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writer-ish · 3 years

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φόβος, or the persistence of fear

prompt: to shower with my muse / for sex on a table/counter/desk / for our muses to try a new position + words: “make me” pairing: mason x detective (grace bennett) word count: 5.3k words | rating: super E!!! (minors dni) summary: φόβος (FO-vos) Greek. “fear”. Post-Book 3 Final Demo, Mason and Grace have some trouble overcoming their individual fears.

author note: i know you said “or”, lovely @detective-sweetheart , but to my eyes you were issuing a challenge as to whether or not i could do them ALL. i didn’t quite succeed, but hopefully it doesn’t disappoint. 😘 and, uh… *side-eyes the word count* ...yeah. really should get that ao3 account up and running huh?

warning: this smutty lil fic immediately follows the end of the final demo for book 3 (bobby route) so if you don't want any inkling of what that's all about, stay away.

XX nsfw prompts

X X X X

Saying that it had been “one of those days” would not only be an insult to days but to the concept of singularity itself.

By the time they roll into the warehouse, it's just after nine-thirty in the evening. The sun has already dipped beyond the horizon almost entirely, but there remains an eerie summer glow of light that seems to permeate the atmosphere. Not quite day, not quite night, but instead some liminal moment that feels almost otherworldly. Familiar, yet not.

Grace shivers.

Mason, sitting beside her in the roomy black SUV, turns towards her as the almost-imperceptible tremor runs through her body.

She meets his gaze, taking in his expression – tight and concerned, the grey of his irises stormy and conflicted – before she feels his hand reach across her lap and cup her outer thigh, tugging her closer to him.

They wait in silence as Adam parks and the rest of Unit Bravo gets out, Felix patting her leg reassuringly from beside her before exiting on his side. Mason gets out as well and turns to her, hands now shoved deep in the pockets of his leather jacket.

It's Grace's turn, so she gingerly exits, the weight of the day finally revealing the toll it's taken on her body. The fifteen minutes of inactivity in the car were, apparently, all it had needed as a reminder of what she'd endured in the last sixteen hours or so. All of a sudden she feels exhausted, weighted down, frustrated, and in desperate need of a shower.

"You good?" Mason asks as they walk together towards the entrance of the warehouse, shoulders brushing, a bit behind the others.

"Just tired," she responds, rubbing her eyes wearily. "Can't wait to shower and just lie down."

"Need any help with that?" The drawled reply is rife with a familiar irreverence, but there is something heavier in his tone that makes Grace glance up.

He's looking down at her, telltale smirk on his lips. But his grey eyes are dim and there's a furrow between his brows that isn't normally there.

"Yes."

Her quick response seems to surprise him; he stops walking and turns to look at her with an inscrutable expression. She can understand why—she isn't normally so brazen when it comes to his advances and she knows he revels in her shyness sometimes. Mastering the art of getting a rise out of her, making her flustered, teasing her and watching her blush.

But this time she doesn't care if her response feels bold or unlike her. Since dawn that morning, the litany of things she'd experienced were enough emotional and physical turmoil to last a person a lifetime, never mind a period that's comprised of less than twenty-four hours.

And now she wants Mason and she wants a shower and she wants to sleep. In whatever order she can have them.

Instead of saying anything flirtatious or sarcastic, he lets his eyes roam over her face for a moment and then he just nods and drapes an arm over her shoulders, leading her inside.

Upon entering the Warehouse, they’re greeted by Adam, Nate, and Felix, who appear to have been waiting for them. All three agents turn when they see Mason and Grace walking in, and Grace feels a pang of guilt, knowing that Adam will probably want to coordinate a meeting of some sort to go over the events of the day as well as next steps.

Sure enough, he intercepts them as they attempt to walk by.

“We should be debriefing on everything that just occurred." Adam crosses his arms and peers down at Grace. "And Detective, have you gotten a hold of Agent Bennett? I can’t seem to—“

Grace opens her mouth to reply, and perhaps Mason can feel the way her body leans away from him, already attempting to gear herself up for the meeting Adam has planned for them all, because he tugs her closer and begins dragging her away, speaking over her before she has a chance to respond.

“The Detective,” he announces, forcing her to keep pace with him, “is currently unavailable."

She can feel Adam's disapproval radiating at her back and she looks up at Mason helplessly.

"Stop," he commands her, then says over his shoulder: "She's had a rough day, okay? We'll meet in the morning."

Adam grumbles his reluctant acquiescence and Felix shouts after them: "Don't forget how thin the walls are!"

Nate splutters, as Mason throws back: "They're concrete!"

Nate’s splutters turn into a groan as Felix responds: "With you two it doesn't seem to make a difference."

Grace groans as well, feeling the heat surge up into her cheeks as she buries her face in her hands. Mason just laughs and continues to drag her along.

As soon as she gets to her room, she lets him in and then closes the door firmly behind them, leaning on it heavily with a deep sigh.

Mason is already walking around the small room, inspecting the current aesthetic. When the room had been set up for her, cues had apparently been taken from her own apartment. So there’s a vibe that can definitely be considered “cozy”, like her style – long white curtains, a plethora of pillows, a down comforter – while also being weirdly unfamiliar. It’s like a Sims version of her own place in some Bizarro universe. She isn’t sure if it makes her feel more at home—or less.

“What did you bring from your place?” His voice breaks her out of her reverie and she looks at him in surprise.

“Oh, uh—” Taking a look around, her brow furrows. “Honestly, not much. After what happened this morning, I didn’t have the wherewithal to grab anything that I really needed. Thank god there’s some stuff here. But I’m going to have to go back tomorrow and sift through the damage. See what can be salvaged.” She shrugs, then to her horror, she can feel her eyes inadvertently well with tears.

“Hey, hey—” Mason is in front of her before she can blink, tilting her chin up. “What’s that for?”

“Ugh, just—” She rubs her eyes frustratedly. “What a fucking day.”

“Yeah, you’ve been through it,” he agrees, before roughly pulling her into his arms. “One for the record books.”

His arms around her provide more comfort than he could probably ever understand and she feels her whole body wilt into his strength and his heat and his scent.

“I’m so sick of days ‘for the record books’,” she mumbles into his chest and she can feel his chuckle more than she hears it.

“Why don’t we see if we can make this one a bit better, hmm?” She looks up just in time for him to capture her lips with his.

Letting out a little sigh, she twines her arms around his neck and allows him to kiss her slowly, leisurely, taking little sips from her mouth, stroking her tongue with his own, stoking a slow fire that always seems to be maintaining a low burn in his presence. She presses her body closer, enjoying the feel of her breasts against his torso, his growing hardness pressing into her stomach.

He glides his hands down her back and cups her bottom, squeezing it appreciatively, before pulling her even closer still.

Moving his mouth to her neck, his teeth glide against her pulse point, and her heart skips a little beat when she feels the sharpness of his canines against her sensitive skin.

“Relax,” he whispers, kissing her softly right in the place where his teeth had just scraped. “This isn’t where I want to taste you.”

She lets out a little whimper and brings his mouth back to hers, kissing him fiercely, feeling the points and ridges of his teeth with her tongue crowding his mouth. He pulls her tightly to him, dragging her body up so her feet leave the ground, and then he drops her backwards on the bed, his knee already down on the mattress with her, poised to pounce.

“No—” she protests and before she can blink he’s off of her and standing at the edge of the bed.

“What is it?” His voice is calm, with none of the frustration she would assume he’d be feeling in that moment.

“No, it’s just—” She pauses and glances at the door to the ensuite bathroom, teeth digging into her bottom lip. “I really need a shower, before any… tasting happens.”

He blinks and then in a flash he’s on her again, his body pressing her deep into the soft mattress.

“For what it’s worth, sweetheart,” he says, nipping at her lips, “I’ll taste you whenever, however.”

“Reassuring,” she laughs, “but trust me when I say a shower is needed.”

“Then let’s get you wet.” She laughs again with a groan, allowing him to hoist her up.

He tugs at her shirt and she raises her arms accommodatingly, allowing him to lift it up and over her head. Piece by piece, he undresses her, hands grazing her skin with each article he removes, discarding the item as quickly as it comes off her body, until she stands in front of him fully nude.

Self-consciousness at her nudity is a forgotten pastime now that she’s with Mason. It’s something about the way he looks at her —he’s always just so pleased. With her or with himself she can’t tell, but either way it does wonders for one’s self esteem.

Even now, she can almost feel the heat emanating off of him, a hungry smoulder of pure energy as his eyes roam up and down her body.

“Shower,” she squeaks, not sure who needs the reminder more.

Instead of answering, he lifts her up effortlessly, dragging her thighs around him until she can cross her ankles behind his back. She feels the fabric of his clothing rubbing every inch of bare skin it encounters – the leather of his jacket against her nipples, his jeans between her legs – and he settles her onto a dresser that she literally hadn’t even noticed before that moment.

Her breathing escalates in anticipation and yearning, waiting for wherever his mouth or his tongue or his teeth go next, but instead he remains quiet and still, before leaning forward and resting his forehead on her shoulder.

She freezes, unsure what he wants or even what she should do. And then she feels it.

A light tremor, scarcely noticeable, running through his body.

Before she can react, his arms tighten around her in a crushing hug and she instinctively hugs him back fiercely, running her hands up and down his back, pulling him closer with her legs.

“Mason,” she whispers. “What—?”

With a growl, he lifts his head and captures her mouth with his own, teeth and tongues clashing in a hungry, desperate kiss. His fingers tangle in her hair as his thumbs caress her cheekbones in a juxtaposition of rough and gentle.

She kisses him back, trying to keep up with the shift in his mood. Pulling away with a gasp, she attempts to catch his eye.

“Are you—?”

Groaning, he leans in and kisses her again, hands running over her body in frantic strokes, as though memorizing the shape of her with his palms.

When he lifts his head again, she sees the conflict in his narrowed gaze, the grey irises stormy with anger and desire and another, less discernible emotion that causes gooseflesh to rise on her bare skin.

“Just look at you.” His voice is harsh, almost angry, and her jaw slackens in surprise at his tone. He tilts away from her as he speaks and she registers the absence acutely as cool air hits bare skin that now feels on display, her legs still spread open around him.

Shyness overcomes her as she becomes truly conscious of her nudity for the first time. She makes to close her legs and he grips them tighter around his hips so she can’t move them, his eyes flicking between hers, seeking answers and absolution.

“You’re so soft, so small,” he continues, his voice still rough with shades of anger, even as his words feel hollow and almost somehow reminiscent of—grief? “This skin, this body you’re in—it’s so weak.”

“Mason!” She finds her voice finally, confusion and indignation at war with one another in her mind as she tries to coincide his expression – which can only be described as tortured – with the hurtful things he’s saying.

“How can we let you go back out there?” His voice is raw now, the anger appearing to slowly fade away, leaving him worn-out and desperate in its wake. “Unprotected? Out in the open for any fucker to grab, to take. To hurt?” He gives her a little shake and she gasps. “Huh? How?”

Understanding dawns. Yes, it had been a rough day for her. One of the worst.

But it looks as though, maybe, it had been a rough day for him, too.

Immediately, her hands begin to move of their own volition, running up his chest and over his shoulders. His whole body seems to sag, the fight draining out of him completely, and he closes his eyes, turning his head away from her.

“I have the Agency,” she murmurs as she tries to soothe him with her touch, her tone, her words. She tucks her hands under his jacket and pushes it off until it drops on the floor. Smoothing her hands back up his arms, she doesn’t stop until they cup his face. “I have them to protect me.”

She turns his head and waits until he opens his eyes, his gaze still narrowed, but with a telltale furrow in his brow.

“And I have you,” she adds, softly. “To protect me.” She pauses, watching the creases in his forehead smooth even as his eyes drift away from hers once more. “I’ll be okay.”

He reminds her now of a beast being soothed; a wolf, perhaps—hackles still up, but with the understanding that the threat has passed, for the time being, at least.

She knows not to look too much into it; loyalty is intrinsic to Mason’s being. His defence of her would be his defence of any of them.

But she kisses his brow anyway, just in case. His cheek, too, even as he stiffens in her arms.

“I’ll be okay,” she repeats, “unless I don’t get a shower in the next thirty seconds.”

His expression shifts back to a familiar one: arched brow, lips curled up on one side, white teeth showing one sharp canine. He seems almost relieved, though at what she’s not sure – the reprieve? Her unspoken forgiveness? Her assurance?

Regardless, she knows she won’t get the answers she seeks and, sure enough, he says nothing, only lifts her back into his arms and carts her off to the bathroom.

She can’t help but laugh against his neck, although her heart still thumps an erratic beat at the odd moment they’d just had.

Depositing her by the sink, he peels off his shirt, dropping it unceremoniously onto the floor as he reaches inside the shower to turn on the water. He then strips out of his pants and underwear just as quickly, appearing more comfortable in his nudity than he is clothed—a fact that she’s come to realize is true.

She can’t help but take him in, flawless and muscular, a constellation of freckles across his upper body and arms. Unruly onyx waves tumble towards his shoulders and her fingers itch to run through them. His chest is covered in short, curling hairs that stretch across his pectorals and down, over his defined stomach and even further still. His prominent erection is unselfconsciously on display, flushed and waiting, apparently, for her.

Feeling the colour rise in her cheeks as she stares, she hazards a glance back up to his face.

He’s regarding her quietly, a growing smile on his lips, his gaze half-lidded and pleased.

“Like what you see, sweetheart?”

“Always,” she responds before she can lose her nerve, her face heating even more.

He chuckles softly, taking a step towards her, stroking his knuckles down her cheek. “The feeling is mutual.” He nods towards the running water. “Feel that and tell me if it’s okay.”

Hopping off the counter, she reaches her hand in. The water is scalding and she hisses out a breath, before adjusting it slightly cooler. She waits a beat until it runs at a suitable temperature on her palm and wrist. “That’s good for me. You?”

She finds herself craning her neck to look up at him. He’s standing tall in front of her, looking down without really tilting his chin. He has a half smile on his face as he watches her and she feels herself redden again under his gaze.

“I’ll be fine,” he says eventually, before crowding her until she has no choice but to take a step in.

Entering the shower fully, she allows the water to run down her back, tilting her head to wet her hair. He follows her in and runs his fingers softly down her chest, snagging on her nipples, already distended and aching.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, tracing over her lightly with his fingertips, playing and stroking. One finger circling a nipple before going down further until it grazes between her legs.

She bites back a moan as her eyes shut briefly, her palms pressing back against the cool tile of the shower for some sort of purchase.

He loops an arm around her waist and brings her to him, kissing her wetly, open-mouthed and demanding, their bare skin slipping against one another.

Swiftly, he turns her, pressing himself into the cleft of her ass. She can feel his hardness wedged deeply between her; a new sensation, but not entirely unpleasant, either. She wriggles experimentally and gasps at the titillating pressure.

“One day,” he murmurs in her ear, reading her mind, and she knows from the way he chuckles that her cheeks have gone truly red this time.

He strokes down her forearms, linking his fingers overtop hers before pressing them onto the tile so that her body is forced to tilt forward slightly. Then, he adjusts the spray of the water so it’s not hitting them directly.

“Open.” His voice is a gruff command and she can’t help but obey, her feet slipping slightly in her haste to spread her legs.

She feels his hand course over her wet skin, erection still pressed against her bottom, as his fingers move across her, teasing and playing, until they settle into the warm, liquid centre of her.

She lets out a protracted moan, her legs shaking, the relief of finally having him touch her right where she needs him to almost more than she can bear.

He strokes her masterfully, a finger delving into the wetness her body is producing just for him, for his touch, and then circling at the apex of her thighs. Her clit throbs with his attention and she can’t help but cry out as he applies steady continuous pressure. The shaking in her legs increases and his body presses against her even tighter, his other hand coming up to cup her breast, thumb strumming her nipple at the same pace as his other finger works her clit.

“I want you to come,” his voice grinds out next to her ear. “I want you to come all over my hand. I can already feel you dripping all over me, all over yourself. Let go, sweetheart.” He bites her neck lightly and she feels the sharp prick of his fangs on her sensitive flesh. “Let go.”

The pain and pleasure intertwine into a blinding flash of white light, her body convulsing as she cries out, her shout echoing throughout the small room. Her legs give way and he holds her steady against him, his arm the only barrier between her and the tiles.

She comes down slowly from her climax, her shaky breath echoing around them, trembling fingers still scrabbling for purchase on the wet tiled walls of the shower.

Before she can fully catch her breath, he turns her around wordlessly and crushes his mouth to hers again. She matches his fervour, opening her mouth and allowing him to consume her. Their kisses feel hungry, desperate, and she whimpers against his lips. Tightening his hold, he lifts her up into his arms, pressing her against the cool tiles. She can feel his hands splayed across her back, cushioning the impact, and she tightens her legs to draw him closer.

His erection is notched between her legs, stroking hotly up and down the teeming wetness there, both from the shower streaming between them and also, she knows, from her own body’s response to him, his nearness, and the promise of what’s to come.

She reaches between them and grips him, running her hand up and down his length as he tilts his head back and groans.

“Jesus, Gracie,” he bites off, and she can feel his fingers digging into her where they rest on her upper and lower back. “You gotta stop that, sweetheart, before I—”

“Make me,” she teases, revelling in these small, rare moments where she has the upper hand.

His head snaps up and she feels her heart skip a beat at the expression on his face, those silvery irises as thin as crescent moons against the deep black of his dilated pupils. His lips curl in a familiar smirk as he bounces her up higher in his arms. Laughing in surprise, she loses her grip on him and has to put her arms around his neck instead for balance.

At the new height he has her, she can feel the tip of his cock nudging into her liquid centre.

She lets out a breath that extends into a moan, feeling him enter her as she opens for him further. He holds her steady, hands cupping her ass as he guides her down, then back up, then down again, allowing her body time to accommodate him comfortably.

“Oh,” she whimpers, the sensation almost too much for her to bear. “I can’t—I’ve never—”

“Shhh.” He shifts and one hand goes to the back of her neck, drawing her head down his shoulder, while his other arm grips her around her hips. “I got you.”

Slowly, slowly he thrusts and pulls back, thrusts and pulls back, shallow and fluid movements, her body giving and giving some more, until he holds her tightly against him, their pelvises notched together, him fully seated within her.

There is never a moment in which she feels so vulnerable as the moment when they’re connected like this. Her body trembles with emotion, the full weight of the day finally crashing down on her. She tightens her thighs against his hips and her arms around his neck, tilting her head to kiss his wet, freckled shoulder, neck and jaw, happy that the steady stream of water from the showerhead prevents him from noticing the tears streaking down her cheeks.

She can’t do this right now, she can’t allow herself to succumb to this moment, these feelings, because if she does, she’s going to say something she regrets. Something that will ruin everything.

So she distracts herself with the physicality of what they’re doing and with the pressing need for release.

“Move,” she begs with a sob that hopefully he believes is impassioned rather than emotional. She rocks her hips against him, needing the moment to end just as much as she needs it to last forever.

He quickly and silently obeys, using her body to create a rhythm that matches his own, crowding her against the corner of the shower, holding her securely in his arms. She can feel his heart pounding against her body and without thinking, she digs her teeth into the soft skin where his neck meets shoulder, not hard enough to draw blood but certainly enough to leave a mark.

The sudden action, fierce and uncharacteristic of her, almost possessive in its intensity, clearly surprises him. His hips stutter against hers and his hands grip her tightly—so tightly that she knows she’ll be seeing the bruises in the morning. He lets out a hoarse shout and she can feel his release inside her and that’s all it takes to send her hurtling over the edge with him. Letting out a cry that matches his, she rides the wave of her own climax, her body holding tightly to his, inside and out.

They stay like that for a beat, hearts pounding, Grace’s breath echoing shakily against the tiles. Gently, Mason disentangles her from him and sets her down, still holding her against him firmly. He strokes her back until she can get her breathing and pulse under control.

Once she’s steady, he pulls away from her. She inadvertently lets out a whimper as the water, now lukewarm, causes goosebumps to rise on her skin, the heat from his body too tempting to be taken from her. She has no reason to be concerned, however, because he’s back on her almost immediately, this time with a soft, soapy cloth in his hand that he begins to wash with her with.

Long, languid strokes down her back, her arms, the backs of her legs. Gently between her legs as he washes away the intermingled essence of what they’ve just done, rinsing and rewashing, in light, soft strokes.

She allows him his ministrations, feeling sleepier and more languorous by the moment, enjoying the feel of him caring for her. She registers that the soap has a light scent, inoffensive to her own nostrils, but she can’t help but wonder if it bothers him.

Reaching up lazily, with an arm that feels sluggish and heavier than usual, she brushes the damp hair back from his forehead.

“The soap—?” she tries, taking the wash cloth from him and allowing it to drop between them. She steps back slightly and rinses herself with the water streaming down.

“It’s fine.” He shrugs. “I can only smell you.”

“Me—?” She realizes belatedly he means her arousal, and the evidence of their union, and her face flares up with heat once more. His smirk turns into a full fledged grin.

“Oh, sweetheart, if I could make you blush like that forever, I’d be one lucky son of a bitch.”

The word forever seems to hang between them and the smile drops quickly from his face at her sharp intake of breath.

“Turn around,” he says gruffly and she obeys quickly, reluctant to allow the moment to be shattered completely.

She hears the sound of another liquid dispenser and the telltale coconut scent of her favourite shampoo fills the humid space – when the Agency does something, they really do it right, she thinks, impressed and a little weirded out – before she feels Mason’s hands in her hair.

If she’d expected impatience or roughness from him in this endeavour, she’s pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. For all his brusqueness and usual lack of desire to perform acts of service for others – outside those related to sexual pleasure – he takes his time with her hair, leisurely massaging in the shampoo, fingertips expertly pressing into her scalp and lathering the wet strands.

She tilts her head back and closes her eyes, a hum of pleasure escaping her lips. The warm water streams over her body and she’s convinced she’d be able to fall asleep standing if she let herself.

After a few more moments of quiet bliss, Mason places his hands on her shoulders and turns her back around. He gently tilts her chin up until the water is streaming over her hair now and she brings her own hands up to assist in rinsing out all the shampoo.

As she gets the shampoo out of her hair, his hands idly tease and caress her, his fingers running over her body once more in light strokes. The touch doesn’t seem to be intended to reignite anything; instead, it appears to be for the simple pleasure of just touching her.

They’re both quiet, the need or the desire to speak seemingly sapped out of them, and she allows him his touches, until all the soap is out of her hair and off her body. Then, she languidly opens her eyes and just watches him—watches how his eyes follow his hands as they move over her body, tracing her with his gaze as well as his fingers.

“Your turn?” she asks, finally, her voice a quiet echo in the small space.

He shakes his head and gathers her close to him, kissing her soundly on the mouth. “I’m good. Ready to come out?”

Instead of answering, she wraps her arms around his neck, stroking down his back and into his damp hair, the unruly waves curling around her fingers more than usual. She kisses him again, then nods against his lips, her eyes dropping closed of their own volition.

The rest is a blur. She feels him towel her off, remaining completely boneless the entire time and succumbing to his ministrations with nary a physical protest. He must dry himself as well, but who knows, because next thing she feels is him carrying her to her bed. She snuggles even more securely into his arms and she can swear she registers his lips against her forehead.

When he settles her on top of the covers she doesn’t even bother to do anything except burrow herself underneath them, still naked, hair frizzing and damp.

Her eyes are still closed, but she knows he hasn’t left, can feel him like a physical ache. Hovering but not touching or sitting. She doesn’t know if he’s in the process of dressing or stark naked. Doesn’t know if his intent is to stay or to go.

The need to keep her feelings inside, to not...ruin things, or push him away, is so, so strong. She could ask him to stay and he could go anyway, taking her heart with him. She could stay silent and wait for him to make his own decision, knowing the outcome would likely be the same.

As she wars with herself, feeling time ticking past, feeling him slowly slipping away, an image arises in her mind unbidden.

It’s his eyes.

She thinks of how they’d looked that morning, clouded with worry and not a hint of lasciviousness, even though she knew she’d been about ninety-nine percent see-through as she’d squelched up the drive.

How they’d looked when he’d apologized to her for his harsh words at Haley’s the other day, contrite and a little bit confused.

The way they’d held anger and, more than that, hurt when Bobby had spoken about kissing her.

And then she thinks about the look she’d seen in them as they’d all been overrun by Trappers and, immediately afterwards, as she had faced certain kidnapping by a supernatural he knew he could not defend her from.

He’d been terrified.

Those storm-grey irises, so familiar and already so dear, had been filled with abject terror and fear.

Fear for her.

The images fade as she hears him rustling, collecting his things.

She thinks again about how he’d been scared for her. Scared of losing her.

She’s scared, too.

She’s scared that all of this might be for naught. That she’ll fall deeper and deeper in love and he’ll soon be looking for a way out.

But tonight isn’t for fears, she decides. Tonight, they’re safe. Tonight, they’re together.

Tonight, he's hers.

“Mason?” Her eyes remain closed, but she hears his movements stop. She lets out a shaky breath, releasing the final bit of her trepidation, before speaking with conviction:

“I want you to stay.”

X X X X

👀 tags: @utterlyinevitable , @ethansramsey , @otherworldlypresents , @worldoffandoms , @raleighcarrera , @ejunkiet , @starrystarrytrouble , @terrm9 , @openheartthot , @octobereighth , @campsearchlight , @coldshrugs , @kelseaaa , @homeformyheart , @intothestrawberryjar , @magebastard , @kodysteach , @newfangledsoul , @silma-words , @lalizah , @detective-sweetheart , @lem-20 , @ifshebreathes-shesathot , @takemyopenheart , @v2itbwstct (if you want to be added/no longer want to be tagged, pls let me know!)

#the wayhaven chronicles #mason x detective #twc fanfic #mason x grace #twc mason #specialist agent m #twc #twc demo #twc demo spoilers

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redsamuraiii · 3 years

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5 Japanese Philosophies Self Help Books You Could Read

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In recent years, society has gathered pace, our stress levels have gone through the roof and we have become increasingly obsessed with money, job titles, appearances and the endless accumulation of stuffs that we don’t really need. There is a growing amount of discontent as we push ourselves harder to achieve the ideal image of perfection that we overwhelmed ourselves.

While social media is helpful in many ways, in enabling you to connect with people from the comfort of your homes and retrieving countless information, it furthers disconnect you from the real world, offline and we inevitably compare ourselves to our peers making ourselves feel miserable and wasting more time scrolling aimlessly on our phones going further into the abyss.

People have begun doing digital detox to get away from it all, to gather our own thoughts and yearn for a much simpler and meaningful life, where we could be liked and loved for who we are as a person. A life built around what really matters to us. I’ve tried reading several self-help books but none of them touched my soul as the five books I am about to recommend you to read.

The thing about most books I tried reading is that the authors boldly claimed how their books will change your life immediately. While these five books made no such claims but merely relates to the acceptance of the transience of all things, and the experiencing of life with all the senses, inspiring you to make tiny incremental steps that will eventually change your life in due time.

They are written by authors who are either living or working in Japan that they have learnt several aspects of Japanese cultural life that they believe could be adopted elsewhere, whether it’s changing a mindset, finding time for a cup of tea or a walk in nature, and other techniques that can be really useful to those who felt overworked, anxious, burnt out and emotionally exhausted.

1 | Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life

A well written book by Beth Kempton, which makes you feel as if you are going on a journey in Japan with her, starting in Kyoto, to discover the history and mysteries behind the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi, which teaches you how to live with the rhythm of nature and see the beauty of imperfection, being gentler to ourselves and decelerating our lives.

To put it simply, it’s a whole new way of looking at the world and your life, inspired by centuries-old Japanese wisdom. With roots in Zen and the way of tea, it is more relevant than ever for a modern life as we search for new ways to approach life’s challenges and seek a purposeful meaning beyond materialism.

2 | A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More

An interesting book by Erin Niimi Longhurst that covers more than one philosophy, that aims at different aspects of your life, such as the first part which focuses on your heart and mind, finding contentment in your life and celebrating your hardships that shapes you into who you are today and letting go of your idea of perfection, because life itself isn’t a perfect.

The second part focuses on your body, how you engage with your surroundings and how to nourish it to stimulate your mind and the third part focuses on developing your habit slowly. And there are several beautiful photos of Japan on every page for you to pause and reflect on what you have just read on that page.

3| The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way

Today, we spend most of our time overthinking, either about the uncertainties of the future or being dragged down by the baggage of our past that we fail to live in the moment and spend our lives sleepwalking. This is where Garcia and Miralles, will guide you to relish everyday experiences and how to live in the moment.

In an age of distraction, instant gratification, and superficial engagement, the Japanese concept of “ichigo ichie,” which roughly translates as “one time, one meeting/opportunity,” can help us to treasure individual moments. Every moment in one’s life, they write, deserves full attention because this very moment will never happen again or in the exact same way again.

4 | L’art de la Simplicité: How to Live More with Less

Ever wonder why Marie Kondo and the minimalist movement are gaining momentum in this current age of commercialism and excessive spending? This book is great place to start to understand it’s underlying concept and how it’ll help you lead a simple life with just the minimum. You don’t have to sleep on the floor in an empty room but know well enough to get rid of things that you do not need because a clean home cleanses your mind and soul.

Dominuque Loreau takes you on a step-by-step journey to a clutter-free home, a calm mind and an energized body. Free yourself of possessions you don’t want or need; have more money to spend on life’s little luxuries; eat better and lose weight; and say goodbye to anxiety and negative relationships.

5 | Into the Forest: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness

We are increasingly becoming an indoor species that we spend 90% of our life indoors, staring at our screens, from work to leisure which is affecting our health without us realizing it. In this book, Immunologist and Forest Medicine expert, Dr Qing Li, examines the unprecedented benefits of forest therapy or Shinrin Yoku, exploring the scientific connection between nature and our wellbeing.

How a mindful stroll in the park, through the forest or by the sea, listening to the sounds of nature and breathing in fresh air into your lungs could reduce blood pressure, stress level and improve energy levels and immune system as well, making you feel much healthier and happier. There are several beautiful photos of the parks and forests across Japan where his research was conducted for you to immerse yourself into, making you feel as if you are there, spending time in nature yourself.

These books that I have shared are a refreshing antidote to our fast paced consumption driven world, where we’re constantly being shoved by the idea of perfection from work to love life. They will encourage you to slow down, reconnect with nature and be gentler on yourself. It can help you simplify everything and concentrate on what really matters in life.

There’s nothing wrong in achieving what you set out to achieve but bear in mind that we’re only human, we have flaws, we have wounds, we make mistakes, we have our limits, we are not identical to everyone else, we go through different paths and life experiences that shape us into who we are. Hope they’ll help you to love yourself just as you are and face life with a smile.

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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Superior Spider-Man v1 #2

The context for the above pages that throughout Superior #2 Otto has been trying to have sex with MJ but met with failures. Finally he realizes he can experience having sex with MJ via accessing Peter’s intimate memories of being with her. The nature of Otto’s infiltration of Peter’s body was such that accessing these memories meant he’d literally feel the sensations that Peter felt (or at least remembered) from the experiences.

The scene proceeds to imply that Otto masturbated whilst Peter’s subservient mind watched all this in horror and disgust.

So…this is easily one of the single most abhorrent scenes in Spider-Man history.

I despise this scene so goddam passionately. Let me try to No. Prize it to make it less awful.

Let’s be clear, the intent by the author and artist was clear. Otto accessed memories of every time Peter was physically intimate with Mary Jane and relived them over and over again.

It was undeniably a heavy implication.

However, an implication is not a confirmation.

And with ‘Death of the Author’ Slott or Stegman’s intent or Twitter statements are not tantamount to confirmations.

So where does this leave us?

This leaves us with Otto wanting to have sex with MJ and realizing that as an alternative he can access Peter’s memories of ‘being’ with MJ (that’s the term he uses). Then he accesses the three we see on the page.

Yes, the art and dialogue are implying these are but three of many which include more explicit scenes. These memories themselves might lead to more explicit scenes.

However…we do not see that. That is not on the page. Therefore it is not confirmed.

To elaborate let’s cast our minds back to the infamous Chameleon/Michelle controversy from ASM #603-604. In these issues Chameleon, disguised as Peter, kisses Peter’s roommate Michelle Gonzalez and they go down to the floor together. One of them (probably Michelle) giggles in a sexual way as indicated by the little hearts around the text.

In the next issue Peter returns home in ASM #604 to find Michelle wearing his boxers and t-shirt and acting like she is his girlfriend.

The implication is clear here too. Chameleon as Peter had sex with Michelle.

Fred Van Lente however said otherwise. According to him Michelle and Chammy

did nothing more than make out … There was no sex, and therefore no rape

This was an obvious case of backpedalling because the story stirred up backlash and even coined a term known as Van Lente rape.

It was improper to have done this story and was disingenuous to then cover his ass the way he did. However, technically speaking the idea that no sex occurred is not actually beyond belief.

In truth we did not see what happened on panel so it is up to the reader’s imagination. Even Michelle wearing Peter’s clothes could have an alternative, if improbable, explanation. She was clearly not mentally/emotionally stable and had little respect for Peter’s personhood or property.

For Michelle to be overly presumptuous based upon some kissing or cuddling is not beyond belief.

And as bad as some kissing or cuddling might’ve been from an ethical standpoint, it’s a far preferable interpretation compared to the Chameleon honestly raping someone; in a story for apparently for kids no less.

It doesn’t make Van Lente’s writing justified. But it is a far preferable in-universe interpretation.

So, when stories have wiggle room should we always take the best faith interpretation?

Well, no it’s more like we should take the least damaging interpretation. Even then it depends case-by-case.

In cases where there is wiggle room to not interpret these recurring characters (that are merchandised to children/intended for fun entertainment for old farts like myself) as not rapists?

Yes. We should absolutely take that!

Equally we should take the interpretation that allows for Spider-Man and Mary Jane to be the least violated possible.

It doesn’t mean we should let the creators off the hook for even doing stuff that supports the idea of these guys as rapists.

But it equally doesn’t mean there is no choice but to interpret them that way.

So, using ‘Van Lente Logic’ if you will, it is not an open and shut case that:

a) Otto accessed any memories beyond the three we see on the page or indeed accessed any lurid memories between the two above pages.

Yes he does say that he can relive each kiss or tender moment with MJ over and over.

The key word there is ‘can’.

He ‘can’ do that.

The story does not confirm beyond doubt that he did.

Using ‘Van Lente Logic’ it is theoretically possible he accessed just those three memories and was satisfied with the sensations he got from them. Or perhaps he was satisfied with the power and potential they opened up to him. As in maybe he didn’t experience what having sex with MJ was like, but he knew he could whenever he wanted and that boosted his ego and sent him on a kind of miniature power trip.

Or perhaps he was content knowing he could access Peter’s memories of being with MJ and thus chose to move on and turn his eyes to new ‘conquests’; like Sajani. Let me try explaining with an analogy. Imagine you were keen on finding an episode of a TV show and were frustrated by your failure to do so. Then late in the evening you are delighted to discover that Youtube has a playlist of the entire show that you can watch whenever you want. You check out three random clips and save the videos. You then turn your attentions elsewhere because you are satisfied that you can watch the episodes as much as you want at your leisure.

Hence why Otto might’ve been so satisfied with himself at the start of the second page.

b) That any of them led to sex. Noticeably only ‘Peter’ is in a state of undress in any of the memories we are shown. MJ is fully clothed in all of them. It doesn’t prove anything because they might’ve just had sex or might have proceeded to after the moments we are shown. But it is food for thought.

c) That he masturbated. Perhaps more importantly than the sexual implications of this scene is the implication of timing. Otto is outside, atop a roof, in his costume and removes his mask when he starts talking about accessing Peter’s memories. The sentence then continues into the next panel with all of the memories with Otto’s unmasked face smiling in pleasure.

This heavily implies he accessed the memories right then and there. Why would he masturbate (in costume and unmasked no less) outside on a rooftop in one of the most densely populated city on Earth; there is even a window right behind him?

That doesn’t make any sense. Therefore he must not have been masturbating.

In fairness there are counterpoints to this. Why would Otto randomly take his mask off at all on a rooftop? It’s a safety risk even with his Spider Sense? One might argue that it was because he was preparing to enter his/Peter’s home. This actually supports the idea that he was masturbating because if he’d be most likely to do that in his home. But then why remove his mask prior to entering his home? Especially when there is no sign of other civilian clothes for him to change into. It’d just be Peter Parker unmasked in a Spider-Man costume entering Peter Parker’s home via rooftop or whilst crawling on a wall.

So the location or being unmasked doesn’t necesarilly prove anything either. It’s again just food for thought. Indeed the very next panel is Otto waking up in bed saying he’s slept more soundly and Peter asking him to stop touching his body.

Again, this is a pretty clear implication?

Is there even any wiggle room on this one?

Actually yes but you’ll have to bear with me as I walk you through it.

Okay so analogy time again.

I want you to imagine a target, like the ones you see in archery tournaments with the rings.

Now imagine the dead centre is ‘Established characterization/In character actions’.

That’s what you want to aim for right?

Being as true to the characters as possible.

But of course you can pick up and move the target right? You can place it on the grass. On concrete. On carpet. Wherever.

So those different locations are the different contexts our characters get placed in.

E.g. the target on concrete is Spider-Man reacting to the death of Gwen Stacy. The target on grass is Spider-Man proposing to Mary Jane.

In this analogy we (the people analysing the stories) are the archers and our bow and arrows are our interpretations.

Obviously the aim is to get as close to centre as possible. To get as close to how the characters would act given both their established characterization and the context.

We can take multiple shots at the target but the one we should count the most is the arrow that lands closest to dead centre.

The guy who built the target and chose to put it on the grass or concrete might disagree. But they just built the target and placed it wherever, they aren’t the ones who have to aim and fire at it. In this analogy Slott, Stegman and Marvel are the creators of the target and the guys who decided to put it on the grass or wherever.

What I am trying to say is, our analysis of the in-universe events (not necessarily Slott’s intent or ability to convey that intent) should ultimately depend upon how the characters would act in that context based upon their established characterizations.

So if a guy kills Spider-Man’s girlfriend, he should be angry about it. If Peter proposed to Mary Jane he shouldn’t be holding a gun to her head whilst doing it.

With Superior #2 Slott characterized Otto as creepily trying to rape MJ and obsessed with her as a mere sexual conquest. He wasn’t in it for revenge against Peter. He wasn’t in it as a way to prove his own superiority. He was just horny and wanted her.

However, Dock Ock had never acted this way before. He had been willing to exploit people (including women) for what he saw as higher purposes, like granting him greater scientific resources or preserving his own life; Otto is an egotist, he views himself as the most important thing. However, it was never sexual. And he has pursued or formed romantic relationships with women before that were at most consensually sexual and not really predicated upon his physical attractions to them.

Otto is all about his mind, his intellect, etc. His fiancée was a fellow scientist who was impressed by his mechanical arms.

His affections for Aunt May, even if they were not strictly romantic, were rooted in her absolute kindness and generosity.

His affections for Carolyn Trainer (again, these might not have been romantic and she was fairly attractive) revolved around her admiration of him and her intellect.

His affections for Angelina Brancale/Stunner stemmed from him noticing a outcast kindred spirit.

Even his later affections for Anna Maria Marconi was predicated upon her intellect, admiration for, and kindness towards himself.

We should also consider that it is often true that people’s choice in romantic partners is a result of their relationships with their parents. The old adage of men marrying women like their mothers and women marrying men like their fathers holds some truth to it.

So what was Otto’s mother like? She was a woman unattractive by stereotypical beauty standards (not that there is anything wrong if you like women like that). She was overwhelmingly affectionate to Otto to the point of smothering him if anything. She was highly praise worthy of his intellect throughout his life. She pushed him to pursue a career ‘better’ than manual labour. Otto’s father was a manual labourer and had a strained relationship with his son. Often Otto’s mother would shield him from his father’s insults or physical threats. As a result for Otto, intellect (and his brilliance in particular) was emphasised as an important virtue.

If we compare to every woman Otto was romantically interested in, or at least held affection for (pre-Superior), we can see they were overwhelmingly kind to him and/or scientifically inclined and/or in admiration of him.

So these are all women that one way or another are reminiscent of Otto’s own beloved mother. And some of them were not ‘typically attractive’ either.

Beyond praising Spider-Man’s heroism, Mary Jane (from Otto’s POV) doesn’t fit the pattern at all. Even if Otto was a ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ type of guy (of which there is no indication), MJ wouldn’t be someone he’d particularly be interested in just for sex. He has never displayed a huge libido for typically glamorous women. Hobgoblin has. Norman Osborn has. Even Electro and Sandman have. But never Doc Ock in spite of being one of the three most recurring villains in Spider-Man’s history.

Thus it is out of character for Otto to have attempted to trick MJ into bed in the first place. And by extension it is also out of character for him to have accessed Peter’s memories specifically for the purposes of sexually pleasuring himself.

On the flipside let’s consider Peter. Peter is actually my trump card for this essay as I think his character actually definitively proves my case.

Okay, so if taken at face value Ghost Peter’s dialogue on the first page seems to convey he’s horrified, probably traumatized, by what he’s witnessing.

However, on the next page, and the pages thereafter, and in all consequent appearances of Ghost Peter in Superior Spider-Man his reactions are….odd

That is to say they are extremely odd for someone who was well…just sexually violated/raped.

Now I’m not by any means saying there is just one way anyone who is raped is bound to act, of course there isn’t.

Nevertheless, for someone who was sexually violated just the night before, Ghost Peter seems startlingly casual. He’s annoyed sure. But he acts like an invisible and silent quipster sidekick complaining to himself off to the side. It is a pattern of behaviour that continues for the rest of the issue and in consequent ones thereafter.

Alright, maybe he’s in denial.

But that seems like a bit of a stretch doesn’t it?

Ghost Peter is a manifestation of Peter’s mind and memories pushed into a subservient position by Otto’s dominant mind. So there is a rather large question as to whether or not realistic (let alone complex) human psychology even applies to him.

Then if you accept you have to consider that he’s not exactly denying that happened. We are talking about acknowledging something occurred but not having anything like a believable response to it. He’s acting like Otto just pissed him off and that’s all.

Well maybe he’s doing what Mary Jane did and putting on a façade of sorts for himself to cope? Except that sort of thing inevitably leads to those emotions coming out some other way. And at no point during Superior or Slott’s run is there any hint that that’s going on. The only reason that worked out for MJ’s character was because the audience didn’t spend that much time following her character intimately.

This then leads me to something I spoke about a long time ago in this essay. To quote myself:

“What this all means is that when we come up against a continuity problem (regardless of whether it’s related to a retcon or not) we have to figure out a solution to it which makes it work based upon the evidence presented in the stories themselves. But it can’t be over complicated or far fetched. It has to be the simplest solution possible which nevertheless answers all of the problems and dismisses the impossible scenarios.”

Maybe what we are discussing in Superior #2 isn’t strictly speaking a continuity error or a retcon. But the principle still stands, the simplest solution is the most logical.

Therefore what’s more simple?

a) That Doc Ock masturbated in Peter’s body to Peter’s memories of having sex with MJ whilst Peter himself was forced to watch in horror and torment, utterly helpless to stop him and then secretly developed a mental issue to cope with this trauma?

b) Doc Ock accessed a few intimate but not really sexual memories of Peter’s romance with MJ which upset and angered Peter. Then Otto went to sleep and Peter was still miffed the next morning?

And before anyone brings it up, Peter’s line about Otto touching his body can easily be interpreted as referring to Otto’s shower, not him having masturbated in Peter’s body the night before.

I know an easy counterpoint to all this is that Peter never acts believably under Slott anyway, so why should we take this interpretation? Wouldn’t it be more likely that Otto did masturbate but Peter is once more not reacting the way a normal person would? Same thing with what I said about Otto.

Well, again, that’s prioritizing intent above everything else.

But more importantly, to go back to my archery analogy, the aim is for our analyses of the in-universe events (as in what canonically happened) to be as close as possible to how the characters would act in context.

Of course so much of Peter’s actions and reactions don’t add up.

But in this scenario we aren’t talking about whether he is appropriately reacting to a confirmed event (like Otto killing Massacre). We are looking at it from the opposite angle. We are trying to confirm and clarify what the event Peter is reacting to was in the first place. As a result it’s far more fair game to take Peter’s reaction as appropriate because that’s the starting point in the analysis.

With Otto it is approaching things from the other end. We know how Otto would act in this situation. Therefore it doesn’t make sense for him to act the way implied. Therefore it’s appropriate to dismiss the implication as it is not a confirmation. The fact that he’s been out of character up until this point is irrelevant beyond pointing to how the author clearly intended for him to act.

But again, Death of the Author applies. Just because Slott intended Otto to have acted a certain way within the context of the implication doesn’t equate to a confirmation of him acting that way.

Anyway, I think that’s enough talk about masturbation for one essay. I’ll go back to my corner now.

P.S. In Superior #27 Ghost Peter claims that Otto accessed 31 memories before deleting the rest of Peter in Superior #9.

Given how active Peter and MJ’s sex life was when they were together if Otto really had accessed they would’ve accounted for a large chunk of the 31 memories he accessed.

And yet after Superior #2 we never see the memories depicted in that issue in any of the various collages or mindscape scenes throughout Superior. Let alone any other physically intimate memories between Peter and MJ. The only other one we see is their first kiss and that’s it.

This lends credence to the idea that Otto actually did not access any private memories involving MJ sans the ones we saw on panel.

#Superior Spider-Man #The Superior Spider-Man #otto octavius #Doc Ock #Doctor Octopus #Dan Slott #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #spider-man #Peter Parker

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wolfliving · 5 years

Text

Garnet Hertz ponders Making

From: Garnet Hertz

This discussion is great - I just subscribed with Chris's message to me - it's nice to connect with like-minded people around this topic. I've obviously been hanging around the wrong places online (like Facebook).

"maker as a disconnection to class struggle" - I could talk about this for YEARS - or at least thousands of words (see below if you don't believe me):

In my view (and I know I'm preaching to the choir here) is that the maker movement was primarily an attempt to standardize, spread and commercialize what artists and hackers were already doing into a “Martha Stewart for Geeks” by Make magazine. The founders literally used "Martha Stewart for Geeks" as their vision - this isn't a metaphor.

My book project, for example, looks to articulate one of the many strands of this scene that predated making — DIY electronics in art — and it reaches back nearly a hundred years. As many of you know, it has a totally fascinating history.

Other strands include hacker culture since the 1970s, the free software movement since 1983, ubiquitous computing since 1991, open source hardware since 1997, the explosion of craft practices since Y2K, the Arduino platform since 2003, the FabLab movement since 2005, and the material turn of philosophy over the past several decades — all of these are maker movements, and most of them are more of a social movement than what Make has envisioned.

The maker movement as articulated by Make lacks fuel of its own and offers little of unique cultural value beyond giving us the nondisciplinary label of the ‘maker’ in 2005. Make magazine organized, promoted and ‘platformed’ the maker movement as its brand, but the leadership of makers came from other sources (as noted above).

What is most interesting about the idea of making is not the term itself — it is the pieces of hacking, craft, DIY culture and electronic art that were left out of constructing the idea of the "maker" (at least in North America), which was largely carved out by Maker Media to serve its private business needs related to selling magazines and event tickets. Maker Media very clearly sanitized things from the hacker scene (maker = hacker - controversy) and from the art/DIY scene (Dorkbot, especially - which I ran in Los Angeles at the time).

The newer understanding of ‘making’ is not really an all-encompassing term for all, but is focused on a specific subset of ideas, primarily exists in a limited geography of influence, has a limited ecosystem of tools, and follows a specific form for projects that are considerably different and more constrained than the ‘making’ that existed before. The scene envisioned by Maker Media was almost exclusively focused on producing work as a leisure pursuit, which is a total misunderstanding with how many hackers or artists work.

In retrospect, the maker scene rode two major waves: the Arduino and 3D printing. I see its death as partially a result of never being able to find a third wave. Maker Media was also constructed as a relatively financially heavy structure that needed a lot of fuel to survive -- it wasn't an artist collective. In terms of financial waves, the Arduino provided vital technological, social and ethical glue that massively helped Make magazine launch. The Ardunio technical platform provided an accessible and uniform venue for sharing project prototypes, and its open source hardware provided a novel and exciting blueprint for how physical electronic objects could be prototyped and distributed. The Arduino and Make had a symbiotic and intertwined relationship with each other, with Arduino providing the hardware, mindset and seed community for Make, and Make providing media coverage and scores of fresh users for the Arduino hardware platform.

A similarly intertwined relationship formed a few years later between consumer-level 3D printing and Make magazine and its affiliated Maker Faire. In hindsight, the 3D printing movement was synonymous with the maker movement between 2009 to 2013, and this impact is still felt today. Of the many projects and companies involved in the rapid expansion of inexpensive 3D printing after 2009, MakerBot was central — and Make magazine largely served as its promotional sidekick.

The maker movement is somewhat significant in that it highlights how alienated contemporary western culture has become from the manual craft of building your own objects, and how wholly absorbed it has been enveloped in consumer culture. The maker movement works counter this alienation, but does so with considerably broad strokes — almost to the extent that making anything qualifies as being part of the movement.

Instead of looking at the maker movement as a large interdisciplinary endeavour, it can also be interpreted as a re-categorization of all manual fabrication under a single banner. Language typically expands into a rich lexicon of terms when a field grows, and the generality of ‘making’ is the polar opposite. Ceramicists, welders, sculptors, luthiers, amateur radio builders, furniture makers and inventors have been conflated into the singular category of makers, and the acceptance of this shift seems to indicate that any form of making is novel enough in popular culture that it is not worth discerning what is being built.

If looking at what typically constitutes a social movement, Make magazine’s maker movement never fit the bill. For example, Glasberg and Deric define social movements as “organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites.” If we ask what oppressed population Make magazine serves, it clearly doesn't have one.

If looked at from an economic perspective, Make’s readership contains considerably more powerful and advantaged elites than the oppressed: the publication’s own statistics claim that its audience has a median household income of $125,000 USD, over double the national US median of $59,039. Make’s maker movement is primarily a pitch to sell empowerment to the already empowered — in a 2012 Intel-funded research study on makers, “empowerment” is identified as a key motivator for the affluent group, and Make primarily sustained itself by catering to this audience until it realized that 3D printing and the Arduino weren't everything they promised to be. Or maybe people finally realized that they had enough 3D printed Yoda heads and blinking LED Arduino projects -- and that building stuff of cultural or design value was actually quite difficult.

If anybody else is interested in reading a draft of my book, just fill this out:

https://forms.gle/1F8787aJqSSapjPW9

- I'll mail out about a dozen physical hardcopies in exchange for harsh feedback.

I'm also still collecting thoughts about a "Post-Making" type of organization here:

https://forms.gle/JBM6DDFT7436p43G9

Some of the responses are as follows:

* Model it after dorkbot but instead of having meetings it can be geared around smaller regional Faires

* I would run it as a non profit and make sure that there are people from all over the world representing. Not only so US focused.

* Focus on low tech and tech criticism...as much as possible far from western culture...let say the gambiara creative movement in LATAM (brazil) or Cuban style repair culture, guerilla, community envisioned and run publications/workshops/happenings without the 'red tape' so often discussed as part of the Maker Media legacy.

So, no forced branding, no forced commonalities (other than perhaps a shared manifesto), no minimum number of participants or fundraising requirement for it to be a 'real' event of the community, and much less of a focus on attracting, and then satisfying, corporate sponsors.

* Should be about critical making, open source, skill sharing, critical thinking and more...

* I think the most important thing is to help local people meet up with each other in person. This should go far beyond people who already go to a hackerspace - this is something that Make did well by bringing together all sorts of people from children, university students, hackers, artists, etc. I don't think this has to be large scale.

* Member-run co-operative; leadership positions only for women; women-only days; focus on understanding biases built into technologies and imagining ways around this (critical technical practice)

And if anybody has made it this far down the page, I'm interested in talking to people working at universities that are working in this field.

Dr. Garnet Hertz Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts Emily Carr University of Art and Design 520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 0H2

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hope-for-olicity · 5 years

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Crushing the romance stigma once and for all Romance novel sales tally in the billions of dollars every year. (That's right: billions. With a "b".) And still, literary critics and other various bookish snobs continue to malign the genre, loudly and with great disdain. Why is that? If you ask these folks, they'll tell you romance novels are nothing but badly written trash. So, y'all have read a bunch of romance novels before forming that opinion, I assume? Oh, no, they'll say, noses tipped heavenward. They don't read romance (with all the contempt in the world placed on the word "romance"). Huh. Now I'm confused. Why would people be so openly hostile to a genre they've never read? I think I can tell you why.The romance stigma and genre misconceptions are so deeply ingrained in us as a society that we have trouble overlooking them, even with glaring examples to the contrary. Heck, even bestselling romance authors like Nicholas Sparks hesitate to admit they write romance. Mr. Sparks insists that he writes “love stories”. On his website, Sparks lays out the difference between “love stories” and romance as follows: “It’s equivalent to the difference between a "legal thriller" and a "techno-thriller." In that instance, both novels include many of the same elements: suspense, good and bad forces pitted against each other, scenes that build to a major plot point, etc. But aside from the obvious, those novels are in different sub-genres and the sub-genres have different requirements. For instance, legal thrillers generally have a court room scene on center stage, techno-thrillers use the world or a city as their setting. Legal thrillers explore the nuances of law, techno-thrillers explore the nuances of scientific or military conflict. The same situation applies with romance novels and love stories. Though both have romantic elements, the sub-genres have different requirements. Love stories must use universal characters and settings. Romance novels are not bound by this requirement and characters can be rich, famous, or people who lived centuries ago, and the settings can be exotic. Love stories can differ in theme, romance novels have a general theme—‘the taming of a man.’ And finally, romance novels usually have happy endings while love stories are not bound by this requirement. Love stories usually end tragically or, at best, on a bittersweet note.” I’m sorry, no disrespect intended, but if you’ve written a story in which the romantic relationship between two characters is the focus, you’ve written a romance novel, Mr. Sparks. The rest is just splitting hairs and can probably be construed as you protesting a bit too much. Throwing in a depressing ending doesn’t completely excuse you from the genre. Sorry. So, let’s take a look at the most common romance complaints and see if there’s actually anything to them: Romance novels are badly written I don’t know if y’all picked up on the implied “all” in that sentence, but I sure did. I don’t know of any genre outside of romance where people feel comfortable saying “all” of it is badly written. Are there some stinkers in the bunch? Absolutely. But I’ve also read plenty of stinkers in the sci fi, horror and mystery genres. I suppose my response to critics who say romance novels are badly written would be: have you read all romance novels? No? Well…there you go. And further...if they’re so badly written, why are they selling so well? Romance novels are formulaic I suppose this might depend on how broadly you define “formula”. For example: 1 person + 1 person = love and happiness Is that how a formula is defined? Because if that’s the definition, it could be argued that romance novels are formulaic. It is a somewhat unspoken “rule” that romance novels end with a HEA (happily ever after). But in my opinion, there’s A LOT that can happen in the middle of that particular formula, and there’s about a gazillion ways that particular equation can be worked out. I’ve read romance novels about everyday people with typical problems, and I’ve read romance novels about vampires and witches and angels. All the lovely variations in which the “formula” can be worked out and twisted about sure can make for some entertaining reading. Romance novels are predictable Again with the implied “all”. Sigh. I’m pretty hard to surprise. I knew that Darth Vadar was Luke’s father well before Luke did. I knew that one of the dead people Haley Joel Osment was seeing was Bruce Willis way before Bruce Willis knew. I knew what was going on at The Red Wedding well before Talisa took that knife to the gut. But I can honestly say that more than a few romance authors have managed to throw me for a loop with their plot gymnastics. (I’m looking at you, J.A. Redmerski!) So, are there some predictable romances out there? Sure. Can it be argued that the HEA is predictable? Absolutely. But to those still arguing this point, I have to ask: is your enjoyment of a book dependent on your inability to predict the story’s ultimate direction? Even if you know where the story will end up, can you not just enjoy the ebb and flow of the story, the writer’s word choices, the snap of the dialog and crackling chemistry between characters? If not...well, that’s kind of sad! Why bother reading at all if that’s the case? There’s no plot; it’s all just about sex This is another one of those all-inclusive statements that should just be ignored. Are there some romance novels that are all about sex? Sure. And there are plenty of others that are intricately plotted (author Tarryn Fisher comes immediately to mind here) and meticulously researched. Beyond that, there’s even an entire subcategory of sweet and clean romances (even some Amish romances) that don’t contain any sex at all. Lesson to be learned here: As a rule, “all” and “never” statements are crap. “Real” writers don’t write romance Who gets to define what a “real” writer is? Was there some kind of specially appointed task force for this that I wasn’t aware of? As it turns out, writing is an art. So, just like any other art form, opinions on what is “good” and what is “real” will tend to vary greatly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there are no wrong answers. And just for the record, Jane Austen wrote romance novels. Anyone care to tell her—and her legions of rabid fans—that she wasn’t a real writer? No? Didn’t think so. Romance novels are unrealistic The “unrealistic” criticism usually exists in a couple of different forms: 1. The heroes and heroines are all perfect looking It’s true that as a society, we like pretty stuff. For that reason, you will find an abundance of pretty, seemingly perfect people in romance novels (especially on the covers). But, you’ll also find plenty of people who don’t fit into a perfect Barbie-and-Ken mold. I’ve read romances about a paraplegic hero, a heroine with CP, and a heroine so unattractive the hero is uncomfortable around her until he gets to know and love her. 2. HEAs don’t happen in real life You know who doesn’t believe in HEAs? Unhappy people. It’s true that no one is happy all the time, but to assume that no one ever gets a HEA is insane. There’s plenty of happiness out there for those who are willing to reach for it. And on a less philosophical note, I think romance readers generally understand that “HEA” is just a phrase. No one assumes that the main couple in the story continued to live out their lives without ever having another care in the world. The HEA is just where the story ends. Romance novels are just “bodice rippers” This one stems from a trend in the 70s and 80s that had innocent virgins (mostly in historical novels) on book covers being accosted by burly, half-dressed dudes (often Fabio) who were pretty much forcing themselves on them. Much like clothing and hairstyles, romance novel trends have also changed quite a bit since the 70s and 80s. For anyone who believes that all romance novels are “bodice rippers”, I encourage you to change out of your velour leisure suit, shut off your 8-track player and lava lamp, and venture to your local bookstore’s romance section. You’re in for a big surprise. Romance novels promote abusive relationships I’ll let you in on a little secret, folks. (Come closer…wouldn’t want this one getting out to just anyone) Women sometimes fantasize about being overpowered by a man. It’s a pretty standard fantasy, actually. Some dude (who looks like Thor or Wolverine) overcomes all of her good-girl protests and better judgement with nothing more than the raw animal power of his overwhelming manly hotness. No consequences, no one gets hurt. Does reading about such a fantasy make women prone to asking their husband/partner/lover to abuse and overpower them on a regular basis? No more so than reading To Kill a Mockingbird makes people prone to becoming lawyers, or reading The Bourne Identity makes people prone to amnesia. Typically, readers are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Critics who spew drivel about romance novels promoting abuse against women seem to think otherwise, though. And further, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read a lot of romance novels. A. Lot. The portion of those novels that featured a man overpowering a woman amounts to maybe 2% of the total. It’s hardly fair to assume that all romance novels—or even a majority of romance novels, for that matter--promote that kind of relationship. It’s just “mommy porn” Sorry, but it’s just not statistically possible that all of the billions of dollars’ worth of romances sold each year were read by mommies. Women and men (yes, men read romance, too) of all ages enjoy romances. This statement is just a desperate attempt by critics to shame readers into buying the types of books theythink everyone should be reading. It’s like trying to convince people they should be watching PBS all the time. PBS is a great channel, but sometimes, you need a little HBO. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just an egocentric bully trying to promote his/her own agenda. Romance novels are silly fluff I’m not going to argue that romance novels are doing their part to cure cancer or end world hunger. (And truthfully, neither are any novels) Some romances are about light subject matter, and others cover much deeper topics such as the grief of losing a spouse, kidnapping and child abuse, murder and even survival in a post-apocalyptic world. And those are just a few examples of the not-so-silly-fluffy topics you can find in romance novels today. There’s plenty more where those came from. Long-story-short, it would appear that nothing is wrong with the romance genre that isn’t also a problem for any other genre, other than what ignorant critics think of it. So, what can romance lovers do to help crush the romance stigma once and for all? Well, the first step is to admit, out loud and to anyone who asks, that you love romance novels. No more sheepishness. No more hiding your romance novels in speculative fiction dust jackets. No more refusing to let anyone see your Amazon browsing history or your Kindle’s contents. Be PROUD of what you read. The second step is to promote the books you read that help crush these myths. That’s what we’ll be doing here at Romance Rehab. What about all of you proud romance readers out there? What other romance misconceptions piss you off? Let’s talk.

#romance novels

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crimethinc · 6 years

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The Mythology of Work: Eight Myths that Keep Your Eyes on the Clock and Your Nose to the Grindstone

What if nobody worked? Sweatshops would empty out and assembly lines would grind to a halt, at least the ones producing things no one would make voluntarily. Telemarketing would cease. Despicable individuals who only hold sway over others because of wealth and title would have to learn better social skills. Traffic jams would come to an end; so would oil spills. Paper money and job applications would be used as fire starter as people reverted to barter and sharing. Grass and flowers would grow from the cracks in the sidewalk, eventually making way for fruit trees.

And we would all starve to death. But we’re not exactly subsisting on paperwork and performance evaluations, are we? Most of the things we make and do for money are patently irrelevant to our survival—and to what gives life meaning, besides.

This text is a selection from Work, our 376-page analysis of contemporary capitalism. It is also available as a pamphlet.

That depends on what you mean by “work.” Think about how many people enjoy gardening, fishing, carpentry, cooking, and even computer programming just for their own sake. What if that kind of activity could provide for all our needs?

For hundreds of years, people have claimed that technological progress would soon liberate humanity from the need to work. Today we have capabilities our ancestors couldn’t have imagined, but those predictions still haven’t come true. In the US we actually work longer hours than we did a couple generations ago—the poor in order to survive, the rich in order to compete. Others desperately seek employment, hardly enjoying the comfortable leisure all this progress should provide. Despite the talk of recession and the need for austerity measures, corporations are reporting record earnings, the wealthiest are wealthier than ever, and tremendous quantities of goods are produced just to be thrown away. There’s plenty of wealth, but it’s not being used to liberate humanity.

What kind of system simultaneously produces abundance and prevents us from making the most of it? The defenders of the free market argue that there’s no other option—and so long as our society is organized this way, there isn’t.

Yet once upon a time, before time cards and power lunches, everything got done without work. The natural world that provided for our needs hadn’t yet been carved up and privatized. Knowledge and skills weren’t the exclusive domains of licensed experts, held hostage by expensive institutions; time wasn’t divided into productive work and consumptive leisure. We know this because work was invented only a few thousand years ago, but human beings have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. We’re told that life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” back then—but that narrative comes to us from the ones who stamped out that way of life, not the ones who practiced it.

This isn’t to say we should go back to the way things used to be, or that we could—only that things don’t have to be the way they are right now. If our distant ancestors could see us today, they’d probably be excited about some of our inventions and horrified by others, but they’d surely be shocked by how we apply them. We built this world with our labor, and without certain obstacles we could surely build a better one. That wouldn’t mean abandoning everything we’ve learned. It would just mean abandoning everything we’ve learned doesn’t work.

One can hardly deny that work is productive. Just a couple thousand years of it have dramatically transformed the surface of the earth.

But what exactly does it produce? Disposable chopsticks by the billion; laptops and cell phones that are obsolete within a couple years. Miles of waste dumps and tons upon tons of chlorofluorocarbons. Factories that will rust as soon as labor is cheaper elsewhere. Dumpsters full of overstock, while a billion suffer malnutrition; medical treatments only the wealthy can afford; novels and philosophies and art movements most of us just don’t have time for in a society that subordinates desires to profit motives and needs to property rights.

And where do the resources for all this production come from? What happens to the ecosystems and communities that are pillaged and exploited? If work is productive, it’s even more destructive.

Work doesn’t produce goods out of thin air; it’s not a conjuring act. Rather, it takes raw materials from the biosphere—a common treasury shared by all living things—and transforms them into products animated by the logic of market. For those who see the world in terms of balance sheets, this is an improvement, but the rest of us shouldn’t take their word for it.

Capitalists and socialists have always taken it for granted that work produces value. Workers have to consider a different possibility—that working uses up value. That’s why the forests and polar ice caps are being consumed alongside the hours of our lives: the aches in our bodies when we come home from work parallel the damage taking place on a global scale.

What should we be producing, if not all this stuff? Well, how about happiness itself? Can we imagine a society in which the primary goal of our activity was to make the most of life, to explore its mysteries, rather than to amass wealth or outflank competition? We would still make material goods in such a society, of course, but not in order to compete for profit. Festivals, feasts, philosophy, romance, creative pursuits, child-rearing, friendship, adventure—can we picture these as the center of life, rather than packed into our spare time?

Today things are the other way around—our conception of happiness is constructed as a means to stimulate production. Small wonder products are crowding us out of the world.

Work doesn’t simply create wealth where there was only poverty before. On the contrary, so long as it enriches some at others’ expense, work creates poverty, too, in direct proportion to profit.

Poverty is not an objective condition, but a relationship produced by unequal distribution of resources. There’s no such thing as poverty in societies in which people share everything. There may be scarcity, but no one is subjected to the indignity of having to go without while others have more than they know what to do with. As profit is accumulated and the minimum threshold of wealth necessary to exert influence in society rises higher and higher, poverty becomes more and more debilitating. It is a form of exile—the cruelest form of exile, for you stay within society while being excluded from it. You can neither participate nor go anywhere else.

Work doesn’t just create poverty alongside wealth—it concentrates wealth in the hands of a few while spreading poverty far and wide. For every Bill Gates, a million people must live below the poverty line; for every Shell Oil, there has to be a Nigeria. The more we work, the more profit is accumulated from our labor, and the poorer we are compared to our exploiters.

So in addition to creating wealth, work makes people poor. This is clear even before we factor in all the other ways work makes us poor: poor in self-determination, poor in free time, poor in health, poor in sense of self beyond our careers and bank accounts, poor in spirit.

“Cost of living” estimates are misleading—there’s little living going on at all! “Cost of working” is more like it, and it’s not cheap.

Everyone knows what housecleaners and dishwashers pay for being the backbone of our economy. All the scourges of poverty—addiction, broken families, poor health—are par for the course; the ones who survive these and somehow go on showing up on time are working miracles. Think what they could accomplish if they were free to apply that power to something other than earning profits for their employers!

What about their employers, fortunate to be higher on the pyramid? You would think earning a higher salary would mean having more money and thus more freedom, but it’s not that simple. Every job entails hidden costs: just as a dishwasher has to pay bus fare to and from work every day, a corporate lawyer has to be able to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice, to maintain a country club membership for informal business meetings, to own a small mansion in which to entertain dinner guests that double as clients. This is why it’s so difficult for middle-class workers to save up enough money to quit while they’re ahead and get out of the rat race: trying to get ahead in the economy basically means running in place. At best, you might advance to a fancier treadmill, but you’ll have to run faster to stay on it.

And these merely financial costs of working are the least expensive. In one survey, people of all walks of life were asked how much money they would need to live the life they wanted; from pauper to patrician, they all answered approximately double whatever their current income was. So not only is money costly to obtain, but, like any addictive drug, it’s less and less fulfilling! And the further up you get in the hierarchy, the more you have to fight to hold your place. The wealthy executive must abandon his unruly passions and his conscience, must convince himself that he deserves more than the unfortunates whose labor provides for his comfort, must smother his every impulse to question, to share, to imagine himself in others’ shoes; if he doesn’t, sooner or later some more ruthless contender replaces him. Both blue-collar and white-collar workers have to kill themselves to keep the jobs that keep them alive; it’s just a question of physical or spiritual destruction.

Those are the costs we pay individually, but there’s also a global price to pay for all this working. Alongside the environmental costs, there are work-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths: every year we kill people by the thousand to sell hamburgers and health club memberships to the survivors. The US Department of Labor reported that twice as many people suffered fatal work injuries in 2001 as died in the September 11 attacks, and that doesn’t begin to take into account work-related illnesses. Above all, more exorbitant than any other price, there is the cost of never learning how to direct our own lives, never getting the chance to answer or even ask the question of what we would do with our time on this planet if it was up to us. We can never know how much we are giving up by settling for a world in which people are too busy, too poor, or too beaten down to do so.

Why work, if it’s so expensive? Everyone knows the answer—there’s no other way to acquire the resources we need to survive, or for that matter to participate in society at all. All the earlier social forms that made other ways of life possible have been eradicated—they were stamped out by conquistadors, slave traders, and corporations that left neither tribe nor tradition nor ecosystem intact. Contrary to capitalist propaganda, free human beings don’t crowd into factories for a pittance if they have other options, not even in return for name brand shoes and software. In working and shopping and paying bills, each of us helps perpetuate the conditions that necessitate these activities. Capitalism exists because we invest everything in it: all our energy and ingenuity in the marketplace, all our resources at the supermarket and in the stock market, all our attention in the media. To be more precise, capitalism exists because our daily activities are it. But would we continue to reproduce it if we felt we had another choice?

On the contrary, instead of enabling people to achieve happiness, work fosters the worst kind of self-denial.

Obeying teachers, bosses, the demands of the market—not to mention laws, parents’ expectations, religious scriptures, social norms—we’re conditioned from infancy to put our desires on hold. Following orders becomes an unconscious reflex, whether or not they are in our best interest; deferring to experts becomes second nature.

Selling our time rather than doing things for their own sake, we come to evaluate our lives on the basis of how much we can get in exchange for them, not what we get out of them. As freelance slaves hawking our lives hour by hour, we think of ourselves as each having a price; the amount of the price becomes our measure of value. In that sense, we become commodities, just like toothpaste and toilet paper. What once was a human being is now an employee, in the same way that what once was a pig is now a pork chop. Our lives disappear, spent like the money for which we trade them.

Most of us have become so used to giving up things that are precious to us that sacrifice has become our only way of expressing that we care about something. We martyr ourselves for ideas, causes, love of one another, even when these are supposed to help us find happiness.

There are families, for example, in which people show affection by competing to be the one who gives up the most for the others. Gratification isn’t just delayed, it’s passed on from one generation to the next. The responsibility of finally enjoying all the happiness presumably saved up over years of thankless toil is deferred to the children; yet when they come of age, if they are to be seen as responsible adults, they too must begin working their fingers to the bone.

But the buck has to stop somewhere.

People work hard nowadays, that’s for sure. Tying access to resources to market performance has caused unprecedented production and technological progress. Indeed, the market has monopolized access to our own creative capacities to such an extent that many people work not only to survive but also to have something to do. But what kind of initiative does this instill?

Let’s go back to global warming, one of the most serious crises facing the planet. After decades of denial, politicians and businessmen have finally swung into action to do something about it. And what are they doing? Casting about for ways to cash in! Carbon credits, “clean” coal, “green” investment firms—who believes that these are the most effective way to curb the production of greenhouse gases? It’s ironic that a catastrophe caused by capitalist consumerism can be used to spur more consumption, but it reveals a lot about the kind of initiative work instills. What kind of person, confronted with the task of preventing the end of life on earth, responds, “Sure, but what’s in it for me?”

If everything in our society has to be driven by a profit motive to succeed, that might not be initiative after all, but something else. Really taking initiative, initiating new values and new modes of behavior—this is as unthinkable to the enterprising businessman as it is to his most listless employee. What if working—that is, leasing your creative powers to others, whether managers or customers—actually erodes initiative?

The evidence for this extends beyond the workplace. How many people who never miss a day of work can’t show up on time for band practice? We can’t keep up with the reading for our book clubs even when we can finish papers for school on time; the things we really want to do with our lives end up at the bottom of the to-do list. The ability to follow through on commitments becomes something outside ourselves, associated with external rewards or punishments.

Imagine a world in which everything people do, they do because they want to, because they are personally invested in bringing it about. For any boss who has struggled to motivate indifferent employees, the idea of working with people who are equally invested in the same projects sounds utopian. But this isn’t proof that nothing would get done without bosses and salaries—it just shows how work saps us of initiative.

Let’s say your job never injures, poisons, or sickens you. Let’s also take it for granted that the economy doesn’t crash and take your job and savings with it, and that no one who got a worse deal than you manages to hurt or rob you. You still can’t be sure you won’t be downsized. Nowadays nobody works for the same employer his whole life; you work somewhere a few years until they let you go for someone younger and cheaper or outsource your job overseas. You can break your back to prove you’re the best in your field and still end up hung out to dry.

You have to count on your employers to make shrewd decisions so they can write your paycheck—they can’t just fritter money away or they won’t have it to pay you. But you never know when that shrewdness will turn against you: the ones you depend on for your livelihood didn’t get where they are by being sentimental. If you’re self-employed, you probably know how fickle the market can be, too.

What could provide real security? Perhaps being part of a long-term community in which people looked out for each other, a community based on mutual assistance rather than financial incentives. And what is one of the chief obstacles to building that kind of community today? Work.

Who carried out most of the injustices in history? Employees. This is not necessarily to say they are responsible for them—as they would be the first to tell you!

Does receiving a wage absolve you of responsibility for your actions? Working seems to foster the impression that it does. The Nuremburg defense—“I was just following orders”—has been the anthem and alibi of millions of employees. This willingness to check one’s conscience at the workplace door—to be, in fact, a mercenary—lies at the root of many of the troubles plaguing our species.

People have done horrible things without orders, too—but not nearly so many horrible things. You can reason with a person who is acting for herself; she acknowledges that she is accountable for her decisions. Employees, on the other hand, can do unimaginably dumb and destructive things while refusing to think about the consequences.

The real problem, of course, isn’t employees refusing to take responsibility for their actions—it’s the economic system that makes taking responsibility so prohibitively expensive.

Employees dump toxic waste into rivers and oceans.

Employees slaughter cows and perform experiments on monkeys.

Employees throw away truckloads of food.

Employees are destroying the ozone layer.

They watch your every move through security cameras.

They evict you when you don’t pay your rent.

They imprison you when you don’t pay your taxes.

They humiliate you when you don’t do your homework or show up to work on time.

They enter information about your private life into credit reports and FBI files.

They give you speeding tickets and tow your car.

They administer standardized exams, juvenile detention centers, and lethal injections.

The soldiers who herded people into gas chambers were employees,

Just like the soldiers occupying Iraq and Afghanistan,

Just like the suicide bombers who target them—they are employees of God, hoping to be paid in paradise.

Let’s be clear about this—critiquing work doesn’t mean rejecting labor, effort, ambition, or commitment. It doesn’t mean demanding that everything be fun or easy. Fighting against the forces that compel us to work is hard work. Laziness is not the alternative to work, though it might be a byproduct of it.

The bottom line is simple: all of us deserve to make the most of our potential as we see fit, to be the masters of our own destinies. Being forced to sell these things away to survive is tragic and humiliating. We don’t have to live like this.

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paperplanesfromfinland-blog · 5 years

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Mom, I’m home!

I’m hanging out with people and their mothers. I’m not jealous. I’m not.

I kind of am but in a weird way. I see how they almost transform. Smile a bit wider, act a bit more relaxed. I have seen that before within Finland too, a change like that when people get to connect with their families and past. I don’t really wish my parents to come here. I miss myself back in Finland instead.

I get to smile. I got to see what several of my friends are like with their family. That’s something that disappeared after high school, so I try to treasure this glimpse to what they are.

I visited a lobby in a fancy hotel. It has an amazing view over Hong Kong and is free to access to anyone. The entire floor is there for the purpose of working as frames for the windows overlooking the city from the 46th floor. Hong Kong is a massively crowded place where every square meter is precious and where land is made there where it doesn’t exist. That floor of the lobby has incredibly high ceilings and it is incredibly empty. Just how hollow can wealth really be? There’re a few potted plants in the golden dollhouse and a lonely piano playing in one of the corners. The keyboard is alive but no one sits there playing it.

Cows and skydivers on a mountaintop. Amazing. It was a hard hike. I was totally spent at the end of it but it was worth it and beyond. We got to walk surrounded by bamboos, in a mist so thick it was hard to see a person five meters ahead of you. When we got to the top there were almost twenty skydivers performing their art while cows were sneaking to the bags and a tent of innocent leisure seekers relaxing and watching the show.

I was really happy on my birthday celebrating it with my friends. We went out to eat and for desserts too, of course. After that we headed to a harbor where we spoke about sweet little things I do not wish to write here. We played tag and danced in front of the cultural centre of Hong Kong, probably looking crazy and scaring the locals with our antics. I got a dog figurine as a birthday present from my group of friends. The dog has bird-feet. It’s perfect but we couldn’t agree on whether to call her Clock or Domino. Rest of the suggestions shall remain unstated. I got to hear the happy birthday song in Finnish, English, French, German, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin…I’m not sure if I forget something. We are not that big of a group but it’s amazing how far a collective knowledge of young minds from across the globe brings so many languages within our reach. Thank you, girls!

I got splinters to my fingers from my chopsticks. That’s got the be a goal of some sort.

Distance is forgettable. The differences are not, even when I don’t consciously think about them. It feels like I build unnecessary barriers and obstacles for myself because of this. Its also in conflict with the idea of building a life here which I have tried to live by since day one. I don’t think this as a temporary solution, something that just waits to turn back to “normal”. This is my life now, this is the new normal.

And then traitorously I realize thinking “Would I really use these sandals in Finland?” or “Well I will have more space for this stuff back at home.”. I try not to think like this because “back at home” is still at least half a year away. That is a sad thought. It is also a weird one since I wanted away from there, I will get to go back there and being here is a privilege (even when it sucks). I want to get as much out of this exchange as possible. I want this to be home now.

(I got around finishing this part in January even though all of this happened in November. It is home now. I know exactly when it happened too, or when I first became aware of it. It was on a really windy and late evening around mid-December. I was walking alone back to the university from MTR station. Nothing great or out of ordinary happened. I just realized that I had the same feeling of familiarity and peace that I had in my study city in Finland. I had a place to call home, I was familiar enough with that part of the city, I had my routines and a sense of independence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I know this city or culture. I’m only saying I know this neighborhood and this lifestyle well enough to feel at home. It’s a scary and beautiful feeling.)

The bank keeps sending me text messages in Chinese.

November 2018

#hongkong #studyexchange #showthosemoves

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vrepitsorrynotsorry · 6 years

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Family Game Night

Title: Family Game Night Rating: G Pairing: Gen A/N: This is set directly after Season 5 but doesn’t really comply with Season 6. We decided not to try to make it conform. This is my contribution to @voltrongenminibang, and @clambatch’s art post is here: http://clambatch.tumblr.com/post/175954988597/hey-guys-heres-my-contribution-to. It’s amazing. You should go check it out.

One of the things the group had asked of Keith when he decided to work full-time with the Blade of Marmora was that he check in with them every once in a while. He had just finished telling them about his latest mission and meeting his mother.

Shiro knew that locating his family meant a great deal to Keith, but instead of looking happy, his face on the vid screen seemed haggard.

“It’s been a while since you’ve come by the castle for a visit,” Shiro mentioned. “Maybe you could ask Kolivan to take a few days to relax? You did just finish a mission, after all.”

The other paladins, Allura, and Coran were quick to agree.

“Actually,” Keith admitted, “that sounds great. Kolivan doesn’t seem to be too happy with my performance lately, and this whole thing with my mom is...weird.”

“You just need some time,” Allura assured him. “We’re happy to have you with us.”

After the transmission ended, the group decided to make it a sort of a party. Hunk was in charge of refreshments, of course, but beyond that, the plans began to fall apart fairly quickly.

“What about entertainment?” Lance wanted to know. “I mean, yeah, we’re all going to eat and talk and stuff, but after that? We need some way to unwind.”

“I’d suggest watching a movie,” Pidge remarked, “but first we all have to agree on one, which would probably never happen, and we don’t have any.”

“I’ve got my music player,” Lance offered, “but most of it isn’t exactly dance music...”

“Hey, Allura,” Hunk asked the princess, “what kind of things did you used to do around the castle for fun?”

“Actually,” the princess begrudgingly admitted, “games were generally considered to be things for very young children, and I’m afraid we don’t have any of them here any longer. I spent most of my free time reading about the cultures of our allies and sparring on the training deck.”

“I guess there’s always the Gameflux,” Pidge mentioned with a shrug, “but we only have the game it came with, and that one’s single-player.”

“There was all kinds of Earth junk in the shop we bought it from!” Lance grinned. “I’ll bet there’s some other games for the system there. Looks like it’s time for us all to take another trip to the space mall!”

“And we’ve got money now, too!” Hunk agreed. Lotor had been more than happy to exchange GAC for Coran and Allura’s old Altean currency. It probably wasn’t worth as much as he’d given them, what with 10,000 years of galactic inflation, but he’d been eager to get his hands on a part of Altean culture thought lost to time.

“I don’t think so,” Shiro declared firmly. When the others, especially Lance, looked like he’d just told them all holidays and birthdays were cancelled forever, he amended his statement. “We really don’t want to cause another scene like last time, and we should leave enough people here to respond in case of an emergency.”

“I don’t think the security guard got a very good look at me,” Coran mused, “and you didn’t go along, did you, Shiro?”

“I didn’t go along, either,” Allura chimed. Shiro and Coran both gave her a pointed look and she sighed. “I know, I know, who would create a wormhole if we really need one...”

“I’m sorry, Allura. I’m sure you’ll get a chance to go some other time.” After Allura smiled to show there were no true hard feelings, Shiro turned his focus to Lance and Pidge. “Now, what was the name of the store where you bought the game system?”

“Uh...” Both paladins considered the question for a few moments.

“I don’t remember.” Pidge shrugged.

“It was run by an alien.”

“We’re in outer space, Lance. Everything is run by aliens.”

“Yeah, but this guy was like the Earth alien stereotype. You know, little, green man with big, black eyes and a head shaped like an upside-down teardrop?”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure we’ll find it.”

“Remember,” Pidge cautioned, “we have the Gameflux Two, just in case he has anything for the first system.”

“Also, please don’t get anything lame or educational,” Lance pleaded.

“I do know how to have fun, Lance. Promise.”

As Shiro and Coran headed to the pod bay, Allura went to help Hunk inventory ingredients in the galley, and Lance and Pidge set about moving the Gameflux into the common area with the most comfortable seating.

*****

After a short period of searching, Coran and Shiro located the correct store. “Terra, huh?” Shiro chuckled and shook his head. “They must have been too distracted by the game to look at the name because they should have remembered that.”

“Oh?” Coran asked. “Does it have some special, human meaning?”

“It’s another name for our home planet.”

The shopkeeper approached in a bright purple leisure suit jacket and gold parachute pants. “Can I interest you in the latest Earth fashions?” he asked politely.

“Ooh!” Coran looked their host up and down. “I quite like that jacket. How are you getting the shoulders so pointy?”

“Actually,” Shiro cut in, “what we’re really looking for are game cartridges for the Mercury Gameflux Two system.”

The alien blinked. “Pardon?”

Shiro glanced around and noticed there were still boxes of the game system in the display window and pointed. “I have friends who bought one of those.”

“Ah, yes! They received a Kaltenecker with their purchase.”

“Um, yeah. You may have cartridges that can be used with it. They would be about this size,” Shiro paused to form a rectangle between his thumbs and index fingers, “and they probably come in a small box with pictures on the outside.”

“Let me check in the back.”

While they waited, Coran scanned a rack of jackets similar to the store owner’s but ultimately decided he didn’t like the fit when he tried one on over his uniform. Shiro found some model kits from an old animated series about fighting robot suits. It was the kind of thing he would have loved as a kid, and it was strange to think that he was kind of living it currently.

The owner eventually returned with a storage container full of Gameflux games in their original packaging. Shiro and Coran rifled through it, the former on a mission to find something for multiple players and the latter taking great joy in reading the descriptions on the back of all the boxes aloud.

There was no shortage of fighting games, but given how tense things had been lately, that probably wasn’t the best idea, even though it could be a vicarious means of blowing off steam. Finally, Shiro’s eyes settled on a particularly vivid box and he grinned as he picked it up.

“Master Racer?” Coran asked, reading the name off the back.

“I can remember playing a later version of this one,” Shiro explained. “It’s a pretty fun racing game. There are lots of characters and cars to choose from, and it’s not too hard to learn, if the others haven’t played before.”

“Might you also be interested in any of this?” The shopkeeper presented yet another container full of various items with the Gameflux logo. They happily snagged extra controllers and an adapter to allow four people to play at the same time. Coran insisted on purchasing several other games as well, but Shiro was fairly certain the racing game was going to get the most play time.

*****

When Coran and Shiro arrived back at the castle, Pidge had just finished setting up the game system to display on a large, projected holo-screen.

Allura cocked her head to one side and frowned slightly at the load screen of Killbot Phantasm 1. “These graphics are certainly...unique.”

Pidge wrinkled their nose at the display. “Yeah, this system is pretty low-tech. Earth has much better ones now.”

“It’s not this awful looking on a smaller screen,” Lance defended.

“I think we’ll be happy for the larger image when we play in split-screen,” Shiro added.

“Play what in split-screen?” Lance asked eagerly.

“Yeah, what’d you get?” Pidge wanted to know.

“Wow...” Hunk let out a low whistle when Shiro showed them their brand new copy of Master Racer. “I’ve never seen the first version of the franchise! I wonder how different it is from the ones I’ve played.”

“It’s been years since I’ve played any of them, either,” Shiro admitted, “but I’m sure at least a few of the characters and boosters are the same.”

Allura was now eyeing one of the game controllers. “These controlling options seem rather...limited. How complicated could this game really be?”

“I can see where you might think that.” Lance nodded sagely. “In fact, you don’t even have to use all of the buttons to play a racing game. The trick is in the timing and good reflexes and hand-eye coordination.”

“My reflexes and coordination are excellent,” the princess mused, “yet I still feel I may be at an unfair disadvantage, having never played one of these ‘video games’ before. Might Coran and I play a few practice rounds to acquaint ourselves with the system?”

“Seems fair,” Hunk agreed with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure all the Earthlings have played a racing game before, right?”

Everyone nodded, and Shiro added, “I can vouch for Keith having racing game experience. He prefers a real vehicle, given the choice, but he’s played his fair share.”

Lance switched off the console and swapped the adventure game for Master Racer before poking the power button again. An upbeat if tonally limited song played as an opening animation scrolled across the screen.

Shiro laughed and shook his head. “Wow... I’d forgotten what the music was like! I think I usually muted it and supplied my own.”

“Yeah, that’s going to get old pretty quickly. Especially since it’s about a sixty-second loop,” Hunk pointed out just as the music began to repeat itself.

Coran was bobbing his head to the peppy beat. “I rather like it.” The mice, who had decided to join in the fun, seemed to like it, too.

In the meantime, Lance had made it to the player selection screen.

“I guess there’s only about eight drivers to choose from in this version.” Lance shrugged. “They’ve still got my favorite at least.”

Allura tilted her head to one side as she perused the images of the available drivers.

“My goodness,” she finally remarked, “the chest on this one seems rather unwieldy for her frame and they are very...perky.”

Pidge’s eyes rolled and they let out a disgusted sigh. “Video game physics tend to ignore gravity a lot.”

“My exposure to human females is understandably limited, but is that typical?”

“Well,” Hunk considered, “figures do vary in size, but those are exaggerated.”

Allura frowned. “Why?”

“At the time this game was made,” Lance began to explain but was cut off by Pidge.

“Only at the time this game was made?”

“Fair enough,” Lance admitted. “The target demographic of games like this tends to be guys that want female characters to stare at and not so much for their personalities. If you think this is bad, you should see some of the fighting games.”

“That being said,” Shiro added, “Bella’s not a bad driver choice. She’s fairly balanced skill-wise, so she’s a good choice for a beginning player.”

“I wonder if she’s racing in someone’s memory,” Allura mused, eyeing the bright pink car behind Bella in her equally eye-melting pink jumpsuit.

“Huh?” Lance asked before he remembered the significance of pink to Alteans. “Oh, the pink. On Earth, pink tends to be a color associated with girls.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and blue is usually considered a boy color. I happen to like blue, but not just because I’m a guy.”

“How odd!” Allura laughed. “Associating colors with gender is something that had never occurred to me.”

“Lucky,” Pidge grumbled. “It’s totally arbitrary, too. When you get older, people don’t care so much, but little kids tend to get either pink or blue shoved in their faces all the time.”

Allura continued scanning the players. “Is there something wrong with that last one’s head?”

“Yeah... That one’s a bear.”

“A what?”

“It’s an animal native to Earth,” Pidge explained. “They look a little like a klanmürl, but they’re arguably less terrifying.”

“Animals on Earth are capable of controlling vehicles?” Coran was intrigued.

“Realistically, no,” Hunk broke the news. “I guess they can be trained to act like they could, but this is another example of video game rules not applying to reality. I love that bear, though. Grizz is my favorite.”

“Dude.” Lance raised a skeptical brow. “Grizz is a heavy! Why would you pick somebody so slow?”

“I like the better control on corners!” Hunk defended his choice. “Grizz is the only character I’ve ever made it all the way through Graveyard Gulch with and not fallen off the road.”

“What is a ‘heavy’?” Allura asked.

“It’s a nickname for a certain kind of driver,” Hunk answered. “They usually have bigger, bulkier vehicles, and they move slower, but they can sometimes knock other cars out of their way. There’s also regular drivers with middling speed and weight, and smaller, lighter cars that go really fast but can be knocked around by other vehicles. It’s a trade-off.”

“Although,” Shiro cautioned, “I think that’s something that may have been added into later versions of the game. The drivers in this one are probably pretty much the same.”

Hunk’s face brightened. “You mean Grizz will be faster?” Then his expression fell again. “Aw, man... Graveyard Gulch is going to be an even bigger nightmare than it usually is. Unless it’s not one of the tracks in this version?”

“Not sure, buddy. We won’t see the track list until we’re out of the character selection screen.”

Allura decided to give Bella a try, and Hunk had almost convinced Coran to race with Grizz so he could get a peek at the character in action, but the advisor had discovered a character with a mustache, and that was that.

Finally, they got their first look at the available tracks: the Original Oval, Curvy Creek, Desolate Desert, City Cruising, and Hunk’s nemesis, Graveyard Gulch.

“You guys should probably practice on the Oval,” Lance suggested. “It’s the least complicated track so you can get the basics down.” He held a controller out to explain the various buttons to an eager Altean audience. “You hold this button down for the gas-”

“What sort of gas?” Coran wanted to know. “And what purpose does it serve?”

“He means gasoline,” Hunk clarified. “The vehicles in the game use internal combustion engines that use it for fuel. What he means is that’s the button for the accelerator.”

Lance huffed. “Okay, fine. This button’s the accelerator. Explaining this stuff is harder than I thought it would be. Anyway, this one next to it is the brakes. You know, in case you want to slow down, but it’s a race, so why would you?”

“Sharp corners,” Hunk reminded him. “Some tracks have sharp corners, and you can’t just speed around them or you’ll skid off the road.”

“Just let up on the accelerator, then.” Lance rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly at his best friend. “On the other side of the controller, you push left and right to move, well, left and right. Either up or down will activate a booster, and that’s pretty much it.”

“What are these ‘boosters’?” Allura asked.

Pidge had been flipping through the small booklet that came in the game box. “According to this manual, each driver gets two boosters that vary character to character and can be used at any time during a race. Allura, Bella has a speed boost, and Coran, that guy’s name is Slick, and he can leave oil on the track behind him to slip up other drivers. You can also find boosters along the track that are a random mix of everyone’s boosters. You always use the last boost you picked up, otherwise it’ll be you character’s boost, if they still have any.”

“Also,” Shiro added, “if you time it just right, you can get an initial speed burst when the flag drops, but it can also slow you down if you’re not on the mark.”

Allura and Coran each took a controller and stared intently at the screen. The mice took up various perches in the laps and on the shoulders of the new racers. When the checkered flag fell, the princess’ car sped off down the track, along with vehicles controlled by the game system, leaving Coran scooting forward in little bursts. One of the mice seemed to be trying to give backseat driving advice, though Coran wouldn’t have been able to understand it.

“You need to hold down the accelerator button,” Hunk instructed instead.

Coran corrected his tapping method and seemed to be doing all right until he suddenly began moving in circles.

“You’re holding down the turn button too long.” Lance was trying not to laugh at Coran’s dismay. The mouse on his shoulder felt no such compunction and laughed so hard they rolled off his shoulder and bounced onto the sofa cushions.

“You said the track is an oval, so shouldn’t I be turning?”

“It’s a big oval,” Lance explained with a sigh. “There are basically straight stretches and you really only need to turn sharply like that at the corners.”

“Ha! You can’t trick me--ovals have no corners!”

“Curves, then! Jeez, you are so literal right now...”

Eventually, Coran worked out the knack of steering about the time the other cars lapped him. He attempted to use his booster, but he’d already been passed.

Lance turned his attention to Allura. “Do you need any help?”

“No, thank you,” Allura replied absently, eyes glued to her racer. “I think I’ve got this.” Sure enough, she was out in the lead with an impressive gap between her and the second place driver. The mouse companion on her shoulder leaned into every turn and squeaked encouragement.

“Wow.” Hunk’s eyes were wide. “You’re going to take first place in your very first race. I’m impressed! I think I was next to last in mine.”

Lance shrugged off her success. “It’s probably just beginner’s luck. This is the easiest track, after all, and it’s not like the controls are that complicated.”

As if to belie that point, Coran skidded off the road after somehow running into his own booster.

Just as Allura crossed the finish line for the win and Coran was crossing it to complete his first lap, a voice called from the doorway, “You guys got started without me?”

The game was abandoned in favor of piling on top of the newly arrived Keith.

“You got here fast!” Shiro remarked with a grin. “We were just letting the Alteans get a feel for the game because they’ve never played before.”

Hunk dashed from the room. “I’ve gotta run and get some snacks ready!”

Coran abandoned finishing his race to assist in the galley along with a sympathetic Allura.

“Don’t worry,” she assured on their way out the door. “You’ll get the hang of it. If you can maneuver a whole castle, you can drive one of these imaginary cars.”

“Whoa.” Keith blinked at the game on the screen, which had been returned to the character selection menu. “I haven’t played Master Racer in forever! Where’d you even find this? The space mall?”

Shiro nodded. “There were other games too, but I was trying to get something several people could play at once.”

“I’m gonna have to go back there some time,” Lance mused. “I’ll bet there’s some other gems available.”

“Four controllers?” Keith observed. “How are we going to decide who plays when?”

“Good question.” Pidge considered the problem for a few moments before snapping their fingers. “I could come up with a bracket system! Except that there are only seven of us, so we’d have to throw in byes if it were single-elimination. Or maybe we could use a round robin format. I’m sure I’ve got a program that could generate something.”

“We could also draw names randomly,” Shiro said. “I can remember playing where whoever wins sits out the next round so people can rotate into the game when we had more players than controllers.”

Lance smirked. “I don’t really care how we decide the racing order as long I get to show you all my awesome driving skills.”

“Yikes.” Pidge snorted. “I’m having flashbacks to the flight simulator.”

“You guys have already seen me drive,” Keith remarked with a shrug.

“And now I’m flashing back to the most terrifying ride of my life.”

“Hey, we all survived!”

“You intentionally drove off a cliff, Keith. I don’t think that necessarily translates to good race driving.”

Eventually, Hunk and the Alteans returned with snacks: pigs in blankets and soft pretzels.

“I’ll have to duck out later for the cookies and brownies that are currently baking,” Hunk informed the others as they swarmed the trays of food.

Allura eyed the cheese oozing out of the pigs in blankets. “Those contain-” she paused to shudder, “-dairy, correct?”

“Yes,” Hunk answered simply but kindly. “You don’t have to eat them, if you’d prefer not to.”

Coran was already halfway through his second of the treats. “I do believe I’ve eaten worse and certainly in less pleasant company.”

The mice didn’t seem to have any issues with dairy, either, contentedly munching on tiny versions of the snack containing only cheese.

There were a few minutes filled only by the sounds of good friends enjoying good food before the subject of how to arrange playing turns came up again.

“I’ll volunteer not to be in the first group,” Hunk proposed. “‘Cause, you know, baked goods.”

Coran and Shiro also agreed to wait out the first race.

That settled, the other four scooped up controllers and prepared to make their character selections.

“Aw, man! Who already took Ace? He’s my favorite.” Lance pouted at the screen.

“He’s my favorite, too,” Keith said as he deselected the character, “but you can have him if it means that much to you.” He chose another option.

“No way!” Lance insisted, picking a different driver. “I’m not taking him just because you ‘let’ me.”

“I’ll take him.” Pidge snagged the still available option.

Allura decided to stick with Bella.

Shiro decided preemptively to put someone in between Lance and Keith on the couch in hopes that their competitive natures wouldn’t devolve to elbowing each other during the race. Since it might be unfairly distracting to put one of the other drivers in that spot, Shiro planted himself there.

After a short debate, they decided to use the Curvy Creek track because it was of intermediate difficulty, and though characters could slide off the main road, it was fairly easy to find it again and there were no major pitfalls.

The race began, and at first, everyone was too focused for commentary. Then Keith sideswiped Lance’s car on a turn.

“Hey, watch it!”

“You were practically taking up the whole road--I didn’t have room to just go around.”

Lance deliberately targeted Keith with a booster, and he retaliated in kind.

With the amount of slamming into one another occurring on the screen, it was probably a very good idea they had been separated physically. Shiro didn’t seem terribly pleased, but it had been his idea to sit between them, so he persevered. Allura and Pidge remained blissfully unaffected from their spots on the floor in front of the couch.

Lance and Keith crossed the finish line at almost the same time, Keith very slightly ahead. They were in third and fourth place.

“Who won?” Lance asked.

“Allura,” Pidge informed him. “Like thirty seconds ago. You guys were so busy being jerks to each other, I managed to take second, and I went off the road about three times.”

Lance sighed. “Sorry, Keith. Truce?”

Keith rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Sure. I got caught up in it, too. Sorry.”

Coran and Shiro subbed in for Allura and Pidge, and Hunk went to check the oven.

They used this pattern of first and second place sitting out the next race for a while, taking breaks for snacks as needed. Pidge, unsurprisingly, as they had been tracking the racing stats, was the first to notice that Allura took first every time she raced.

“It’s got to be the alien genes,” Lance mused as he watched Allura flawlessly navigate a tight turn. “She’s got a better reaction time.”

“I’ve got alien genes,” Keith reminded him.

“Yeah, but you’re only half Galra at most. Plus, Allura’s Altean.”

“So’s Coran,” Hunk reminded them, “and he’s... Let’s just say I’m not seeing any inherent advantage there.” Coran was somehow currently facing the wrong direction and not even on the road.

“Do you think she’s using magic somehow?”

“Why does it bother you so much that she’s good at this?”

“It doesn’t bother me that she’s good,” Lance attempted to articulate what was bugging him. “It’s more that she’s so good so fast, you know? She barely even has to work at it. Plus, she’s kind of getting a little smug about it.”

Allura crossed the finish line, in first place again, with a whoop. “This game is quite amusing,” she said, covering a small yawn, “but it’s also getting somewhat boring.”

Keith and Lance shared a look of unspoken understanding. Beating one another in the race was now less important than someone being able to beat Allura.

“Oh yeah?” Lance asked casually as the racers stood for a stretch break. “Maybe you should try the hardest track.”

Hunk gasped. “Graveyard Gulch? I’m out.”

Shiro agreed to be their fourth player for a run on the Graveyard Gulch track. It was both the longest track in the game and it had the largest number of turns, the majority of which had steep drop-offs that would cause a substantial recovery delay if drivers weren’t careful. Allura didn’t seem worried in the least.

Coran, Pidge, and Hunk lined up behind the couch to observe, even if Hunk was doing so through his fingers.

As the racers crossed the starting line, Lance and Keith flanked Allura, keeping as close as they could. They attempted a coordinated booster attack, only to have Allura utilize her brakes to avoid them, steer around, and then use her own speed booster to leave them behind.

Hunk chuckled. “No real use for the brakes, huh, Lance?”

Lance might have responded with a rude gesture, but his hands were busy. “Thanks for the moral support, buddy.”

Shiro frowned, half in disapproval and half because he was doing his best not to fall over a cliff on a turn. “Were you two really just ganging up on Allura? Kind of rude, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Allura remarked dismissively. “They didn’t do a very good job of it.”

One of Shiro’s eyebrows climbed upward. “You’re awfully confident.”

“If the other races we’ve played thus far are any indication, they can try their best and it won’t matter.” The mouse on her shoulder nodded in agreement.

Shiro’s other eyebrow joined the first. He looked over at Lance and Keith, scrambling to catch up again and then smirked, though Allura couldn’t see it.

The double booster stunt had slowed her down enough that Shiro was still fairly close, and he waited until they were on a turn to bump into the side of Allura’s car. She managed, just barely, to remain on the road. Her jaw dropped in indignation for a moment before she grinned wickedly right back at Shiro. “Oh, I see how it is!”

The remainder of the race could be described as nothing less than brutal. Shiro, Lance, and Keith held nothing back, all teaming up to keep Allura from taking first place again. In turn, Allura had to employ every ounce of coordination she could muster and missed no opportunity to fire boosters back. The three team members in the “audience” behind the couch cheered everyone on equally.

Allura crossed the finish ahead of the others, but due to all of their interference, a character controlled by the computer had taken first place.

Allura released a huff of breath and looked down. At first, everyone was afraid she was going to be angry with them, but then her shoulders began to shake and she laughed.

“That was by far the most challenging race tonight! Well done, if not quite enough to beat me.”

“We’ll figure it out one of these times!” Lance proclaimed, followed by a large yawn.

“Probably better not try again tonight,” Shiro remarked. “I think we should all head to bed. We can always play some more in the morning.”

A chorus of yawning had followed Lance’s initial contribution, and Pidge was already half asleep, propped between Hunk and the back of the couch.

“This was really fun.” Keith smiled at their makeshift family. “We should do this more often.”

“Definitely!”

“Speaking of tomorrow,” Lance wondered, “will we be racing more, or did you get any other games we can play with a group?”

“Indeed!” Coran affirmed. “I can’t recall what it was called at the moment, but Shiro said something about tiny games?”

“Mini games?” Pidge perked up at the idea. “Tell me you found a copy of Alfredo’s Festival!”

Suddenly, every Earthling in the room seemed to be a bit more awake.

“Tomorrow,” Shiro reminded them firmly. “We’re done for tonight.” To emphasize his point he stood, walked over, and hit the power switch on the console. There was some unhappy grumbling, but they all began to file out of the room and head to their quarters for the night.

“Am I to understand that this other game is composed of many games that are very small?” Allura asked.

“The ‘mini’ name isn’t so much about literal size,” Pidge explained. “It’s more that the games are simple and short so you can play a bunch of them in a row easily.”

“The controls are even simpler than racing. You’re gonna love it, Coran.”

Shiro hung back, watching the others leave the room. It was good to have everyone together again. No one knew when the next catastrophe might strike, but for at least this one night, it had been so much fun to forget about responsibility and just enjoy one another’s company. If they were lucky, the peace would hold out through the morning, or at least long enough for everyone to enjoy a nice breakfast together and the chaos bound to spring up during a rousing game of Alfredo’s Festival.

#voltrongenminibang #voltrongenminibang2018 #vld #fanfiction #keith #takashi #lance #hunk #pidge #princess allura #coran hieronymus wimbleton smythe #team bonding #playing video games #they/them pronouns for pidge

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chelfierambles · 6 years

Text

The Perfect Gift

Not rly much of a fanfic writer but did one for fun for @princettegil

DRAGON KNIGHTS FANFIC

Pairing: Ramganas x Gil

Mostly cute, some fluff, sfw, slice of life, iunno how the fanfic community tags stuff

Summary: mixing canon with modern day, Ramganas gives Gil a new phone for safety measures. Gil ponders on all the things Ramganas has done for him and tries to find the perfect gift to show his gratitude, but can he find something that this new hi-tech phone can't already do??

====================================

"Bag?"

"Check."

"Wallet?"

"In the bag."

"Shopping list?

"Right here." Gil produced a folded piece of paper that was then visibly slipped into his own pocket.

"Phone?"

Gil revealed the new phone given to him by Ramganas from his other pocket, but not without an incredulous expresion. He still was not so familiar with such tehnology but Ramganas insisted he get one after some previous ... unfavorable encounters with past faces he'd rather forget.

"You remembered how to use it like I showed you?"

"Yeah," Gil lied. No matter. He lived without one all this time that another day or two wouldn't make a different while he was still getting the hang of it. And if he admitted it now Ramganas will all too willingly repeat a meticulous demonstration that Gil wasn't willing to go through right now.

"Good. I got a few errands to take care of myself but you call me if anything happens. Anything at all and I will be right there." Ramganas wrapped his hand behind Gil's head and pulled him gently for a forehead kiss.

"Don't worry, I'll be fine." Gil assured his lover. "Not like I'm going to get attacked at a fruit stand or anything. Well i'm not going to hold you up any longer. I know you can't be late either."

This time it was Gil's turn two softly lean in for a small kiss on the lips. "See you tonight."

With that Gil turned out the door for the long trek to the downtown market.

The trek down, although long, passed in no time as Gil knew the way like the back of his hand and usually zoned out until the sounds and smells of the town called him back to his senses.

Much time has past since he left his abusive ex but he was still uncomfortable hanging around in super social space for too long. Most of the time Gil just acquired whatever he needed and then left.

But today he was in a good mood. Well... honestly since moving in with Ramganas there had been more days like this. It was almost like a dream come true that he couldn't fathom just a few years ago. He was truly blessed to be reuited with Ramganas and live this peaceful ordinary life that he had always thought impossible.

A sudden flood of emotions overcame him thinking about all they had been through, and what Ramgans still does for him now.

"I should do something to return the favor," Gil stated his whim-decided desire aloud.

Gil traversed down the bustling streets of the south side of town. There were a lot of different stores this time around from what Gil remembered. Then again, he tried not coming down unless necessary and even so, didn't really pay attention. But it seemed that previous construction were completed, old business replaced with new ones, and quaint pop up shops and stores were rejeuvinating the life of this usually quiet town. It was becomming more lively.

For once Gil was in no hurry to complete his grocery shopping now tha another thought preoccupied his mind. What could he get for Ramganas?

This led to a subsequent train of trying to recall every detail of his lover all at once. What was his favorite color? His daily routine? Did he complain about needing anything recently? What could really express Gil's appreciation?

Ramganas had always been so attentive to Gil's needs, especially as Gil was trying to work through his own blocks of amnesia caused from past traumas.

When no answers started jumping out, Gil could feel his frustration settling in. But he was determined to bring a gift back one way or another, and that desire was stronger than his own disappointment in himself.

"Maybe I'll just browse until I see something that Ram would like."

Gil perused the store fronts, peeking through windows for the type of contents each had held. And with each item, he thought how it would relate to Ramganas. One window particularly caught his eye. A window of fantastically decorated watches.

"Oh! Perhaps this would do!" As much as Ramganas was meticulously detail-oriented when it came to Gil, he was rather absent minded about his own affairs. Often this would result in Ramganas having a rather laid-back approach to time for his own appointments.

"He can finally keep proper timing with this.--" but no sooner than he got his hopes up imagining his lover's happy face, he recalled that Ramganas had mention that one of the phone's capabilities was to display the time, as well as setting off alarms when needed. It already would have the functional ability to meet Ramganas's needs. Dejectedly, Gil pulled himself away from the storefront window and carried on.

As Gil continued his search with an even stronger determination, chiming notes tickled his ears. Following the direction for the source he spotted and open table vendor selling hand carved musical boxes.

"Ramganas loves music!" Gil proclaimed excitedly to himself. In fact Ramganas was a lover of all the arts and Gil had the joy of being taken to museum and concert dates.

"Perhaps I should get him a music box."

And then, Gil once again recalled Ramganas's all-too-thorough phone demonstration. It could play it too and Ram had already taken the liberty of installing an extensive music library into it.

With another heavy sigh, Gil pressed on.

Gil's mind wound faster and faster. What started as a leisurely day out was quickly becoming stressful as Gil's ideas for a peefect gift one by one were being upstaged by a new technology he had yet to figure out. "There's got to be something I can get that this thing can't already do."

A camera? No Ram already demonstrated the great photographic features of the thing using Gil as his personal model. A journal or art sketchbook? Nope, these things apparently had "apps" that could accomplish the task with no mess.

Nothing. Nothing Gil could think of this blasted brick couldn't already accomplish for Ramganas. All of which Ramganas already knew how to access whereas Gil still had much to learn.

Finally with a huff Gil decided to give up for now and at least accomplish what he had set out to do. Making his way to the familiar part of town where the food markets were located, Gil executed his best skill for the task which a phone certainly couldn't replicate, finding the best deals and bargains for all their necessary grocery items.

Once the necessary tasks were accomplished, Gil readied himself for the trek back. There was no longer any reason to linger, and he just about convinced himself in defeat for his side mission of acquiring a present for Ramganas.

But a part of him still didn't want to accept it. There had to be SOMETHING he could get. As if to answer his deepest desire of the moment, a storefront window caught his eye. It was a arts and craft store. Gil stared at it for a good long moment before the idea hit him.

"Of course! A phone certainly cannot replicate a hand-crafted item!" The thought of victory over technology pleased him and he went inside...

~~~

Ramganas heaved a tired sigh as his day's work came to an end. It was past sunset, the errands took much longer than he would have liked. With the sweat dripping down from the heat of the day, dealing with rude personalities, and being beyond hungry at this point, there was nothing he wanted more than to be home this instant with his sweet lover. He really wanted to hear Gil's voice right now.

A small grin crossed his face. Maybe he should give a pop quiz to test his boyfriend's knowledge of using the phone. He popped his own out and began dialing the digits.

Ring

"The number you are calling is not available. Please leave a message after the beep."

"That's strange... but maybe he just doesn't know how to answer. Let me try again."

No answer. Again and again.

A sudden fear crept under his skin. Why wasn't Gil answering? What if something happened to him?

The moment that thought entered his mind, Ramganas began to sprint his way back. *Please be okay!!*

At the door, Ramganas's fingers fumbled anxiously for the keys as he unlocked the door and threw it open.

"GIL!!"

The sight that greeted him was... not what he expected.

Gil, sitting on the floor, wide-eyed and frozen from the sudden burst, and seemingly entagled in... ribbons?

Ramganas stood with mouth slightly agape, "What is going on?"

"I.." Gil started, "I was trying to...But it didn't.. I didn't know how to...." the cat-like lover averted his gaze in shame and embarassment as he tried go hold back tears from falling. "... for you..." he managed to squeeze out in a pathetic mew.

In that moment Ramganas understood. His tall form swept across the room and wrapped his arms around his lover. "You are the greatest gift I have ever received." He squeezed tightly and could feel warm drops of wetness fall on his shoulder. Letting go to get a good look at the face of the one trying so hard to please him, "And look! You even gift-wrapped yourself up for me!" Ramganas laughed, which helped ease Gil into a small smile.

"That... wasn't my plan but glad you like my gift." Gil responded through a tear-soaked smile.

"Always." Ramganas whispered as he softly kissed Gil's forehead, then drew his face in close to kiss his lover's lips passionately.

As they gazed into each other's eyes filled with love and passion, Gil smiled and whispered softly, "care to help untie me now?"

At this suggestion Ramganas smirked mischeivously, "Opening gifts is my favorite part. How about we continue this in the bedroom?" Without waiting for a response, Ramganas scooped Gil's body into his arms and carried him princess-style into his room, making sure to close the door behind.

#dragon knights #fanfiction #fanfic #ramganas #laamgarnas #gil #ramxgil #laamxgil #my fic #my writing #long post sorry on my phone and couldnt do a read-more #ill try to edit later?

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notmjbad · 3 years

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our house?

i have just awoken from the most incredible dream, which seemed to happen in two parts.

in the first part, i was at a wedding ceremony. my own, in fact. i was marrying a woman i did not know and had not seen before, though i strangely had no doubts or apprehensions about it. i was on the altar and it was over like that. all i properly remember of it is that she was beautiful and i kissed her passionately. although i can remember this short part of the dream, i cannot remember when i actually dreamed it, whether it was just before i got up for the toilet this morning, or some days ago.

the second part was a bit wilder. i remember being with my dad in his car at nighttime, and he was driving me back to my own place. i saw some sort of green light on the top of a building just past the side of a bridge we were crossing, which looked familiar to real life though the city which is often visible was a lot closer than usual, almost encompassing the bridge. my place was slightly different, well lit, though my desk was the same and the rooms did not make physical sense, almost as if different rooms were somehow in the exact same location. i seemed to be living with my dad, as i previously was in real life. i was also sharing my bed, which seemed to be just a mattress on the floor, with a woman, probably the one i had just married, though i’m not sure. i remember that my dad and i had some fast food, and we were about to sit to eat it. my wife was absent. though we had this food of ours, i realised that the light i had seen off the side of the bridge previously was something i seriously wanted to go and investigate. so i made up an excuse about getting something that i had forgotten from my dad’s car, and presumably took it to go and see said light, though i don’t remember specifics here.

i believe this realisation happened later on in the dream, as i was dreaming, but i envisioned a scene in my dream’s head to explain this light phenomenon as being a symptom of the matrix computer simulation we were in. it was explained to me, or more truly, from the character of trinity out of the matrix series to another character, that it was a phone booth, being a motif that occurs often in the matrix series, and they were concerned about the light emanating from it, as this indicated that it was connected directly to the machines so they could monitor the immediate area with greater efficiency. they seemed to be confused as to the location of it, that it was somehow too far from the city for the machines to usually be concerned about surveillance.

anyway, now to the meat and potatoes. it seemed to somehow be late afternoon again, previous to the night scene with my dad i just described. i was out the front of my new house. the house i was supposed to be moving into with my new wife. i was with a dark-haired woman who i first thought was my wife, though she turned out later to be a mutual friend of myself and my wife. this occurs to me as a symptom of the fact that i didn’t actually know what my wife looked like, and that i may have had more control over the dream as my actual self than as my dream-self. we were organising plants and decorations in the front area of said house, beautifying it, speaking like people who knew each other well. i remember speaking about roses and whether i could bring some over from my old place, and not much else. i remember going inside briefly, and then being informed that said woman needed to move a large case of luggage from her car to the house, so i agreed and we walked the moderate distance to the carpark which i now realise is reminiscent of the carpark at my university, rather hilly and extensive. anyway, i had secured the bag, and begun making my way back. for some reason, said dark-haired woman did not follow, or only followed halfway. i remember returning with the bag, and finding my actual wife in the house, tall and hot and blonde and totally reminiscent of a certain very successful onlyfans content creator that i know of in real life. some part of me must have asked; ’this is my wife?’ and truly she was. i remember asking said question as i was passionately engaging her against the audibly crunching blinds of one of our large windows. shortly after, her father appeared. i firmly took his hand; ‘how ya goin?’ and he seemed absolutely exuberant that we were all there together. i remember after this going upstairs to our bedroom and other rooms to organise some things as we were still in the process of moving in. i believe the dark-haired friend reappeared at this point. i remember exploring this new house of ours, as i was still very new to it all. it occurred to me that i had done all of this, gotten married, bought a house, etc., completely sight unseen. and i could not bring myself to be any less intensely happy about the situation. a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, maybe it is what i want? i saw the study, my desk with it’s computer and clamp-mount microphone arm. it had another desk beside it, lighter in colour, though i am still not sure if it was meant to be my wife’s or some sort of cousin’s of hers who was also meant to be moving in with us. i remember going to the bathroom after this, as i needed to relieve myself in the dream for some reason. the bathroom itself however held a surprise quite strange. looking out the window as i walked in, was the actor kit harington of game of thrones fame, looking depressed and introspective. looking back now, i realise this may have been the cousin who was meant to move in with us. he didn’t seem to want to move from his position at the window, so i didn’t make him. there was also some other nondescript man in there with me. it occurs to me now that this may have been another character that i will introduce soon. anyway, i did my thing, but not without interruption. there was a chuckling sound coming from the ceiling, and looking to see what it was exactly, i noticed a small amount of white liquid drop from a vent in said ceiling onto the floor as a shuffling noise was also heard. all i will say about this is that the chuckling sound seemed to have been from my father-in-law, and that i found it weirdly equally as funny at the time. i’m not sure if this next bit occurred later on in the dream after returning to the bathroom, or straight after relieving myself, but i will put it here anyway. i remember becoming almost lucid for a moment. i could control my view of the trees and houses outside the flyscreened window, remarking all the time about how realistic it was, and becoming properly self-aware of my now impending awakening. i decided that i would not awake, and i either then flushed the toilet or relieved myself once more, and left the room. i found myself in a leisure room of sorts. it had a computer, guitars, what i assumed to be a tv setup though i did not look at it in detail, and a second tv setup with a small crt type sony brand tv and older equipment sitting under it. none of this stuff was mine, so i remember being confused as to this, and why the cousin we were meant to be living with was being accommodated so generously. regardless, i spent little time in the room, and proceeded to meet my guests. i was greeted almost immediately by a real-life friend of mine called alex, with some popcorn low in a bowl with some milk in it for some wild reason. i ate it with no qualms in front of him and my father-in-law, who seemed to have mixed feelings about the situation. it was then made apparent to me that everyone was having cereal for dinner as opposed to something proper, and from here i remember nothing but a scene in our new living room. there were at least two couches or armchairs, and i was on the right side of the right-hand one. i’m unsure where my wife was at that point, though it is possible she was to my right. the dark-haired friend must also have been there somewhere, as was the live-in cousin. to my immediate left, i believe was my real-life best friend and roommate leon, and to his left was my brother, but not as i knew him. on the left end of the couch i believe was my father-in-law, and on what was probably an armchair beyond the couch was alex. as mentioned before, my brother was not my brother as i know him in real life. i believe this was the unidentified character in the bathroom previously, and he was no-one inconsequential. though i felt not abnormal about this in the dream, after waking i found it quite incredible that the face i had been looking at an conversing with in the dream was michael hutchence, the unfortunately passed and incredibly passionate leading man of the astronomically successful australian band inxs. and he was my brother! he appeared in the dream as he did in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the success of inxs was taking off. in any case, we were watching some strange art piece on tv, featuring what i remember to be the lyrics of kylie minogue and a blue guitar. i remarked to my brother how reminiscent of previous art pieces that i somehow knew he and the band u2 had been involved in, as it was all done in my city of sydney, assumingly and somehow in the early 1990s, even if my brother’s appearance was not true to the time that had passed. i find it incredible writing this now that the names dropped so far were all close to each other at various points, being that kylie dated michael for a while, and that bono & u2 were great friends with michael until his terrible passing in sydney in 1997, which also happens to be my birth year. in any case, i remember only that michael indicated that i was correct about the art piece conversation. we then collectively continued onto another subject, being the house itself. for some strange reason, there was a tablet that everyone was passing around with a picture onscreen of where the house we were in was eventually built, with just concrete and some walls and grass. it was physically pointed out to me by someone how the rooms of the house were laid out, and it all made complete sense. though of course it did not make physical sense, as the same phenomenon whereas multiple rooms seemed to be occupying the same physical space was still occurring, as it was in the previous place described, where my father lived. a song went through my head, as the title suggests, while having the house’s architecture explained to me; ‘our house, in the middle of our street, our house...’ and i remember not much else but a deep and incontrovertible sense of contentment with my situation. i was surrounded by family and friends and completely happy, even if there were some strange caveats and weirdnesses. i only wish now that my own father had been there in the dream. perhaps the word is bittersweet. the last thing i remember was sitting there realising that i had a doctor’s appointment the next day, and that i shouldn’t stay up too terribly late. the funny thing being that i actually do have a doctor’s appointment today in real life. i awoke shortly after, and the rest is here.

thanks for reading.

#dream

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overtopsdev · 4 years

Text

Hacking Your Mental State

To quote the very first post on this blog; “starting something is easy”. However, we don’t want to just start this thing, we want to finish it too.

Working from home can be challenging at the best of times. Harry has spent most of his career doing it, but Shane has spent most of his actively avoiding it. This year however, none of us get a choice, the world rolled a 1, and we all have to work out how to do what we’ve got to do while in these particular circumstances we are in. It’s very tempting to throw up your hands and go “too hard, I’ll just wait for the world to be back to normal”, but that is no way to live. If you want to get anything done in life, you have to just roll with the punches, look at the situation and go, “ok, what can we do with this? How can we make this work anyway?”

So, Harry and Shane have decided to make this whole game in a few months, on top of their other day jobs, which themselves are already quite demanding. How do we fit it in? Well, most answers to that question come down to making the best use of time that we can. Firstly we have to be constantly making decisions about what’s worth doing and what isn’t. This is discussed in more detail in the post “A Never Ending Balancing Act”. But it goes beyond just making smart decisions about the fidelity of the game. Often it will come down to doing less revisions of an asset, or having less content in the game, because a game that gets released with less content at least gets released.

(Walking? Easy. Walking to Perth? Hmm…. not so much)

But, even all that isn’t really the beginning of the story. Sometimes it can be hard just getting started.

This is where the title of this post comes in. This kind of applies across the board, but especially when working from home; there are ways you can trick yourself into being more productive. It might sound strange, but honestly, our brains are often like unruly pets, they aren’t just going to do what’s in our best interests by default, and you often need to “trick” them into desired behaviour.

A naive, yet common approach to “better productivity” and something I’m pretty sure is universal when we are young, I know I definitely both did it and saw it in all my peers when I was at uni, is to just consume more caffeine and pull all nighters to get things done. This is not really recommended. It might work in the short term for something like a game jam, but long term, it will just wreck you, and actually be COUNTER productive.

(Source: Shane’s actual energy drink can collection)

So, apart from a life long caffeine addiction, taking that approach won’t really get you anywhere, so what will?

The following is a list of tips and tricks we have picked up over the years, from reading books, to experimenting and learning from our own experience:

Just do it for 5 minutes

This is a common one amongst artists, and many of you might have heard this one before. Just getting started can be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when it comes to productivity. The mountain of work in front of you can seem insurmountable, even if you have managed to conceptually break it down into bite sized tasks, that pile of tasks stretching off to the horizon can still feel like too much, and that can be a major hand brake on progress. So, because our brains are lazy, or more specifically have a lot of inertia (they just keep wanting to do what they are already doing), all you really need to do is convince yourself to just do 5 minute’s worth of work. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? You don’t have to do the whole thing, just 5 minutes, maybe 10. You will then find that after all the effort of getting set up, opening up the project (or in the case of art, getting your pencils/paints/whatever else out), and actually putting pen to paper, the momentum of getting started will carry you through. It will actually be harder to stop than to keep going, and before you know it, you will have done at least an hour or two worth of work.

Walk through a doorway

Ever have that experience of walking into another room and immediately forgetting why? Then when you go back, you remember? You aren’t just going senile, it’s to do with how our brains chunk information, and switch from context to context. Real life physical cues cause our brains to change context, I’m sure there’s probably some perfectly logical evolutionary explanation for it, but it doesn’t really matter why, all you need to know is that it is a thing, and you can use it to your advantage. By putting yourself in a different physical location, you can put yourself in a different mental location too, making it easier to be in “home mode” and “work mode”. Now, this year, we don’t get the “freebie” of going to an office or classroom to do this for us, but we can trick it into happening anyway. If you make sure to set up your space at home in a way that keeps work and leisure separate, even if it means just moving your monitor and chair from one side of your desk to the other, then when you “travel” from home to work, get up, walk to the letterbox, and come back to sit in your new context. Travelling through the doorways while doing so acts as like, mental “page breaks” or chapter markers. Trust me, it works.

Put shoes on

This is related to the above point. It’s about forcing your mental context. Wearing shoes is something most of us strongly associate with being in “work mode”. I would suspect that most people don’t wear shoes around their own home all day every day, and so the act of putting shoes on is subconsciously associated with going out and doing “non home things”, which for most of us, is probably most commonly work/school. Shane’s version/personal preference for this one is putting on a belt rather than shoes. It amounts to the same thing, although may be less effective. There aren’t really empirical studies on the difference that we are aware of .

Procrastinate your way to Productivity

This is honestly something I thought I came up with on my own, but I have since read about it a bunch of times, and discovered during conversation that a bunch of other people do it too.

It’s often easy to get distracted, or when working on something have the thought of “this sucks, I wish I was doing something else instead”. Like we touched on in the “Mix of Easy and Hard” post, this is something you can use to your advantage rather than trying to stubbornly avoid, by having an alternative, just as important task to go on with that is more appealing in the moment. If you have a Rock-Paper-Scissors style arrangement of multiple tasks that all trump each other when it comes to procrastination fodder, you can “procrastinate your way to productivity”.... this is one I would say to use with caution though, as you HAVE to ensure you always come back to the original thing, you can’t put stuff off forever. You also have to actually see tasks to completion when you switch to them. You can’t just keep doing nothing, otherwise, unsurprisingly, nothing will get done.

(This was clearly the result of someone procrastinating something more important)

Put the right music on

Something most people know, even if only subconsciously, is that we tend to be more productive while working to music (I honestly don’t know how musicians do their job then, that sounds like lonely work to me). An extension of that which most programmers at least seem to have a handle on, is that when doing anything that needs the language centre of your brain, like programming for example, or writing of any kind, it’s best to listen to something without lyrics. Classical, EDM, Vaporwave, whatever, but just not something that’s going to interfere with your ability to think words. This doesn’t seem to be as big a deal with art or level design though. Harry and Shane have both found that we are perfectly fine working on visual stuff while listening to basically anything.

One thing I did discover recently though, and in hindsight it’s not at all surprising, but my usual heavy rotation playlists were just getting too repetitive. I’d been listening to the same few favourite tracks over and over. So I started putting on full albums to work to, stuff I hadn’t listened to since I was a teenager/in my early 20s. Apart from the 1-2 “best” tracks off each album that would stay in heavy rotation. What I found was that this was an instant time warp back to my youth. This itself isn’t the revelation, everyone kind of knows that music facilitates mental time travel (the only sense better for it is smell). What was the revelation though, was how much this brought back the fire of enthusiasm for game dev.

There’s this unfortunate trade off that tends to occur over a lifetime, like a metal oxidising, where, when you are young you have all the enthusiasm and drive, but none of the skill or experience to do anything with it… then, the older you get, as experience goes up, the raw enthusiasm tends to blunt and dwindle. BUT, I found that by listening to my favorite music from my youth that I haven’t really listened to much recently, I was able to put myself back in that headspace. So, now that I do have the decades of experience, I am able to trick myself into that high drive mental frame from back when I couldn’t do much with it besides flounder around energetically, but ultimately ineffectively.

This last point I realise isn’t all that much help to most people reading this blog now, but maybe keep it in mind for the future. It might just help you down the track one day.

If you liked the stuff I was talking about in this post, then you absolutely have to read the book “Predictably Irrational”. It should be mandatory reading for any game developer in my opinion.

https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Predictably-Irrational-Audiobook/B01ITOX98S

Holy crap, that was a long one. Thanks for reading to the end.

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beatricethecat2 · 7 years

Text

if/then (2.0) - 12

Sneaking this up at the midnight hour. Typos, yes! Edited a bunch 2/3.

Previously: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11

Read first if you are new! gutted/sorted and wax/wane…if/then is a continuation of those two.

////////////////

Upon Myka's return from abroad, the lack of the push of the sale makes it difficult to ease back into her life again. Without a clear path to London, having time on her hands feel wrong, so much so Helena’s action plan, while controversial, seems more and more viable.

The last night of their trip, their "alone time" was thwarted by Claudia already having plans with friends. They instead cuddled with Christina until she fell asleep in bed then moved to the couch and cuddled together. A steamy make-out session soon commenced and continued for quite some time until it was mutually acknowledged they could go no further clothed. Myka laid her head on Helena's chest while Helena stroked her fingers through her curls and as they lounged, an all-consuming bliss flowed between them.

“I’ve been looking into schools for Christina, and flats near said schools,” Helena said, quietly, as if she knew she was impinging on Myka’s buzz.

“You have?” Myka said, tilting her head back and angling her eyes up to meet Helena's.

“Imagine waking up next to each other in our very own bed.”

“Heavenly,” Myka hummed and snuggled close.

“I spoke briefly with Claudia, and we've devised a plan. I'll use the money I saved to bring you and Christina over. It’s of little use stagnating in a box and Claudia believes she can render it transferrable."

“But that's Christina's college fund."

“There's plenty of time to replenish it before she's off.”

“You're serious?”

“Quite.”

There were a number of things Myka wanted to say then, ranging from, “why didn’t we do that in the first place,” to “yet another thing to go wrong," but Helena continued before she had a chance.

"No more running yourself ragged, remedying my follies. I could support you while you’re finding your feet. And with London as your hub, you’ll source new contacts easily. Your art will thrive, and we'll follow you wherever your travels take you."

“In your dreams," Myka said, smirking coyly, reaching up and patting Helena’s cheek.

“Mind you, not to the extent of Pedram and his wife, but as much as I could manage. And who knows the bounties my future may hold.”

“Where’s all this positivity coming from?”

“From having you near,” Helena answered. She slid Myka’s hand over her lips and kissed the palm. “I’m sick to death of others controlling my circumstances. It’s high time I steered my own ship. For you, for us, for all our futures.”

“But the appeal. You're not worried?” Helena's ideas were plausible, but her sense of excitement was tinted with unease. There must be a snag somewhere.

“Terrified. But I refuse to wave it around as an excuse any longer. You’re what matters to me. Both of you. And for this to work, we must work together. I’ve been sorely lacking in that respect, and it’s completely unacceptable.”

“You're being too hard on yourself." Myka curled closer to Helena, glad she was opening up but sorry they'd lost the intimacy from a few moments ago.

“I'm afraid not. I've been delusional, convinced my associations with Mrs. Frederic would shorten my sentence. There's nothing to be done except move forward. And I do want to move forward.”

Myka wants to move forward too. While Helena's positivity, in the moment, was comforting, she hopes the feeling lasts until they see each other again.

-------

Myka’s first day back in the office, there’s a buzz in the air.

“Hey, Leena," she says as she pops her head in Leena’s office.

“Myka, you’re back!”

“So are you! Everyone’s excited.”

“That's the baby they're excited about. She was here for a minute this morning and charmed the pants off of them.” Leena taps her phone then hands it to Myka. On screen is a photo of Leena, her smile positively glowing, watching Vanessa play with her child. The kid herself the cutest thing Myka’s ever seen, so she can see how charmed everyone must have been.

“Sorry I missed her.”

“She’ll be back, sooner rather than later."

Myka's mouth opens to respond, but a smooth segue eludes her. Christina-aged kid banter she can manage, but small talk about babies not so much.

"Come in. I haven’t seen you in forever."

Myka steps into the room and sits across from Leena.

"How are you?”

“Things are…ok. 'Eventful’ for short.” It's been months since she's seen Leena, how much detail should she go into?

“Something's changed. Definitely." Leena squints while studying a point beyond Myka's head. Myka turns but sees nothing of interest.

“Not behind, above you. I'm studying your aura."

"My what?" Myka swings back to face Leena.

"Your aura. It used to be pinkish-red, but now it's yellow, with a big brown streak down the middle."

“Is that bad?" Myka angles her eyes up but sees no change in color. She respects Leena, a lot, even looks up to her as a mentor, but she'd never struck her as someone with new-age leanings.

“Not the best. A little brown is ok, even expected, but this..." Leena waves a finger as if scribbling over something. "...is coloring everything.”

“Should I aim for pinkish-red again?”

“No. There should be more of a spectrum.”

“Spectrum. Right,” Myka says, rolling her eyes around, wishing she could see what Leena sees.

“I sense you’re overwhelmed, but change, for you, is good. Use this as is an opportunity to find balance. Work on coaxing the colors apart."

“How?” Myka looks back at Leena, who is now grinning like a doctor about to say something she doesn't want to hear.

“Do more things for yourself. Things that aren’t work-related. Something out of the ordinary, with Christina, or go out with friends.”

Myka snorts. “If I still have any."

“Everyone’s busy in New York. Give them a ring."

"I promised Christina we’d take cooking classes, so there’s that.”

"That's good. Very good. Take a few days off now that I'm back."

"That would be...amazing. Are you sure?"

"Positive." Leena looks above Myka's head again and smiles. "The brown's clearing."

Myka looks up but sees nothing, but she’ll take Leena’s word.

---------

“Take this reprieve in stride and care for yourself,” Helena suggested one evening when Myka sounded particularly lost over the phone. Helena's words mirrored Leena's, and combined with Leena’s pep talk, gave her the push she needed to follow through.

She got in touch with Amanda, who happened to be in town for the week, and they met up several times. Amanda was more entertaining than overbearing, though she talked mostly about herself, but the familiarity in their exchanges reminded Myka she had a life before her situational bubble.

Abigail came to stay for a weekend, and her visit was particularly welcome, prompting Myka's first day of leisure since Helena's departure. Christina tagged along, and they toured galleries and walked the High Line, then meandered through the West and East Village until reaching home. Claudia then took over parenting duties so Myka and Abigail could catch up, and Myka an Abigail hopped on the subway to Brooklyn.

They dined near Myka's apartment, and as they waited for their main course, Abigail pressed for details about Myka's trip. Myka was careful, at first, not to disclose sensitive information, but lost sight halfway through their second bottle of wine.

“You keep coming back to the fact Helena’s secretive about her past,” Abigail said.

“Do I? I thought I was better about that.”

“Compared to when?”

“Before this trip.”

“It didn’t bother you this much before your trip. This trip revealed a lot.”

“About Helena?”

“About you both and the way you deal with relationships.”

“Not very well,” Myka mumbled. She twirled the stem of her glass and took a generous sip of wine.

“You’ve both been through major, life-changing events in a very short time. To me, it sounds like you’re starting to come together as a couple.”

“I guess we are. But what about all the stuff I told you that I shouldn't have?”

“Don’t let it overwhelm you. Sure, Helena’s deflecting, but it’s a defense mechanism to cope with change. Keep prodding her; she’ll eventually open up. In the meantime, be proactive. Look for clues she left behind.”

“You mean talk to other people?”

“For a start. Or anything else you can think of.”

“There’s this box of photos and journals at Claudia’s she said I could look through, but I hated to do it when she wasn’t here.”

“She gave you permission, so you have access to her past without her being present.”

“Huh. Maybe.”

“Think about it, then let me know how I can help."

--------

Myka, the ever the diligent researcher, accepts Abigail’s challenge and soon begins her own investigation into Helena's past.

Liam and Steve are her first subjects as they're the easiest to access. She asks questions after school, sipping tea at their kitchen table while Christina and Erica play in the background.

"None of us really know what she went through as a kid. Maybe that’s the key,” Steve says.

“It always felt like she was proving herself to someone, but I’m not sure who. Herself, her family, society...it never quite added up,” Liam says.

They discuss Helena until dinnertime, but they’ve only known her a few years, so nothing particularly enlightening is revealed. But they all agree the path Helena's taken, work-wise, is an odd one, especially with Claudia around, and they think there's more behind Helena's decisions than she's telling.

She next enlists Claudia's help to sort through Helena’s journals and photos, diving in deeper than their earlier peruse.

Myka thumbs through Helena’s journals while Claudia spreads the photos across the bed, arranging them chronologically. As images fall into place, and much to Myka’s dismay, none are from London.

Claudia searches for more images on her computer while Myka scours Helena’s entries. Most are unreadable, scribbly messes until Claudia acts as translator. As Helena mentioned, there are few personal notes, and she finds only the occasional reference to a social life. One entry piques her interest, dated near when she and Claudia went to the festival, but try as she might she can’t decipher what it says.

“Who the heck is X?” Myka says, handing the notebook to Claudia.

Claudia squints at the tiny letters, then reads the entry out loud.

“X left to...uh, I think it says, 'follow her destiny’...yeah, that sounds like H.G....without a word of parting. Henceforth, I’ll not...muolve, no, involve myself with another in such a way again."

Claudia flips through the next few pages, looking for more entries. “That’s it?”

“As far as I can tell.”

Claudia studies the page. “This code we wrote together, so this Ms. X bit was written later. I have no idea who she is."

“Weren’t you with her twenty-four seven?”

“Sure felt like it," Claudia mumbles while examining the text again. "But I was just a kid. I wasn't clued into stuff like that. You gotta ask her who it was."

Myka shakes her head. “She’ll say something wistful about youth and lost love then change the subject.”

“Then I’ll do it.” Claudia reaches for her phone, but Myka grabs her wrist.

“Let's not open old wounds just yet. It sounds like Ms. X was on her way out no matter what. I bet Helena didn’t deal with that very well.”

“H.G. was a total downer by the end of that semester. Lady love must have harshed her buzz.”

“She broke her heart. Which is interesting, in the scheme of things,” Myka says.

“Why? Chicks followed her around with puppy dog eyes all the time. But ‘part of her charm’ was she'd never 'give them the time of day.'"

Myka scowls.

“She was real snotty back then, on her high horse about everything. It was hil-arious at the time. You wouldn’t have liked her then.”

"I don’t doubt it."

"She's mellowed a lot, that’s for sure. But this chick breaking up with her must've pushed some buttons."

“It's just…there was the festival, right? And then, um…Christina happened.”

Claudia gasps. “You think she got pregnant to piss off Ms. X?”

“Not directly. She was hurting and careless, that's all," Myka says. She takes the journal back from Claudia and looks over the entry again. "What I don't understand is why she's never said anything. Whoever she is, she's long gone by now. It happened years ago.”

“'Feelings’ aren’t her thing.”

“Then like you said, her writing this down was a big deal.”

“Ok, sure. But why does matter now?”

Myka stares the page and tries to connect Ms. X to something tangible, but her mind comes up blank. “It doesn’t. I’m just…surprised.”

“Because she tells you everything?”

“Because she tells you everything.”

“Oh come on. I beat things out of her even now. You think things were different back then?”

"I don't know. Maybe," Myka answers, knowing full well Claudia's right.

Claudia scowls, and Myka looks away, then scans at the spread of photos on the bed.

"Let's clean up. I think we've done for today."

----------------

Myka picks up where she left off a few days later and revisits earlier tomes, searching meticulously for any further mention of Ms. X. When she finds none, nor any evidence of additional lovers, she concludes that down the line, Helena dating Giselle was a bigger deal than she'd implied. And then it hits her; she needs to talk to Giselle, as Giselle’s a reliable source of information.

There's precedent for small talk as Giselle occasionally asks about Helena the mornings she drops Christina off at school. But questions she wants to ask are not school-appropriate, so she musters up the courage to invite her out for coffee.

When the date arrives, Myka’s nervous beyond belief; why she ever thought this was a good idea is now a mystery to her. Giselle arrives on time and on the phone, speaking in Spanish faster than Myka can keep up with.

“Boys,” Giselle grunts, rolling her eyes as she hangs up. She sets her bag on the chair and rifles through, plucking out her wallet. “You want anything?”

“No, I’m good,” Myka answers and adds a small smile for lack of a better greeting.

Giselle nods and walks toward the counter.

Myka watches her flag down the barista and studies the swirl of tattoos poking out from her wide-necked top. They mimic the curls falling casually out of her updo, a departure from her usual tight bun at work, the coif dignified yet rebellious at the same time. Her wide belt, resting just above her hips, is studded, as are her boots, adding fuel to her punky aesthetic. But even in a loose t-shirt and tight jeans, she commands an air of authority, as the boy at the counter snaps to attention like her students.

“So...what’s up?” Giselle asks upon return, blowing on her drink as she sits. “Pretty ballsy of you, asking me out."

“Yeah, that’s me. Ballsy,” Myka says, flashing a shaky smile. More like crazy, she thinks, as she sips timidly on her latte.

“Something up with you and Helena?”

“No, we’re good, considering the circumstances.”

“Christina?”

“She’s ok. We've visited twice, but it’s hard tearing them apart."

“It’s always hard on kids when their parents have visa problems. They think it’s their fault their parents left when they’ve done nothing wrong. I see it all the time, and it drives me nuts. She's lucky she's able to visit, as most kids can't.”

Giselle’s phone buzzes and she scowls at the screen. “Sorry, I…” She trails off while furiously tapping on letters.

Myka relaxes back into her chair; this is less awkward than she thought. But before complacency sets in, she better cut to the chase. She'd hate to blurt out something Giselle’s not privy to.

“So I wanted to ask, but you don’t have to answer,” Myka says as Giselle finishes up. “Why did you and Helena break up?”

“Having second thoughts?”

“No, it’s just...it sounded like she invested a lot in your relationship. Meeting your family must have been a big deal for her.”

"Ah, I get it. You want to introduce her to your folks, and you're worried it'll spook her."

"No, I...well, maybe." That day may never come, if she has any say in it, but it’s actually a good topic to talk through.

"She didn't have a choice with me. They’re nosy as hell and to be honest, I paraded her around like a prize. Not my finest moment,” Giselle says, then takes a generous sip of her beverage. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“I’ve tried, but…you know how she explains things, and you don’t realize until later that she didn’t really explain anything at all?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“She was like that with you?”

“I figured it was a self-preservation thing because I was such a hot...mess.” Giselle looks at her phone as it buzzes again. “Damn it,” she mutters and grabs the device.

“What went wrong?” Myka prods.

Giselle glances up, then sends a quick text, and takes a second to compose herself before answering.

“I pushed too hard, too fast. Helena nursed me through some tough times, but...you know how she has a thing for damsels in distress?"

"I, um, guess?"

"So when you came along, I was like, ’there she goes again.’ But it’s different with you. With you, she fell hard."

“She loved you, too. She was going to move in with you."

“That was never going to happen. It was a rumor we started to piss off Fernando. There’s no way she’d leave that shitty apartment for me.”

"So you weren't going to marry her so she wouldn't be deported?"

Giselle stiffens in her chair. “Where’d you hear that?”

“S-Steve and Liam."

Giselle scowls in a way that makes Myka genuinely scared about proceeding.

“I-I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Water under the bride," Giselle says and waves a dismissive hand. She looks off into the distance, and Myka wishes she hadn't brought it up.

"Hang in there, mija," Giselle says, the words sounding as if they're more for herself than Myka. "If anyone can get through to her, it's you. And Christina thinks the world of you, which is half of the battle.”

“I think the world of her, too."

“You've got something special, you two. I’m rooting for you."

Another text pops up, and Giselle grunts disapprovingly at her screen. “Gotta jet,” she says. "But some advice. If you decide to have kids, don’t have boys. Unless you want an ulcer."

Giselle downs the rest of her coffee and gathers her bag, then taps call on her phone. She leaves as she entered, shouting at someone on the other end, but waving goodbye to Myka as she goes.

Kids with Helena? Would Helena want more? It’s not something she'll bring up voluntarily, probably ever.

-----------

As days stretch into weeks, a well-worn pattern emerges, one that rebuilds Myka's sense of self. She shares Christina duties with Claudia as before, but keeps on top of after-school activities and enrolls she and Christina in a one-day cooking workshop. She’s even carved out time to paint, sometimes at Claudia’s, but mostly in Brooklyn and occasionally brings Christina along to stay the night. Either way, she’s pleased her art’s become a priority again as her show in Warsaw is quickly approaching.

It's been hard to connect with Helena, but not for lack of trying; Helena's schedule's packed beyond belief. She's working overtime at the bar to earn time off for Thanksgiving, and between that and school, she's scrambling from dawn until midnight.

When they have connected, it’s been upbeat and open, and things feel like they're finally moving in the right direction. Helena approached Mrs. Frederic about finding a place for Myka on her team and has even disclosed what she can about the appeal. She always manages a goodnight call to Christina, no matter the circumstances, even while music's pumping in the background at the bar.

Everything was chugging along fine until one night, after Christina was asleep, Claudia arrived home guns blazing.

“Dude, you were right! You’re never going to believe this,” Claudia barges into the room and drops down on the couch next to Myka. She yanks out her laptop and clicks away on keys, then flashes a self-satisfied grin while handing it to Myka.

“What am I looking at exactly?” Myka says, shaking her head.

“Waay in the back,” Claudia says and clicks a combination of keys to enlarge the photo.

Myka leans closer to the screen. The photo looks like it's at an auction house, but she’s unsure which one. “That looks like Mrs. Frederic. And Theodora, the woman I met with in Italy."

“Look who’s standing next to her.”

Myka studies the pixellated woman, her face in three-quarter view with her back turned. A black baseball cap covers her brownish-blonde hair, but her jawline seems familiar. She reads the caption for confirmation of identity but finds only a date.

“That can’t be her. This is from seven years ago."

Claudia minimizes that photo clicks on another. Myka's insides cringe at the same dark blonde staring back at her.

“Who’s Janis Eisner?"

“Right?” Claudia bounces in her seat. "So I kept digging, using facial recognition software, and maaaybe hacking a firewall or twelve."

“Claudia!"

“I’m a big girl. I covered my tracks." Claudia taps on keys, and as a new page loads, Myka’s stomach knots.

"Morgana Kurlansky? No way. That’s got to be fake.” Myka leans towards the screen and reads the text closely.

“It’s legit. From Interpol’s database."

"Seriously?"

"Yep."

"Do you think Helena knows?"

“How’d she get that job again?"

“She’d overheard someone at school talking about being understaffed."

“Sketchy, but not totally whack. Maybe Babezilla’s keeping an eye on her."

“Why? Helena's already cooperating with Mrs. Frederic."

"Maybe she’s keeping an eye on both of them."

“Oh..." Myka's eyes widen as she looks at Claudia. Could Helena's meetings with Mrs. Frederic be considered shady by the authorities? Or is Mrs. Frederic in under surveillance because she's using Helena for information? “Sally said she thought Mrs. Frederic was up to something. She said she was close to figuring it out."

“Figuring out what?"

“Something big if Interpol’s involved.” Myka stares at the woman pictured, internalizing in her sober, confrontational gaze. Whatever's going on, Helena better not be in more trouble with the law.

“One more thing. And this one's kinda wild,” Claudia says, clicking on another image. “Morgana Kurlansky was at Stanford around the time we were. Her transcript says she was on a cross-enrollment ROTC scholarship, so she took a bunch of classes at Berkley. She joined the Navy; then, I guess skipped over to Interpol.”

There, on the screen, is a young Bonnie Belski, smiling brightly on her Stanford ID.

“D-Did Helena know her? Could they have been…could she be...” Myka can’t even say it out loud. Her hand slowly rises to cover her mouth, her heart sinking further than before.

Claudia tilts her head, mulling it over. “It’s possible, I guess, but I don’t think we would have crossed paths. She graduated before we did and it’s a pretty big school. Plus we lived in our lab.”

“Right,” Myka says, still staring at the photo.

“Should we warn H.G.?”

“Warn her about what? That we think Bonnie’s spying on her?”

“Yeah.”

“If I told her I told you about her meetings with Mrs. Frederic, she’d never trust me again.”

“Good point,” Claudia says, fishing a thumb drive out of her bag and sticking it in a port. “I’ll give you this stuff to look over.”

Myka's phone rings and she jumps. She doesn’t recognize the number but picks up anyway, still stunned by all this information.

“H-Hello?” she says and slides her computer towards Claudia, stiffening as the caller speaks. “Mrs. Frederic?”

Mrs. Frederic gets right to the point, giving only the necessary details, telling Myka more is forthcoming in an email.

“I understand,” Myka says, nodding as if Mrs. Frederic could see her. The call ends as abruptly as it began.

“What’s up?” Claudia asks, yanking her memory stick from Myka’s computer.

“I’m on a red-eye to Berlin tomorrow. I’m back on the sale."

-TBC-

#BERING AND WELLS #w13 #fan fic #Eternal AU week #if/then #and here we go folks #into the abyss #things can only get more complicated from here on out #(I know everyone's busy watching Carmilla #but give this a read when you get a chance)#thanks!#(I'm a creampuff too BTW)

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kendrixtermina · 7 years

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Extra Typology Vol #3 - Part 9, A: The Leisurely Style (Basics)

This would be the quintessential “Type B” individual - sure, they’ll fulfill their obligations & put in whatever share of work is needed to have a solid living, but once that is done, they feel that they have the right to their personal pursuit of hapiness & see that as the area of life where the “worthwhile” stuff happens - That this is where life is & that the other part is the drudgery you do for the sake of your life.

They feel that they have a right to their “me time” and while they might fill it with anything from plain chillaxing to hobbies to creative pursuits, it’s important to them that they are guranteed this opportunity, and though they are generally easygoing, they will vigorously defend their right to do their own thing & have their time & space.

This seems to be vaguely 9w8, the Phlegmatic Temperament or the Ne-Si axis.

(Funnily enough I never thought of this as any sort of distinct trait, perhaps because it’s the most common one in my makeup - I always just assumed this is simply “everyone to some degre/default/common sense/normal people” which, in hindsight, seems to hold the implicit assumption that type A people are “weird” Sorry. ^^° Well, at least I am now less stupid than I was before reading this book so yay for this book. Guess this just shows how we’re all vulnerable to & should be on the lookout for that type of thinking, as we’re all ordinary or unusual in some ways.)

The Six Domains

Self

The first priority for the Leisurely style is the inviolable independence of the self - The implicit idea that they have the intrinsic right to be who they are, to feel good, and to pursue their own pleasures and concepts in their own way - and that no person or institution has any business “meddling” or taking those rights away from then - They can be said to have a more fluent connection to the basic, default value of human existence.

If a Conscientious person will define themselves & others through their work, Leisurely people are more likely to see their indentity as related to their hobbies and, as a corollary, will tend to ask others “What are you into?” instead and believe in their inalienable right to use their personal time however they choose.

Unlike some of the more emotional “scattered” types they can operate quite well within systems such as the family, the workplace, the community... indeed those outer complexes are necessary to fulfill their needs, but they do not identify with or feel a need to cater to any outer authorities and generally don’t have a pronounced superego or any of the associated heavy self-critical burdens. - They’re aware of their obligations, but after meeting them - including those to their family - the Leisurely person will turn to what they see as “the things that really matter”: The pursuit of their private pleasure in life, be it sports, art, contemplating nature or watching TV with a beer in hand.

Unlike, say, Self-Confident types who feel that they are inherently special, better and closer to the center of the universe than most others, Leisurely people perceive that, along with everybody else, they are small cogs in the cosmic wheel - and that’s okay with them. Leisurely folks are usually comfortable with themselves - but even small cogs are entitled to lucky breaks - which is how Leisurely people perceive the diference between the have and the have-nots.

Most of all, they feel entitled to be happy and claim this right vigorously - Leisurely individuals will not enslave themselves to anyone or anything, or substitute anybody else’s values for their own - they might have a role to play, a job to do, services to perform etc. but they are individual and separate, subject to their own dictates - they’re willing to do their part, but beyond that, they reserve the right to feel good privately.

Relationships

This same central attitude extends not just to work but also to their relationships, with the result that these can only work under a premise of “You don’t own me.” or contain a certain ambivalence - Don’t misunderstand: People who have this as their dominant style are deeply entwined with other people - they’re family oriented and comfortable in groups. They like or even need to be taken care of and enter into relationships easily.

At the same time, they are, like Vigilant types, vaguely suspicious of others, especially people in authority - Leisurely types lowkey expect others to ask too much of them. But while Vigilant people stand emotionally clear of people until they are certain their autonomy is assured, Leisurely individuals have a much greater immediate need of companionship - as well as a foolproof defense against being ill-used: If anyone asks them to sacrifice their self-determination, they’ll simply refuse - they are frequently skilled at saying no and will always be protective of their individual freedom.

They’re not the sort to change themselves or a lifestyle they are satisfied with for the sake of a relationship, and if that means the relationship has to stop, they can generally accept that, seeing little sense in trying to win back an ex-partner who has clearly proven incompatible with their life an not likely to be happy with them - that said, they do care about their relationships & are likely to experience emotional pain when their desires conflict with those of their loved ones - they’ll usually go their own way in the endbut not without a lot of soul-searching in the end.

It’s not uncommon for people with this style to be read as lazy by those who don’t share their values, but that’s a misunderstanding: Not too different from archiever-types they’re dividing up their time according to what they want but what they want isn’t recognition or fancy stuff but to have a significant portion of their time to use as they please without outside encumbrance - they’re generally not rebels, mavericks, angrily defiant indvidals or anything of the sort: They won’t yell or argue when asked to do something they consider far beyond their duties - they’ll simply refuse.

They might simply not want or value the same things as their type A friends/partners & not find it as important that this or that is done - sometimes with the result that the other person feels obliged to do it & ends up comlaining about having to do all the work when the Leisurely person never asked or expected them to.

Work

To a Leisurely person, work and moneymaking are generally a means, not the end. They’re the sort to look at their employment as “just a job” rather than a career or vocation.

Because they generally work not for fame or sucess, but simply to pay bills, get a pension, finance their pursuit of pleasure and maybe have fun, they generally won’t take work home, don’t worry about it after hours, won’t do work that they see as outside their responsibility & won’t do more than what is asked of them to please the boss or feel better about themselves - they feel just fine.

They can be good, cooperative workers & are quite capable of fulfilling the requirements and taking pride in what they do, but they don’t find the meaning of their life in their work and won’t let themselves be pushed around by someone who does - However, they might not necessarily see how their apparent lack of ambition might account for receiving less approval, encouragement or reward that their coworkers who do go the extra mile and may resent another person’s success as unjustified.

That said, individuals with a mixed pattern containing traits like Conscientious or Self-Conscious do manage to find pleasure somewhere in the workplace - some may be able to mix pleasure and business, which is probably the easiest to accomplish in creative work - others may enjoy some aspects of their work and procrastinate on others, or find something incidental to their work that they actually enjoy (such as the office sports team) - they can do very good work and stand a lot of tedium but the job is rarely going to be the central focus of their lives. They work slowly & comfortably and won’t rush to beat the clock, or to make an unreasonable deadline.

This may annoy the occasional supervisor or boss because people in authority generally expect their employees and subordinates to share their values & dedication to the project even though they ‘ll be getting a smaller share of the rewards, but the Leisurely person may reply that they’re not paid to photocopy bills or work past five, in short, that whatever extra stuff is being demanded is “not their job”, and they will certainly resist being exploited -

Leisurely types are at least mildly suspicious of authority in the workplace - they expect that the boss will want more than they are willing to give - which often proves true, especially when the job has no precise description, or when the boss is highly Conscientious, Self-Confident, Agressive or Serious. Leisurely individuals attempt to fulfill their obligations, but might feel ill-used if their supervisors or colleagues do not accept this as sufficient - if the boss asks them to do more or to work faster, they might begin to feel that they are being treated unfairly - in general, Leisurely individuals are very aware of their rights. Fair is fair, and anything else is exploitation - as such, they won’t hesitate to make use of such rights (like take off all the days they’re allowed to) and, for that, may be

While the promise of extra pay is usually not enough to tempt them to stay longer, being compensated with extra free time later on might actually do the trick - and if a Leisurely person happens to be self-employed, they’ll have much the same attitude toward authority and won’t let their clients make unreasonable demands of them.

Emotions

In terms of emotional dynamics, Leisurely individuals often fall into the phlegmatic temperament (or possibly SanPhleg if extroverted), or, as Oldham puts it, reminiscent of Lizards basking in the sun: They’re placid, patient, slow-moving, mellow and not likely to get upset.

Even when they’re angry, (usually because of real or perceived unfairness) they tend to be indirect about it and avoid head-on confrontation - instead they’ll sulk, assign blame elsewhere, act grouchy & sullen and half-heartedly neglect the tasks others want them to do, or act all scattered & procrastinatey until... ooops! The deadline has passed, basically doing a bad job so that they won’t be asked to do it again.

Self-Control

As a side effect of the above orientation toward chill, they tend to avoid things that might disrupt their “flow” - which might lead them to put off onerous tasks such as word deadlines, taxes, bill paying, christmas shopping etc. to the last minute.

Apart from that though, their self-control is actually fairly good (just used for their piorities) - a halfway healthy individual is not driven to excesses, though many little indulgences can backfire by adding up, leading one to damage their health out of sheer habit from too much sugar, booze etc.

Worldview

To people in which this style is predominant, the world is a fairly straightforward place, if populated with a lot of folks who claim authority over others and would have you working all the time on unimportant tasks - Leisurely individuals have a built-in immunity to these claims because they can see that work is only a part of what there is in life.

They protect their identities by keeping a low profile, fulfilling only those obligations to the system that they must, wishing for a stroke of good luck (to which they feel as entitled as the next guy) and then concentrating on what they really want to do with their time, or, as they call it, the real life.

Life Choices

Leadership

Predominantly Leisurely types are rarely found above mid-management, because they’re not that ambitious in their careers - they don’t want to devote themselves to getting ahead, don’t care about working hard enough to make tons of money and are very reluctant to make the kinds of sacrifices on their personal time that the fast track demands.

Since Leisurely individuals often work for the same company, agency or military branch, they may rise to mid-management levels over the years - as managers, they expect of their subordinates what they expect of themselves: A day’s work for a day’s pay. They don’t push anybody too hard, but they do expect their staffs to follow the rules and not make life difficult for them. They’re not particularly creative or motivating managers, but in the beaurocracies that they find themselves in, they fit right in & allow the wheels to keep turning without rocking the boat.

Job Recomendations

If this is your primary style (and you were unlucky enough not to be born rich), im for a good ‘ol 9-to-5 job in which you know exactly what is expected of you - Since people of your style like their challenges primarily outside the workplace, look for a secure job that offers good pensions & benefits (teacher, city hall clerk, civil service, union shops etc.) and avoid jbs where a lot of initiaive is required (eg. lawyer)

Be aware, however, that those more interested & invested in the job may receive more encouragement and rewards. While you might see self-employment as a way to ensure that you have sufficient time to yourself flexible working conditions, it might be a bit of a trap if you can’t muster the necessary self-discipline or switch from work to play - You might have better chances if you have traits of a more ‘disciplined’ style, but it can also be hard to reconcile those two sides of yourself, as such traits can be in conflict inside a single individual as much as in society at large - A solution might be to become a consultant or freelancer, to combine pleasure & work by finding a job you enjoy (eg. creative work), or, you can try to focus on archievement while you’re young & kick back later once you’ve secured a foundation of cash and ressources.

Stress Sources

Perhaps as a result of maing their lives very comfortable, they’re rarely ever tense & generally don’t end up with stress or anxiety related problems - they tend to be emotionally even, but with one important exception: When they’re pushed to do more than they think is fair, or when someone pressures them to change their priorities - such situations would represent the primary souces of stress for a Leisurely individual.

In response they feel drawn to do things the other person’s way, but then react by resisting in a more demonstrative way, which can go from guiltily going along with it for a while to lowkey hostile, complainy passive-agressive behavior. If others keep insisting, the Leisurely person will indignantly justify their behavior and even try to rally others to their side.

If left alone to do their thing, it doesn’t take much for them to find emotional comfort - they don’t really need any great things to be satisfied, just a little bit of chill time - ultimately this is a slow, easy, pleasure-seeking style. Hapiness can come just from sitting in front of the TV with a bag of chips - but if their relationships with mates and supervisors are constantly strained by arguments, sourness may become their primary attitude.

Parenting

Generally speaking, Leisurely parents make for responsible breadwinners who are concerned with their children’s basic needs - their family life is an important source of pleasure for them and generally very important - they have a gift for enjoying themselves and can share in their children’s lives more memorably when they are all having a plain old wonderful time.

However, there can be a tendency t believe that what is best for them is also generally best for their children & they do not generally go out of their way to adapt to their children’s needs and wants if those are different from their own - they can be sort of old-fashioned. That said, they are usually not inflexible and will bend if someone can get through to them that they must.

In the maladaptive extremes, though, such a parent may refuse to comprehend that their children may have different needs than the one they assume and end up being remebered as a stubborn & selfish person more comcerned with their own comfort than the child’s welfare.

Romantic Compatibility

Strongly Leisurely people need mates who are accepting, understanding and giving nd are content to orbit around them - they won’t put the needs of the relationship first and will only go so far to please others, except when it comes to brief acts of contrition - that said, they do value their relationships, like being cared for and all will be well if their partners don’t mind the responsibility of keeping the relationship together and doing a little more of the chores. Then, they will prove to be responsive, appreciative, loyal and loving mates.

(A/N: Alternatively, try someone who gives just as little fucks about excessive neatfreakery as you do - worked just fine for me on 2 separate occasions. Or, have some arrangement along the lines of “the living room stays clear but my desk my rules”. I personally prefer not to burden or embarass another person with my dirty dishes - can we agree that neither partner should have to twist themselves into a pretzel?)

A strong degree of either the Devoted or Self-Sacrificing style might be conductive to a harmonic match as those will usually be able to tolerate the Leisurely person’s fundamental self-interest while providing a warm & caring quality

Those with with pronounced Conscientious traits should look elsewhere though - Chances are they’ll have a hard time understanding or accepting each other’s approach to life. While they might get together due to the Leisurely type’s appreciation for the Conscientious ability to take care of things, this pairing very often turns very sour in the long run - Neither style is good at compromizing and both wants stuff done their way.

For similar reasons, the Self-Confident style is probably out - their “high standards”/”ongoing archievements” approach tends to clash with the Leisurely style’s “work until content & then chill” MO, and the Self-Confident partner will tend to expect concessions that Leisurely types are unwilling to give

They often feel comfortable with Vigilant types as they both mistrust authority - the Vigilant person will typically be responsible and make fallback plans in case the Leisurely person mucks it up.

Two Leisurely people will generally respect & understand each others’ rights, but as they like to be taken care of it might help if one of them had a tad of Devoted or Self-Sacrificing style in them - also, someone needs to step forward & take charge when less desirable things need doing so it would depend on the exact “trait coctail” of the people involved.

Serious mates may provide a sense of resigned responsibility that can keep the relationship together - even if the Serious partner feels put upon, they don’t necessarily expect life to be all fun & games. They will likely support a highly Leisurely person’s belief that those who have it better ust got lucky, as well as their passive wishfulness and sourish attitude - they might not necessarily be able to share in the Leisurely person’t pleasures, but they certainly won’t keep them from pursuing them.

They will generally not be comfortable with emotionally demanding styles such as Dramatic or Mercurial

Relationships with Sensitive types might well work, but the Leisurely type should take care to be there for the Sensitive when they need suppor with personal challenges

Like the Leisurely style, the Adventurous style is pleasure seeking, but they tend to break the rules rather than stay within them & play ball, so forget this match

Specific Issues

The Leisurely Style vs. Housework

Since their free time is their main source of joy in their lives, Leisurely people need a lot of time to themselves - Even if they’re the local homemakers. In that case the house will be presentable enough, the meals good if not elaborate (unless cooking is one of their hobbies), but nothing will be particularly well kept, prepared or organized.

Taking care of a home & family is one of the more demanding jobs out there so it may be a good thing if the Leisurely individual knows how to set their limits, but they may run into problems if their mate doesn’t think of housework as “real” work & sees their need to have a break from it and entertain themselves as self-indulgent.

On the other hand, if the Leisurely mate is the one who works outside the home, they may mistakenly assume that their at-home partner didn’t have much to do all day & not be inclined to pitch in after they “did their due” on a long day of work (it’s easy to see how being raised with certain cultural expectation of what one’s “share” of the work constitutes can be unhelpful here ^^°)

In general, they treasure their non-work hours too much to give up too much of them for chores, especially if there’s other family members whom they feel could and/or should take care of it.

Success isn’t Everything

Leisurely-style people can be found in virtually all manner of careers, including, say, Chemistry professors, but rarely on top of any, which is fine by them - Since their overall comfort in life comes from how they enjoy themselves away from work, they rarely devote the time or push that hard.

A pitfall of the Leisurely type may be that some for whom the trait is very pronounced may drift off course or lose direction in their life, but this needn’t happen - generally they can and do make good lifes for themselves (according to their own priorities) even if others may say that they haven’t done as well as they “should” have. For example, they might pass up a prestigious job for one that is secure and easy-going & be happy with their life as it is, doing the things they do, and will prefer doing activities they actually like (be it at work or at home) rather than squeezing the maximum potential out of everything.

#typology #extraTypology #oldham #oldham personality #personality #Leisurely

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jikook-kills-me · 7 years

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It Leads To You

Pairing: Jikook

Summary: Jungkook was only 10 when he started dreaming of EYES. At 13 he dreamed of the person calling his name, At 15 he saw his back. At 16 he discovered his name. At 17 he saw his face. And everytime Jungkook fell in love

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Jin was sitting on the sofa watching Taehyung who was walking back and forth in the living room occasionally shaking his head and murmuring something. His restlessness and incessant pacing was making Jin’s head spin. It hadn’t been that long since Jimin left and he was already wearing a hole in the floor.

“Will you stop that?” He asked finally fed up.

“Stop what?” Tae asked surprise evident on his face.

“Your mindless pacing. It’s making me crabby.” Jin said crossing his legs, a pout evident on his face.

Tae couldn’t help but laugh at that. “When are you not crabby hyung? I wonder how Joonie hyung deals with you all the time.”

“Yah-” Jin uncrossed his legs and continued. “-for your information Joonie loves me and my crabbiness.” At Taehyung’s scoff Jin continued “But don’t worry I still love you the most baby brother.” He fixed Tae with a look and brought his hand up to his lips sending a flying kiss his way.

Tae dissolved into giggles losing his balance and fell. “You are too much seriously.” He murmured after getting his breath back.

“Whatever. Now that you aren’t pacing and making me agitated, tell me what’s wrong?” Jin said patting the sofa beside him silently asking Tae to sit with him.

“What do you mean? I am not worried about anything.” Tae sighed lying on the sofa resting his head on Jin’s lap instead.

“Tae.” Jin warned in a low voice. “What did I say about bottling things up?”

Taehyung snorted. “That was for Jimin.” He looked up at Jin.

“It was meant for both of you. Now tell me what’s wrong.” Jin said running his fingers through Tae’s hair.

“I don’t know Jinnie hyung, I am just really worried about Jiminie. I mean I have no way of knowing how he feels, this bond lets him feel what I feel every time but it doesn’t extend the same courtesy to me. I can’t see how Jimin feel unless he allows me to and it sucks.” Tae murmured.

“You know the reason behind the bond right? It’s not there for convenience or other fancy stuff, the only reason why bond mates existed in the first place was to help casters to be in control of their magic and not their emotions. The bond is supposed to be this way. They are supposed to gauge your feelings and help you accordingly so you won’t be overwhelmed by the spell and your emotions. It had been this way even before the Azure stone went missing.” Jin sighed still massaging Tae’s scalp.

“But that’s the thing hyung, Jiminie is not the usual bond mate. He is a channeler, they are not supposed to be bond mates not even before the disappearance of stone. I know he is strong but I just worry sometimes thinking what if my unstable spells on top of the spiraling emotions I have overwhelm him? What if he gets drowned in my emotions unable to differentiate what’s his and what’s mine? You know that’s a recipe for disaster. There is a reason why channeler’s are never bond mates, why Azure witches were never bond mates.” Tae sat up frustration evident on his features.

“Azure witches were never bond mates for casters because during circles whether be full or half azure witches were needed to work alongside casters. They used to weave spells for the casters to cast. It’s impossible to weave and untangle the emotions of a caster at the same time.” Jin explained.

Tae huffed. “But now they are channelers , can only weave spells with the help of caster’s power and this shared energy results in spells weaker than before, resulting in the full circle to be repeated more often than twice a year.” He rubbed his face. “I know hyung I pay attention in class.”

Jin snorted. “Who knew?”

Tae pushed Jin and whined. “I am serious hyung.”

“Let me finish.” Jin pushed Tae back. “The essence of a caster somehow knew that’s why they never chose to bond with theirs.”

“Why did my magical essence have to bond with his then? Why does his life have to be endangered just so my emotions don’t overwhelm me.” He continued almost pulling his hair out with how agitated he was.

“Just for that reason Tae. Your spell needs stability and he needs power source.”

“But that’s for now hyung. I am afraid of the day we have to participate in a circle as the performers and not supporters. How will he handle weaving and me at the same time?”

Jin hugged his brother trying to comfort him. He knows how close Tae and Jimin were and also was aware how much Tae worried about him but he also knew how strong Jimin was as compared to other channelers.

“You remember what I told you on Jimin’s birthday? You have to be strong and lend him your strength when he gets weak.” Jin said.

He continued “There must be reason why you two ended up being bond mates, why you chose him as the person to support you both physically and emotionally. Why your essence bonded with his and your powers ended up being compatible during screening. You two complement each other that’s why the council permitted this to happen and didn’t interfere-that and the fact you both weren’t compatible with anyone else. Do the same for him as he does for you. The bond is not the only way you can help him Tae, support him and be his shoulder to lean on. That’s the best you can do for him.” He said rubbing Tae’s back.

“But would that be enough?” Tae mumbled.

“It is for now.” Jin sighed.

There is a right time for everything. We’ll talk about this again when that time comes. Just be there for him baby brother, that’s all you can do at the moment.

Jin thought running a hand through his brother’s hair watching how the tension left his body with every caress.

Jimin and Jungkook were making their way to Jimin’s apartment walking leisurely as if they had all the time in the world. They weren’t precisely in any hurry anyway so why rush? Besides they were enjoying each other’s company too much to care.

They talked about their courses, about their likes and dislikes to their favorite food, about why Jimin was in Seoul and how Jungkook still spend weekends with his parents and about their tastes in music. They talked about everything and at the same time nothing at all.

Jimin was happy he found a friend in Jungkook. It was not like witches were forbidden to befriend humans, it was just he has never been to human realm so making human friends was highly unlikely.

“Hyung.” They were walking in silence when Jungkook spoke up.

“Hmm?” Jimin hummed looking at him.

“Are you allowed to reveal yourself to us?” Jungkook asked adjusting the beanie on his head.

“It’s forbidden actually.” Jimin smiled wryly.

“WHAT?” Jungkook screeched stopping in his tracks. “Then why did you tell me? OH MY GOD! You’ll get in trouble because of me.” Jungkook flailed.

Jimin laughed and then ran a soothing hand down Jungkook’s back to calm him. “Calm down Jungkookie, I won’t get in trouble.” Jungkook took a deep breath letting go of the tension in his body.

“Besides, I didn’t tell you anything, you found out yourself after you saw me. I just broaden your knowledge by telling you more.” Jimin giggled cutely at that. “Jin hyung said it’s fine to tell you whatever you wanted to know. So it’s okay.”

“But hyung…” Jungkook said still worried about Jimin.

“Look Jungkookie, no one has to know and they won’t find out if we stay careful. It will be fine so, don’t worry. Besides this-this dream thingy-” Jimin moved his hand around “-is linked to the both of us and the only way we can get answers to all the whys, is together. So letting you know was an important.” Jungkook nodded.

Jimin took Jungkook’s hand and they started walking again. Jungkook looked down at their joined hands and couldn’t help but notice the softness of Jimin’s hand and how well it fit in his own. He smiled and intertwined their fingers.

Jimin took a hold of Jungkook’s shoulders and looked him directly in the eyes. Jungkook knew he was blushing but the rosy tinge blooming on Jimin’s cheeks consoled him that he was not the only one.

They were standing outside the apartment which Jimin said was his. The door was already unlocked but Jimin decided some pep talk was necessary to prepare Jungkook for what lie beyond the door.

“Jungkook-ah listen, don’t be surprised by what you see inside ok? It may look like a normal apartment from outside but it’s not.” Jimin murmured in a low voice in case someone was listening. Jungkook felt a shiver ran down his spine at the husky tone of his voice.

“Hyung, whatever it is I can handle it just fine.” Jungkook smiled.

Jimin sighed but opened the door nonetheless. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

As soon as they stepped inside Jimin closed the door behind him. Jungkook observed the apartment and found nothing extraordinary about it. It was the kind of apartment a college student was expected to have. All that preparing for nothing Jungkook thought amused. But before he could voice that out Jimin ahhed and said something about not lifting the illusion spell. He murmured something under his breath and then snapped his fingers.

Jungkook turned around and felt his jaw hit the floor. In front of him was not the apartment he saw just 30 seconds ago. It completely transformed into a luxurious condo the kind that is featured in celebrity magazines. All lavish and screaming money.

“What…?” Jungkook couldn’t help but gasp.

Jimin chuckled and lifted a finger to close Jungkook’s still hanging mouth. “A little bit transformation, a pinch of space and loads of adjustment spells.” Jimin winked.

“God! It’s like I stepped into another world.” Jungkook walked inside taking in his surroundings. "Am I dreaming hyung?” He asked without looking at Jimin. Jungkook was no stranger to money or lavish accommodation, hell his parents were filthy rich. It was because of that reason alone, he could pursue a career in Arts and Graphic designing with only a minor in business. His parents weren’t like other rich stuck ups, they believed in hard work and modesty. He never had anything handed to him on a silver platter and it was because of that very reason he was living in an ordinary apartment- his parents bought for him when he started college- approximately quarter the size of what he was seeing presently.

Jimin laughed. “No, you are not Jungkookie.”

“We witches don’t like cramped spaces. It makes us uncomfortable and anxious.” Jimin said as he strode towards the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yeah that would be nice.” Jungkook said following Jimin. “Why?” He asked situating himself onto the stool observing Jimin.

“Huh?” Jimin asked filling the kettle with water.

“You said confined place makes witches anxious. Why?” Jungkook asked.

Jimin looked at Jungkook, taking in the way he had his chin resting on his palm with his bangs covering part of his left eye. He had no idea why a posture as innocent as that was making his heart race. Maybe it was the way the bangs were covering his eye or the way his biceps bulged under his white shirt but Jimin could feel himself heating up. Everything in him was pushing him toward Jungkook, to have those muscled arms wrapped around him, to burrow his face in that toned chest. The thoughts roaming his head made him shiver but couldn’t help it and took a step towards Jungkook, unconsciously licking his lips.

The whistling of the kettle brought Jimin back to his senses. He had no idea what he was thinking entertaining such thoughts. Sure, Jungkook was attractive but that doesn’t mean he has to jump him, now does it? Get your head on straight. He is your friend Jimin, just like Tae is. Do you think about jumping Tae? No, right? So you can’t be thinking like that about him. Focus.

Jimin shook his head trying to get rid of the mental images that entered his head accompanying those thoughts, uninvited.

“Are you okay hyung?” Jungkook asked eyeing the way Jimin was shaking his head and blinking his eyes repeatedly, like he was shaking away something.

“Uh yeah.” Jimin said clearing his throat.

“Are you sure? You kinda look really red.” Jungkook said worried.

“I am fine Jungkookie. It’s just the heat from stove.” Jimin willed the blush to disappear and his heart to calm the fuck down.

“Oh. Okay.” Jungkook smiled.

“Right. Haha. Back to your question.” Jimin turned back to the kettle, pouring the water into cups. “They didn’t tell us much, just bits and pieces. So I don’t know much but it has something to do with the dark era of witches, when they were held captive. Though we are free now, our subconscious mind kinda remembers that?” Jimin placed the tea bags in and faced Jungkook again to see if he understood. His inappropriate thoughts long forgotten.

Jungkook regarded Jimin with a thoughtful look. “So you can’t ride the elevator? What about cars? Subway?” With every word leaving his mouth Jungkook was becoming more and more horrified.

Jimin chuckled in amusement at his behavior. “We are fine with all that stuff. It’s just the place we live in that have to be spacious and-I don’t know-” Jimin rubbed his chin trying to think of a word to describe what he wanted to say “-bright?” He questioned. “I can’t think of a better word.” He smiled.

“Oh thank fuck. That would have sucked otherwise. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t ride elevators.” Jungkook shuddered at the thoughts making Jimin laugh that whole body laugh. Jungkook smiled; glad to witness such a beauty with his eyes. Jimin was exquisite when he laughs.

“This place looks quite luxurious.” Jungkook placed the cup on the coffee table after sitting down on the couch-which was quite plush and soft unsurprisingly-resuming his scanning of the place.

Jimin snorted. “That’s because I live with Kim Taehyung.”

Jungkook frowned thinking, like that explains anything. Jimin saw him frowning and explained. “Tae loves luxury-well, that and Gucci.”

Jimin smiled making his eyes disappear. Jungkook could feel an answering smile bloom on his own. Jimin’s smile just like his laugh was contagious.

“Speaking of Tae, don’t you two live together? Where is he?”

Jimin looked around like he just noticed they were indeed alone. “Hah! Must have gone with Jin hyung to visit his family. He missed them a lot.”

“To Gemlight?” Jungkook asked.

“Mmhmm.” Jimin ruffled his hair.

Jungkook noticed the adoration that appears in Jimin’s eyes, the softness that washes over him when he talked about Taehyung. It made him wonder if one day a look like would be directed at him, if he would ever be on the receiving end of Jimin’s adoration and maybe just maybe love. It doesn’t hurt to hope right?

“How long have you two been friends?” Jungkook questioned smothering the jealousy building up inside of him and stomping on it for good measure so it won’t rear its ugly head.

“Since forever. I don’t remember a day we weren’t friends.” Jimin said, there was this faraway look on his face like he was remembering something. “We became bond mates the day he was born so I always have been his carer of sorts but even if we weren’t joined by the bond I think we still would have been best friends.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Jungkook heard a deep voice say behind him and it was so unexpected that he fell off the couch to the floor, flat on his ass. Jimin burst out laughing flinging his whole body on the sofa. The sight was so endearing that Jungkook ended up laughing himself totally forgetting that there was a third person currently in the room with them.

“Oh my God! Are you ok?” That same voice asked now beside Jungkook.

Jungkook turned to his side to see the person-who oh so had the pleasure of startling Jungkook-owning that voice and came face to face with blonde hair, freakishly handsome face and slanted eyes with this really straight and kind of pointed nose he always wished he had. Kim Taehyung his mind supplied helpfully.

“Yeah. I am okay.” Jungkook mumbled.

Jungkook saw Jimin smacking the back of Tae’s head reprimanding him how it was rude to sneak up on people and scaring the shit out of them, how he should always announce his presence.

“Did you visit your family?” Jimin asked crossing his arms.

“Um. Yeah.” Tae replied rubbing the back of his head.

“And you didn’t think of inviting me you asshole. Do you have any idea how much I missed your parents?” Jimin huffed.

“Uh sorry?” Tae said. Jimin finding his answer unsatisfactory turned his back on him.

“Jungkookie, why are you still on the floor.” Jimin asked totally disregarding Tae’s apology.

“Ah Jimin-ah..?” Tae said.

“Come on get up.” Jimin took hold of Jungkook’s hands helping him up.

“Jimin-ah? Hey don’t ignore me. I am really sorry…” Tae whined. Jungkook couldn’t believe a grown ass man whined just because he was being ignored.

“Do you hear something Jungkookie? There is this fly buzzing near my ear.” Jimin pouted still ignoring the existence of his best friend.

“A fly? I am highly offended.” Tae moved towards Jimin and in a blink of an eye they were both on a couch with Jimin being tickled mercilessly by Taehyung. “I’ll show you what this fly can do.” Tae laughed.

“Fine.” Jimin was literally gasping for breath. “Stop. Stop. I forgive you.”

“Now was that hard hmm?” Taehyung bopped Jimin on the nose.

Jimin kicked Tae off the couch and Jungkook observed the way they fell into an easy banter. He smiled unconsciously.

“Sorry Jungkookie, we totally ignored you.” Jimin stood up from the couch.

But before Jungkook could tell Jimin that it was fine and all, he was interrupted by this hyper creature Jimin call his best friend.

“Hey! How did the talking go? But since you are here, I am assuming it went well right?” Taehyung said. “Well why wouldn’t it. Hey! You don’t have a problem with us being witches right? You can keep this a secret?” Taehyung fixed Jungkook with a look and then continued like he didn’t ask him something in the first place. “Because if you do then we have a problem Mister.” He said haughtily crossing his arms on his chest.

Jungkook was rendered speechless.

“He is all good Tae.” Jimin answered instead.

“Then are we going home to meet Joonie hyung?” Tae asked grinning.

“Yeah.” Jimin said staring at Jungkook who was still frozen in shock.

“What are we waiting for then?” Tae asked confused. That seemed to bring Jungkook back and he murmured. “Wait. Wait.”

“It’s forbidden to tell humans of your existence, so how is it possible for me to go to your realm?” Jungkook asked.

Jimin and Tae shared a look and then turned to Jungkook with matching grins. Something about their mischievous expression spelled trouble with a capital T and it was making Jungkook uneasy.

Jungkook looked at Jimin questioningly but it was Tae who answered.

“Easy peasy, Jungkookie. We’ll sneak you in.” Tae winked.

A/N

Hey everyone!

Ok before you decide to bring out your torches and burn me alive I really wanna explain a few thing. I know it has been like ages since I last updated though I said I'll update soon but I really have my reasons. I have really been crazy swamped with my studies. The courses were getting harder and I barely had time to sleep, like there was more or less 3-4 hours a day I could sleep. Right now I have a little bit more time so I started writing again. Hopefully I'll write more and complete atleast two of my on-going fics. *God I really hope*

I have exams coming up in June so my goal is complete this fic before that. I'll try to update atleast once a weak.

Thanks for reading.

Also thankyou to those who are still reading this story even after a long uninformed hiatus.

Sorry I kept you waiting.

Happy reading.

-Seher

#jikook #park jimin #jeon jungkook #It leads to you #chapter 10 #bts jimin #bts jungkook #kim taehyung #bts v #vmin best friends #college au #reincarnation au #supernatural au

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architectnews · 3 years

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"We should allow an African curator to turn the whole thing on its head"

The haughty dismissals of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale by western critics overlook the welcome involvement of African architects, argue Kabage Karanja, Stella Mutegi and Patti Anahory.

It can be said that nothing important or thought-provoking lacks controversy. This year's Venice Architecture Biennale serves it in plenty if we go by the criticism directed at the curatorship of professor Hashim Sarkis and his team as well as the many works produced by a diverse range of participants.

These criticisms include articles such as Carolyn Smith's critique in the Architectural Review, titled Outrage: The Venice Biennale Makes a Mess and Oliver Wainwright's review in the Guardian, headlined A pick 'n' mix of conceptual posturing.

Edwin Heathcote's review in the Financial Times was titled Full of words, questions and stuff.

Roberto Zancan's piece in Domus, titled Biennale, Stop Making Sense! at least presents a more balanced reading of the event, but yet with a sobering conclusion.

Our unapologetic positioning as Africans in this response to these criticisms cannot be understated, especially when considering architecture's poor heritage of representation of diverse thoughts and practices of people seen to be "below" the enlightened global North.

This year's biennale discusses urgent topics that we, as a global society, need to address if we are to build a more egalitarian, inclusive and ecologically conscious world

Broadly speaking and without too much posturing, we present a collective counter-position that can be partitioned into five main headings, with the simple brief to balance the debate surrounding this exhibition and how it was all put together.

It sifts through the thoughts of a few participants in the exhibition, processed and consolidated into, yes, more words and readings that can help visitors take a fresh and deeper look at the exhibition. We then conclude with some free-radical thoughts about the Biennale's future.

Traditional models versus emergent models

Many of the criticisms fail to place enough gravity on the heterogeneity of contemporary practices, and the ongoing expansion of the architecture discipline. It seemed clear that some of the readings were locked in a nostalgic past where architecture is synonymous with construction.

This year's biennale set itself to discuss contentions and urgent topics that we, as a global society, need to address if we are to build a more egalitarian, inclusive and ecologically conscious world.

The answers coming from participants attest to the diversity of topics that need to be engaged with if we are to achieve such a future, which has to be the opposite from, if at least in addition to a homogeneous one.

Architecture's knowledge and strengths go beyond the beautiful practice of building that too often gets obsessively relied upon to address the questions of how indeed we will live together.

The value of research and the installation format as a medium to convey its message

The seemingly blatant disdain toward research and or the diverse range of research production is another telling point in some of the critiques.

Much of architectural knowledge is produced through research and the ways to display them demand formats other than the traditional instruments of architecture, such as plans, sections and models.

The installations mocked as "research" are serious works that try to bring to the foreground many of the pressing issues of our times.

If the criticisms were targeted to the medium through which such works got expressed, it would have been acceptable. What is not acceptable is the ridiculing of long-term, serious efforts to advance knowledge in specific areas by discarding them, after short bursts of analysis into the work.

The role of the curator

The figure of the curator was also attacked. This could not have been more apparent the moment statements such as "a good curator should mirror the practice of a museum curator" emerged.

This could not have been more anachronistic. Museum settings are one thing, international platforms such as the biennale are another, from the way works are produced to their meanings, audience and lifespan, which attests to the diverse role architectural exhibitions play today.

The museum model has long been challenged and, arguably, surpassed. Architecture and art exhibitions have been shifting in character while undergoing a significant self-critical revision. It is the role of the curator to work towards creating the conditions and pushing boundaries for this new model to emerge.

To not have bothered in the first place: fighting pandemic procrastination

According to the curatorial team, only a handful of participants were able to maintain their initial proposals without the need to change or adapt their installation due to the hardships and ideological shifts in thought that the pandemic brought, such as the loss of sponsorship or logistical challenges from shipping to production.

This in many ways made the exhibition all the more refreshing and current to not only consider the impact of the pandemic but, in the words of Roberto Zancan, to consider that this year's biennale marked the end of an era. It was an incredibly difficult series of moments in time when the curator and the whole biennale institution found it crucial to have the exhibition.

There is a great need to reignite the energy of the city but also that of the architectural world as a whole. A decision made to live and work with the trouble, without the luxuries and mirage of the post-pandemic comforts that may or may not come to look back at 2020 and 2021 with the crystal-clear vision that hindsight affords.

Participants addressing architecture's inability to grapple with the most difficult of issues and crises across the planet

We find it hard to avoid the stereotypical depictions of critics' aloof and often ambivalent to works by diverse communities – and this exhibition has a good supply of diverse projects. Many participants either received the gross broad-brushed grouping under the demeaning banner of Hashim's selection bag of candy, or in many cases, given overly surfaced critiques about their seemingly pseudo research, or as described by one critic, served as inedible "word salad" – a description that even made the proudest recipients of this criticism giggle inside.

The celebration of the many African participants seemed to be cut short by the clouds cast over such works as Alatise's Alasiri installation

It begs the question, however, how deep did the critics dig to understand the participants, as probed in the Yoruba proverb quoted by Nigerian artist and architect Peju Alatise in Alasiri, her project in the Among Diverse Beings section of the Arsenale.

"Yara rebate gba Ogun omokunrin ti won ba afara denu", runs the proverb, which means "a small room can inhabit 20 young men if they have a deeper understanding for one another."

How much time was really afforded to actually review the work and research of the participants at the biennale, and by extension Hashim's curation of the entire exhibition? Surely the cultural barometers of our time might every so often need calibration to look in closer to read the longer climatic formations of such an event, rather than the immediate weather patterns of a press-day opening in isolation?

The celebration of the many African participants seemed to be cut short by the clouds cast over such works as Alatise's Alasiri installation. This is a continuous body of sculptural and architectural objects and readings, reigniting mythical figures of the past and present, all set within free-standing door openings linked to another African proverb that states: "Eniyan ri bi ilekun, to bagba e laye ati wole, o ti di alasiri" ("People are like doors; if they permit you in, you become their keeper of secrets").

"How will we live together is a poignant question, made more complex by the current Covid 19 crisis," said Alatise, whose body of work both creates and inhabits a space where both women and men are liberated through a phantasmagoria of feminist origins and infrastructures. "The answer begs for moral inclusion that I feel architecture alone cannot give."

Patti Anahory (who co-authored this piece with Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Cave_bureau) and Cesar Schofield Cardoso from Cape Verde present their project Hacking (the Resort): Water Territories and Imaginaries in the Arsenale in the As Emerging Communities section.

It features an exquisite artisanal fishing line floating plastic bottle wave installation, which in their own words "investigates a confluence of the possibilities where tourists and local labour meet in a choreographed strained dance of labour and leisure".

This project imagines a space and time where both disparities and possibilities are confronted in equal measure, with a continuous body of work that manifests in their built projects and digital artworks.

Separately, with the biennale in mind, Anahory emphasized the disparities in funding allocations to realise the exhibition. She asks what would happen if all participants were constrained to a capped budget as a way to balance the output from both an environmental impact perspective, and to squarely bridge the north and south global economic divide.

This project was also whitewashed under the broad-brush criticism of the entire exhibition

Our Nairobi practice Cave_bureau presents The Anthropocene Museum, "Obsidian Rain", an installation under Galileo Chini's fresco in the dome of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, presented as part of the As One Planet section curated by Sarkis. This is a post-colonial architectural reading, representation and proposal to critique the anthropocene era.

This project was also whitewashed under the broad-brush criticism of the entire exhibition, dismissing the installation via comical depictions of moonstones and meteor showers, when in fact the hanging obsidian stones follow the shape of a cave used by Mau Mau freedom fighters during the colonial period and celebrated by Malcolm X.

Today, Cave_bureau uses this story to curate forums of resistance against the continuous neoliberalist expansions of geothermal energy extraction that is often done to the detriment of the local Masai community and the natural environment in Kenya.

The stones, sourced from the Great Rift Valley, reference mankind's earliest raw material, which was used to create stone tools. This is an ignored architectural heritage that catapulted the homo sapien species into the troubled brave new world that we find ourselves in today.

So here the floating cave structure is critically juxtaposed against Chini's fresco in the dome. This architectural refocusing is grounded further back beyond Plato's Allegory of the Cave; that is, the human race's collective heritage of cave inhabitation by our early ancestors. This is a heritage that is still caricatured right up to today, more so in the surfaced reading of this work.

Concluding together

We live in a deeply broken and divided world where many of the participants choose to work with the communities that are most affected by the global pressures that have their anthropogenic roots in slavery, imperialism and colonialism.

This is a continuous struggle lived through today, epitomized by the climate crisis movements, The Black Lives Matter movement and women's rights movements among many others. These pressures are intertwined and exacerbated by the present-day neoliberalist powers.

Architects can no longer ignore and leave this difficult work to politicians and activists to address these formidable global challenges

It was in fact the use of the hybrid counter powers of the contemporary arts within architecture that was heavily criticized, which in fact allows many to mould our place within the profession that often struggles to meet the current global challenges head-on.

As Sarkis intimates, architects can no longer ignore and leave this difficult work to politicians and activists to address these formidable global challenges, lest we all just remain as professional pawns aloof and marginalized from the pulse on the ground.

The question posed by Sarkis, "How will we live together?" in many ways remains both rhetorical and requiring an immediate space to grow and generate these answers together, especially when many voices and ideas continue to be silenced and ridiculed.

One could argue that the profession remains in the early sketching phase of confronting our impotence in the face of these pertinent global challenges of our time, while the hurried brick-and-mortar readings and spatial-planning remedies that seemed to be so desperately craved could very quickly lead us towards the mistakes of our forebears.

One welcome criticism was that future biennales can no longer remain the same: this one indeed marks the end of an era

This biennale was in fact a safe and open space, where we never felt overburdened to be the monolithic authors of a bright new future but instead allowed to creatively work with the cultural and physical matter that would in fact help us forge this new future together.

One welcome criticism was that future biennales can no longer remain the same: this one indeed marks the end of an era, where mountains of matter are shipped to Venice without confronting and justifying the carbon footprint. We should enact previous suggestions where carbon is sequestered by planting trees across the globe and through working with marginalized groups to do so.

We should be questioning if anything should be shipped in the first place? Maybe we should even be pondering over the observation by one critic to look at the accumulated knowledge and dexterity of many of the domestic biennale installers, subcontractors and artisans that could be curated in its own right.

Finally, we should allow an African curator to turn the whole thing on its head. Maybe the one wearing the latest Royal Gold nugget on his neck right now or, better still, his protege, Nigerien architect Mariam Kamara, whose contribution to this year's biennale was close to genius if you care to look and listen a little closer.

Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi are architects and spelunkers who founded Cave_bureau in 2014. They are natural environment enthusiasts, leading the bureau's geological and anthropological investigations into architecture and nature including orchestrating expeditions and surveys into caves within the Great Rift Valley in east Africa.

Patti Anahory is an architect, educator and independent curator and co-founder of Storia na Lugar, a storytelling platform and [parenthesis], an independent space for inter(un)disciplinary exchanges, creative experimentation and cross-disciplinary dialogue. Her work focuses on interrogating the presupposed relationships of place and belonging in reference to identity, memory, race and gender constructs. She explores the politics of identity from an African island perspective as a fugitive edge and radical margin.

The main image shows Cave_bureau's Obsidian Rain installation at the central pavilion.

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