loved about you and how “Pretty” didn’t cut it.

You smiled at him, pulling a hardcover book out of the bag. You opened the front cover. A piece of paper slipped out. Before you could investigate, Joel’s handwriting caught your attention.

I don’t know if you’ve been counting, darling, but this is the 100th book I’ve given you. When I met you in that bar, I knew if I had the chance to give you just one, I’d be the luckiest man alive.

We always talked about going on a big trip for our 25th wedding anniversary. I know it’s a little bit late, but I booked us on that trip to Italy you were eying last year.

I’m sure it’ll be beautiful, but I still think the best view is you.

I love you, Darling.

You picked up the slip of paper: the booking confirmation set for mid-September. You looked up at Joel, tears blurring your vision.

He chuckled. “Surprise.”

You set the book carefully on the end table, moving onto Joel’s lap. “You hate flying.”

“But I love new places.” He kissed your nose. He still looked at you like you hung the galaxy. You imagined you looked at him the same. “And you.”

You kissed him, the words whispered for just the two of you. “I love you too.”

#joel miller #tlou #the last of us #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #pedro pascal #build you the world

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scintillyyy · 8 months

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was finally able to watch some more firefighter show

listen this whole "balace the ledger" thing the captain has going on continues to be deeply unhealthy. he should not be in this profession. at all.

oh god i forgot they made him a dude whose blood has high anti-d antibodies, so he can donate to help make rhogam. thanks for your service, captain needs to quit. as someone who has gotten like. 4 doses of rhogam i appreciate your service. and he's bitching about it. actually dude, i don't want your anti-d. please keep it. (i know i'm supposed to feel bad for him, but i don't. i really don't.) (all respect to james harrison, though, the man from australia whose plasma donations have saved more than 2.4 million babies (including one of his grandchildren!)

okay. i hate to say it, especially as someone who hates trophy hunting. but they would still very much kill the tiger no matter what public sentiment said, sorry. i highly doubt that they would have done anything but shoot on sight.

okay. okay. back to the dumb blood plotline. so. i am a little confused here. like. 1) from the get go. why. why. why are these stranger bitches being let into the nicu (? i'm assuming that's where they're at). that shit is so locked down it's not even funny. they don't just. let people in to see the babies. not on l&d, not in the regular mother-baby unit, and especially not the nicu. even pre-covid, my cousin had a baby in the nicu and it was very. one person could go at a time and you had to be specially let in. 2) okay so maybe the dad did let them in because captain's blood saved their baby's life or something. like it is a blood donation, not an organ donation. you don't know whose blood it is, it's all pooled together. and even if he had special rhogam blood that specially went to this baby....that's not really how this works re: rhesus disease???? i have some questions.

(side note the absolute hilarity of that scale for that baby saying 2.268 lbs....i know you can't have uber premature babies on tv but that's a full 10 lb baby on there. also, that is such an arbitrarily low number, but if it was real, that baby would not just be getting blood. i cannot emphasize how much that baby would be hooked up to, including, most importantly. oxygen. and would likely be in an incubator. there's just so much wrong here.)

anyways back to rhesus disease, let's talk about rhesus disease. so rhesus disease nowadays is incredibly rare, because of rhogam. rhesus disease occurs when a mother becomes isoimmunized to her baby due to the mother having a negative blood type and the baby a positive one and her blood cells start to destroy the baby's blood cells in utero causing anemia and jaundice, in worst case scenarios stillbirth. prevention is key and we are very good at preventing it. the key is to give the mother anti-d, and tricking her body into thinking it's already produced anti-d so then the mother won't produce her own anti-d if and when her blood comes into contact with the rh positive blood of her baby. so with prenatal care you generally get blood typed at your first visit so they know if you're positive or negative. if your blood type is unknown, they treat you as negative because it doesn't hurt to get anti-d. you get anti-d with any potential chance you may have come into contact with your baby's blood. any bleeding in early pregnancy, you get it (you have to get in like 72 hours after bleeding). you also get it standard at about 28 weeks (because the anti-d lasts in the blood for about 12-14 weeks and should cover through the baby's birth). when you have the baby, the baby gets blood typed and if the baby has positive blood for sure, you get it again. this will almost always successfully prevent the mother from becoming isoimmunized for future pregnancies and protecting her next children from the potential for rhesus disease.

because firstborn children (like the one captain gave his blood to) don't generally get rhesus disease, because a mother doesn't generally become isoimmunized until after she's given birth to her first child and come into contact with the baby's blood for the first time (because that's most likely happen during childbirth). even if the first time mom got exposed during the pregnancy without getting rhogam, she generally won't have produced enough anti-d to meaningfully attack the baby's blood cells by the end of the prengnacy, but she will by subsequent pregnancies. so the firstborn isn't generally at risk for getting rhesus disease. another thing you get tested for in pregnancy is whether or not you are isoimmunized and if so, how badly. if it comes back positive for anti-d, your prengancy is monitored very, very carefully. they monitor how bad it is, and they can do in-utero blood tranfusions if necessary should the fetal anemia be really bad.

so yea. i am not only shocked by this firstborn baby's rhesus disease (because that would assume the mother was already isoimmunized for some reason, which i suppose is technically possible if she had a previous miscarriage, but we're getting into highly unlikely territory here because if it was an early enough miscarriage the embryo wouldn't have been producing it's own blood type yet and if it was late enough she would have been known to be rh negative and received rhogam-) i am also raising my eyebrows at the fact that captain's lifesaving blood got sent directly over to this baby with rhesus disease ~to save her~ because saving babies from rhesus disease has nothing to do with transfusing special anti-d blood to babies (which probably does nothing special for them) and everything to do with preventing rhesus disease from even developing by giving the mother rhogam. mr. james harrison's blood plasma hasn't gone to babies--it's gone to mothers. because giving a rh positive baby anti-d doesn't do anything special for them--it's the mother who needs it so her blood doesn't attack the baby! (what i'm saying is that they probably essentially wasted captain's blood by transfusing it to the baby--that baby can probably just get regular blood without special anti-d antibodies transfused to help with anemia, along with phototherapy for jaundice and ivig as needed). so what is happening here. why. (i mean, i know why it's so chim can show captain in person how his blood will ~save the lives of babies~ and it's not near as exciting as going to an ob appointment to watch a woman get a 5 second shot with a sourpuss on her face cause it burns like a mofo but what they did instead is really, really not how it works-).

also, let's talk about james harrison's blood. he um. he wasn't born that way y'know...his blood produces a vast amount of anti-d antibodies because when he was 14 he underwent a chest surgery and received 13 units of blood. my guess is he is rh negative and received some rh positive blood at this time and as a result became incredibly isoimmunized (so how is captain's blood a match for him, hmmmmm?), which mycauses him to produce a lot of anti-d and would produce even more following donation. also. he didn't donate blood. for the anti-d it was far more efficient to donate his plasma (in fact, rhogam is made from donated plasma, not blood), which he did. an average of once every three weeks from the time they found out about his blood until 2018 for a total of 1173 donations, when he became ineligible to donate more at the age of 81. captain, you will never be on his level.

not much else to say about the end of season 1 tbh except good old romancing the uniform.com. you know i do think it's realistic to have a first responder dating site. farmers only is a thing after all. and women love first responders, or as my aunt put it when she found out i was dating a firefighter - "you have to be careful, scintilly, because women, they see these pensions and these good benefits and they just throw themselves at firefighters and will try to steal them" (she had a bad experience with this happening to my cousin. i still joke with my husband about all the women who throw themselves at him. they're tumbleweeds.)

and finally goodbye and godspeed abby. get out of this mess. i mean, you were also very much a part of this mess. but still. can't wait for you to probably become the bad guy for moving on because your actress didn't continue with the show when i'm sure they could instead do a "we drifted apart naturally" as a way of writing out your actress.

anyways currently starting the first episode of season 2, and lol at buck talking like a 45 year old old guy about "respect". that's the energy of the drunk guy who would ramble on about nothing during my husband's virtual union meetings during the height of covid. eddie being former military is very realistic, there's a lot of preference to get former military on public jobs.

#some firefighter bullshit

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itwasthisorthemilitary · 25 days

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April 5, 2024

Judgement day.

And I couldn’t be happier that my bracket was SO wrong. I hate to admit it, Francisco crushed this.

On April 18th I will be headed to Los Cañones, Panama Oeste. Approx population 200-250. Super rural. Electricity will be an issue but cell service and water are pretty reliable. Xavier knows the town and told me that there’s an orange orchard, a big river, and lots of kids. I’m only about 30 minutes away from Los Mortales.

Along with me in Panama Oeste are 🥁🥁🥁

CAITLIN, Sam, Maddy, Sophie, and Janet. It’s a motherfucking SQUAD. I’m so excited. When the big reveal happened and we all flipped our folders over, Caitlin and I were standing next to each other and it was the most relief I’ve ever felt. That girl is gonna be my neighbor the rest of my life i swear to god. I never believed I’d be in the same region as her and now I’m letting myself be excited. And let me tell you…our families are FREAKING OUT. They are so happy because we are so close. They all cried. Sughedys told me that if i hate my new family i can just come live with her again and we don’t have to tell the Peace Corps anything.

THEN in my packet of information, they mentioned the name of the last volunteer who was in this site, pre covid. Naturally i found him on Instagram in about 7 seconds and started messaging him. He returned to Panama after his service was terminated early due tot he pandemic and now he runs a hotel in Veraguas, Panama. So essentially, he’s amazing. He’s been messaging me all night and says he still goes back to visit Los Cañones because they’re his family now. Every message he sends just elevates this to such a new level of realness. He and his brother are going to visit me the day after I move there to show me around and introduce me to people.

Today felt insane. The anxiety and nerves and energy was really stressful and although I couldn’t be happier and was so relieved, the comedown from all the emotions made me jittery and exhausted. I’m nowhere near Audrey, Liv, or Carlo. We all are making plans to see each other but who knows the reality of how well we will execute those plans. Liv is so far and I know she’s scared because she’s hours away from other volunteers, whereas i can walk to Sam in less than an hour. I’m tempering my excitement around her, but she knows that’s what I’m doing and there’s no way to diminish her fears until she’s there and it all works out. Geographically she’s got one of the coolest sites, so i intend on keeping my visiting pact.

Feeling crazy, and sleep doesn’t want to greet me again. Unfortunate considering I’m headed to Panama City at 6 am tomorrow.

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nancydrewwouldnever · 1 year

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I feel like the majority of his impetus behind ASP was his disgust with Trump. It feels like it was his more physical manifestation of his anti-Trump stance, beyond his tweets of the time. I feel like once Trump lost re-election in 2020 his politics interest started waning big time.// I noticed this too. I started questioning it ever since he brought the idea forward and doing interviews about it. It felt like a vanity project against trump with interviews of not so great republicans. Then once trump started going downhill and lost, his interest in it has almost disappeared. I wonder if he feels like he accomplished anything with ASP. I don’t think we’ll ever know but from the outside looking in, it doesn’t feel that way to me. However I do think it could’ve been a very decent political site if there was just more of a long term focus and determination about it. He’s just not a person who has that, in my opinion.

So, obviously, I'm using some older asks still in the inbox to spur some things I'm thinking about while I have asks off.

While I do believe in the loss of interest after Trump was out of office, I also want to talk about what ASP might have accomplished for Chris, even half-heartedly.

Let's not kid ourselves that ASP was not a cog in the wheel of a larger PR persona soft pivot strategy. Let's take a look:

The Wired Interview, January 2020 (clock when the interview actually happened though, October 2019 in L.A.)

So this was done not too many months after the Hollywood Reporter Interview of early 2019 that also teased the "quasi-retirement" angle and talked about ASP as well:

So, like any good business venture, using the year previous to launch to tease out the product. (The product being the reinvented post-Marvel Chris Evans.)

Then, a feather in the cap that would have hit at the same time as ASP's initial launch, had it not been for Covid, the Time Magazine May 2020 inclusion article:

But, to me, the real big score for any politico, a write-up in The Washington Post, October 22, 2020:

They even came to his MA house for the photoshoot, due to Covid.

The rebrand/pivot continued into 2021, post-election, but pre- him going back to more regular filming scheule. The Newsweek article, June 18-25, 2021 cover edition:

So, here we had it, the real gain from ASP, the post-Marvel all-grown up new Chris Evans PR persona. Yay.

Too bad whatever personal life decisions he made half-way through 2021 completely blew this up.

I would have liked to have seen where this version of Chris could have gone. (And I guess we'll never see this again, because he seems to have no interest in it anymore.)

#ask #ASP #interview #2020 #2021

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lol-jackles · 9 months

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But why are are actors expecting to work for few years and be able to get residuals or money from that work for lifetime? Normal jobs don't work like that? We work for few years with an organization, get our salary, and when we leave our jobs we get nothing more from that company. I've never understood why actors expect to keep getting something for life? Am I missing something? I'm not from US so I don't know how the normal blue/white collar salary structure works there. I can understand if an actor is paid less for a job and they want to be paid more for that specific time/contract. But to keep on making money from one time job for life? I just don't get it.

You sound like a studio executive back in the 1950s. Back then, actors didn't make anything beyond what they made during production. The main argument for residuals is studios are re-selling the same product over and over again for years, decades even. If you made one unique lemonade that was so good that your boss keeps selling and re-selling your one lemonade for years and pocketing the profit, wouldn't you feel you should get a cut of the profit too?

Ronald Reagan was the SAG President back in the 1950s and he was able to negotiate residuals for TV actors, but movie studios executives said a hard no. Why? Because television was killing the movie industry. Today studios are complaining that less people are going to movie theaters since Covid. Same thing was happening in the 1950s, theater attendance fell by 65% thanks to television.

Studio executives told Reagan, "Why should any employee be paid more than once for the same job?". So Reagan had to up the ante and authorized the actor strike of 1960. After 5 weeks of high-stake contentious showdown with studio executives, they finally agreed on residual systems for all films produced from 1960 and onward, and retroactive residuals for most but not all films pre-1960, meaning Reagan would not be getting residuals for some of his early films.

Since 1960, about $8 billion in residuals have been paid out to actors and their heirs and supported the middle class for the next 50 years. And, thanks to Reagan and the strike he engineered, working actors are also eligible for both health insurance and a pension. This is one of the reasons why I always had a soft spot for President Reagan (for non-American readers, Reagan went on to become U.S President in the 1980s and was one of the most popular President in history).

"I've never understood why actors expect to keep getting something for life?"

The short answer is actors are paid 60% of their salary during the first few years of the show, banking on they will be paid the rest after 4 years when the show is syndicated, and if they're lucky they'll make 60% more than their previous salary. So if you were only paid 60% of your salary for the first 3 or 4 years of your job, you bet you would want to be paid the rest through residuals that will push your salary over 100%. And if your show is a hit, your pay raise will go though the roof.

Actors outside of the U.S system are usually paid upfront. A few European actors during the '90s and '00s tried to convince their colleagues to convert to the residual systems, but most actors couldn't conceive the idea for waiting for the rest of their salary a few years down the line even if they can reap far larger fiscal benefits.

However you may think of the residual system, for 50 years it supported the middle class in Hollywood. The middle class is what prevents a country from de-evolving into a third world country. Now Hollywood has become a third world country with just the rich and the working class, like a less fun version of Veronica Mar's life in the town of Neptune.

#residuals #sag aftra #SAF AFTRA strike #wga strike

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mushroompone · 3 months

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Hello! I really love your writing and with all the hype going with the mlp infection/zombie I was wondering how do you approach writing horror/gore? I mostly like to write slice of life, romantic, fluffy stories, so whenever I try to write something darker, a zombie apocalypse for example, the violence feels juvenile and the horror falls flat. Your stuff is absolutely terrifying and amazing, so I'm just sitting here wondering how?? I know that's a broad question, but I would appreciate a peek into your thought process for writing horror. Thank you and have a good day!!

Oh my gosh you're so kind!! First off, thank you! I have really enjoyed writing horror for this community for many years now, and it's been sorry cool to see this massive interest during of of nowhere for MLP horror content!

Second, definitely a broad question, but I can offer some broad tips in response:

(1) Work with what scares you. Horror actually comes naturally to most of us, you just have to be willing to explore some of the darker corners of yourself. Consume horror as much as possible and try not to shy away from what scares you. Most importantly, though, understand why you find it scary. This leads to step 2...

(2) Drill down to the core fear. There's a lot of creatures and things that pop up in horror again and again: ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and certainly zombies. But to work with these effectively we have to understand why they scare us. The answer is different for everyone! Let's take zombies as an example: for me, zombies are scary because they are infectious. I find plagues and diseases to be really really scary, even pre-covid lol. For others, it's more about loss of control - becoming a zombie means becoming an animal, or something else inhuman. Dig until you find the why. Then...

(3) Give someone the worst day possible. Picking your protagonist is critical. The monster has to be difficult for them to face! So think about what will play well off your core fear. If you've found zombies as your monster and distilled that to loss of control .. well, Luna would be a great choice! She's all about loss of control. That's super scary and very real for her. If you're going in more of an infectious disease direction, Twilight would make more sense - she would make a very believable germaphobe, yet still be driven to help those around her and find a cure. If you do it right, all you have to do is...

(4) Sit back and let it happen. It helps to have a destination in mind (even if it's as simple as "happy ending" or "real downer"), but if you've set yourself up this way you've got a concept and you're ready to let it rip. Start writing. Be gross. Scare yourself. Look over your shoulder and wonder who might be watching you. If you get stuck, ask yourself this: how could this possibly get any worse? Then do that. With pizzazz.

The details of writing prose that is gooey, gory, and chilling come from reading. You'll start to get a feel for where to linger, where to hold back, where to describe, and what to leave up to your reader's imagination. The hardest part is the balancing act - keep some things obscured. Leave some mystery while making it clear what is scary and why. However, once your audience knows the precise size and shape of what they're dealing with, it becomes a lot less scary! My rule of thumb is that I never want my audience to be able to plan a way around the danger. They should never be able to devise their own means of escape - something should always be left uncertain or shrouded in darkness.

I hope this helps!! If you'd ever like someone to look at what you're working on, I love beta-reading pony horror :) actually, come to think of it, I love beta-reading all horror!

Again, thank you! Your an earned my heart ❤️ I love hearing that my sacred are still scaring!

#im in quite a few mlp discords that are very interested in mlp horror also #so if you ever wanted to join a community like that im happy to share!#but since i dont own those discords im not willing to just post willy-nilly #idk maybe i should make an evil horse discord...#mlp #mlp horror #mlp fim horror #mlp fic #mlp fim fic #mlp fim horror fic #mlp fim #my little pony

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writer-and-artist27 · 9 months

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[Image Description: A colored pencil split-screen drawing of a brunette bespectacled Master huffing for breath, six-pointed blue stars shining in her brown eyes despite her apparent exhaustion, while an orange-haired May King of an Archer reels back from implied shock and growing awe. Both figures are illuminated by a rough colored pencil outline of their respective colors, being pink and green respectively. At the top left corner of the drawing is the creation date, being "8/12/2023." End Description.]

If there's one story of @partialdignity's that I've been going back to lately since isolating from COVID, it's Swell of Affection that portrays the moment Master Vy had given Robin his first Grail. (Thank you again for writing it, Carim, I still love it a lot. Very very much so.) And since Oshi no Ko has been on the brain (no thanks to my buying up the English volumes of the manga and listening to the B-Komachi Song "Sign is B" pre-isolation), I wanted to draw one of the pivotal moments of that story, being when Vy tugged at Robin's sleeve and used her voice over her whiteboard just to tell him how much he meant to her.

It felt right using Oshi no Ko's stars to show what Robin saw (more so since I've made it writing canon Vy gets stars in her eyes when particularly emotional/determined since the LB6 arc at least), and for my first drawing in 3 months, I feel pretty alright with this. Had to stare at my copies of the Salem manga, a web-posted doujinshi, Robin's character sheets in both Wada Arco's recent artbook and FGO materials, and some Oshi no Ko fanart, but here we are.

My real life Robin told me how it took a few months for him to realize he was in love with me (which is embarrassing to look back on because past me had no idea), and since then, I wanted to show how things happened in-story at least.

Now to draw more when I get more confidence.

#art stuff #passing days #concept art #mastersona vy #robin hood (fate)#implied robinvy #yes i did use oshi no ko as inspiration #fate grand order #also the irony of master vy having blue stars is not lost on me #considering i started with tomo having blue eyes

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writingwell · 1 year

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Could you write a fic where Beckett has been sick for a bit and keeps insisting it’s a cold before Castle forces her to take a Covid test preferably pre-couple pretty pleaseeee🙏🏼

pre-couple but covid, idk what time machine shenanigans would go on for that, so i made it tried-to-be-a-couple didn't-work might-try-again-any-day. you might not be looking for that. but here you go:

What started innocently enough soon turned vicious: from a tickle to a hellacious barking, sniffing when she drank a freshly made cup of espresso to vampire sneezing explosively in rapid succession.

Every eyebrow in the bullpen went up. Every eye turned her way, suspicious and damning.

She seemed to notice her audience, turned to him instead, glaring as she spat, "It's not covid!"

"Uh-huh," he answered. Both hands raised in surrender.

But they all knew.

(Well, they all suspected, because it was 2022, and they were midway through boosters and Delta/Omicron and Great Flu Resurgence and some of the beat officers were getting RSV on top of that and then a stomach flu went around when the masks came off in the precinct, and really, coughing and sneezing and a scratchy voice—what else could it be?)

No one was immune to the suspicion, just as no one was immune to covid but in the window of time afforded to one by the life of the vaccine or a previous bout with the novel corona virus, and well, everyone had their own story to tell, much like after 9/11 when that was the first thing people talked about in the street or meeting for a drink, where were you, only now it was how many of your family died or how long were you laid up?

Rick Castle cornered her (not too closely, no; he knew she was contagious and he didn't want his mother getting it, vaccinated or not) in the parking garage of the Twelfth before she could ride up to Homicide.

"It's not covid," she hissed, before he could even speak.

"So take a test," he answered easily. "Put our minds at ease."

"I did. I have. I've taken three," she hissed.

If he stepped back to avoid whatever sprayed from her hissing, could you blame him? "This morning? Before the call about the body?"

"Last night," she said. A grudging hesitation. "It was negative last night."

"Okay, then maybe go to the City clinic," he said amicably. "Could be strep." Or whooping cough.

"I don't feel bad, no body aches, no fever—"

"Alexis got strep every winter until she was thirteen. That year, no strep! We joked she'd grown out of it. But then her best friend, after every sleepover, would mysteriously come down with strep and Alexis wouldn't. Friend's mom made me take her in and get tested. Sure enough, she was asymptomatic."

"It's not strep," Beckett answered. Scathingly, but she was the Captain, and she did often push him aside when she needed to get going and he was being difficult.

(Busy woman, the Captain of the Twelfth. He was often being difficult, considering he wouldn't quit her and she wouldn't commit to him.

But she wasn't wrong, since she had a press conference to get to and a Homicide division to micro-manage. Whoops, did he say micro-manage? He was being mean. In his own head. To the woman of his dreams/nightmares.

Theirs was often a love-hate relationship these days.)

He kept silent, rode the elevator up with her. He made her a cup of espresso in the break room while she prepped for the press conference. Granted, he was rushing to get it ready—coffee was still their love language, despite the bumps in their road—but when she took a sip and her face blanched, he knew.

"Ahem. Funny taste?"

"It's not covid, Castle."

At the press conference, she was in the middle of her rundown on the DB—okay, yes, Castle should have been listening but the guy had been a jackass member of City Council who had tried to get her fired—and her voice cracked.

She cleared her throat. Coughed delicately into her fist. Tried again.

Her voice broke like fine porcelain in the hands of underpaid movers, and the first question from the press was, Are you coming down with something?

She steadfastly refused to look at him. Deny deny deny, and she was getting good at it, as the Captain of the Twelfth, had to give her that.

He was home that night working on book edits—he was giving Nikki Heat a vicious bout of covid, laying her up in her apartment, when a murderer comes to call—when his phone vibrated off his desk and dropped to the floor.

Her face the ID. From that ill-fated night in his bed. She had changed it twice before he'd discovered a passcode to his phone she couldn't guess/wheedle from his mother. Even now, it filled with him a melange of dread and sweetness, terror and tenderness.

"Captain Beckett, you rang?"

"Castle—"

"You sound awf—"

"I have covid."

"I know," he murmured, rising to his feet. "I bought chicken soup from the Czech deli on my way home, and I have a guy on speed dial who can prescribe you paxlovid."

"The drug? I heard it gives you rebound covid."

"That's not because of the drug," he told her, gathering his keys and wallet, his jacket. "It's just a thing some people get, treatment or no."

"Okay," she croaked. "Get me drugs."

"I'll be right there."

He arrived forty-seven minutes later with the prescription, chicken soup, a package of KN95s, his laptop, and a determination he'd not felt since that botched night.

She took it all.

She wore the mask, laid on the couch in the living room with her face to a satin pillow, her eyes slitted like a cat, and watched him make edits on the book.

"Did you give her covid?" she rasped.

"Yes."

She didn't answer. Merely watched him.

He submitted his first round of edits and made her a bowl of soup, wore his own mask but wouldn't isolate from her as she sipped the broth. Her throat worked as if each swallow was pain. Her eyes had dark rings, bruised-looking, and her hair was limp. She coughed and they both flinched.

He fished a water with electrolytes from his bag of provisions, opened it for her because her fingers looked fragile. She drank. She eyed him.

She fell asleep with the bowl against her chest, half drunk. He took it from her, put the water on the floor close at hand, couldn't resist pushing the hair back behind her ear.

He bent low. Held his breath for an instant before he confessed: "I didn't want to. But. I still love you."

-----

#castle fanfic #castle one shot #three words prompt #short fic #chezchuckles

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beauty-grace-outer-space · 7 months

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Oh my god I'm going to lose my mind.

Back in Fall of 2017, I auditioned for a local professional choir. I got in, I joined up, yippee. I did the fall/winter season and then returned for the spring season, and it was fun. I did choir my entire life growing up, audition/honor choir 12-18, and musical theater in college. I had missed singing with other people a lot, and it seemed like a good opportunity to be social and get to sing in a group. I even got a few solos; good times.

Fast forward to Fall of 2018. I return for the fall/winter season. Shit is hitting the fan with my grandmother and that whole situation. My mental health is in the gutter. My self esteem tanked out entirely. I was barely making it through. Then the conductor starts introducing "choreography" and I tried, I really did, but I ended up leaving rehearsals (repeatedly) in tears because I was so embarrassed. Finally I hit a breaking point and went "I can't do this anymore, I need to get myself together". So I made my apologies, notified the proper people, and withdrew from the choir. Thought about going back in 2019... didn't. Then COVID hit, and things went virtual for 2+ years. I wasn't interested. Then my mom got hurt, and I have essentially been a caretaker since then. My time was not my own. The choir started meeting in person again this January. I missed singing. I missed the people. I rejoined. Six weeks later, my uncle got sick and died very suddenly. It was extremely traumatic for my family. I became overwhelmed emotionally and in regards to time management. When it became clear I was going to miss more than three rehearsals, I made my apologies and withdrew from the choir, but always with the intention to return for the Fall season. This is something I made explicitly clear to the conductor, the manager, and the staff as a whole. Then in August, my grandmother died very suddenly. Far less emotional fallout, but my time was-- once again-- not my own. I had no idea what dates or deadlines we'd be dealing with, what all needed to be done, etc. but I knew we would have to clean out their apartment, move my grandfather in with family, and handle all of the post-death bureaucracy. The choir season started; I did not join. One week later, everything wound up resolved and wrapped up and I realized I really miss choir and will be able to make rehearsals, at least September - December... so I send a message to the conductor asking if it's alright that I return. No response. I messaged a friend who is in the choir and she told me to just come to rehearsal (something that is done all the time). I notified the manager and relevant staff, filled out the paperwork, and went to rehearsal. I had the most fun I've had in weeks. People were excited to see me, and I them. The music for this season is gorgeous and it felt good to remember that I can look at music and know how it reads and how to perform it. It felt good to remember another language I speak outside of writing alone in my room: music. I went out for drinks after with one of my closer friends in the group and we chatted for hours. I made plans to hang out with a few others, and I got excited about the prospect of the retreat this weekend, spending a whole day working on music in a beautiful building instead of the usual pre-birthday sobbing alone in my room for three straight days. And then the conductor emailed me. I am certain I'm reading too much into it, but it basically said, "You're a flake and I want you to think long and hard about the commitment you're willing to make to this choir." And she CC'd the new head of the organization, a woman who has never met or spoken to me. All the good feelings instantly vanished. I'm sad and frustrated and angry. I waited a while, and cried a lot. I drafted a few different replies. I finally returned her email (and CC'd the same person so she'd see my reply as well). I politely but pointedly said "I had two deaths in the family this year unexpectedly, which changed my schedule dramatically in a way that was out of my hands. I did ask your permission to come back, but since you didn't reply I figured it was better not to miss another rehearsal than to wait on an answer. Let me know what you want me to do. If it's preferable I'll just return the music ASAP and remove myself from the roster."

I'm not going to the retreat on Saturday. I'm convinced I made up all of the positive reactions to my presence in my head and now am wondering if people asked her to try to get me to leave because they probably don't like me, anyway. I'm reviewing and overthinking every interaction I had, and I keep coming back to standing in a group of a few of us, looking for an excuse to go out to dinner or karaoke, and one of them saying, "Well my birthday is October 3rd." I said, "And mine is September 24th!" (which is stupid and I should not have said anything and I hate that I said anything at all). And then they just continued, "Oh, yeah let's go out for (other girl's) birthday!" and that was that. And I do not like my birthday. I do not want to do anything for my birthday. It's already miserable and it hasn't even come yet. But now, of course, in my head it's like, "No shit, Sherlock. No one gives a fuck about you or your birthday, just keep your fucking mouth shut, idiot." When the conductor finally replied to my email, she basically just said that they expect singers to commit September - June, and not much else. I feel like I'm out of ways to say, "I can give you September - December, but I can't promise anything past that. If that's not ok, please tell me now." I just want her to tell me, because if *I* make the decision to leave based on what she's saying, I'll look like I'm proving her right and flaking out. But if she tells me, hey, sorry, that's not gonna work then I can at least be like, "Oh, there were logistical issues." So now I'm just stuck in this spiral of: no one likes you, no one wants you around, everyone thinks you're unreliable and a bad friend and annoying, just shut the fuck up and go away and for the love of god stop trying.

#long rant #personal #I am not having a good day #/week #/month #/year #/life

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gulski2 · 1 year

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Right. This is gonna be maybe a bit spoilery, I will expel all the football things concerning ted lasso s3 that are swirling through my head and y’all can ignore it and move on with your life while the void and I enjoy each other’s company

Stadiums they filmed in: Nelson road(selhurst park obv), supposedly Johan Cruijff ArenA, Stamford Bridge, London Stadium, Etihad, Emirates.

In a recent podcast moe jeudy lamour was talking about Wembley and it sort of sounded like they didn’t film there again in s3. That means: we’re probably not going to get a serious FA cup run, unless he was, of course, lying(very purposefully omitting information), which is very much a possibility. If we don’t get an FA cup it leaves us with two possibilities for “winning the whole fucking thing” - actually winning the premier league, an idea which I hate, or missing out on the title but winning a family(I.e. tedbecca endgame).

Now let’s talk Amsterdam: assuming the show keeps playing sorta by the rules, as they’ve pretty much done so far, the only really relevant time for them to go there is pre-season, but considering it’s episode 6, it makes less of a sense. That is, unless this episode is going to actually be a flashback or a chapter reading out of Trent’s presumed book, which I really don’t know if it’s spoiler or fanon, but Apple kinda teased with that Trent promo.

Kits: we have 3 kits and a new training kit(thank god, the gray is ugly) - 1) blue and red 2) orange and 3) believe blue and yellow . On most of what we saw there was a premier league symbol on the arm. I haven’t seen a cup insignia, but that doesn’t mean much.

Captain: Isaac is still captain. The Sam scene seems to be an exception, probably brought about by either an Isaac red card(maybe after the west ham game, which seem to escalate into violence) or a special occasion for Sam. Considering I didn’t see Isaac in the huddle, it’s probably the first option. In ALL other instances though, including on the wall of s3 set, Isaac is captain.

New guy, maybe dressing room trouble? So I’ve seen this #10 shirt with the name Zava around since the day the trailer dropped but haven’t spotted a new face and his name wasn’t on any of the lockers, but now we actually have the footage of it.

Now, a number 10, the fact that all of the fans seem to be sporting his shirt and that he got 4 fucking lockers and a La-Z boy, seem to indicate he’s a big deal. Also notice the Ajax and Juventus shirts with his name on them, further indicating his status. It’ll be interesting to see how that sort of thing changes the dynamic within the Richmond dressing room.

I have to say that it’s a pretty bold choice to bring a new #10 for the last season, and that’s also kind of why I think he may be an antagonist throughout the season. At the end of the day, we all want one of our faves, who’s been with us since day one to get the winning goal(in show. Irl I don’t give a fuck who scores, as long as they’re from my team), not a newcomer.

I also heard there’s been some talk about whether or not they’re going to deal with the World Cup, as in universe it’s 21/22 season, and well, there’s honestly no need for them to say anything about it unless we have a time jump, but assuming they did mention it, I would guess they’d ignore the fact that it was played in Qatar just like they ignored COVID, and talk summer World Cup as usual instead of a winter one like we had this year.

Ok. That’s it. Maybe. We’ll see.

Edit: we can also talk about Nate coming back as kit man if anyone would like to indulge me

Second edit, because I can’t leave well enough alone: I’m guessing he’s gonna leave for west ham on the January transfer window, and Sam is going to take his #10 shirt.

#ted lasso #ted lasso spoilers #ted lasso season 3 #ted lasso s3 #football #football is life

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scottuminga · 5 months

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Greetings to my Fans, Family, Friends, Followers and Fellow Artists. Thanks for sticking around me this year. In regards to updating my socials. I find that I tried to get into a groove. But with things changing it might have been put on the back burner. I really hope to document and share with the world more of what interests me, and the pieces I create. There’s also a restlessness in me that wants to find communities and circles that share these fascinations. I was talking to my cousin the other day, and I mentioned how the year went by and spent time waiting. But realized during those periods of quiet, that there was time for me to do things I wanted to create for myself. I’ll make sure to seize these moments without pressure to really go forward.

Some reflection notes from 2023. I found I added at least a few more 3d Elements and particles into my art. And building my own codex of shapes has excited my psyche. It's like a new set of brushes that gives a twist to my body of tools. I hope to make more traditional illustrations and drawings with poetic ties, because I think I’ve been separating my own arts for most of my life. And I really want to just say “This is all part of me”.

I’m going to jinx myself. But with the year nearing an end. I find there were events and synchronicities that have been frequenting me like it did pre covid. And there have been moments where my schedule and things in life just end up being at the right time, or happens right after another. There are times I get anxious leading up to these things and when the time comes, it all just comes out fine. And I’m relieved that it happened. I really want to remember, cherish and carry these 2023 moments of feeling adventurous and comfortable again.

I want to think 2024 will become a significant year. And I’m going to really try exercising that creative muscle and produce whatever comes to mind. Remember to go at your own pace, and also reach out to those important to you and the ones who made and make life exciting. <3Scott.

#scottuminga #scifiart #fantasyart

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 3 months

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Coached my first tournament in nearly a year today. It was an odd way to start, as I’ve hardly even been to practice since last spring. I haven’t properly returned since COVID occurred. I tried in 2022 to go back, it sort of worked, until a ways in 2023 when I got really disillusioned with it and stepped way back. But wasn’t ready to say I’m quitting, because it was my entire life for about 15 years. You can’t just give that all up. I always assumed I’d do it forever. It was the only place where I knew people or knew what was going on.

There was a really little tournament today, in this small town about an hour away. It was this little thing, nearby and unimportant, in the middle of the part of the season that’s full of major championships. My friend talked me into going with her to help coach. It’s only an hour away.

I always said I love the sport, and I meant it. I love the physical feeling of it. I love the back and forth and the way you can get so deeply focused in the middle of a match that you forget everything else exists. I love the high of when a move works and you bring them down, and I even kind of love the sense of just pushing against a wall when it doesn’t work. I love the strategy and all the little things that you can pick out in a video review. I love the competition.

But more than anything else, I’ve realized, when it’s gone what I miss is being part of something. Having a community, a place where I can go and I know who everyone is and they all know me and I know what all the little connections are and how everything works. That seems like the most irreplicable part of it, if I ever closed the door completely on the idea of being involved again (by, for example, moving out to the East Coast or even across the ocean, as I’ve considered doing, and have no really strong reason to stay besides keeping a door open), I don’t think I’d ever find that anywhere else. The very thing that makes that community feel special to me is the number of years I spent getting to know everything in it. You can’t just replace all those years. I could make new friends but I couldn’t make a whole new community. And friends come and go, you don’t want to count on that for your whole social life. They marry women on the other side of the world or they get engaged to women who live here but want to drastically change his social life, or they have brain aneurysms or they try to a fuck a teenager so you have to cut him out of your life. As, you know, a few completely hypothetical example of where four of my friends have gone in the last few years.

Today was definitely about community. It was a tournament mainly for kids aged sixteen and under, not the level of coaching I did pre-COVID. Pre-COVID, I was mainly involved with really competitive team, of the ones aged 16-24 or so, and I was on the road almost every weekend for tournaments that were usually not just an hour away. The GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is 5 or 6 hours away from us (depending on traffic and on which bit of the area it is), and I used to be there all the time, because that’s where the more competitive teams and the bigger tournaments are. We’d go down there every weekend, pile as many coaches and athletes in one truck as we possibly could to save on gas costs, then pile as many as we could into a hotel room or Air B&B or sometimes the floor of the gym where my friend coaches in Toronto, to save on more costs.

And I constantly complained about it, because it’s not fair that athletes from my city have to pay so much more to compete than the ones who live in the GTA, who can just drive an hour in on the morning of the tournament instead of driving 5 hours the night before. But obviously, once it was gone, it was the biggest thing I missed. The road trips home after a tournament, with kids going between loudly signing along to the music, trying to teach my co-coaches and I Arabic (the athletes who rode in the coaches’ truck almost all spoke Arabic, because by and large they were the ones with parents who weren’t rich enough to drive them down – most of the white kids went with their own families), falling asleep on top of each other, and talking shit about their opponents. I wouldn’t trade that for a team that has a little extra money for facilities due to a much lower travel budget, but they don’t get the bonding time. They don’t get the special moments like yelling at 17-year-old for sneaking out of a terrible cheap motel in the middle of night and nearly getting killed.

But today wasn’t that. It was a little tournament in the valley around our area. I knew everyone. So many people whom I hadn’t seen in years. It was gratifying how many came up and hugged me as soon as they saw me, excited to see me because it turns out the community hasn’t forgotten me no matter how long I’ve been gone. I had some really lovely chats with some people I haven’t seen in ages.

But I did remember: being part of a community can get romanticized in my mind really quickly when I haven’t actually done it in a while (you know, like how doing two 5-hour road trips a week for months at a time seems like a beautiful thing when it’s a bit of nostalgia, but would get much more annoying if I started actually doing it again). In actually practice, the thing about being in a whole community, rather than just a small and curated group of friends, is you don’t get to pick who joins that community. Which means that going to spaces where the community is requires being around people you don’t like.

I didn’t realize until today just how lucky I’ve been in the last few years, really since 2020, to have had to spend almost no time in person around people I don’t like. Not that I never have to do that – we had a fun time at Christmas this year when my brother made some racist jokes and I told him they were racist and then my mother started crying because she hates that he and I don’t get along. But mostly, aside from a few exceptions like that, I’ve been able to avoid that feeling of standing in the presence of someone I think is being terrible and having to bite my tongue and try to get along. And I really fucking hate that feeling. I’ve always hated it, obviously. I know everyone hates that feeling, but I think I might hate it more than most people do. Because my friends can do it while seeming only mildly annoying, and it’s always bothered me more than that. Pre-COVID, it was a running joke among my friends that I hold a grudge forever and have no “poker face” for hiding when I can’t stand someone. But I could at least tolerate being in their presence, if I had to. I think that during COVID, my tolerance for that has gone down in the same way an alcohol tolerance would from lack of use. Doing it today made me wonder how I ever used to get through it all the time.

Here is a list of reasons why I disliked various people who were in the room with me today:

- The coach from another city who met his wife by being her high school teacher.

- The ref who’s been posting on Facebook that Israel has a right to defend itself.

- The other coach from that city who voted for the horrifyingly abusive coach to get on the board during the Big Dramatic Elections of 2016 (no not the American ones, the ones for board spots in our region). The coach he voted for has put three athletes in the hospital (that we know of) by forcing them to cut dangerous weight and train while injured, and also drove a friend of mine/first fully qualified female ref in Canada out of the sport by intimidating her into dropping a sexual harassment complaint against him.

- The coach from my team who used to be very close friends with me and then got a girlfriend and stopped talking to me almost entirely, and now they’re engaged so that’s just forever now, and he still makes vague small talk with me when he sees me as though we didn’t used to share everything and as though it’s fine that we have to catch up on basic details of our lives from the last two years.

- The coach of the host town’s team who told a girl I used to coach that girls aren’t really cut out for this sport.

- The parent from my team who once yelled at me for not having the correct facial expression during her son’s match, and also made a formal complaint against our coaches because we didn’t get sufficiently aggressive in yelling at refs to change calls at a tournament for little kids.

- There isn’t even any point in specifying individual people who post Joe Rogan on social media, because that’s just everyone in the room. In this community, the ones who are super into Joe Rogan but think Andrew Tate takes it too far are the progressive ones.

- And on that note: the random guy I saw wearing a Jordan Peterson shirt. Reminding me that probably at least 70% of that room consists of people who are also into Jordan Peterson.

- There were a lot of shirts with Christian imagery, which is fine and I don’t judge, mostly, or at least, I try not to. I still didn’t love being around it.

- The parent from another team who once complained about how my team was full of “ghetto kids” and the kids from her team should be careful around my team in hotels to avoid having their stuff stolen (because we have a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants, especially as compared to the small towns around us that are all white).

- Several people who drove out during the trucker protests to stand quite close to literally outside my fucking house, holding "fuck Trudeau" signs to protest COVID regulations, and also to be a part of a mob that shut down my entire city and intimidated the locals and caused massive property damage and several assaults on people not to mention to horrifying messaging, a couple of years ago. Not enough years ago for me to have put it behind me. Not enough years ago for seeing if my kids can beat up their kids to all be fun and games now.

- The guy who’s running a team because he used to be an assistant coach to that team when it was run by his brother, but a year and a bit ago, his brother committed suicide, to avoid going to court with the female athlete who had charged him with sexually abusing her since she was 15 years old. So he died, his brother took over the team. His brother who was close friends with him and was an assistant on the team through all of this and definitely knew what was going on the entire time, and never did anything to stop it, in fact tacitly encouraged it by continuing to coach there. And now he’s just in charge of those children and apparently that’s fine. Also, his presence reminded me of how, when the girl posted her story on social media after he died, the general reaction from our region was that she shouldn’t have done so because you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Not that she was wrong – the evidence was overwhelming that he did do it. Just that you shouldn’t be mean about him anyway.

- The guys sitting next to me while I ate lunch in the coaches' room, talking about how kids today are so much softer than a few years ago and it's all because COVID regulations have ruined the generation because Kids Are No Longer Tough.

- The guy who’s way too eager about cliché and useless coaching courses that make the coaches who take them think they’re better than the ones who spend that time actually out there coaching. (Actually, compared to everyone else, I’ve turned around on that guy and greeted him today as an old friend.)

But. Also, I've been listening to all these radio shows with John Robins where he's talking about Queen, and sometimes he references We Are the Champions, and every time it makes me remember that that song was on the playlists that we used to play on tournament road trips in the pre-COVID days, and it was the best thing in the world. And I think of this video that I watched so much during the lockdown days, when this still felt recent and like something that might come back soon, that I took once as we drove home in the middle of the night, from the type of tournament that makes us glad for all those tournaments where everything goes wrong, because they make it more special on the rare occasions that every person on our team performs to their potential and we just go down there and take over the whole venue, we were coming home with more medals than we knew what to do with and months of work paying off for everyone, and we had the playlist on and the kids in the back started singing, and you just can't get something that means as much as that without years and years going into it.

One of the guys signing in this video is now way too into misogynistic bro podcasts, even some of the explicitly racist and Islamophobic ones despite the fact that he's a Muslim immigrant from the Middle East. But he saw me today for the first time in months and gave me a big hug and told me he missed me and wished I'd coach him again, and what am I supposed to do with that?

And even if you could create that kind of community without putting years and years into it first, where am I supposed to find one that's better? I guess if I want community and not dealing with that kind of bullshit, then the thing I'm looking for is the mythical liberal bubble. A bubble that's kept liberal by this cancel culture I keep hearing so much about. Geoff Norcott has promised me - he swore up and down - that comedy is such a place. But I've been to a couple of club comedy nights in the last couple of weeks (well, pub comedy nights where comedians work out material to take to clubs), and they sure did not feel like liberal bubbles. I'm beginning to suspect the liberal bubble might be something invented by Geoff Norcott, or possibly by one or two people who might be even worse than Geoff Norcott, to sell terrible books. What I'm saying is I think I could really use a little more cancel culture in my life.

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oh-archivist · 11 months

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Hey I've been following you and your transition for a long time now. Do you mind me asking why you came off T/ how easy it was to do so?

I've been out as trans masc for 12 years but still not on T, which I really want, but not sure I want to be on it for the rest of my life!

Aw thanks for following for so long! I came off T for two main reasons: 1- Anxiety got really bad after COVID started. I used to do my shots with ease, for 5+ years! But then COVID hit and my anxiety was horrible. I'd sit in my bathroom for hours with the syringe in my hand and my head was just going OFF with scenarios of all the ways my shot could go wrong and I'd die LMAO even though I've been doing T shots with ease for literal fucking YEARS. But that's anxiety for ya. 2- My hair was receding and thinning. My hair is incredibly important to me and my main way to express myself. I started losing hair in 2017 (2+ years on T) but didn't think anything of it cause my sister would leave a lot of hair in the shower too, but that wasnt normal for me but I didn't think to start meds to slow down hair loss. So my hair lose got really bad in 2018 and following into 2019. I knew losing my hair was a risk but I didn't think it would happen to me since my dad has thick hair and he's older. BUT when you go on T, your hair lose gauge would be your mother's father. Not your father. So, if I knew that then, I probably would have stopped T a lot sooner. But! We live and we learn. Since being off T I've gotten my "hips" back but they dont have me too dysphoric, periods are back and bottom growth is back to where it was pre-T. I didn't lose anymore hair? I dont think and my anxiety is WAY better now that I don't have to deal with shots every two weeks. To help with the hair lose, I've contacted two hair transplant surgeons. Both have said I've lost a lot of hair and that surgery would be expensive -_- and I might need two. So I've decided to try and go with non surgical hair restoration solutions. I did it for a year in 2019-2020 and it was alright! And I'm doing it again cause it was really hard to look in the mirror these days with my hair lose/thinning. It's not the perfect solution but it's something. It's better than risking a hair transplant (or two) and them not going well. I may continue this non surgical hair solution for a full year, or just go back to wear synthetic wigs! I hope my personal struggles and short comings with T have helped you decide. My advice would be to stop T when you start seeing your hair fall out (if that is something important to you) but if not, you could be on T for probably 3/4 years and pretty much plateau in results. But to keep those results, you'll need to stay on T.

#ask fox

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airyairyaucontraire · 1 year

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Ever get your period a day or two before a trip and wish you could just shove the vacuum cleaner up there and get it all out in one go and not have to deal with that nonsense away from home and your own washing machine and so forth?

Look, I have to say I am not unappreciative for my good fortune in assorted ways but 2023 needs to pull its fucking socks up. First we spent the first week of the new year with COVID-19 cutting a swath through the household. My dad tested positive on New Year’s Day, his actual birthday. Long-time tumblies will be aware that my dad is a man of multifarious shortcomings but I really don’t think he altogether deserved that. So we’ve spent the week in semi-isolation with the weird feature that as the only adult who didn’t seem to get it, it’s like I’ve been quarantined in my room. (Tested negative daily the entire time, a rare feat for my generally very basic immune system.) There is nowhere to sit except the bed so I’ve basically been bedridden, while ACTUALLY PERFECTLY HEALTHY but endeavouring to avoid my closest relatives’ plague, and I’ve managed to fuck up the traitor muscle on the left side of my shoulder/neck/back axis due to inactivity/odd positions. The best thing that’s happened the entire fucking week is Little Nephew and I went out with masks on to buy Red Niece a new raincoat (Green Niece fits and loves his old raincoat but there’s only one of it) and had ice-cream/a milkshake before we went home, that was the fucking highlight. (Green Niece’s raincoat has a pattern of sharks. Red Niece’s raincoat has a pattern of butterflies and that is exactly what they are like as people.)

(It’s so interesting yet also sad to consider how different Little Nephew’s stillborn twin Harrison would have been from him, had he lived. I sometimes imagine two copies of Little Nephew scampering around here, but Harrison being as different from him as Red is from Green. I wish I could have known him and seen his individual ways. However, I also think “Christ Almighty, two sets of them would break us,” so it’s a bit of a thing all in all and I don’t share that thought with him or my sister obviously.)

My Red Niece comes to see me every day to demand an extremely specific My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic picture be printed off to be stuck to cardboard and cut out for her to play with rather than my sister having to source and purchase MULTIPLE discontinued toys from an earlier generation, and quite frankly even the current generation is not easy to find in New Zealand stores! We have been carefully preparing her psychologically for the fact that there is no printer at the beach house we’re going to for five days next week and she will have to make do with the ponies she’s got. I probably need to put in more time on this but it makes me a bit sad that other than describing the pictures she wants, she doesn’t really discuss FiM with me and as you know, I’ve got thoughts. And a purple wig I’ve worn to cosplay Human Rarity. I wonder where that is, or if I got rid of it in a fit of “The world has changed and this is never going to be my life again”? Because it was a cute wig and we’d make a swell Rarity and Sweetie Bell.

I’m sorry, you know I love Rarity (sobbing) so much

Also, am experimenting on myself and discovered that, per the neurologist’s suggestion, alcohol does reduce my leg tremor problem! Of course it also renders me unfit to drive and possibly to work, but that’s interesting to know, isn’t it!

And the weather’s been verily shit, so rainy, and forecast for rain every bloody day but one in the location we’re going to. There’s always hope for it to be nicer than forecast, I’ve certainly experienced that at times, but still, 2023, get your fucking act together! This is not good enough! You are going to be the Year of the Rabbit soon! Is this good enough for Sailor Moon? No! It is not!

And Little Nephew is having some manner of pre-pubescent hormonal surge that is apparently pretty common in eight-year-old lads and is on an emotional roller coaster which at times renders him dia-bleeding-bolical, my God, the fucking DRAMA

And I’ve just started my period and we’re going away the day after tomorrow

And I would just very much like 2023 to get its fucking shit together because it’s not easy for anyone but WE ARE BLOODY WELL TRYING

#life with airy #oh and kevin bloody mccarthy got elected speaker finally #what’s it like to know you are absolutely bottom of the dogshit barrel but you finally dragged your lousy carcass over the line kev

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