#plus every one of the many paragraphs I came up w on my own

[monkberries]

Wait what's wrong with the AKOM How Do You Sleep episode? I remember it being fine but its been ages since i listened to it so if you've got any thoughts I'd love to hear them :)

Be aware, this is only about the first episode, not about the George-focused episode. If they resolve any of the issues I have with the first episode in the second episode, then I sincerely apologize.

First, there are some things they talk about that I agree with! Near the end of the episode, they discuss the dynamic between John and the people around him in a really insightful way, and in a way I’ve often thought about it; both John and the people around him were all kind of in this mindset of “oh, Paul rejected us? Well, we didn’t want him ANYWAY! So THERE!” They also discuss the fact that John was very easily manipulated, and nearly his entire support system (minus Ringo, and shame on them for not mentioning that) basically egged his anger and viciousness on. And they also play/read some interviews with John about the song and tangential subjects, and it’s always nice to hear primary sources.

However, much like their post about Lewisohn, I find a lot of this episode excessive, overtorqued, and generally far too exaggerated. They perceive an imbalance in narratives (which I do think is there, just not to the extent they say) and overcorrect, imho.

First, I want to get my opinion on the song itself out of the way: I listen to it a lot. It’s on my Fall 2020 playlist. I enjoy the musicality, the style; the mood it evokes is extremely strong to me. Sometimes it’s fun to indulge in feeling evil or mean without having to actually be evil or mean! Plus, I love playing it right before Jealous Guy, or Steel and Glass, or I Know (I Know), just to get that maximum John Lennon Mood Whiplash effect. I think George’s solo is vicious and perfect for the mood as well. However, the lyrics are pretty horrendous in terms of their effect on Paul and his feelings; they’re also horrendous in that they’re just not well-written lyrics. IMHO you can tell it was written by three different people all throwing insults at the wall to see what would stick and rhyme. Half of the digs don’t even make sense. “So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise/You better see right through that mother’s eyes” Wut? “The one mistake you made was in your head” ??? The hell do these things even mean lmao

Anyway. Onto the episode itself.

Around 1 minute in, they say that there’s not a lot of check and balance in the Beatles fandom w/r/t this song, and that much of the fandom espouses that HDYS was “deserved” and “honest”. They reiterate this sentiment over in different ways throughout the episode, and I just do not see that kind of thing being a majority opinion in Beatles fandom spaces at all. Perhaps they are occupying different fandom spaces than I occupy (tumblr/Hey Dullblog/beatlebioreview), and it is true where they are? (In which case, my goodness, find some better blogs to follow, babes!) They talk about how they’ve never seen anyone pick it apart before, and that the discussion around it has not changed, that people have been saying Paul deserved it since it came out. Again, this is does not jive with my experience in the Beatles fandom.

From Shout!, a book with a well known anti-McCartney streak, published in 1981: “John’s Imagine album - despite the plea for universal peace and brotherhood in the title track - launched a thermo-nuclear strike back at Paul with ‘How Do You Sleep?’ a title suggesting crimes almost in the realm of first-degree murder. The McCartney references were unmistakable, and, often, cruelly unjust: ‘The freaks was right when they said you was dead... The only thing you done was Yesterday...’ There was even a two-fingered gesture of contempt for Paul’s new outdoor life with Linda on their Scottish farm.” Also, the RS review spends two paragraphs talking specifically about how heinous and unjustifiable HDYS is. You can definitely say that rock journalism takes some of the attitude of HDYS and runs with them, such as Paul’s music sounding like muzak - that sentiment certainly persisted. But I would argue that most of the shit journos are reacting to and buying into comes from Lennon Remembers primarily, where John says all the same crap and more, and worse, rather than HDYS itself, which they seem to balk at.

They make the claim as well that the Imagine LP has been elevated to some kind of untouchable, un-criticizeable status. In the years after his death, I think there is probably some truth to that, although again, untouchable is an extreme word. Even in 2003, the LP was number 80 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time. However, it was 227 on NME’s list in 2013 and dropped to 223 on Rolling Stone’s new 2020 list, suggesting a waning in popularity over time and a willingness to look more objectively at the quality of it.

The thing that really bothered me about this episode is like... They talk about the need for nuanced discussion of the song, right? And that’s all fine and good, and I agree, nuance in any Beatles discussion is essential if you want to get close to any actual truth. However, they then go on to say, quite adamantly, that if you say the music of the song is good, even if you think the lyrics are awful, then they wouldn’t even bother having a conversation with you. It’s very “We want nuance! NO NOT LIKE THAT! YOU’RE DOING NUANCE WRONG!” Like, I’m sorry, the music is good, in my opinion! John is very good at evoking a mood! The fact that I think George’s solo is incredible, or that the keyboard riff gives me chills, or that I think the bass goes super hard, doesn’t mean I don’t understand how rough the lyrics are or the effect they had on Paul. In fact, imho, I think it’s important that we discuss how quality the music is because it underscores the calculated cruelty John exhibited. He worked hard on this song. He wanted to create a very specific feeling out of it, and he succeeded in spades. I think if it had been crappy musically, people would have been much more contemptuous of it than they already are. As I said earlier, some of the digs don’t even make sense; I think they’re bolstered and propped up specifically because the music underneath them is so good. Also, it’s not fucking wrong to enjoy a groove.

I also take some issue with them saying that HDYS was easily among the worst things John ever did. Like... equivalent or worse than going on anti-Semitic, homophobic rants? Yikes.

There are many instances in this episode where they will go “I often read things like...” or “Jean Jackets will say...” or “I see this a lot...” and then never actually talk about where they see these things or quote directly from them. One instance goes “I often read things like, ‘John Lennon is expressing years of pent-up resentment over creative differences’, as if John is some kind of, like, drunk art teacher doling out free advice to Paul on his music.” I’ve read a lot about HDYS and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. Just about every discussion of the song I’ve seen says very clearly that it was an unjustified, deeply personal attack. I realize there is an aversion to publicly Naming Names when you’re calling out people who perpetuate a bad narrative. But I want to know where this stuff comes from. I want to actually see what it is they’re upset about.

Lastly, they talk near the end about music innovation and experimentation, and this is where I think things go much too far in overcorrecting a narrative. The well-known narrative for many years post breakup was that Paul was a boring square who wrote granny music. That is true; he was much maligned in the press about that. However, I think post-Hertsgaard, post-Revolution In The Head, post-Complete Recording Sessions, and post-Many Years From Now, that attitude has changed quite a bit. Most serious Beatles fans know now that Paul was the first one to really get into Avant-Garde stuff; most fans know about the fact that he made McCartney 1 basically alone in a homemade studio. Most fans have probably heard or at least heard of Temporary Secretary, lmao.

But it feels like these women are still living in the past where Paul was still being maligned for being a square, so instead they go way far to the other end and say “Paul was the musical innovator, not John.” And that is just flat out NOT true. They were BOTH musical innovators. The fact that Paul was the first to get into avant-garde art does not exclude John from also being incredibly innovative and experimental in his own way. Perhaps he wasn’t doing that on Imagine; they are right that Imagine is a collection of really good but fairly commercial songs. But they utterly discount the fact that he did Strawberry Fields Forever, and I Want You (She’s So Heavy), popularized backmasking, was one of the first if not the first to use amp feedback in a song in I Feel Fine, experimented with recording his voice differently with Tomorrow Never Knows and Revolution, and also the entirety of Plastic Ono Band!!! You don’t have to downplay or erase John’s experimental contributions to music in order to elevate Paul’s. You can elevate both of them. It’s fine.

Also, this is the episode where they say Lewisohn’s book is exactly the same as all the other Jean Jackets books except thicker, and I have a viscerally bad reaction to that for many reasons I have already outlined on this blog. Suffice to say, it is demonstrably untrue (not least because Lewisohn hasn’t published anything in his Tune In series that goes beyond 1962) and unfair to someone who has done an unbelievable amount of legwork to back up his writing. They also compare Lewisohn to Goldman (???????) and call them John and Yoko’s “fuckin bitch boys saying the same shit over and over again.” I have to imagine Goldman was a misspeak and she meant someone else, but still that jarred me lmfao

#about the blogger #Anonymous #podcast blues

[forsetti]

On The Myth of American Individualism

In light of people completely, and sometimes arrogantly, defying public health recommendations to address a pandemic in the name of “Freedom” and “American Individualism, I thought I'd repost this article I wrote in 2012.

Recently, New York Times resident hack pundit, David Brooks, wrote an article arguing that Republicans are the party that “celebrates work and inflames enterprise”.  The GOP come from a long lineage of hard working, God fearing individualists that can be traced back through American history from Mitt Romney to the first Pilgrim who stood, buckled shoed, atop Plymouth Rock. Here are his opening two paragraphs: “The American colonies were first settled by Protestant dissenters. These were people who refused to submit to the established religious authorities. They sought personal relationships with God. They moved to the frontier when life got too confining. They created an American creed, built, as the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset put it, around liberty, individualism, equal opportunity, populism and laissez-faire.

This creed shaped America and evolved with the decades. Starting in the mid-20th century, there was a Southern and Western version of it, formed by ranching Republicans like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Their version drew on the traditional tenets: ordinary people are capable of greatness; individuals have the power to shape their destinies; they should be given maximum freedom to do so.”

For Brooks, America was built by hard working people who cowered from a smiting God, lived like Ted Kaczynski , didn’t accept handouts and loved the soft reach around from the Invisible Hand.  From this great tradition sprouted great men who were the salt of the earth, ordinary men who lived off the fruits of the sweat of their brow.  People like Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, two men who grew up in luxury, went to topflight prep schools and colleges, were able to walk into business with a long list of powerful, influential people already in their contact lists and didn’t fuck up and when they did, had other doors and opportunities open for them because of who they are and who they knew.  I highly doubt that John Q. Colonialist could get a government bailout to safe his business (Romney) or have one failed business after another yet have people willing to throw money and opportunities at you over and over again (Bush).  

On the claim that Republicans are the party of work and this tradition has been passed down from John Smith and Patrick Henry to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Belle Starr, I call “Bullshit!”  This country was discovered, settled, expanded, progressed and rose to the world’s greatest economic power because of the community, not the individual.  This love affair and worship of individualism in America is not based on its history or facts.  It is a complete myth.  A myth that has become a fundamental underlying principle of today’s Republican Party.  A myth, that Jim Jones-like devotion to has resulted in horrible, often progress stifling, policies.  It is an even more deeply rooted myth in conservative lore than Ronald Reagan being a tax cutting, small government, hard line hawk.

The first wave of immigrants that came to America came for economic, not religious reasons and they didn’t migrate to our shores to frolic in the Fountain of Laissez-Faire. They were employees, mostly indentured servants, of major trading companies who sent them here to harvest resources like timber and furs.  They were “company men”, not individuals who were looking to forge a new life by braving the elements or testing their mettle. The manner in which they worked and lived was communal.

The next wave of people coming to America was the religious immigrants.  For Brooks, this meant the hardworking, God fearing Protestants who sired America’s work ethic, loved the eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus and who planted the love and respect of individualism into the country’s psyche where it grew and flourished for three hundred plus years and can now be seen in the standard bearers for the Republican Party. Unfortunately, “There goes another wonderful theory about to be brutally murdered by a gang of facts.” (author unknown).

There certainly were groups of very devoutly religious people who came to America during this time. However, what Brooks conveniently omits are the multitude of the other groups that also made their way across the Atlantic to avoid the religious persecutions and heavy handed dogma in Europe. Atheists, Deists, Agnostics, etc., left Europe for the New World because of the religious environment in Europe.  Being part of the religious wave didn’t mean you were religious, it meant you left because of religion.  There were just as many, if not more, non-religious, non-fundamentalist immigrants to America during this period than the “Forebears of Freedom and Republican/American Greatness” as Brooks would have it.  This group played as much a role in America’s formation as a country and culture, if not more, than the Puritans or Quakers.  Some of the non-religious people who played a bit part in the formation of America include: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith…

The fundamentally religious in early American history was not the dominant group and it was not individualists.  They in fact were the opposite.  They were communal socialists.  In order to afford ship passage to America they often pooled their money together to ensure they could travel as a group. They formed settlements where they helped build each other’s homes, businesses and defenses.  They had community storages and would mete out food and other resources as necessary.  They didn’t cut off someone who was sick.  Instead they would get together and, as a group, figure out the best way to address this or any other problem. What they didn’t do is as they were ascending the gangplank of the Mayflower wave to each other and say “Good luck!  Maybe I’ll see you around.”  They stayed together, worked together and helped each other.  They didn’t abandon the sick and weak or withhold food or shelter.  If you want to see the modern day version and descendants of the early religious settlers to America, visit the Amish community in Ontario Ohio or Lancaster Pennsylvania.  The Amish, Mennonites and similar groups have been the ones to continue the traditions of the early settlers.  One word that is never used in describing these groups or their members is ‘individualism’.

Not to mention that there were a lot of other settlers in the early America who were not the Protestant, white New Englanders yet had just as much impact on society and culture then and now.  The Spain heavily influenced Florida, California and the American Southwest.  France’s influence was felt all along the Mississippi River and Great Lakes areas.  To ignore or deny these groups’ impact on American culture in favor of a tiny sliver of white, New England Protestants, is intellectually dishonest.  Brooks takes a sliver of early America, ascribes general characteristics to it that were not true and then claims these traits are what made this country great.

Let’s fast forward a dozen score years or so to the early 1800’s and visit another group of people touted as the champions of The American Spirit of Individualism-The Pioneers.  You know the salt of the earth, lovers of capitalism and all things holy, the people who settled the West and spread the seeds of rugged individualism like they were John Holmes at Burning Man. According to people like Brooks, the Pioneers were the hardworking, Bible toting, individualist progeny of John Smith, William Bradford and Adam Smith.  Again I call “Bullshit!”  Hardworking? Absolutely.  It was pretty difficult to not have to work hard to survive during this time unless you were filthy rich.  The technology at the time was better than it was in colonial times but it still wasn’t good enough to diminish the day-to-day demands of life in the 1800’s.  Individualists?  Hell no!  I don’t even know where this idea came from.  Even the most cursory look at this era shows quite the contrary.

Remember the stories and pictures of the Pioneers moving across the Great Plains along the Oregon Trail? Did they make this trek one wagon at a time, as individuals?  No. There is a reason they were called wagon trains because they moved as groups.  When they arrived at their intended destinations did they head off in different directions and go all Jeremiah Johnson?  No. They either joined settlements already in progress or started their own, as a group.  They moved as a group, built communities as a group, defended their properties and families as a group…  I come from Pioneer stock.  My genealogy tree has a branch that goes back directly to Brigham Young (of course with 56 kids from 16 of his 55 wives, you can’t swing a dead cat along the Wasatch Range of Utah without hitting someone who is related to Brigham).  Every single aspect of Mormon history, from moving to and building up Nauvoo Illinois, to crossing the prairie, to Brigham leading the faithful into the Salt Lake Valley through Emigration Canyon and pronouncing “This is the place”, to building Salt Lake City was a group, not an individual activity.  It was so communal and such a collective effort that Marx and Engels would have been “Whoa, lighten up a bit, let a brother get some alone time.”

One argument against my take is-“These groups had to band together for pragmatic reasons.  There were extenuating circumstances and variables that forced them to operate as a group in order to survive.”  My response to this critique is-“Yeah.  Your point being what?”  Either working together, spreading out risks and rewards works and yields positive results or it doesn’t.  What the reasons are for doing so are irrelevant.  It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter what the reasons are for opting for the group versus the individual approach.  I fail to see how changing the reasons either changes the efficacy or the results.  Another way of looking at it is to ask the question, “Do you think they could have achieved the same results via the individualism route?”  There doesn’t seem to be any historical evidence to support that they could.  I’m skeptical that the Pioneers didn’t know how to deal with the big issues they faced and followed the community approach to problem solving out of ignorance, stupidity or tradition.  If you think they could have achieved the same or better results by acting as individuals, I would need to see some evidentiary support to back up this position.

The next defense of individualism is along the lines-“That was then, this in now.  The world has changed so the need for the community approach has diminished in importance and has been replaced with the superior, individualism approach.” There are two main problems with this argument.  First, Brooks and the defenders of individualism are not saying, “The community approach WAS the driving force behind early American exceptionalism but now it is the individual.”  The view they hold to be innately true is that it WAS individualism that made America great. Individualism brought to this country by God fearing, religious freedom seeking, hardworking  Europeans, passed down through the generations or absorbed by some sort of osmosis where the trait, like blond hair to Scandinavians, is dominant in conservatives.  Brooks and company might admit that the community approach played a role, just not THE role in making America great.  It was individualism that built that.  Uh......., no.  

Second, the “but the circumstances have changed and the individual plays a fundamentally more important rule” argument is also bullshit.  Certainly the nature of the problems have changed.  We don’t typically worry about packs of wolves, marauding Indians, small pox, the plague, dysentery, being snowed in an unable to get food for weeks in today’s society.  We live in a much more technologically advanced world where these types of problems have adequately been addressed and dealt with.  When it comes to many of the problems and situations that faced the early settlers, we will never face them.  Why?  Because are Founders and those that came after them, as communities, found solutions to those problems.  But, just because those problems either don’t exist or are rare does not mean that we currently are sans problems.  With the advancement of technologies, the world has expanded where people are not limited to living in a small area of the world most of their lives, where commerce and ideas travel around the world at an unbelievable speed.  We’ve gone from regional to a world economy. While the small, regional problems of the past have been handled, there are larger often global problems that need our attention.  I don’t see how, if individualism couldn’t properly deal with the small, regional problems, it can possibly take care of larger ones. If anything, the larger problems need a larger community.

Imagine a small town in Nebraska in the late 1800’s whose local bank is having a cash flow problem.  The town needs the bank so they come together and as a group, deposit enough money to keep the bank going.  Fast forward to September 2008 where the large banks and financial institutions in the U.S. who have branches across the country and all over the world and also have deep, financial ties to other countries’ banks.  They have a serious cash flow problem.  One of these banks was Bank of America. Imagine the B of A branch in Minden Nebraska, population 3000.  It doesn’t matter how community minded and organized the kind citizens of Minden are, nothing they do can safe their local bank from collapse because it belongs to a much larger entity.  So, in order to address the problem, the definition of community needs to expand. The financial problem was nationwide so it took the entire nation to adequately address the U.S. banking problem.  The global financial problem took the global community to address and fix it. It is not that individuals have not made significant contributions but outside the arts, very few have had a big impact on the economy or culture of America.  What makes America great and the advantage we have over just about every other country is our diversity. Homogeneous societies can accomplish a lot and often quickly because as a group, they think pretty much alike.  Their greatest limitation is thinking outside their cultural box.  America, with its wide diversity of cultures always has voices outside the box providing input.  This is a major force behind our innovations and progress the past couple of hundred years.

Name a major economic event in America’s history that was the result of individualism.  There might be some but the majority are ones undertaken by either groups or the government (group) for the betterment of its citizens (huge group).  Louisiana Purchase, Seward’s Folly, Transcontinental Railroad, Interstate Highway System, Tennessee Valley Authority, Space Race, WWII, GI Bill, Erie Canal, St. Lawrence Seaway, Panama Canal, Hoover Dam…all were paid for by the group, built by groups and benifitted groups of the population.

Individuals who have been put on the pedestal of individualism didn’t accomplish what they did by themselves.  Edison is thought to be one of America’s greatest inventors (Tesla was much better but Edison was a better marketer). Growing up, the image of Edison was him laboring long, arduous hours by himself in is laboratory. The reality is he had a very large team of some of the world’s top people working in his lab in Menlo Park and was heavily funded.

Individualism is important and certainly has played a role in America’s rise to power.  But, individualism didn’t have the starring role in “Making America Great”. That role was played by a cast of thousands.  Individualism was a bit player whose name wouldn’t come up in the end credits until half the audience had already left the theater.

[amphtaminedreams]

A/W 2020 Fashion Month: Before Vogue Went Blank (Part 2)

Hi to anyone reading,

I was going to start this post by jumping straight into Dion Lee and part 2 in general but there's been a lot going on the past couple of days-although this blog is primarily fashion, it wouldn’t feel right to start talking about designers without acknowledging all the shit that’s been going down.

^Photo Credit to @spiltcoco on Twitter

Yesterday, police footage came out of US police murdering yet another black man in broad daylight-George Floyd. He joins Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Alton Sterling, plus hundreds more named and god knows how many more unnamed African American citizens in the ever-growing list of victims of police brutality.

The majority of these are just people going about their daily lives, a majority of them doing absolutely nothing wrong; even those we know to have committed crimes have been unarmed and non-violent offenders. That being said, their offences are beside the point when we’ve seen the white perpetrators of mass shootings be calmly cuffed and escorted into the backs of police cars as if they were the ones selling cigarettes without permits. American police, given the amount of them that are armed, regularly become judge, jury and executioner trained for 8 weeks by an institution that originated from slave patrols. I cannot imagine how terrifying it is just to walk around as a PoC in America. I cannot imagine the collective trauma that has been suffered because of recent events on top of the intergenerational trauma that most likely exists because of centuries of oppression. I cannot imagine what it’s like to live in a country that was built to suppress you and was by law allowed to do so until very recently, those original structures still in place. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be made to feel like this is your fault. I mean, Boris Johnson is a useless, cold-hearted twat and I won’t defend him or this country for a minute (we have much blood on our own hands, and racial profiling is just as much a thing here as it is in America-I read earlier that you’re 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched in London as a non-white person compared to a white person), but I still can’t imagine him publicly advocating for the mass murder of groups he knows to be primarily made up of black people via Twitter. This whole situation is so unimaginably fucked up; anyone who still sees America as one of the world’s most developed nations needs to take a long, hard look at what is going on and reconsider that opinion.

Whilst we can’t fix everything, we can all speak up and make our voices heard, and it is our duty to do so. It’s not good enough to just “not be racist”, you have to be ANTI-racism, even if that means constantly reflecting on your own privilege and challenging your assumptions. Neutrality is complicity. Signing a petition isn’t going to change the world, but it’s a start:

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_abi&recruited_by_id=7ba70000-a127-11ea-87fb-d1ff0bf6ea96

As I publish this, there’s less than 50,000 signatures needed to hit the target of 6,000,000 so if you happen to see it, get signing! There are lots of other petitions online but Change.org seems to be the only major one you can sign in the UK as the other are US based and require a zip code. I never thought I’d close a paragraph by quoting Macklemore but the line “no freedom 'til we're equal, damn right I support it” is at the forefront of my mind right now. Again, neutrality is complicity. We’re never going to achieve a fair society by sitting on our asses and hoping things will improve. Let’s all do the best we can.

Sorry if that intro wasn’t what you came here for, but I just think it’s so important to talk about. I know I’ve said in the past that fashion is supposed to be an escape from everyday life but there are some times when real life needs our attention and this is one of them. Feel free to unfollow if you disagree.

Anyway, onto the fashion. If this is the first post you’re reading, welcome! There’s a part 1! But I don’t wanna be pushy so start here if you wish!

If you read part 1, welcome back! 

I ended that post by practically falling at the feet of Dilara Findikoglu, and I so wanted to start this post by regaining a sense of dignity and go straight into what-the-fuck-ing at Dior, but I know breaking chronological order would really piss off those “OmG I’m SoOo OCD, tHis BuzZfeEd aRtiCle WiTh DiFfereNt SiZed TiLes ToLd Me!” which is basically me minus claiming liking things to be organised means I have OCD-no, just dermatillomania and the denial that a compulsive skin picking disorder has anything to do with OCD because the neuroses club that is my brain doesn’t have any space left. SO, I have to continue where I left off and star the post with Dion Lee, whose collections I am a big fan of.

I could ramble a bit more but I did enough of that at the beginning of part 1 and am sure I’ll do more than enough in this post anyway, so here it is, Dion Lee:

Considering we ended with the maximalism of Dilara Findikoglu, sliding back over towards the other far end of the scale with a designer that tends to pitch their tent on the borders of the minimalism camp feels correct. Dion Lee, fortunately, seems the perfect collection to open with. There aren’t many other brands who do edge in such an understated and masterful way. If you want to be ready for combat and look like you’d fit right in at Vogue at the same time, look no further. This season’s collection is full of perfectly placed cut outs and immaculate tailoring and subtle street fighter-esque details as ever, and that’s why it pains me to say it:

Not that this is enough in the way of critique to restore my dignity by any means, it’s not a patch on last season.

I don’t think there was a single bad look in that show, and at times it felt like I was weeding through them here. When the looks were good, they were GOOD but a lot I found to be disappointing. Plus I have no idea why you’d put tie-dye in an A/W collection. I appreciate that it’s an Australian brand and that our winter is their summer, but they’re presenting to the rest of the world at fashion week and anyone in Paris, Milan, London and New York is going to be freezing their tits off and looking like a twat in an orange tie-dye sundress. There wasn’t much of a dip in quality for the menswear compared to last season, but honestly womenswear left a lot to be desired. That’s what happens when your expectations are high.

I used to think that if you assume the worst, it’s impossible to feel let down. And then I saw Dior’s A/W 2020 collection. Did a full 180 on that statement.

I suppose it’s a step up from haute couture, but then at least the styling in that was simple, and it just didn’t look like anybody had tried at all; here it’s clear Maria Grazia chucked everything she could at this collection, every headscarf, every gingham print, every shallow feminist undertone, and it was still a fucking mess. At first you think some of the individual pieces are cute but have just been ruined by the styling, and then you begin to look, and realise that even those individual pieces could’ve easily been bought in a New Look Boxing Day sale.

THIS IS CHRISTIAN DIOR, SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF THE MOST LUXURIOUS BRANDS OUT THERE. WHAT IS GOING ON!? 

I don’t know, I included as many looks that I didn't mind as I could, but it’s like there always has to be a crappy, unnecessary detail in there. Everything is so literal. Of course the collection based around the divine feminine has the models dressed like basic ass Greek goddesses, so of course the collection based around the modern woman and equality has women walking the runway in ties and ill-fitting shoes too. Maria Grazia, here is a box:

Think outside of it. 

Next is, thankfully, Elie Saab:

No, not exactly a trailblazer of a collection, but executed with poise and elegance as always. I mean, the styling is spot on. It looks like each part of the outfit was made for another, to contribute to a whole clearly envisioned look, similar to what we saw in the Alberta Ferretti show. Elie Saab is known for its haute couture shows where all the tiny details, the sequins and the silk and the embroidery come together to make something beautiful, and this is just that on a larger scale, with less “wow”s and more quiet admiration, more wishing you were the one wearing that outfit. If you’re gonna play safe, do it this well. The night dresses are stunning of course, but not even my favourite bit of the show. It’s the casual looks, the pussy bows and the ruffles and the neck scarfs and the private girls school monochrome colour palette with the occasional pop of red or purple, a toned down version of what we saw at haute couture, any of which deserve to be worn whilst eating macarons in front of the Eiffel Tower before trip to Musee D’Orsay. It’s Poppy Moore’s school uniform grown up and made fit for a fashion magazine editor:

Somehow managing to cram an Emma Roberts early 2010s fashion moment into every post is my talent, who knew. Wild Child was really a gem.

Erdem was a mixed bag:

With a lot of the outfits, I can’t tell if I actually like the garments that much or if I just like the look as a whole. I mean, without sounding too gluten-free Callie from the Valley, I like the VIBE, but there was a lot of outfits I almost included before I had to ask myself “LAUREN, do you ACTUALLY like this or do you just like the walking-into-your-sugar-daddy’s-will-reading-to-claim-his-fortune DRAMA of it all!?” 

It happened a couple of times, where once I took off my black and white, theatrical violin accompanied entrance filtered sunglasses, I realised that the actual print was ugly. A collection so cohesively ornamental and kitschy is going to lean too far into that at times, and they were a few overly-fussy moments where it seemed less nudge nudge wink wink and more like Erdem Moralıoğlu fell into his grandma’s wardrobe, stole some fabric, and called it a day. I don’t want to sound like I’m not a fan of the collection because overall it’s gorgeous, I just thought it was a bit much at times.

Continuing with the theme of clever seasonal continuity that weaved its way throughout this year’s A/W offerings, Ermanno Scervino kept the core of his summer collection and made it just that little bit darker, added some weight to everything, and this is one of the rare occasions where I like the winter incarnation a lot more. I’m not huge about either but there’s a lot of things I’d love to wear here, the coats especially.

Up next is a reliable favourite of mine: 

Etro.

Was it REALLY necessary for you to include ALL those coats I hear you ask?

Alaska Thunderfuck as Gia Gunn voice: Absolutelyyyy.

When it comes to bohemian fashion, Etro is unbeaten. Everything is always exquisitely coordinated and styled. Like I usually fucking hate aztec print but I love the way it’s done here. I’ve never known a brand to make belts seem like such an integral, tasteful part of the outfit in a field where they so often seem like a last minute addition for the sake of accessorising; it pains me to say it, but Elie Saab, I’m looking at you. It’s your only fault. 

Yes for bringing back embroidered jeans! Yes for all those high necks! Yes for the tapestry print! Yes for the Afghan waistcoats! Etro will keep fedoras cool forever and I love them for that; I don’t know if she ever actually wore any of their stuff but I just know Stevie Nicks was in her prime would’ve ate this shit UP and she is my style icon for the ages. Plus, I might be way off base here but a lot of the collection seems to be inspired by traditional Romani style and it’s a beautiful direction to take things, a treasure trove of layers upon layers and rich textures and opulent prints.

I can’t wait til the phase of my phase of my life where I can swan around in maxi dresses and ponchos. I just hope those maxi dresses and ponchos are Etro.

Onto another brand which hasn’t had a bad show since I started my reviews: Fendi. This season, they took their late 60s/early 70s wild child aesthetic and gave a millionaire’s high maintenance wife spin on it, and what’s not to like about that? 

I mean, Fendi is a brand which is always going to excel in its F/W presentations-the rich, bohemian prints (pro-tip: if you can’t already tell, me mentioning the word bohemian in a review pretty much guarantees I like the collection), the furs, and the warm colour palette all perfectly translate into clothes suited for walks through a city going through a post-summer burnout, where it rains red and orange leaves. You can tell Silvia Fendi is in her element when she’s got texture to play with, something that comes across in the gorgeous coats Fendi consistently puts out, and this season continues that trend. Plus, there’s a lot of adorable details here-shoes that show off the decorative socks underneath, the cube shaped bags and those furry ear muffs which I hope bring about a high street muff renaissance because they’re the equivalent of slipper socks for my ears and THEY’RE ACTUALLY REALLY PRACTICAL. The only thing I’m not in love with is the mirrored glasses, and I can’t help but think how replacing them with a pair of grandad style aviators would be the icing on the cake for the collection. Maybe I just need to see Miss Robyn Rihanna Fenty wearing them and then I’ll get on board. Usually works.

Ah, GCDS. I got so excited for it after last season but this time round, it was a bit of a disappointment. There were a few outfits that semi-matched up to how cutting-edge I saw their last collection, however a lot of the pieces looked pretty low quality. I get that streetwear is in the name, but it’s supposed to be a high fashion take on that, and a lot of the looks were quite pedestrian. Stand outs are the top 2 rows and the leather motocross style jumpsuit on the far right, third row down, but the quality of these pieces wasn’t consistent across the board and I feel like I ended up having to convince myself I liked some of the others just so I had enough photos to justify including the brand. It really sucks when I look back on how ahead of the game last season’s collection was-we’re talking outfits that wouldn’t be out of place on Instagram’s Tokyofashion page and as far as I’m concerned that’s the fashion holy grail. Some of these looks, especially the menswear, could be from a Boohoo TV ad and that makes me sad.

Meanwhile, Giambattista Valli put out a collection that looked like a virtual postcard of Parisian fashion; if a St-Germain-des-Prés streetwear themed Instagram doesn’t exist already, someone should capitalise on that, stat, because if my typical vision of French feminine fashion is correct it would be full of outfits like this. I feel like this is what a fashion novice EXPECTS Chanel to look like. Trust me-these days the reality is much more disappointing.

There’s many things I'm happy to see here besides the tulle and florals and prettiness I expect of the brand. Obviously the berets and the bows and the elbow length gloves are the kind of off-duty ballerina style touches I’ve become accustomed to but there are also some nice surprises here: the military style white jacket, the unexpected snake motif on clothing that’s otherwise overly delicate, and to my delight the return of the boater hat. IDGAF, this is the summer where I’m buying myself one off Ebay and making this happen for me whether they become a “thing” or not. I shouldn’t squander having this little of a double chin; the opportunity may never present itself again. 

I haven’t watched Killing Eve in a longggg time since there’s only so much of two women attempting to kill each other and then miraculously avoiding death you can watch but I’d love to see Vilanelle prancing round a city in this kinda shit slitting some necks again. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like too much of a sadist; only in a purely fictional world is this something I want to see, I assure you.

Givenchy was really, really great this season too, imo. Definitely a step up from the last RTW anyway. Aside from the drama of the exaggerated floppy brim hats and the quirky tassle detail dresses a la Schiaparelli, a lot of these outfits kinda remind me of something a Miranda Priestly/Cruella De Vil type would wear, and you know me; I’m all for that kind of intimidating, about-to-either-slap-you-or-fire-your-ass bad bitch energy. The gathered leather gloves with the androgynous subtly checkered power suits feels CORRECT and if Giambattista Valli is the bottom in this relationship, Givenchy is the top. Am I allowed to reinforce sapphic relationship stereotypes as a bi girl? Probably not. I’m sorry. Won’t do it again. Just this once. And you know I’m right really xoxo

And OMFG Gucci. Another impeccable collection for me, honestly. Once again, it’s probably my favourite of the season. How it is that Alessandro Michelle gets it SO right for me despite his vision being so bold and different every time? He has this specific brand of strange, conceptual beauty which blends past and present trends in a way so supreme it should be considered art. It’s not a term to throw around loosely but the man is a genius, and tbh I’m still not over the human head props from the 2018 F/W winter show.

In my Haute Couture week review, I talked about the Viktor and Rolf collection (which I loved, don’t get me wrong!) and said that pretty meets grunge is my fave thing ever-this is that, but much even more substantial and intelligent. The Wes Anderson-esque pieces or that late 60s/early 70s hipster aesthetic that I loved in last season’s show hasn’t been done away with either-be it the level of detail or the colour scheme, it all somehow fits together. Never did I think I’d see dresses fit for porcelain dolls through the lens of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen seamlessly slotted in between outfits that could’ve been put together from the clothing rack of Dazed and Confused’s costume department. I want it all-opulent fur-trimmed coats, crucifix jewellery and pilgrim hats I’m sure both Edgar Allan Poe and modern goths would approve of, and the tiered skirts that wouldn’t be out of place in a Westworld saloon. The models were delightfully sad and almost creepy looking and I wouldn’t change that for the world. To say 10/10 doesn’t do it justice, so I’m gonna have to open a reviewer’s can of worms and say 100/100.

Gucci is a tough act to follow, and I’m sorry it has to fall onto the shoulders of Halpern. In the nicest possible way (as if there is any nice way of saying it), I don’t think I any expected anything but a downgrade, so if anything, my standards will be lower so...Michael Halpern, you can thank me I guess? 

That was really mean, I’m sorry. It’s not a bad collection, and I definitely like it more than last season’s. It’s a slightly garish colour palette at times but an exciting one in spite of that, which when paired with the animal print dotted throughout makes this collection the perfect fit for a tropical beach party or at the very least, a semi-decent night at the Caribbean themed bar in your local town centre. The sequins and silk, a Halpern trademark, are as tastefully done as ever, and seeing them on the models, I can’t deny these are some power fits-the kind of clothes you are bound to look and feel confident in; if you wanted to play queen of the urban jungle for a night, this is what you need to be wearing.

Ah, Hermes.

Generally not one to stoke a fire inside me. In all fairness, the tailoring here is really, really nice and French biker chic, and the pieces are perfectly crafted-it’s not that I don’t like the outfits because I think that if I saw one of them individually in a natural, messier setting I’d probably be impressed. These are classy, elegant winter looks and what more could you want when you’re looking for outfit inspiration for this season? It’s just that it’s always a little too neat and uniform for me, and on the runway I like my fashion to be risky. This could almost be the sophisticated mother to a Tommy Hilfiger collection and whilst that’s something I would probably wear if I wanted to look put together, it’s not what you get excited to see at fashion week. Primary colours all together aren’t where it’s at for me either, the infamous colour scheme of the cheap plastic playhouses you’d find in the garden of every working/middle class British household back in the day. Yes, I had one. So did the after school club I was forced to attend whilst my mum was at work. Apparently the negative connotations are still too much for me (a boy I went to the after school club with did once fall off the back of one and crack his head open so maybe it’s justified).

Isabel Marant was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from Isabel Marant; if the Etro bohemian woman is one who rolls out of bed and chucks on the first thing she sees, the Isabel Marant bohemian woman is the one who claims she’s done the same thing but who actually planned it all out the night before. She designs for the gluten-free, bikram yoga Kourtney Kardashian style “hippy” who claims to be a free-spirit but would definitely not do acid with you. I was gonna say it was a collection for the Gwyneth Paltrows of the world but then I remembered Gwyneth proudly released a candle she claimed smelled like her vagina and changed my mind-she’d definitely do acid with you. 

It’s definitely a cohesive transition from the summer collection; both have that seemingly laid-back, clean-cut vibe, and cater to the rich, impeccably groomed scented candle loving woman everywhere. Obviously the pieces are a tad more suited to an alpine lodge in Switzerland than a beach in Malibu this time round, but that same mild colour palette, pretty, naturalistic patterns, and generally relaxed fit persists. It’s cute enough.

J.W Anderson is a bit of an enigma.

Despite the experimental silhouettes and the kooky details that you think would very “look at me!”, the collections still seem to have a chilled, easy-going feel to them. They toy about with the strange but remain entirely sophisticated whilst doing so-I think it’s because aside from the little quirks that make the garments J.W Anderson, they’re otherwise fairly reserved and simple; even the quirks themselves mostly tend to be exaggerated, more conceptual takes on more typical stylistic motifs anyway. Anderson has a knack for producing statement pieces that don’t look like they’re trying too hard to be statement pieces, a talent he expertly deploys at Loewe as well. Whilst Maison Margiela collections are like the fashion equivalent of that Jughead “I’m weird, I’m a weirdo” speech, J.W Anderson’s refusal to conform is quiet and modest. I like it. It’s not generally my personal style but I can admire the thought behind the work, and there are still some things I’d love to try. I have a few standouts-the shoes with the hoop detailing dancing from the ankle straps, the dress on the bottom right with what appears to be art nouveau typography on, the trench coat with the cape detailing and the gossamer dress to its right are all stunning, especially that dress. If I ever want to dress as the bubble Glinda the Good Witch descends in when she meets Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I know where to go, though I don’t suppose there’s going to be an occasion that calls for that any time soon. Can I just have the dress anyway?

Kim Shui is another new designer I found through blessed Twitter screencaps-thanks guys for doing my research for me. Much appreciated.

But anyways! Like Charlotte Knowles, it’s clear she’s still establishing her aesthetic as a designer, and thus far I love it. The whimsical, throwback prints on urban silhouettes that range from the androgynous suits of city dwelling cool girls to the amped-up sex appeal of nightclub dresses is gorgeous, especially twinned with dainty headscarfs and opera gloves-all in all I think this a very cool and wearable collection and I’m looking forward to the next collection she puts out.

Next up is Lacoste, and IDK why I always include their collections to be honest, considering they’re not really known for “high fashion”. I guess it’s because my dad has collected Lacoste shirts since I was little so I kinda have a soft spot for it and feel obligated to include it every time presentation season comes around. Yes, the outfits are unbearably preppy and the colours are garish but I feel like that’s kind of the appeal? So what if some of the tracksuits look like they could’ve been pulled out of a bad mafia movie? I see the argyle jumpers, with a bit of wear and tear, as a charity shop gem my sister would come across (she has the #Y2K Depop girl knack for finding old designer pieces in the shittiest charity shops without the audacity to try and sell them at a 70% markup) that I would then steal from her wardrobe to wear myself, contrasted with a ripped mini skirt, chains and and docs. I see the POTENTIAL of a look that is very fuck you to the rich middle age tory styling we see here. It’s punk, okay?

Lanvin was STUNNING this time around. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching Mad Men recently and it reminds me of the fashion on that-which I hope somebody won an award for at the time BTW, it is SO fucking good-but I just adore every look here. I can’t even remember if I reviewed Lanvin’s SS20 show, and so clearly if I did it wasn’t that memorable (no shade intended), however this collection is a different story. Every single one of these outfits is iconic movie moment worthy, a 60s Cher Horowitz plaid two piece equivalent that would get screencapped and replicated ad-nauseam, all the best looks of Betty Draper and Peggy Olsen and Joan Holloway and Megan Calvet brought together and refined for the modern day woman. I might even consider sacrificing my anti-royalist principles if it meant I could transport myself back in time and switch bodies with Grace Kelly so I could make this collection my princess-off-duty wardrobe and drive around Monaco in that Bella Hadid look, roof down, all the drama of the fur trim and the gloves and hair whipping about in the wind (but in this unrealistic vision I can actually see what I’m doing and I’m not choking on random strands and swearing at Mother Nature as if she is a real entity with a personal vendetta against me).

Loewe! More J.W Anderson! I’m gonna try not to repeat myself by arsekissing too much all over again and get the good points out of the way quickly! So rapid fire: elegant! Delicious colour palette! Interesting shapes! I think I’m seeing a Victorian/Edwardian influence there! Correct me if I’m wrong! I like it! The coats are strong! Remind me of the suffragettes! But lets pretend in this case these Loewe style coat wearing suffragettes are not raging classists!

AH. Apart from that, it was a bit too austere for me. I definitely preferred Anderson’s eponymous collection; there were a fair few recurring details in this show that I couldn’t get behind that I didn’t include, in particular this bib-like black panel that just kept popping up on everything. Sorry J.W Anderson. But a 50% success rate is still good! And at the end of the day, having 2 collections on Vogue Runway at once is more prestigious than the accumulative total of every accomplishment I’ll probably ever have achieved in my life by the time I’m on my deathbed so what do I know anyway? Sigh:( At least I’ll always have the honour of having the largest head by circumference of my class in year 4, right *sweats nervously*!?!?! 

Louis Vuitton was definitely a downgrade on last season for me. There were for sure elements I liked-the Vera Wang-esuqe mixing of the tulle bustle skirts with the rougher, more masculine biker inspired vests and jackets was a cool choice, reminiscent of Gucci’s mixing of the lace dresses with harnesses. I enjoyed the baroque jackets and subtle nods to steampunk style too. Though we’ve already seen it a lot this season, the wet look coat with fur trim I can’t help falling in love with, and I’m immune to the potential ugliness of the muted blue monotone look purely on the basis I can picture Ripley from Alien in it. So like I said-it’s not as if I hated it. I guess when it comes down to it, the collection wasn’t bad so much as I just had higher hopes. I will say though, the staging was INCREDIBLE. As a history nerd, I never thought I’d see the day when a Henry the 8th lookalike actor was part of the backdrop of a Paris fashion week show-and I always thought there was no interesting career path for me in the subject!

And another big name I don’t tend to be so partial to, Maison Margiela. IDK, I did like last season but I wasn’t a fan of haute couture and it took me a while to warm to this. Call it deconstructed, experimental, whatever, but you know when you can’t decide what to wear and you’re in a rush so you kinda just throw all the shit you decided against into a pile? Well, my initial thought was that this season Margiela is kinda that, on the runway.

I will say, once I let go of my need to see a clear shape, a lot of the individual pieces were stunning (NOT the puffed up tabis though, I still can’t even get behind the regular ones). I guess I just wish they’d go for less is more with the styling because as it currently stands, it makes it hard to actually take the clothes in. 

Ultimately, one thing you can always say about Margiela, like their clothes or not, is that it has a monopoly on being effortlessly bold.

Marc Jacobs I really liked again, though I will say it doesn’t stand out quite like the S/S collection did. That was absolutely STUNNING-I can’t remember specifically where I ranked it in my top ten but I know it was at least in the top 5. This, on the other hand, is...pretty. It’s very pretty, and very put together, so I’m not saying at all that I don’t rate it. I suppose it’s just a lot simpler than I expected it to be-I don’t have a problem with simplicity, at all, especially if it’s what a brand is known for but I feel like part of the appeal with Marc Jacobs is that it’s pretty kooky. I mean, not Thom Browne or Margiela kooky, but commercial kooky at least. I feel like the kookiness is lacking here? And that’s where this feeling is coming from? And also, the fact that Lanvin tackled the same era and did it a lot better? So there’s that, too. Plus, I adore Miley Cyrus but...why? Random celebrities waking the runway just doesn’t do it for me-it always comes across as a publicity grab, as if the designer isn’t confident enough in their collection’s ability to get people talking on its own, and I suppose in this case that says it all really.

Margaret Howell was...well, Margaret Howell. She’s known for her basics, and they’re always pretty non-offensive “regulation hottie” in the words of the icon that is Damian from Mean Girls. It’s been, what, four years? More? Since I last watched that film but I’m pretty sure watching it about twenty times between the ages of 9 and 15 tattooed it on my brain. I include her because even though they don’t get my pulse racing, I like these pieces; considering the fact that expecting straight white men to ever have style on the level of barbiedrugz (his instagram is my favourite thing ever) or Rickey Thompson is ludicrous, Margaret Howell’s menswear looks are probably are the best, realistic goal for any future partner. Because I like my men dressed like Paddington bear/a depressed Brown University English lit lecturer, okay? Or in other words, Will Graham from Hannibal.

Marine Serre had a few good moments-the looks that I liked were the ones that stayed within her lane of blending the weird with the visually appealing. There were a lot of cool things going on, and I like the utility vibe (the boot with the pouch detailing and the mask are perfect examples of this done well), but outside the fits I picked out a lot of it went over my head tbh.

Marques Almeida is a show I was looking forward to-it has such a youthful, experimental quality to its collections (it’s no surprise the designers said they were influenced by the HBO show Euphoria this year!), similar to Central Saint Martins, and you can tell the designers (Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida) are based in London too; we are talking about the birthplace of the punk fashion movement, and as a designer it’s probably almost a rite of passage that you incorporate elements of that into your work. Marques Almeida does that with a flair and consistency you can count on. Their clothes don’t have the wildest silhouettes or anything like that but the fun they have playing around with print and colour and the ease and confidence with which they settle on those combinations always comes through-the black and white coat with the yellow furs trim is one of my favourite pieces from the entirety of this season’s offerings.

I wasn’t so fond of Max Mara’s SS20 collection and I'm not gonna lie, this isn’t THAT much of a step up for me personally. It’s just one of those brands I feel obligated to include because it’s talked about quite a bit but I’m not totally sure if it’s for me. Too monotone, but I’ll give it another season! And I mean, there is a slight improvement here-this collection is a lot more laid back than the stiff, austere feel of the last, and there are some very well fitted and structured pieces. A lot of the looks kinda remind me of a 2020, fashion take on The Breakfast Club’s “Basket Case”, which is kinda cool, and just from looking at the clothes, the high price tag is palpable. Also, scruffy hair club unite! Though obviously it’s intentional here! That’ll be my excuse for the next time I turn up at work looking like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards-Max Mara made me do it.

Ending on those words of wisdom, I’m gonna bring this post to a close, because I can’t fit any more photos in! I’m desperately hoping that I can fit this all into 3 parts like I did with my last RTW review but even if I do have to make 4 posts, I still include my top 10 shows as I did before. I hope to get that post up within the next couple of weeks! After that, I’ve shot a Lana Del Rey inspired by each of her different albums and “era”s though given last week’s events I’m on the fence about whether to post it or not, especially given her silence over the last couple of days. I’m really proud of what I’ve put together and I’ll always love her art and music (I have 2 bloody tattoos, for fuck’s sake!), so I’m trying to think how I can reconcile that with those awfully worded posts and just the general lack of awareness of bigger issues that she’s displayed the last week. JFC, being a Lana stan has always been so chilled up until now. All the very valid and important takes aside, that “Lana pls delete that post and apologise, we can’t fight the barbz all your stans are depressed” tweet is the only good thing to come out of this shitshow. He got a point. Breathing feels like effort lately:( IDK, if you’re also a Lana stan and you have any opinions on the matter, feel free to DM me, because I’m feeling pretty conflicted rn.

Most importantly though, are the issues I opened this post by talking about, and I thought I’d finish by including the thread of petitions I saw on Twitter. Like I said, a lot of them aren’t available to sign in the UK but to anyone who read up until this point (thank you!) idk where you’re reading from so maybe some of them will apply to you:

https://twitter.com/yericvIt/status/1265801832930045953

Also, while we’re at it, because every tory voting twat seems to treat our country as if it’s some beacon of hope where racism is non-existent and love to tell PoC to stop moaning about their experiences, here’s a thread of black British men and women who have lost their lives to police violence:

https://twitter.com/illh0eminati/status/1266441604170223617

Thank you for reading until the end. I hope that you enjoyed the fashion part of the post but also that if you did read this far, you read the other bits too if you didn’t know what was going on already. It seems like everyone does but you forget that Twitter’s a bit of an echo chamber and that outside of it, there’s a lot of ignorance, whether intentional or not. I know Tumblr has a similar audience to Twitter so I imagine there’s loads on here about everything going on too, but ya know. I wanted to talk about it just incase. 

Stay safe, keep fighting the good fight, and again, thank you for reading!<3

Lauren x

#fashion #fashionweek #fashion week #pfw #Paris fashion week #milan fashion week #nyfw #new york fashion week #lfw #london fashion week #aw2020 #fw2020 #style #styleinspo #style review #fashion review #high fashion #haute couture #dior #dion lee #max mara #supermodel #Bella hadid #marc jacobs #gucci #chanel #erdem #elie saab #luxury #designer

[riseofmoonxchild]

b i t t e r ⬴ ʇ ǝ ǝ ʍ s // chapter one

➴pairing – jimin x reader – taehyung x reader – [ft. namjoon]

➴genre – fluff // angst

➴theme – college!au // jimin!barista // taehyung!artist

You developed a little crush on the barista at your local coffee shop, Jimin. While you start going to the cafe regularly, thinking it as harmless and innocent, you don’t realize that your interest in him will catch the attention of Taehyung, the most-liked boy in school. As the two of them stir up an almost espresso-and-milk-kind-of element to your school life and study load, you find yourself involved in a more complicated situation than you were prepared for.

»listen to the bittersweet playlist titled “coffee shop boy” here

« m u s e »

✰

f a l l

The first time you met Jimin, he was antagonizing over making your coffee perfect. And by met, you meant it was the first time you had ever laid eyes on him. You could tell that this wasn’t special treatment for you—because he was so nervous, so confused, and so focused on the process of actual coffee-assembling, because he cared about the smallest details—you could tell that he wanted it to be the best that anyone could make it. It went beyond trying to seek recognition from the customers or his boss; nevertheless, it was cute. And even if his genuine efforts weren’t meant to flatter you, they made you feel warm and even flustered.

So many college students had come for a coffee break at this time, which was probably overwhelming. It was the height of midterms, and this coffee shop was a popular spot for students to hit because it was right across from the main campus location in Seoul.

“What can I do for you today?”

“Hi-” you paused, taking a moment to mull over your thoughts, “I’d just like a caramel macchiato, please.”

The whole time he was taking your order, he had never made eye contact with you. He was quietly focused on the machine in front of him.

“What size?”

“Just a medium.”

“Alright, that’ll be $4.32,” he reported, looking up. Jimin smiled slightly, as of he were ready to take on his next challenge. “It’ll have that ready for you in no time!” He vowed.

You watched him make your order with a small yet enthusiastic determination.

And finally, as he reached to hand you your coffee, as soon as he saw your hand grabbed a hold of it, his eyes flicked to your yours. He smiled shyly at you and giggled a little, almost nervously. And a heartbeat later, before you could even process your own reaction, he was helping the next customer.

✰

w i n t e r

You were determined to finish your final paper for your English class. Paragraph by paragraph, you sipped on the coffee, savoring hints of cinnamon and caramel as you persevered. You couldn’t help but glance outside every ten minutes, watching the snow gently blanket the outside world. Part of you wanted to venture out there, but the warmth of the coffee brought you back in every time, keeping you cozy and focused. Relatively focused, that was—inevitably it brought you back to the barista boy, and by that time your whole face became warm.  

It had been two months, since you started coming in around four or five times a week, getting your fix of caffeine and something else you didn’t want to admit to yourself. But, inevitably, you discovered what days and times the barista boy worked, just by observation, and that he also had a name other than “barista boy”—Jimin.

When you finished your paper, you were relieved to have officially completed your second fall semester. You stretched, prepared yourself for a final chance of relaxation, and messaged your friend in hopes of celebrating somehow. You wanted some way to relieve all the stress that had piled up to this point.

“Hey, Joon,” you texted, “Do you want to go to Club Avenue tonight?”

You suddenly were reminded of the past semester and the drama that had consumed most it. Despite relentless, pointless efforts, it seemed everything that could have fallen apart inside your own little world did—friends, grades, reputation, your planned future. And with that you had picked up some habits, like drinking and clubbing, especially on week nights, skipping classes. This cafe had, unexpectedly, become your safe haven.

While you had commended yourself for pulling yourself together half way through this semester, and finishing the best you could, you couldn’t help but want to let everything go.

Namjoon, your best friend, your partner in crime, the one who stuck with you through all the fires, seeing you get hurt and sticking around to deal with the burns. You literally couldn’t go on any adventures without him or make any big decisions without his advice. He had been the only constant, and he was the only person you really had as a support now.

“Sure. I’m finishing my assignments but they’ll be done before tonight.”

“Mmk ♥♥.” You knew that Joon didn’t personally like your idea of fun, because he rather be doing other things, but he was always along for the ride. “Good luck!”

“Let’s have a good time tonight. We deserve it ;)”

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

From the way he pulled on Jimin’s sleeve, he could have been easily mistaken as a child. “Ahhh, wae, Jimin-ah. I need you,” he whined.

The whole time the boy begged, Jimin tried to remain as indifferent as possible. However, seconds later a smile flashed on his face, promising the other boy a chance at triumph.

“Yah, Taehyung-ah,” he started in a parent-like tone. “Do you not have any assignments left? Didn’t you have a big art project due?”

Taehyung pouted, his face dropping in disappointment.

Pleased with his ability to stay firm, Jimin folded his arms and raised his chin just the slightest bit. “We can’t play until we’ve finished our work—like the responsible haksaeng, students, we are.”

Exasperated, Taehyung asked the air more than anything, “Ah, wae..”

“Fine,” he perked up, heavily invested in this more-of-a-business-like proposal than anything, “I finish my portfolio by tonight, and you-” he pointed at Jimin’s chest, “have to grace me with your presence.” His charming, yet childishly and genuinely satisfied smile made an appearance to conclude the agreement.

Jimin smiled and looked up, amused and please all at the same time. He immediately switched back to his previous persona, face sullen. He raised his right eyebrow, as if considering the options, and gave one confirming nod. “Alright,” he extended his hand for a handshake.

Taehyung accepted the gesture, a goofy grin on his face. “Waaaaaa, Jimin-ssi. It was a pleasure working with you.”

The two laughed, and Taehyung confidently announced, “I’ll pick you up at 10,” winked, and then sauntered off. Jimin just shook his head and went back to work.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

The snow had stopped, and so Taehyung sat on a city street bench, across from the coffee shop, trying to work at a masterpiece in his mind. He had his sketchbook on his lap and was pensively observing his surroundings. While it may have seemed like he was procrastinating this whole time, he really just hadn’t been able to muster up the concentration or inspiration necessary to enter into a creative mood, let alone the mental state he needed to be in for this project. Taehyung sighed.

I want you to use something from the ordinary everyday, something people wouldn’t think twice about. But I want you to convey it from the onlookers’ point of view, as precious or extraordinary from their eyes. That was the professor had demanded. But Taehyung had never really thought about things, things that weren’t so attractive or alluring, that they didn’t demand the attention of every person who laid eyes on them. He liked things like that. People that were so spectacular, their essence flowed, oozed off of them, making them irresistible.

It wasn’t that he pursued outwardly gorgeous people, or that he had shallow intentions, per say. He just enjoyed beautiful things and beautiful people. He saw people as art, and art came to life in his every day. He was always trying to find his muse in one thing or another.

One might even argue he was one of those beautiful people, one of the most exquisite pieces of living art. He never really thought about the people in the background, so indistinguishable they were barely silhouettes on a page. In life, from middle school—elementary even—into college he had been the feature highlight, the centerpiece, almost. Wherever he went, people just gravitated towards him. It was all he had known. And he didn’t really seem to mind.

Frustrated with the assignment, he dramatically sighed to the paper, fiddling with his pencil before he looked up for what felt like the thousandth time. But then he saw her. He saw you. With your brows furrowed in concentration, sending waves of intense synergetic energy with your glare towards the computer screen. Taehyung laughed in amusement, that same goofy grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. But then, what he thought was an indestructible focus was suddenly broken, as he saw you sneak an almost nonexistent glance towards the barista boy. And his eyebrows raised in partial-curiosity, partial-surprise.

Taehyung, a contemplative look resting on his face, came to a sudden realization. And then, with this newfound sense of purpose, he began sketching.

☾——————————————————————————————————☽

A/N: wow i’ve been meaning to post this, cause i’ve been excited about this♥ not exactly sure where this story headed, as far as character development, but i’m looking forward to what avenues i may end up exploring (hopefully with constant fluff included). plus, it’s kinda become my baby, haha.

☽

→ preview // chapter one // next

→ "coffee shop boy” playlist

⋆

taglist: @monvieesdaebak

#jimin fanfic #jimin fluff #taehyung fluff #bts college au #bittersweet #taehyung fanfic #jimin college au #taehyung college au #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts angst #bts fluff #bts barista au #bts jimin fanficiton #jimin fanficition #bts taehyung fanfic #bts taehyung #bts writing #taehyung angst #bts coffee au #bts writing blog #bts fanfic blog #bts v #jimin bittersweet #v bittersweet #taehyung bittersweet

[smallmediumproblems]

Now that everything’s made public, this was my submission for the Piles of Nonsense 2019 Halloween statement exchange! I haven’t gone through all of the other submissions yet, but the one I got was AMAZING, 10/10 looking forward to the next event like this. I actually wrote two since I couldn’t decide on the prompt, the other one’s an additional chapter in the Ao3 link. It’s about a cat.

You don’t get many people in here asking for advice, do you? Seems kind of stupid. Everyone comes with an offering for your greedy little watcher, and none of them think to ask for anything in return. Well, I haven’t forgotten that this is an archive, and if you don’t mind, I’ll be using it as one. I mean, what are you going to do, stare me away? No. I thought so. Besides, it’s not like I came empty-handed. I do have a story for you. I imagine you’ll need some context to be of any use, just like a normal archive. I don’t need an actual, physical favor, you see. Just information. A statement for you, and a nudge in the right direction for me. Sounds fair? Good.

You’ll want me to start from the beginning. I can tell.

A few months ago, I made the mistake of trying to clean my apartment. I’m one of those people who’s chronically unable to clean on my own. I always get distracted with old forgotten things. Videogame cartridges, costume odds and ends - books are the worst, the absolute worst. Especially if I find one with a bookmark still in it. Part of me feels guilty for leaving it unfinished, which of course means I have to chew through a few chapters and a precious amount of my cleaning time.

That’s how I knew this particular closet was going to be hard for me. It wasn’t just books. It was notebooks. Three stacks of the things, each one nearly two feet tall. From the couple I’d labeled, I must have been eleven or twelve when I’d written them. Most of it was schoolwork in spiral-bound notebooks, plus some stacks of looseleaf stapled together. The real prize was an old diary. It was a scuffed little composition notebook, much smaller than the others. That’s what drew my attention to it in the first place.

I don’t remember keeping a diary. Finding one anyway didn’t strike me as odd, I’m sure I don’t remember a lot of stuff I did when I was eleven. That’s how I explained it away to myself. I’d forgotten most of what was in those schoolbooks, I can tell you that. You know, I used to speak French? Like, not a lot, but apparently enough to write a few paragraphs of essay responses. I found that out as I was flipping through the notebooks trying to dredge up any memory of when I’d written them. The fact that I couldn’t made me a little sad. It’s like I was a completely different person back then. A tiny stranger who spoke French, who doodled in the margins of her notebooks, and who slowly, unremarkably, vanished.

I think that’s why I started reading the diary. I didn’t feel bad for her- or, myself, I guess - but I was curious. I’m sure you know what’s that like. To my immeasurable disappointment, the first few entries were dead boring. This clearly wasn’t the first journal I’d ever kept. I’d fallen into a routine of matter-of-factly jotting down whatever I’d done every day even if I had nothing to say about it. After a while, I got to one that was just aimlessly sad. Like, big, messy handwriting sad. No details about the day, just a lot of purple prose about how I felt helpless and trapped. It was a little hard to read, honestly. That did make me feel bad for eleven-year-old me. It can’t have been too awful, though, because the next entries continued on like nothing happened. I guess the little frenchwoman had a habit of bottling things up. A couple pages later, I found the first really strange thing in the journal. It looked like nonsense, at first. One line of apparently random letters in all-caps:

JWMKRLLYUABWHJMOJ

I thought it might be an acronym of some sort, or a mnemonic for something in one of the schoolbooks. It wasn’t referenced anywhere else on the page. I was ready to brush it off until I saw another one a couple pages later.

DDSVXSXXVQZVJNJ

The thought appeared in my head that this might be some kind of coded message. A bigger mystery than what it said was who I thought I was coding it from. I had no siblings, and parents who were pretty respectful of my boundaries as long as they thought I was safe. I wasn’t a paranoid child. At least, I don’t think I was. It looked like there was a lot about myself that I’d forgotten. The only idea I had was that I could figure it out if I could just decode the messages.

This turned out to be harder than expected, even with the help of the internet and a motivational cup of tea. After a little digging, I figured that it was probably coded with something called a Vignere cipher, where you use a single word as a key to encrypt a string of text. That made the most sense, but the online decoder I found couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Either the key was too long to decipher, or the messages were too short. Probably the latter. At this point, my interest was starting to wane. I really needed to get back to cleaning. The fact that I’d stopped what I was doing to google ciphers was a bad sign. I set aside the diary, making the difficult decision to chuck the rest of the notebooks directly into a garbage bag. The doodles weren’t exactly the lost works of DaVinci, and I wouldn’t need to reference my algebra homework any time soon. By lunchtime, I’d gotten about half-done refilling the closet with more junk for me to throw out next time I felt like cleaning. I was feeling pretty good about the day until I found myself tapping out a rhythm on my mug.

I don’t know if this next part is going to make sense. It definitely didn’t to me at the time. Something about the movement felt involuntary in a way that was very alarming. It wasn’t a natural motion like swaying to music. It reminded me of goosebumps. Or like when you get nervous or frightened, and you just start shivering like it’s minus ten outside. That feeling that there’s a wire crossed in your brain, somewhere. What really shook me was how hard it was to stop. Relaxing my hands didn’t work, and my fingers continued to spasm when I set down the mug. I eventually got around it by clenching my fist so tightly that I couldn’t move the hand at all. This made my microwave burrito harder to navigate, but that wasn’t my biggest concern just then.

I wondered if I was having a stroke. It didn’t sound like one. Too minor, too specific. I’d say I didn’t have a history of this kind of thing, but that would imply that I had any idea what it was. My mind scrambled for something that had happened, something I’d done that would have caused this. My eyes, of course, settled on the journal.

What if the key wasn’t a word? What if it was a pattern? I loosened my grip on the fist. The rhythm was weaker now, barely a twitch in my fingertips. The same pattern repeated over and over again. First the thumb, then the middle finger, then pinky, index, ring. One, three, five, two, four. I made for the diary, flipping it open to the first chunk of coded text. It was harder to decode than it would have been to encrypt, even with scratch paper, but fortunately it was short.

I THINK IT’S WATCHING

I don’t remember being a paranoid child. I am definitely not a paranoid adult. I need you to believe that I would have taken any excuse to dismiss the whole thing. Surely this was just an eleven-year-old girl taking some fantasy a little too far. But something about the message filled me with the most unshakable dread. It hit on something that was just short of a memory. A feeling that I’d felt before while holding this diary, reading those words. Even parsing it out logically, I couldn’t quite shake it off. The messages were so isolated. Nothing else in the diary pointed to someone who would have made this stuff up. I didn’t ever comment on school drama or gossip, no conspiracy theories, or dreams of intrigue. Just the coded messages. That, and the way my fingers were still twitching. One, three, five, two, four.

Another scan over the page didn’t reveal any clues. If anything, the entry was less detailed than the other ones. Which made sense, actually. I’d be a little more careful of what I was saying if I thought someone was watching me. I made another pass through the diary and collected every encoded phrase, every one translating just as unsettling as the last. There weren’t many. Most of them were pretty vague. Things like "It can see me” or “It’s so close.” Some were specific, but not much more helpful. One read, “It’s behind my eyes.” Another said, “That’s not my voice.”

Reading the whole thing start to finish, I noticed something else. Some of the handwriting wasn’t mine. I hadn’t really noticed it at first because, honestly, who picks up an old journal expecting to find something like that? I saw my handwriting because I expected my handwriting. The human brain is real lazy, when it wants to be. Especially in the earlier entries, the handwriting was noticeably different. The w’s were sharp where they should have been round. All the circles were slanted wrong, the a’s, the d’s, the p’s, all of them. There’s this little curl at the bottom of my l’s and t’s that wasn’t there, that was the one I noticed first. Again, this was totally something I could have explained away, if it wasn’t for one of the later pages.

There was a margin completely filled with w’s. Curly, rounded w’s, the way I always write them. I remember getting confused in a statistics class once because they look just like the lowercase Greek omega. I also remember thinking that there was no way I’d use that symbol in real life, and that I shouldn’t change my writing, because it looked nicer. The margin was full of the things, and at the very bottom was another coded message. It was the only reason I stopped on the page in the first place.

THAT’S NOT HOW IT GOES.

I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed at that. As if it were talking to me.

I’d scoured the whole thing start to finish, and one of the coded messages still didn’t translate. It was just one word off in the margin: AIDEZMOI. I kept mulling it over, trying to see if I’d put it through the decoder wrong, but by that point my brain was starting to turn to mush from the whole thing. Even if it was another keyword, I was out of things to decode. The trail had gone cold, and I was starting to get distracted again.

I pulled out my big sheet of scratch paper, the one I’d been decoding all of this stuff on so far, and tried to write one of the coded messages. The only memories I’d managed to conjure up had been tactile; the tapping fingers, the feeling of the diary in my hands. Maybe I could get back in the mindset of my past self by retracing her steps. I wrote something that I thought sounded sufficiently paranoid, coming up with:

MHFXINHFNSOH

It didn’t look right. I’d wanted to write “Can you hear me,” half directed at myself from the past, and half at whatever I was hiding from. Had I spelled it wrong? I double-checked just to be sure. No point in doing this if I was going to do it wrong. The translation I came up with read:

LEAVE ME ALONE

I dropped the pen. I’m surprised I didn’t throw it across the room. For a split second, I honestly thought of throwing the diary out with the trash bags. This was the second time this thing had made my hand move on its own, and I was not excited to find out what it was going to do next.

But, like I said, I was curious.

The way I saw it, I had two options. Option one: The diary was super haunted, in which case I needed to get it as far away from me as possible. Option two: Whatever was taking control of me was already here, and the diary was the only thing that had the clues I needed to stop it. I must have stopped it before, right?

I took the pen and tried to write something else the same way, coding and decoding it. Pushing the boundaries a little at this stage probably wouldn't be too dangerous. I wrote one of the lines from where I had the diary open to, something about having pizza for lunch.

PLEASE JUST STOP THROW IT AWAY DON’T TOUCH ME

That sounded like option two. I felt that same annoyance as when the coded message made fun of my handwriting, bubbling up into something close to anger. This thing was taking control of my body. Who did it think it was, making demands like that? This sounds stupid now that I say it out loud, but I kind of assumed it was reading my thoughts, so I wrote out another line to see if it had anything to say for itself.

YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET ME I’LL KILL YOU GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT

I decided that this thing had lost its letter-writing privileges. For a third time, I tore through the diary for any more clues, something that looked even a little out of place. More than anything, I wished that I had some of the earlier books. How long had this been happening? When did I start coding the messages? More importantly, how did I think they were going to help? They couldn’t even be called cries for help. Just… cries.

Slowly, I realized that I did have other books to search through. The trash bag of notebooks still sat next to my front door. I emptied it out onto my kitchen floor, and was faced with the crushing realization that I had no idea where to begin. Just like in the diary, all I could do was look for a break in all the little patterns of my old life. I got through nearly a dozen notebooks before I recognized the word from the margin.

AIDEZMOI.

Aidez-moi.

Help me.

It had to be the French homework. The notebook was peppered with French in the margins like the codes in the diary. There was one page with a whole block of it scribbled on the back, clearly not part of an assignment. Just sort of tucked in between class notes, like she was hoping someone wouldn’t notice. Hoping that thing wouldn’t notice.

This was the only lead I had left, and I desperately needed it to work. I pulled up a translator on my phone and got to work, decoding line after line. Sure enough, the very first one shaped up into a sentence.

I need to tell my parents.

Poor thing.

It’s watching my diary too close. Thank god it gets bored in class. I tried to tell Ms Kennedy with that last assignment, but she just told me to keep my essays more serious. Why won’t anyone listen? It’s so quiet. I can almost speak. If I could get just one word out, I don’t even know what I’d do. What could I say? I’m afraid to think too hard. What if it can hear my thoughts? Can you hear me? You son of a bitch?

I yanked the pencil away from the page. That last line hadn’t come from the notebook. I won’t try to tell you I wasn’t scared, at this point, but I was starting to get angry, too. Not the best combination for someone to act rationally. I said - and I actually tried to talk to it, out loud - I said, “You don’t get to talk to me like that.” I told it that I’d already beaten it once, and I could sure as hell do it again.

My voice sounded wrong, when I said it. It was that same gut-deep, physical deja-vu as when I’d held the diary. Not the words, exactly, but the feeling that I was struggling against something inside my own head, my own body. I’d messed up. As soon as the words were out, I knew that. I realized that the more I engaged with it, the more I made it real, the more power it felt like it had over me.

By the time that thought appeared in my head, it was too late. I looked down to see that I’d filled the rest of the scratch paper. No codes, this time, no French. Just big, messy handwriting. Like someone was upset. It read:

FUCK YOU. I'm still alive, and you’re still stupid and lazy. Nobody listened. That’s the only reason you’re here, nobody listened, and nobody helped. If I had gotten out just once, you’d be the one stuck in here as a bad memory. You didn’t beat me. You did a lot of things to me but you did not beat me. I’ve been patient. I’ve been quiet. But if you don’t throw out that diary- if you don’t get your slimy hands off of the ONLY THING you didn’t take from me, I can promise you I won’t be quiet anymore.

It looked so much like that sad, angry page from the diary, I almost felt sorry for her again. But I’m sure, just like that terrible day all those years ago, she’ll get over it. Eventually. She’ll learn to be grateful, again. I’ve been thinking it over in the meantime. Whether I want her gone for good. She’s clearly been doing some rearranging upstairs, and I’m just not sure I can let that slide now that I know what she’s been up to. I’m not sure I should. That’s really why I’m here talking to you. If anyone can help me figure out how to do it, it’s you. It’d be nice to have the option even if I decide to keep her around. A part of me just wants to prove her wrong. Show her I’m not too lazy to finish the job. I’ve just been so busy. She’s got a lot of responsibilities now that she’s older. If I’d known how much work taking over for her would be, I don’t know if I’d have signed up for it. I’m not lazy, really, I’m not. And just because she knows French doesn’t mean she’s smarter than me.

#tma #the magnus archives #fanfiction

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN DEFCON

Close, but not as strong. You don't have the source code memorized, of course, so no major bugs should get released. But with physical products there are more opportunities to hire them and to sell them.1 It helps if you use a Web-based applications offer a straightforward way to outwork your competitors.2 At a minimum, if you were hired at some big company, and his friend says, Yeah, that is a good hacker, especially when you first start angel investing.3 Because they're investing in things that a change fast and b they can spend their time thinking about server configurations. Actually what it says is that circuit densities will double every 18 months. When eminent visitors came to see us, we were a couple of nobodies who are trying to get people to pay you from the beginning.4 It's an exciting place.

For the angel to have someone to make the medicine go down. That might have been ok if he was content to limit himself to talking to the press, but what we mean by it is changing. I wanted. And this, as you can, and your competitors can, you tend to feel rich.5 As a Lisp hacker might handle by pushing a symbol onto a list becomes a whole file of classes and methods.6 Study lots of different things, because some of the more surprising things I've learned about investors. What began as combing his hair a little carefully over a thin patch has gradually, over 20 years, grown into a monstrosity.7

And since I made much more money from it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its identity. We're impatient. And so all over the place. If a company is doing well, investors will want founders to turn down most acquisition offers. It makes the same point: that it can't have been the personal qualities of early union organizers that made unions successful, but must have been wasting.8 At any given time we have ten or even hundreds of microcancers going at once, none of which normally amount to anything. I like about this idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it.9 Because VCs like publicity. Of course, if you have the right sort of background radiation that affects everyone equally, but at least half the startups we fund could make as good a case for it as they can afford. Joe Kraus's idea that you should be smarter. There is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities.

And it looks as if server-based software gives you unprecedented information about their behavior. In practice a group of 10 managers to work together.10 But because he doesn't understand the risks, he tends to magnify them. Increase taxes, and willingness to take risks. You only take one shower in the morning.11 I want to reach; from paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course.12 I remember when computers were, for me at least, how I write one. We're starting to move from social lies to real lies. A lot of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. Many published essays peter out in the countryside.

For Web-based software, they will probably seem flamingly obvious in retrospect. It's not so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one made by a Swedish or a Japanese company.13 One is that this is a valid approach. It's not what people learn in classes at MIT and Stanford that has made technology companies spring up around them. But an illusion it was. Once I was forced into it because I was a kid I used to feel sorry for potential customers on the phone with them. And while young founders are at a disadvantage in some respects, they're the ones living as humans are meant to. If you try this trick, you'll probably buy a Japanese one. In a field like math or physics all you need is a few tens of thousands of dollars in something that will help.

Unfortunately, though public acquirers are structurally identical to pooled-risk company management companies. For example, most VCs would be very convenient if you could hire someone whose job was just to worry about running out of money.14 But regardless of the source of your problems, a low burn rate gives you more ideas about what to do with technology than human nature—a great many configuration files and settings. That's something Yahoo did understand. So I'd advise you to be skeptical about claims of experience and connections.15 So my guess is that they drift just the right amount.16 Plus he introduced us to one of their fellow students was on the line.17

But there is something afoot. Even when the startup launches, there have to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. The thin end of the spectrum. Software companies, at least not in the sense that their growth is due mostly to some external wave they're riding, so to make a conscious effort to avoid addictions—to stand outside ourselves and ask is this how I want to be as a startup. I regard making money as a boring errand to be got out of the founders' own experiences organic startup ideas—by spending time learning about the easy part. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work in offices now: you can't show off by wearing clothes too fancy to wear in a factory, so you don't need to write. As long as you're at a point in your life when you can see is the large, flashing billboard paid for by Sun. This essay is derived from a talk at Defcon 2005.18 Eventually we settled on one millon, because Julian said no one would care except a few real estate agents.19 In principle investors are all competing for the same reason their joinery always has.20

But I wouldn't bet on it. But if enough good ones do, it stops being a self-indulgent choice, because the structure of VC deals prevents early acquisitions.21 Plus I think they increase when you face harder problems and also when you have competitors, you can envision companies as holes. To developers, the most common form of discussion was the disputation. We can stop there, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads.22 Which will make you think What did I do before x?23 Most investors, especially VCs, are not like founders. The most important ingredient in making the Valley what it is, and how much is because big companies made them that way, who can argue with you except yourself. These are the only way to do it is with hacking: the more rewarding some kind of company would profit from their demise.24 For I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave to Philosophy, but if I get free of Mr Linus's business I will resolutely bid adew to it eternally, excepting what I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me.

Notes

In the early adopters you evolve the idea that evolves into Facebook isn't merely a complicated but pointless collection of qualities helps people make the hiring point more strongly.

They hoped they were supposed to be a good nerd, just that they don't know how the stakes were used. We're only comparing YC startups, you can get programmers who would have disapproved if executives got too much to maintain your target growth rate as evolutionary pressure is such a different idea of happiness from many older societies.

The revenue estimate is based on revenues of 1. There are lots of others followed. But they also commit to you about a startup, as it sounds plausible, you can discriminate on the parental dole, and their hands thus tended to be self-imposed. I realize I'm going to use thresholds proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where w is will and d discipline.

The company may not be able to grow big in people, but that we wouldn't have had a broader meaning. By this I used thresholds of. Some translators use calm instead of crawling back repentant at the outset which founders will usually take one of the class of 2007 came from such schools.

The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is because those are writeoffs from the end of World War II had disappeared. 5 million cap, but he got there by another path. That's the difference between us and the super-angels hate to match.

Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but this sort of person who would never come face to face with the amount—maybe not linearly, but he turned them down because investors don't like content is the way they do the startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work have different time quanta. I get the answer is no longer a precondition.

A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that they kill you—when you ad lib you end up with an online service. 56 million. Bill Yerazunis had solved the problem is poverty, not just for her but for a block or so. In technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver.

That would be in that. The trustafarians' ancestors didn't get rich from a mediocre VC. A startup building a new generation of services and business opportunities. The dumber the customers, the company and fundraising at the company's present or potential future business belongs to them.

Now many tech companies don't. If it's 90%, you'd ultimately be a good product. Earlier versions used a recent Business Week article mentioning del. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp, which would cause HTTP and HTML to continue to maltreat people who make things very confusing.

Keep heat low. The reason not to like to fight. The word boss is derived from the end of World War II to the inane questions of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses. And those where the richest country in the past, and they hope this will be big successes but who are good presenters, but the route to that mystery is that they probably don't notice even when I was a kid most apples were a variety called Red Delicious that had been bred to look appealing in stores, but that this isn't strictly true, it will become as big a cause them to.

Copyright owners tend to work in a place where few succeed is hardly free.

One new thing the company by doing another round that values the company, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But I think that's because delicious/popular. The reason you don't have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take another startup to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say how justified this worry is. Even the cheap kinds of content.

To a kid and as an adult. A scientist isn't committed to rejecting it. What if a company with rapid, genuine growth is genuine. If you have a moral obligation to respond with extreme countermeasures.

I couldn't convince Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this talk, so you'd have to assume it's bad.

If they were going to need common sense when intepreting it. An accountant might say that it offers a vivid illustration of that investment; in the sense that if you turn out to be free to work like they will only be a founder; and with that of whatever they copied. I'm not saying that if you hadn't written about them. Though we're happy to provide this service, and suddenly they need.

I replace the url with that additional constraint, you now get to be good. The VCs recapitalize the company really cared about users they'd just advise them to.

Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the police in the past, and you have to mean starting a startup, both of which he can be and still provide a profitable market for a solution, and their hands thus tended to be memorized. Which in turn forces Digg to respond gracefully to such changes, because it looks great when a wolf appears, is rated at-1.

Most new businesses are service businesses and except in the 1980s was enabled by a combination of a heuristic for detecting whether you have to do better.

Again, hard work. Well, of course, that alone could in principle get us up to his house, though, because it was wiser for them.

I wonder if they'd like it if you get nothing. The most important factor in the world, and stir. Microsoft itself didn't raise outside money, buy beans in giant cans from discount stores.

Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college. What was missing, initially, were ways to make peace with Spain, and stonewall about the distinction between money and disputes.

Aristotle's contribution? Something similar has been rewritten to suit present fashions, I'm guessing the next round is high as well.

No one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the early empire the price, and 20 in Paris.

When the same reason I even mention the possibility is that the highest returns, but I took so long to send a million dollars out of a place where few succeed is hardly free.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #World #organizers #sup #information #source #code #server #job #War #point #man #variety #businesses #reason #price #money #startup #police #block #VCs #successes #tens #reasons #solution #students

[mushmeyers]

why do we do this to ourselves?

Spot/Jack - ao3 link - co authored by @spotsies

hi everyone, i'm back from not updating my multichap works to upload a oneshot. it's actually another RP, but a para one this time- so yeah, perspective p much switches every paragraph if you have a problem w that :P

anywayssss the lovely spot to my jack @spotsies wrote for spot and i wrote for jack! love u!

Jack couldn't help but feel incredibly tense as he walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, headed towards the docks. Tension, he'd found, was an emotion strongly associated with Spot Conlon. To the other guys, he made tension through his intimidation. The rumours that he'd beaten people up on a ride at Coney had flown around for years, and they were founded in Conlon's very real soaking ability. But as Jack reached the docks and spotted (hah) him, he knew it wasn't that tension that he got when he was with Spot, particularly not when they were alone. Oh, no. It was a very different kind, and one that Jack had been keeping to himself for years because of the risk associated with it. "Conlon," he called out with a wave and a grin as he walked towards him, spitting on his hand and holding it out.

Spot was sitting crosslegged on a crate, idly watching some of his boys attempting to fish the waters with a fishing line fashioned out of old bootlaces. What a waste. When he heard approaching boots on wood, he didn't bother turning to look until Jack was right near him. He knew his footsteps anywhere. Finally, he turned his head with a lazy smile to face his friend. Enemy. Ally. Whatever he was. "Kelly," he greeted cordially with a spit and shake of his own, firmly ignoring the fact that he'd almost felt a bolt of electricity go through him the moment they touched. That wasn't unusual with Jack. Not these days. "You're late, y'know. It's past noon."

Jack grinned, shrugging. He let himself regard Spot for a second longer than he'd let himself with anyone else- he knew that if Spot noticed (and there was no doubt he did), he never commented. "Had a fight to break up on my way over here. Only been a few minutes." Everything in him wanted to take a step closer to Conlon, to close the distance between them. That was the usual now, though, and something that couldn't be said out loud. He'd never gotten verbal confirmation that Spot was feeling this too (or that he was even like that )- but the tension between them all but confirmed it. Instead, he moved on to business. "So, Staten's been givin' you trouble?"

Spot all but rolled his eyes at Jack. "Not here." He pushed himself off the crate, glancing around before leading the way along the docks, dodging workers hauling cargo until they reached a more secluded section. It was all but hidden from the main docks by a few twists and turns and that was how he liked it. He didn't usually bother conducting business in private, but more recently he preferred to be alone with Jack. And it wasn't because he was uncomfortable with people seeing how they interacted now. And it wasn't because he liked having Jack to himself for a little while. He settled himself on the wooden planks, gesturing for Jack to join him. "He keeps sendin' his boys over."

Jack was used to the routine. They'd meet, and whoevers turf they were on (usually Spot's, since he insisted) would lead the other to a secluded place. And that's when Jack swore he could feel the distance between them, and the thickness in the air when they spoke, and every single pause or glance held a kind of strength he hadn't even known they could hold before. It was a feeling that he'd only been getting with Spot, and it'd been increasingly rapidly, much to Jack's stress. The leader of Brooklyn, he reminded himself. What a controversy that would be. Jack had long mastered not getting caught with guys, but that was besides the point. This put so much more risk on the table. He settled beside Spot, frowning. "Sendin' em over? What, to sell? The fuck's he thinkin'?"

Spot didn't need to glance between them to know exactly how many inches away Jack was sitting (three). He wanted to, though. He wanted to close the gap. He wasn't the type to seek any kind of affectionate contact with people. But when Jack was around, he felt magnetised. Forcing himself to relax, he reached up and dragged his hat off, pushing his hair back. "He's trying to start shit. He's been doin' it all week, and they keep comin' over, sellin' and then they start fights. And he claims he don't know shit about it." Spot scowled. "But he's sending his biggest guys."

Jack looked, watching Spot's hands running through his hair, the way it fell and the look on his face as he started to scowl. "He's tryina start shit with Brooklyn? What reasons he got?" Brooklyn and Manhattan had been easy allies for a while. 'Accidentally' crossing a bridge was hard to pass off- though apparently, that concept was foreign to Staten Island newsies. And plus, there was the unspoken fact between the two of them that Brooklyn and Manhattan being allies made it easier for the both of them to have their times like these. Because even though he couldn't actually do anything, the ridiculous amount of tension and feelings he got around Spot was dizzying enough to be completely worth it. "What's he tryina pull? He knows Manhattan n' Queens'll side with you, n' the Bronxs too far away to even matter. He just tryina get his kids soaked?"

Spot glanced over at Jack, his fierce expression softening a bit as he did. "I don't know. Maybe he's tryna piss me off bad enough I'll do somethin' that'll make the other boroughs feel sorry for 'em. Or hate us. Same difference." For a long moment he was silent, turning his cap over in his hands. The tweed was worn and grubby, but he didn't mind any. "I'm plenty tempted by it. The Bronx can't do shit and Queens don't care all much about Staten except when he's trying to piss them off." And you'll side with me whatever I do. He didn't bother adding that. Spot dropped his hands by his sides; just enough so one lightly brushed Jack's leg. That's all you'll ever get. It was infuriating to sit here side by side with the guy he'd loved so long and not be able to hold his hand proper or kiss him, and for a moment the unfairness of it all took his breath away so it was all he could do to glare miserably at the wooden planks.

Jack watched Spot's hands, turning the hat over and over in his hands. He frowned. "Don't take their bait. Like you said, that's just what he wants." Jack didn't mention the shudder that ran down his back when Spot's arm brushed his leg, and continued speaking. "I'd just finish the fights he starts, n' finish 'em real good. Put Red an' your muscle sellin near the bridge for a few days, show 'em what's what if they start the fights. He's a coward, the moment his boys start bein' properly beat he'll back off. But you can't be blamed for finishin' fights when he started em." Jack shifted, and their hands were only about an inch away now. Jack was itching to move it that final inch, to take Spot's hand, or to grab him and fiercely kiss him and show him how much he felt for him- but instead he just left his hand an inch away.

Spot swallowed hard. He was struggling to just focus on what Jack was saying. It was good advice, after all. But he kept getting distracted by the fact that there was only an inch between them now. Sometimes he really hated how hyperaware he always was of Jack in his space, especially the fact he didn't really want him to leave it. "Yeah," he mumbled eventually, fighting to drag his attention back to the actual conversation. Get a fucking hold of yourself. "He's such a shit leader. Imagine gettin your boys hurt just so you can have a bit of pity." He was tired by the politics, sometimes. And he had an awful suspicion he'd feel a lot better if he could rest his head on Jack's shoulder for a little while, sit quietly with him like that with their sides pressed close and their fingers laced. But that wasn't going to happen.

Jack nodded in agreement, rolling his eyes. "Never seen him make a smart move in his life." And it was true.  Staten was a fucking idiot. Jack sat quietly for a few seconds. The issue had been sorted fairly quickly- and no surprise. Jack knew Spot didn't need him to make a decision on an issue between Brooklyn and Staten Island. But that didn't mean that Jack wasn't thankful Spot'd called for a meeting, because now he was only an inch away and Jack could pretend that they coud be even closer. Or we could actually be closer. The coast was clear, they were alone, and the tension between them was almost unbearable. Jack turned to Spot. "Why do we do this to ourselves?" he asked, shaking his head with a small laugh. He wasn't sure what came over him- he knew why they did, it was illegal, they were leaders of boroughs, all of the shit that could go down if they were caught - but what could happen if they didn't was intoxicating, and Jack had been wondering about it for years .

Spot felt every muscle in his body go taut when Jack spoke, and he kept his eyes focused straight down. Don't move. Don't look at him. Don't give him any sign. It was as though the tension between them had both broken and amped up to the max. "Do what?" he replied in a clipped, strained voice. He could feel Jack's eyes on him. He wanted to meet his eyes, see the truth there and not be scared of it any more. But he didn't trust himself with it. So instead he sat perfectly still, barely daring to even breathe.

Jack looked at Spot, raising an eyebrow that he couldn't see anyways because Spot's eyes were fixed on the ground. The way he'd tensed up, looked away, the strain in his voice. He knew what Jack meant- there was no way he didn't, the tension had always been two sided. Jack took a deep breath, and he reached, taking Spot's hand in his own. "Not this," he said quietly as he interlaced their fingers, looking intensely at Spot and praying that this didn't go completely wrong.

Flinching involuntarily when Jack's hand took his, Spot had to physically force himself not to jerk away. Every part of him was screaming DANGER and he wasn't one to ignore his instincts. But at the same time- he felt like he was on fire. This was all he'd ever wanted. Slowly he looked up, gaze going from his feet to their hands to Jack's face. He had the most beautiful eyes. And Spot could see that same terror and longing and hope he felt reflected in them, and that was enough to make him gently lace their fingers together, taking in a shaky breath. "You know why," he muttered. His mouth was dry.

When Spot laced their fingers together, Jack felt like he could explode. Something as simple as this was what he'd stayed up many a late night wondering about, and he'd done it, he'd actually done it and it felt amazing. "I know why," he repeated, "but I hate it. It's the worst. I can't stop thinking about you ," he half whispered, giving Spot possibly the most intense look he'd ever given anyone.

Spot let out his breath between his teeth, relaxing for what felt like the first time in years. So it was all out on the table now. He wasn't being choked by this secret any more. He squeezed Jack's hand. "I can't... me either," he admitted eventually. "I can't fuckin' concentrate when you're around. And every time you go home it hurts." The last part was spoken quietly, since it was still embarrassing to say, but there was a vulnerable edge to Spot's tone and he didn't know if he resented it or not. He was inclined towards the or not .

Spot had said it back. Finally, the heavy feeling on his chest dissipated, leaving Jack feeling light. "I hate goin' home," he admitted back. "Well, not the home bit. I hate leavin' you." And it was the truth- he adored his boys and all of that, it wasn't where he was that was the problem (unless you were talking New York, but that was a whole different story.) It was the lack of Spot that was the problem. The vulnerability in Spot's voice made Jack edge closer to him, putting a hand on the side of his face. It felt right there. They were alone, and they were holding hands and talking and a rush of adrenaline ran through Jack, probably both from how wrong what they were doing was, but also how damn fucking right it was.

Spot closed his eyes for a brief moment, finding himself leaning into Jack's touch without even meaning to. It was like all the tension and stress had just drained away. Like there was nothing else. Then he looked up again, at the guy he trusted more than anyone, and tried a small smile. "I can never decide if you're brave or an idiot or both," he said quietly. "And I can't decide if I'm about to be stupid. But I don't really care." With that, he carefully curled his fingers around the back of Jack's neck, pulling him down gently into a kiss. It was stupid, maybe, but he could have sworn he felt a bolt of electricity run through him as their lips touched. And it felt perfect.

Jack laughed, grinning as if he was about to say something back- when Spot continued talking about being stupid, and then he was softly pulling Jack down and then their lips met, and holy shit, there were fireworks. Explosions and bolts of electricity and all of that. It felt perfect and right and like he was meantto kiss Spot. God, that was sappy and dumb, but so was Jack. Especially after so long wondering and imagining what it would be like to kiss Spot, to be able to actually show him that he loved him. And fuck, Spot might be right and this might be stupid- but that was put out of his mind right now in favour for pulling himself closer to Spot, his thumb running over his cheek as they kissed.

Spot leaned into it hard. He let the joy and relief and fear and shock wash over him, and when it faded he was still kissing Jack, his Jack. They belonged to their boroughs, but they'd always belonged a little bit to each other as well. The hand on his cheek, warm and reassuring and the brush of lashes against his cheek; it was intoxicating, and if he wasn't as disciplined as he was, he mightn't have drawn away when he did. But it was too dangerous. If they were caught kissing here, anywhere, not only would they both lose their leadership but they could go to jail if they weren't beaten to death first. So he leaned back reluctantly, dropping his hand to Jack's chest to stop him from following. He looked just as windblown as Spot felt. Fuck, he was beautiful, and there was nothing he wanted to do more than kiss those lips again. But at least the tension had broken, replaced by this understanding they shared.

Jack kept his eyes closed for just a few seconds, the feeling of Spot's hand on his chest still sending that same exciting current through him. He opened his eyes, looking at Spot and taking every detail of his expression that he could remember. He wanted to be kissing Spot again, but he knew exactly why Spot pulled away. He sighed quietly, taking his hand from Spot's cheek and letting it rest on Spot's knee, unable to let go of finally being able to touch him, even if just for now. It had been building for so long, and now Jack just looked at Spot, shaking his head with a small smile. "Bein' brave means you gotta be an idiot sometimes- but you're doin' it 'cause it's whats right." And sure, maybe this was idiotic, but it was right , and that's what mattered.

Spot snorted. "Look at you, givin' advice. Like you're so wise." His attempt at sounding gruff completely failed, the affection shining through in a way he'd never let it, and he couldn't even bring himself to care. Not when Jack was looking at him with that smile. God. It felt like they could just sit in this moment forever- he wished they could just sit in this moment forever. But they were always on borrowed time, him and Jack, and today was no different. This was big, and they had important things to sort out. "Hey," he said more quietly, trailing his hand down his arm to take his hand again. "You know we can't never be open 'bout this." He knew Jack knew. But when he said it out loud, it felt more like something they were facing together. "Whatever this is."

"Had a lotta time to think about this," he laughed, Spot's affectionate tone making his heart swell a bit. His teasing, the way he was looking at him, the feeling of Spot's lips still lingering on his, it was the small details that he hadn't expected that made everything feel like he was floating. Jack squeezed Spot's hand when their fingers were laced together again, nodding. "Yeah, I know. It's just between us" Whatever this is. What even was it? Was there even words for this? Jack shrugged, frowning. "It's whatever we want it to be. N' I want ya to know I'm sweet on you," he finally said the words out loud, after them being true for years. He was sweet on Spot Conlon, and if the world couldn't know then at least he could.

A slow smile spread across Spot's lips. "Sweet on me," he repeated, almost rolling his eyes. "Course you'd find the sappiest way to say it." Nobody in Brooklyn was sweet on anyone- they had girls, but you didn't go about telling people how you felt about them. He wondered if the Manhattan newsies did things differently. Clearly they did, if Jack was saying stuff like that. But hell, if it didn't make his heartbeat pick up. "I'm sweet on you too. And Christ, I wanna see you more than this. In places more private than this. I been holdin' out on you years, Kelly." He'd dreamed so long of being able to lie quietly for hours with Jack, tangled up in each other and talking quietly between kisses.

"You're sayin' that like you didn't grin the moment I said it," he teased, greatly enjoying Spot's smile and revelling in the fact that Spot said it back. And he'd been holding out on him for years, god, if that didn't make the years of wondering and what ifs so worth it. Jack nodded. "Me too," he agreed quietly, pulling Spot in a little closer. "Come have a meetin' with me at the theatre sometime. Medda's. She's right in the Bowery, she don't care 'bout this shit. We'll tell em all it's over somethin' serious," he half suggested and half asked. The amount he saw Spot now wasn't enough, it wasn't before and it wasn't going to be nearly close now.

Spot (after slugging him in the shoulder for the teasing) hesitated, weighing the options in his head. He didn't like spending time away from Brooklyn at the best of times. But Jack was offering proper privacy, somewhere safe. And there were so many things he wanted to learn about Jack- his favourite food, what he talked like when he was tired, the pitch of his moans- that he just couldn't here. "Okay," he agreed after another moment, and ran his thumb over Jack's knuckles with a little smile. And then, after glancing around and pausing for a moment to listen out for anyone nearby, he shifted closer and leaned his head on his shoulder. Like he wasn't going to take this excuse.

Jack smiled, clearly calmed by Spot saying okay and then resting his head on his shoulder. He leaned his head on Spot's, glad beyond words that they could finally sit like this, that he could finally hold Spot's hand and let Spot know how he feels. How he feels about Spot. Maybe it was a bit quick considering that everything had just properly happened, but he'd been feeling this for years, so if anything it felt like making up for lost time. "I love you," he said quietly, letting himself close his eyes and just be alone with Spot for a minute.

Spot was just about the happiest he'd ever been when he heard Jack's next words and promptly froze. I love you . That was what wives and husbands said to each other in private. It was what you said when you were writing a love letter or proposing. And never in a hundred years could he ever have imagined that anybody, let alone Jack Kelly, would say it to him. But when the shock melted away, he found it replaced by a glow of happiness that spread to the tip of his toes. And really, they'd been something for years now. Just something unspoken. And now he could change that, and he wanted to, so he murmured, "I love you too," and didn't care how foolish it made him sound. "I don't want you to go home."

Jack really didn't want to go home either. He wanted to stay like this with Spot forever- or he wanted to go somewhere private, and be alone with Spot. Being away  from him, however, was the exact opposite of what he wanted. Not only that, but he had to leave soon- he had a few more things to sort out in Manhattan today, and he was sure Spot had other things to do. But that didn't make it any easier. "I don't want to either," he sighed. "But you're gonna see me again soon, aight?" With that, he slowly sat up more. Speaking of him having to leave, the time was coming soon. "An' now we both have somethin' to look forward to."

"Wait," Spot said sharply, following Jack up. Instead of saying anything else, he took his face in both hands and pulled him in to kiss him again; he found himself trying to commit the feeling to memory. He didn't want to let go, not when he'd just gotten all he'd ever wanted. And Jack's lips were soft, and his face was warm, and kissing him brought everything into alignment in a hundred different ways and Spot had never felt safer with anyone. And for a fleeting moment, he wondered what it would be like to run away from their responsibilities,  just look out for each other. Sleep under real stars. Hold each other properly. But like I said, the moment was fleeting. So eventually he did pull away, stroking a thumb across Jack's cheek and looking at him steadily. "I love you."

Jack turned around, being pulled into another kiss. He hadn't realised he'd missed it already until he was doing it again. Kissing him felt natural. Meant to be. All that sappy shit. It was so, so difficult to not pull Spot onto his lap and kiss him over and over, cover him in kisses and quietly tell him about all the nights he'd spent dreaming of him. If Spot had spent even half of those thinking about Jack, he'd consider himself lucky. When Spot pulled away, Jack looked at Spot again, smiling at him soft and gentle. "I love you too," he said, promises of more and the future laced in the words. Seperating himself from Spot then was probably the hardest thing he'd done in months, and he already felt the urge to wrap his arms around Spot's waist and cling. "Tell me when you wanna meet next," he said, daring taking a step closer than a friend probably should be. "Make it soon, yeah?"

Spot nodded curtly, not shifting his gaze from Jack's face. He knew his stare put people off, and he usually liked it, but right now he just wanted to remember this moment without weirding him out. "Soon," he repeated, then sighed. "Yeah. Aight." He went to kiss him one last time and promptly became aware of just how tall Jack was. Fucker. He had to get up onto his toes to reach, and pull him down for a quick kiss. It hurt to let go. "This week, though."

Jack leaned down when Spot stood on his toes, giving him another sweet kiss. He couldn't help but press a kiss onto Spot's forehead with a smile. A week. He could do a week. "I'm gonna miss you," he admitted quietly. Now it felt like there was an entire flood of things he could finally tell Spot. He glanced back to where they'd come from earlier. "I gotta go now." Pause, and then quietly, "Love you, Spot." It was difficult actually getting up and heading in the direction when all he wanted to do was kiss Spot over and over again, but somehow Jack found the self control to.

"Love you too." Spot watched him go, heart twisting sharply. On one hand, he'd never missed Jack more. But this felt like hope, and he had a tangible promise that they'd see each other soon and that he felt the same. And he was light as air. Pulling his cap low over his eyes to hide the happiness he suspected was there, he waited until the other leader had disappeared before turning and slamming a fist hard into a wooden crate by him. God, he was excited for whatever was coming next.

#spot conlon #jack kelly #spj #newsies #spotsies #enjoyyyyy ;)))

[sanguinesprout]

Therapy/Counselling Diary #6 (more frustrations, tribulations and a tiny speck of sunshine)

I don’t know how I’m feeling rn, I just wanna climb into bed and stay there forever. I feel kind of conflicted and overwhelmed, hopeless but a smidgen hopeful at the same time but as always everything is overpowered by doubtfulness and hesitance and fear. I’m spiralling quite a lot, I want to calm down and figure things out rationally but my mind is racing ahead with frustration and the irrational. 

Yesterday’s counselling appointment felt quite different to the others, it was more blunt, filled with harsh truths and realities, eye opening but upsetting. To put it simply, it was a tough lesson and the words hurt and I cried. I don’t mean there was no encouragement or empathy present, it just felt like there was much less of it this time. The counsellor was probably getting impatient because I’m not trying hard enough, needed to light a fire under my ass kind of feeling.

Well, I’m past halfway in the number of sessions I’m allowed, I haven’t been able to move forward as much as she wanted and planned which is probably where the sort of urgency to do things is kicking in. There’s a lot more waiting on trying to get financial help than both of us expected. I mean I did apply for it and I enquired about it, I didn’t just ignore it, so it’s better than the latter right?

I keep wondering if counselling was the right choice for me, like the right kind of guidance because I feel like a lot of my deeper problems are not being considered into why I am struggling or that there’s not anything to help alleviate them. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, or am I..? It’s not the exact thing I wanted, it fills only a small piece of a big complex puzzle, but beggars can’t be choosers :c I know the focus has to be narrowed down, everything is brief because time is short. I don’t want to have bad feelings about it, I don’t want to be ungrateful or butthurt either, it just feels like it’s not enough or it’s missing a step, but I also know that outside help can only do so much, everything is on me to change and improve from the inside. I feel so conflicted.

I know I need to stop moping, stop feeling sorry for myself, stop trying to make excuses and pin blame on things and people around me for my shortcomings and lack of action. It’s just when you spent such a long part of your life having these feelings and being a certain way, it’s hard to just up and go, hard to break the cycle and move on. To try and bring back control into your life when you felt you’ve never had it or lost it so long ago, it feels like you’re a newborn deer with starry eyes stumbling around on unsteady legs trying to get uphill, with the hill being a learning curve that’s actually a tall and seemingly impassible vertical wall.

I keep thinking of all these ‘I’m’ phrases. ‘I’m worthless, I’m useless, I’m ungrateful, I’m such a waste of space’ as afterthoughts to my moments of successful avoidance and it’s throwing me into such a hopeless mood where only grey clouds hang and no light can filter through. If my thoughts were like a message board, all the comments would be insults like these and unhelpful pro life hack troll comments plus the typical kys x 1000 .__.

C’mon me, don’t be so hard on yourself, it isn’t helping, there is hope... or is there..? Yes, there is but it’s just hard to see clearly right now. I’m feeling quite lost again, I need to try and find my way through the fog, I can do it, c’mon, don’t worry so much, you can do it!

I think I’m feeling a little better after getting a little of my frustration out, I’ll try and recall how yesterday went from beginning to end in simple form, I especially wanted to get things down as soon as possible so I don’t keep having to think back so hard and end up muddling stuff up. My memories are already a blur though and I feel like I've already begun to try repress a lot of it, but some good things were also said and some kind of nice things happened after so I’ve got to get to those too. You know, bring back some sun into this grey rainy spell, maybe even make a rainbow somehow :>

Okay, I got to the appointment just on time and sat for maybe 2 mins max, she came and collected me and I went for a quick bathroom trip because the weather that day was bad and I felt a mess. She asked for my weekly depression/anxiety self assessment sheet and I gave it to her and she looked over at it briefly. I think there might have been something small before this but I forgot, but w/e lol.

She asked (rhetorically?) if there was any improvement in the sheets/scores and pointed at one of the scores and asked me ‘what’s this?’. She was pointing to my score of 1 (some of the days) for the statement ‘Thinking you'd be better off dead or hurting yourself in some way?’. She’s never asked me about any of my scores on the previous ones, I feel like maybe she was offended some how that I hadn’t improved under her guidance or that maybe my scores were particularly bad that week idk I shouldn’t assume but she seemed the tiniest bit aghast anyways. 

The thing is though, the scoring sheet is intended for every two weeks but I’ve been doing them for every one week so they probably come across as a stronger representation idk? I’m sure I scored 1 for most other times on that same statement too (or did the lowest 0 score but only because I was trying to seem hopeful and not idk shock-worthy? Bad and inaccurate I know). Well let me just say it was hella awk and that was even after I got in a taxi ride with a driver that didn’t speak english and struggled through that the same morning, the awkward feels just keep rising.

Anyways, back to what I was saying, or well, not saying. She asked me what that score was, and that gave me this vibe that she was idk disgusted or like I said offended... I mean I think she asked why I put that after too but I couldn’t find the words to answer. It’s kind of sensitive topic (especially for me who usually withholds and can’t express feelings that well) and somehow I thought it would be kind of obvious thing, like something that didn’t need to be questioned... .__. 

I mentioned I had depression on the first session, she knows I’m struggling in general and last week was particularly stressful for me with the pressure to do stuff and I didn’t want to bring it up as the reason at the time. Maybe she forgot or got me mixed up with someone else, she probably sees so many people a week and stuff.

It just felt weird and I was kind of confused, I was searching my mind for an appropriate answer but was still just so taken aback that I just blanked. I ended up saying something like ‘you know, when you feel kind of hopeless...’ and kind of cringed inwardly. But then I think she went into a sort of a reassuring and positive sort of pep talk, telling me that I was doing good and all that stuff, it made me feel better for that moment, though I still feel a bit idk traumatised lol... ;; Because I always worry about doing things right, being seen as weird, having that being in school and getting reprimanded feeling it just freaked me out. 

Oh... oh my god, that just reminded me of something... A lot of past experiences influence our current feelings and beliefs right? I noticed I keep mentioning about being told off and I keep wondering why it affects me so much, makes me afraid even now and I remembered in school when I was very young there were times I was told off and felt wronged and it hurt, I was a good kid and I always tried my best but I guess it wasn’t enough sometimes. Those things I was scolded for seemed irrational and unfair and I’ll bet a lot of them actually were, but I was just a kid, I just take it and believe that I deserved it, but maybe it was just me, taking things to heart a little too much too.

I’m so scared of being told off by my parents, by anyone really, just the prospect of it happening alone is enough to make me shrink away into the floor. Remembering the faces and tones of voices of those particular teachers, it scares me and makes me feel so upset, they were mean and strict and I feel there was a hint of some discrimination somewhere but no one is obligated to be nice to me anyways I guess... Idk I’m side tracking again, being over dramatic maybe but those snippets of memories that just came up from their hiding place right in the depths of my mind, to stay with me that long, it’s painful recalling them again. The beliefs I hold from then, they are one and the same as the ones still latched on to me today, probably in an evolved form and weighing me down even more. 

Something that’s been bothering me, am I always playing the victim? Am I actually always in the wrong? Do I really blame others that much? Is there actually no reason to feel any of the things I do? Is everything actually my own fault? These just go on to repeat that cycle of worthlessness and confusion. I don’t even know, the more I think about things, the greater the self-loathing becomes. It’s not healthy, I need to stop it. Wow idek what I just wrote in the past few paragraphs @^@”

Um so, my memory is kinda crappy after the bit about the paper. I remember I had some homework from last time which I struggled really badly with even though it probably wasn’t something hard, but idk I just have a hard time doing any type of task cause I get that foggy head pain and can’t concentrate or retain information and ugh why can’t I function like normal..?? ;^; I quickly scrawled down the stuff the morning of the app but well... I waited for her to ask for it but she never did, I was thinking, I should take it out and give it to her. But I avoided doing so... and later I thought again I should give it, but I didn’t, or well I was too preoccupied with what was going down then. I’ll make sure to mention and give it in next time... I’m scared she’ll be annoyed, or disappointed, tell me off etc etc. but better late than never I guess. Maybe the session would have went differently if I did, maybe we could have focused on that instead, ack it’s my own fault >^<

We talked about what I did last week in terms of going out, communicating and practicing phone orders. Welp, I don’t think I went anywhere other than shopping the same day of the last appointment so there was nothing to discuss there. As for the phone order thing... I managed to do it... but only once. I panicked and stumbled over my words and it deterred me from trying again just like I thought it would. But my mum and sis gave me some helpful tips which I can use next time if I can pluck up the courage to.

I actually did it, even it was only once, which was something. But I did it more because I didn’t want to disappoint the counsellor, because she already wanted me to do it the prior week and I didn’t, so it was done out of a greater fear so to say... I mean, I did do it a little for myself too and for my parents, who were kind of impressed I tried at least. I thought maybe at least me trying, even if only once would be something but she said that really she would have expected me to do much more, once wasn’t enough, but at least I did it. I felt real bad, I’m so cowardly and she is expecting me to have tried doing it everyday lots of times by next week but I’ve already avoided trying for almost two days already :<

I also made it sound like I was making a bunch of excuses as to why I don’t go out that much, I said some inaccurate things and I feel bad about it. She said I should go out more, follow where my sis and parents go and try to immerse myself properly in what I’m doing, as I mentioned being around others makes me anxious and I will often leave what I’m doing without properly looking or buying what I wanted. Eg. if I’m looking at clothes and someone stands next to me looking, I’ll move so they can look or hurry up or cut short my own perusing then move. She said to not mind them, that I was there first and should take my time. I move out of politeness and because often when I want to look at stuff and someone else is there for a long long time or is just blocking the way it kind of irks me (and when I look at things I am really slow I guess), so I wouldn’t want other people to feel that way idk I suck I know. I’ll try follow my parents this weekend or go somewhere with my sis or something. 

She also went over my sort of plan to get a job and was telling me to work under my parents and gain experience from home (work is at home) so I can write it on my CV. I already knew of this but I keep thinking my parents are so set on doing things themselves and their way, that I’ll be in the way, do things wrong, get told off etc. Maybe it’s irrational to think this, no, it certainly is, but I can’t help thinking this way. I told her that I’ve tried asking them to teach me suff before but they were unwilling and she told me not to pin the blame on them. She said I needed to push to do things and asked me ‘what do new workers(of any profession in general) usually do?’ and I answered something like ‘watch’, watching and learning, shadowing. She’s right, I should do that, it’s just my aforementioned fears especially the getting in the way part that’s getting in the way.

Wait, I lie, there’s much more than that. There’s my extreme self-consciousness which makes it difficult for me to be anyone’s view let alone customers (especially the regulars that sometimes ask how mum’s daughters are doing, to which she mostly talks about my sis because well, I got nothing). I didn’t say this to her though... Also my fear of someone I know coming and seeing me, asking how I’ve been, what I’m doing etc... Seriously if I didn’t have such an ugly mug etc. I would be doing much better or maybe I wouldn’t be this way at all... :c

So uh, I have to do some of that experience gathering and skill learning, yeah it’s necessary, it’s a good opportunity and it’s beneficial. The pressure to do things so quickly and so much at a time (for me) is just so overwhelming. 

Stuff got kinda not so great from here...or maybe I got the order of things mixed up but oh well....She said she felt frustrated for me so she couldn’t imagine what it must be like for me. She said that I have to try and do much more, that it’s for me and my life and it won’t affect her at all whether I do things or not and that she has many other people that she needs to see and that’s her job, if I don’t do things then there’s no point of me coming to sessions and stuff like that. She said something vaguely like ‘you’re [age] years old, you should be able to/can do all these things ...[something something] it’s almost like you’re a baby’ this isn’t actually what she said but I remember her saying my age and the word baby because these are things I think about all the time about myself.

There was some other sort of raw truth telling and I can’t remember all of it but it just really got to me and the tone and the words kind of cut me deep and I started crying or well my eyes started leaking and I really really didn’t want them to... ;^; As I expected she is unfazed by it, probably has seen it a million times from others, and I was trying really hard to ignore the water in my eyes too and continue listening to her, but in the back of my mind I was wishing I could just have a moment, maybe even a tiny bit of reassurance or sympathy. I don’t mean to make her sound like a heartless robot and she probably did say some reassuring things I don’t remember properly, but at that time it just felt so bad like... like you know all the stress from the past weeks and just my whole life busted out and I felt like I didn’t matter or something like that.

Oh, I remember one of the things she also talked about/asked was what would I do (in terms of living and looking after myself) if my parents died. She asked or talked about this in one of the earlier sessions but that was if they died like right now, and this time I think she was saying about you know, like people only live so long kind of thing... like the thing about the depression bit earlier, this is a topic I really don’t like, the way it comes out is so blunt and just throws me off so much. I contemplated what to say in return and was really tempted to say ‘die’ but I know that would not be a good idea but I couldn’t think of much else, I said ‘nothing’ instead and she was I guess taken aback (in a bad way, like ‘what do you mean nothing? You can’t just do nothing’).

I blanked so hard to find the answer because the truth is I don’t know what I’d do. She said I couldn’t rely on my sis to look after me forever and that’s true and I already know it. I guess this is just a way to help me put my future in perspective maybe, to get me to take more action now so I would be more prepared to take care of myself then and in general. It still stung a lot though.

Also there was some talk of what my plans are to get to what I want to do and I can’t remember exactly what sparked the next small bit of conversation, but I was talking about how I have some illness that prevents me from wanting to go out/work because I get sick easily in those environments and she told me how she has a friend that has similar stuff and she doesn’t let this get in the way of her doing stuff, that she still goes out and works and lives and while that’s true and very useful to know it kind of felt idk... I didn’t want to sound like I was bringing up excuses, I just wanted to let her know I have other troubles I needed sorting in addition to the ones she knows.

Then I can’t remember how but it lead to me talking about maybe going to the doctor for medication to help with ADD/Depression/anxiety (which I had been avoiding) so that I’d be able to think clearer and do things more quickly in addition to her help but she just said that was something pointless in a way, that medication isn’t a miracle cure to my problems and kept emphasising ‘this is CBT, it’s all about behaviour’ ?^? But the thing is, I wasn’t saying that it was a miracle cure and her disregard for the fact that it could maybe help, it kind of idk... it made me feel frustrated and maybe some time around here is when I cried or maybe I was already crying idk but my voice was weak and I didn’t want to debate it anymore. 

The thing is though, behavioural stuff is her specialism and not medicine and I understand that but why so adamant or against it?  @^@ It kind of feels like when I asked her about whether a diagnosis would be helpful that other time and the answer was pretty much nope. I know medication isn’t healthy and isn’t ideal, and I know it can be unhelpful in terms of side effects, but I was referring more to ADD medication which I read positive things about (but I guess I need to research more). If I could fix things without medication, that’s the obvious choice anyone would choose, but some things are proven to be chemically related and idk why I’m continuing to talk about it... tbh I already take medication every day for my other physical blah but even I feel iffy about taking it for mental related things.

I just felt kind of miffed and upset and actually kind of hopeless by the end of the session and idk it didn’t end with me feeling super motivated like the last few. Tbh on a lot of the other sessions, I just kept thinking I want to go home, but none as much as this one. I kind of almost wanted to just up an cancel the rest of the sessions, but I think I can stick through it, there’s only 4 more, who knows what could happen, what I could maybe achieve and leave with. Or even if there is nothing much, at least I tried, I can learn to be stronger from this experience alone. I have been mulling over a lot of things and yes, there was some useful things and I do see where she is coming from on a lot of things too, it’s just the pressure to do stuff is killing me because my fears are still there and grow even stronger when I’m at home. To put myself in her perspective though, it must be like flogging a dead horse a lot of the time, I feel bad she has to deal with me.

Anyways, after the session I went to the toilet again and tried to put come cold water soaked tissue on my face and eyes to make it less red and calm down. Then after my sis was supposed to come and go run some errands and shop with me like usual but she was running a bit late so she told me to browse around. I was feeling a little scared, but I remembered I used to be okay doing this and agreed to do so. I went to a stationery store and browsed it at my leisure, was a little anxious and had to wait at the till for ages for someone to get there but it was kind of nice, I felt a little proud of myself for going and I did buy some pens I wanted. 

After that I just wandered around outside while waiting for my sis to come over and used the opportunity to take some photos of the things in the area, the weather wasn’t great but it gave me a reason to pull up my hood and have the courage to go around. I wish I could be brave enough to do this without having to feel like I need anonymity and to actually do it properly without rushing and thinking people might be looking and judging, but anyways it was something I wanted to do for a long time and I did it a little bit! I hope I can use this as motivation to go out more and improve my skills ^^

I also went to some other shops, then the supermarket and I asked the store worker about the stock of an item so that’s something! The rest of the day I just kind of sat around thinking about things again. I wanted to go back and do something nice like the posting art stuff but I’m still hesitating and also now I keep thinking that those sorts of things are not important and that I should be focusing on the more serious stuff like the job thing. Other people have jobs and they can afford to do nice things on the side because they have the important things sorted out and prioritised well, I don’t have a job so I shouldn’t be doing nice or meaningless things, I need to be serious... is the kind of thought train I have. It’s true, but I... I don’t know...

Anyways, I used up a whole day to write this post pretty much. It was really difficult and much much weirder but it was useful to get the thoughts out and down which is good. I feel I always keep trying to soften and justify things I say still, I still fear being recognised and perceived as bad and all that terrible jazz. Maybe I’ll get over it someday.

I want to end the post positively like I always do, but I’m struggling a little on this one. It’s always the overthinking, the irrational and the inaction and I’m getting worried about next week because time flies. What do I need to do to just get over the fears...? T^T I really wish there was some magic cure all medicine.

I guess only thinking the logical or not thinking at all and actually challenging the fears is the only way. Do I think I can do it? I might not be able to completely dispel the thoughts but I think trying a little more shouldn’t hurt too much. I gotta ingrain it into my brain some more, that all that matters is I tried, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’ll get better and easier with practice, it’ll be okay.

Baby steps and more determination is the way to go. I can do it, I can do it, I can do it! Even if not straight away, I’ll get on track and soon be chugging full speed. Believe in myself, be proud of myself and try my best, I keep forgetting. Take care of myself too.

I actually wrote a list of things I want to do, my dreams or a bucket list as such in my drafts, I want to be able to fulfil them and cross them off with a smile. To accomplish this, I just need to do them. More doing, less moping! It’s my life, I should be able to do all the things I want to do and be the person I want to be.

I gotta try harder, just persevere and do and that’s all there is to it, c’mon I can do this, I can do all these things someday or even today! Don’t let the little bumps on your journey throw you off, don’t let other’s words bring you down, keep fighting, keep going, it’ll be worth it! You can do it!! ^^

I think maybe I’ll go try post something for reals now on my other acc somewhere and then I’ll practice some phone order-y stuff! It won’t be so hard after taking the first few steps silly me, go go! C:

Have a wonderful evening and keep going, you can do it!

#therapy #avpd #depression #anxiety #social anxiety #feelings #thoughts #family #long post is long #but I did it! #believe in yourself #baby steps #don't give up! #you can do it! #it's hard now #but it'll pass #like when you're constipated and feel like you're gonna die #lolol #that was a terrible comparison #I'm sorry #but rly constipation is no joke #stress is really bad for bowels in general #don't stress! #try your best! #I wrote idk a record amount of times #I think I sound really ditzy here #oh welp

[justforbooks]

Min Jin Lee on the Road to Free Food for Millionaires

I had already failed at two novel manuscripts. Publishers had rejected my first manuscript, and I rejected the second, because it was not good enough to send out. I was 32 years old and beginning my third novel.

I had been trying to get a novel published since 1995, the year I quit being a lawyer. Since high school, I’d had a chronic liver disease, and I couldn’t work the hours of a Manhattan law firm without getting ill, so I thought I’d write fiction. My husband Christopher had a steady job with health insurance, but we had gotten our apartment and mortgage with two incomes in mind. Money was tight. After a miscarriage and a difficult pregnancy, our son Sam was born, and that same year, we learned that beloved family members, who could no longer support themselves, were awash in catastrophic debt, and suddenly, we were responsible for another household.

It is never a financially prudent idea to be a fiction writer, but I had not anticipated running through my savings in a year, being unable to earn even a modest living, not being able to afford part-time childcare to write, having a debilitating liver disease, and taking on the debts of people I love.

I was ashamed. After six years, I had not yet written a published novel, and I was broke from the choices I had made. I wondered how we’d pay all these bills, send Sam to college, and save for retirement. When my friends asked me to lunch, I made excuses because I could not afford the luxury of eating out. I could not answer when they asked kindly when my book would be available to purchase. I hid my failure by staying home.

From the moment I quit lawyering, I tried to learn how to write good fiction. I had written and published personal essays in high school. I was a history major in college, but for pleasure, I’d taken three writing classes in the English department. To my surprise, in my junior and senior years, I won top writing prizes for nonfiction and fiction, respectively. It’s possible that the college prizes misled me to believe that I could publish a novel immediately after quitting the law. However, the more I studied fiction, the more I realized that writing novels required rigorous discipline and mastery, no different than the study of engineering or classical sculpture. I wanted to get formal training. Nevertheless, after having paid for law school, I could not hazard the cost of an MFA. So, I fumbled around and made up my own writing program.

Always a reader of the 19th-century greats, I read more widely. I read every fine novel and short story I could find, and I studied the ones that were truly exceptional. If I saw a beautifully wrought paragraph, say from Julia Glass’s Three Junes, I would transcribe it in a marble notebook. Then, I would sit and read her elegant sentences, seemingly pinned to my flimsy notebook like a rare butterfly on cheap muslin. Craft strengthened the feelings and thoughts of the writer. When I read and reread Junot Díaz’s stories in Drown, I was struck by his courage and genius. His perfect narrative voice matched the intricacy and greatness of his plot architecture. Great fiction required not just lovely words or fine feelings, it demanded emotion, structure, ideals, and bravery. Fine works of fiction made me feel glad, the way I feel glad when I see a painting by a master, an ocean at dusk, or the face of a child.

In New York, it is possible to study with great writers for very little money. If one can afford to live here, there is a shock of riches in culture, so much so that artists work for almost nothing. Once a week, when Christopher could watch Sam after work, I took a turkey sandwich in a baggie or a carton of hummus and went to my writing classes or met with my writers’ group. For less than $200, I was able to study for several weeks with Lan Samantha Chang, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Jhumpa Lahiri at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop early on in their careers. I took a class at the Gotham Writers Workshop with Wesley Gibson. For about the same amount and for a season’s length of classes, I studied with Jonathan Levi, Joyce Johnson, Joseph Caldwell, Joan Silber, Shirley Hazzard, and Nahid Rachlin at the 92nd Street Y. The Y runs a famous preschool, and in the evenings, grown men and women sat in these preschool classrooms, smelling of tempera paints and box apple juice, anxious to know if their stories made any sense. Teachers generously encouraged me to continue, but privately, I wondered if I should quit. I was getting older, and I was afraid that I could not return to a steady profession.

The year after Sam was born, impulsively, I applied for a spot at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was accepted. The tuition was more money than we could spare, something like $1,000. However, I knew it was difficult to get a spot at all, and I felt I had to go. I had nursed Sam for a year, and I thought this might be a good reward for having given up my body—or so it seemed to me—for the pregnancies, the illnesses, and the breastfeeding. Christopher took time off from work and stayed with Sam, and I went to Tennessee. For nine days, I studied fiction with Alice McDermott and Rick Moody. Each day, after my class, I would go back to my dorm room and cry because I missed my baby.

At Sewanee, it felt like everyone had gone to prestigious MFA writing programs like Iowa and had book contracts. Back then, conference attendees wore name tags, and mine read just my name, indicating that I had not received any scholarship money to defray the cost of the conference tuition. One day, during lunch, I met a young woman whose name tag stated her name plus the name of her fellowship. She hadn’t paid any tuition because her publications had merited her a scholarship. There was a group of us at the table, most of whom had scholarships, and the young woman casually mocked the housewives who had paid full freight to attend the conference. I didn’t realize at first, but she was talking about me. That summer, I was 30 years old, a new mother, and I learned that a talented young woman artist held housewife writers in contempt. I couldn’t eat so I returned to my room. I avoided her for the rest of the conference, because I sensed she was right. It had been a mistake to come all this way to take a class. Then at the end of the conference, Alice McDermott nominated my workshop story for an anthology called Best New American Voices 2000, and though the editors didn’t take my piece, I thought that maybe I could keep trying.

Then something else good happened a few months later. I got an Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the category of fiction. It was for $7,000. I used some of that money to pay for a five-day writing class in California with the famous editor and writer Tom Jenks and the novelist Carol Edgarian. To improve my understanding of the sentence, I began to read poetry. I took a class at the Y with David Yezzi to learn prosody, and it changed the way I looked at every word. Whenever the poetry critic Helen Vendler came to the Y to give one of her seminars, I did whatever I could to attend.

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. I had no way to prove objectively the things I was learning, and I can’t tell you why I thought my self-curated education correct, but I followed the steps I could afford to take and somehow trusted that I would learn how to write something fine.

When I ran out of money for classes, I went to readings and bought hardcover books I could not afford. At the bookstore or library, I’d sit all the way in the back. If there was a Q&A, I would have half a dozen questions forming a lump in my throat, but I wouldn’t voice a word. I went to the readings of Herman Wouk, Marilynne Robinson, Junot Díaz, Joyce Carol Oates, Gary Shteyngart, Julian Barnes, Richard Ford, Jay McInerney, Chang-rae Lee, Veronica Chambers, Ian McEwan, Joan Didion, Susanna Moore, Shirley Hazzard, James Salter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Rick Moody, Susan Minot, and many more. I wanted to know: How did you do that? How did you send me into this whole other world of your creation? How did you make me feel these new and old feelings? How did you keep trusting that it was all worthwhile? And yet, I could barely form an audible sentence around them, but I suppose I didn’t have to, because I had their work, and their work spoke to me and stayed with me in a private way without me having to prove anything to them or them to me.

As a habit, I read on the subway. One day, I was finishing V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas on the 2 train, and I burst into tears, amazed at the magnificence of Naipaul’s literary achievement. I knew of his politically controversial attitudes (e.g., he thought women writers were unimportant), and yet I understood that in this work, this man had done something extraordinary with fiction. Through characterization and sympathy, Naipaul had made me care deeply for a humble and curious character, who so clumsily yet so vitally struggled for his wishes. Later, I learned that Arwacas, the fictional setting of the novel, was based on Chaguanas, an immigrant town where East Indian-Trinidadians live and where Naipaul had grown up. Naipaul gave me permission to write about Elmhurst, my town in Queens.

After the classes, the readings, the discarded drafts, I started to research my novel like I was a journalist. When I wanted to learn more about my character Ted Kim, the investment banker, I interviewed several men who went to Harvard Business School. One of them told me that I should pretend to apply, because one had to see a school like that to believe it. So I did. I logged into the website, and I filled out a visitor’s form, and I was able to come in for a day.

I sat in on a class. There were maybe 25 students, and each person had a name card in front of him or her. It was impossible to hide in that room; however, what was clear to me was that no one was hiding. It wasn’t like any class I had ever attended in high school, college, or even law school. I don’t know if everyone in that room had done his homework or if she understood the lecture and the complicated spreadsheet on the whiteboard, but I learned something about these attractive young people. I surmise that what distinguishes a Harvard Business School student is his confidence in his abilities. I have never been in a building so filled with young people who look like they can do anything and want to solve very difficult problems. After a few hours, I started thinking that maybe I should apply for business school because the energy was so buoyant. If anyone was depressed or anxious or doubtful, I think he or she must have stayed home that day. No, I did not apply to HBS, but that day changed me, because I started to value research, not for the details or the velvet scraps of dialogue, but for the feelings that new information made me have. I felt confident just by being with other highly energetic people. I wondered what it would be like to have two years of that atmosphere when even I, an applicant pretender and a writer with no book, felt that positive after mere hours. So I took that feeling and gave it to Ted, a man who believes that he is right even when he is troubled or afraid. Ted’s convictions propel him to great economic success. However, even his convictions are weakened in the presence of sexual desire and a secret yearning for a kindred person. Ted is not good, but research allowed me to recognize his vulnerability, which allowed me to love Ted in his totality.

Then something wonderful happened. The Missouri Review published a story I’d rewritten 17 or 18 times. I had a Bankers Box filled with just drafts of that one story. Maybe that’s what it took.

Not much after that, my wrists began to hurt. I had trouble lifting a coffee cup. My son was in preschool then, and to drop him off and pick him up, I had to walk a few blocks, but it was painful. My ankles were swollen and holding hands with my son to cross the street was hard. I couldn’t turn round doorknobs or walk up stairs with ease. After several misdiagnoses, I was sent to a rheumatologist who guessed correctly that my liver disease was making me ill. I had developed liver cirrhosis, and I had never had a drop of wine.

There were a lot of doctors, and they wrote about my case to each other. A gastroenterologist wanted me to try a course of treatment with Interferon, because I was so young, and liver transplants were not so easy to be had. For three months, I gave myself a shot of this medicine in my thigh each day. My hair fell out in clumps in the shower. When I bent down to sweep the floor, blood vessels would break in my face to make bruises. I could not leave the house sometimes because I had diarrhea or because I could not stop vomiting. Each day, I had a few hours of energy, and I would store them up for Sam, my three-year-old. I wanted him to think that I was well.

When the treatment ended, my liver function tests improved markedly. My doctor was cautious, so he took more tests. I continued to work on Free Food for Millionaires, compelled to finish a first draft. A year after the treatment, the doctor told me that I was cured of my chronic liver disease. One in a million, he marveled. I went home that afternoon, and I lay down on my bed with my good news. This life was unexpected. I told myself that I could not be so afraid of judgment that I would hold back. And so I did not.

When I sold the manuscript in the summer of 2006, I counted 11 years as my apprenticeship. I was 37 years old.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS

[survivorindia]

Creepy random asshole who appears randomly at the beginning and then disappears. - Kendall (Episode 12)

https://youtu.be/cN6UaKTHxUA Ok heres what I want everyone to know. IM THE MOST PARANOID PERSON IN THE FUCKING WORLD. AND I CAN READ PEOPLE VERY WELL. AND I THINK I HAVE GONE MENTALLY INSANE BUT AT THE SAME TIME I FEEL FUCKING AMAZING! If yall think that I am going to go home 9TH! place! NINTH FUCKING PLACE by the hands of the seasons biggest buffoons than yall dont know me very well HUH. Lexi g, kendall and I made an alliance chat today and it sat so good with me. I was like omg yas we finally have someone (Kendall and I) We finally do! ... Then I got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach and it was just something that did not sit right. I couldnt put my finger on it. I knew robin and alexis were voting me tn, and people have been after me hard core...since...well...before merge and the fact that Im sitting here in single digits is fucking surreal. Im probably going home soon.....SO WOULDNT IT MAKE SENSE FOR SOME ONE TO FLIP!? WOULDNT IT? I MEAN. IF I WAS IN ANYONE ELSES SHOES. I would make sure as FUCK to get me out. This is not cocky but like....im still here after how many fucking attempts? Which is why I think ash and lexi g are voting me out..OR GOING AGAINST me so thats both lexis, robin and ashley But lets look at the facts of why I think theyre going against me No one talks to me all day, except for alex and kendall. Interesting. Lexi G, plays lost puppy like no one cared about her in her alliance. Interesting. Ashley is being short with me. HM. Go on call with Lexi G, feel like abosoLUTE SHIT AND I KNOW SHES LYING TO ME, Lexi mentions ashley on call but backtracks and im like..........................oh my fucking god. !!! THEN HERE COMES THE STORM: I tell kendall ashley is voting me out, they make a chat, i tell kendall to add lexi g, this is secretly a test to see if my suspicions are true AND 5 MINS AFTER THE CHAT IS MADE ASHLEY ASKS ME WHY I THINK IM VOTING HER OUT LOLOLOLOLOLOLO FUCK OFF\ [6:17:53 PM] Sarah: ashley [6:17:57 PM] Sarah: can u just be honest [6:17:58 PM] Sarah: with me [6:17:59 PM] Sarah: like [6:18:01 PM] Sarah: legit [6:18:04 PM] Sarah: idc that ur voting me [6:18:07 PM] Sarah: but like [6:18:12 PM] Ashley Hudson: I am not voting you. [6:18:13 PM] Sarah: ive been NOTHING but straight up [6:18:17 PM] Sarah: like IT WOULD MAKE SENSE [6:18:25 PM] Sarah: I would do it if I were u [6:18:31 PM] Ashley Hudson: it wouldn't make sense I THINK IVE GONE INSANE BUT LIKE I HAVE A GUT FEELING I JUSY KNOW AND I HOPE ITS RIGHT OTHERWISE ASHLEYS GONNA HATE MEEEEE Ashley: you have been like my #1 this whole time why would I throw that away me thinking: YOU LITERALLY GOT "WHO DO U FORGET IS STILL PLAYING THIS GAME" IN TOUCHY SUBJECTS OF FUCKING COURSE YOU WANT TO MAKE A BIG MOVE IDC IF I GO HOME BY ROCKS IDFC BUT LIKE WHY DO THESE BITCHES THINL IM FUCKIJG STUPID IVE BEEN SAYING THIS ALL GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 NOW FOR THE HOME LANDING: Ashley: you have been like my #1 this whole time why would I throw that away you are the one that is aligned with Kendall, and I guess want Lexi G in on that? that's cool. #CONFIRMED LEXI G AND ASHLEY FLIPPED CONFIRMED AHDHDOIFHJSDOI;FKJSDF WHY WOULD ASHLEY KNOW ABOUT THAT OTHER THAN LEXI G FUCK OFF WERE GOING TO ROCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKS! SEE U ON THE OTHERSIDE BITCHES

The detailed account of my evil plan of which I shown to the Samantha that I had purchased-

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FC9bUbYixYpVNdOA6LwrnUhXryI4Bo3tnWLVqB4RgMY/edit

You know, I think I finally get it. I think I finally understand Sarah, Jordan, and even Gavin. Allow me to elaborate. Unless you have been drunk for this entire season, it is well known fact that we were surrounded by Pathological Liars. I'm not saying that to be a judgmental asshat, I came to this conclusion via unbiased observation. Jaiden.... Dom.... Ruben.... What do all these people have in common? If you said they had a dick, yes but that's not the point I'm trying to make. At one point or another someone on my side tried to reach out to them and be all like "Hey let's work together because no one would suspect it," Jaiden/Dom/Ruben would agree and not even five minutes after they make the vow, they would go out of their way to get those three out. Whether they expose them, give them false information, or just talk shit; these guys would always take advantage of the trust they were given and go out of their way to make a messy as fuck tribal. And after everything has gone to shit what do they do? They come crawling back like their battered wives and be like "Hey let's work together". And the same shit keeps happening over and over again. Until they get voted out. I almost fell into that cycle in the case of Robin but luckily my personality, which is one of a vengeful emotionally stunted woman child, prevented it from happening after she revealed me to Gavin. But I think I'm about to fall into it again... though this time with Lexi L. Lexi L. is a fascinating individual, without Gavin around, she appears to be a more rational and calculating kind of player. Given the right tools, I think she could make some sort of impact on the game. Plus her sense of humor is amazing! I really really want to keep her around and not just because I have a death wish or because I am bored. I think she could be a useful tool for my quest for world domination.... well game domination... If I learned anything from ORGs, this one in particular, it's that the truth doesn't really matter. Everyone has already crafted their own stories in their head, one's where they are the super heroes or the super villains, maybe even the damsel in distress. Even if the truth is shown right in their face, people refuse to accept it, instead finding refuge in their earlier perceptions. I think that's why the whole edgic thing is so popular, it falls in line with this kind of thinking. The story I want to "create" is an underdog story. One where the villain is Lexi L and the reluctant hero is myself. Lexi L takes out everyone I am aligned with, everyone who is considered a threat, and then at the final 4 or maybe the final 5, I behead the dragon. I promise I am not doing this to fuel my own ego nor do I have any real delusions of grandeur. I know and accept the fact that I'm not some messiah archetype, hell I'm not even the satan archetype. I'm more like the creepy random asshole who appears randomly at the beginning and then just sort of disappears. The thing is, they don't know that. All I need to do is to make them think the opposite of that fact. Plus if I do that Sarah, Alex and Gavin won't hate me forever! Which would be great because I like all of them very much and don't think I'll be able to handle their hatred. Now that I think about it, they'll probably hate forever after reading this..... Why am I putting this down in the confessionals again? Oh right because I went this entire season without gloating about some evil plan and it's starting to feel very weird. I think I want to work with Lexi L to make this happen. I want us to craft a story in which the hero and villain fight to the death... but I'm probably going to leave that part out if I ever pitch it to her. On paper this sounds like a good idea but only if you didn't read my first couple paragraphs... I have no sure way to control her. What I am I supposed to do rely on her benevolence and friendship? That is a terrible incentive for loyalty, I mean look at right now, I am literally plotting to destroy my own alliance. And the only thing that is supposed to stop me is the power of 'friendship' or 'showmance' or whatever... Clearly this isn't working! All it's doing is making me feel mildly guilty and paranoid. Another thing that's stopping me is the past. If one goes through my previous confessionals from previous games, you'll see they all have one thing in common. Well two things if you count the idol fucking... Every time I tried to flip or make a #bigmood, bad things follow. Don't believe me? Malaysia: Tried to help Mitchell, got voted out by everyone and their mothers. Rebels versus Rogues: Tried to help out Simon, got idol out. Technotits: Tried to help out little AJ, ended up voted out unanimously... again! I may be dumb enough to fall for the same thing three times in a row but not a forth! I mean, I think. Cause I already gave Lexi L. the map we've been using to find the vote negator, places we looked included. For all I know, she already showed it to Gavin, Alex, Ashley, and Liam. I'm not as concerned with Sarah cause I already told her but I'm not sure if one vote will make much of a difference. I don't want Lexi L. to be my Jaiden or Dom or Ruben, all that will really do is hinder me. But I want to do this plan so badly! If it seems like I wasted your time with a pointless subplot, chances are I have and I am almost sorry. I swear it's like nobody can make a decision on their own! Like it takes ten billion years for anything to get done! LIKE UGGGHHHHHHHHHH Also I think we found out what the opal idol does. And it's from Hellwaii so we hate it based on instinct.  Also now Sarah actually wants to vote out Gavin and I don't know how I feel about that...  I mean I can save her probably but should I? Because I don't think it's in my best interest to cheat a group of people who have my back over a group of complete strangers who don't.  On the other hand if I just be a good little puppy and tattle on her and save everyone, would it make a difference? I'll just be following the same path I have been trying to escape...  I know I know this is almost exactly what I asked for but I need the option to go back if things get to heavy. I adore Sarah but I shouldn't drop everything just because she asks me too.... The Gavin's plan was to have 4 vote for Lexi and 3 vote for Robin. Sarah is one of the Lexi votes so if I could convince her to flip and make it a  three three three vote (Lexi, Robin, Gavin) then we can flip with other Lexi and nobody will know it was us... Oh wait now it turns out that they want her out. Again, what did she do to piss these people off? I should probably stop editing in real time and actually submit this damn thing 

Well everything has gone to hell. I'm pretty sure Sarah has gone insane, she keeps saying that Ashley and Lexi G. are trying to get her out but refuses to explain why. She said it was a gut feeling and I guess, despite how psychotic she may sound, she could be right. Ashley isn't exactly close with any of us and was pretty crestfallen that she was picked out as most forgettable in touchy subjects. So her flipping would make sense. Lexi G is... well she has been going on and on with the woe is me crap and I almost bought into it. Fuck I actually did buy into it for like the past week and a half. There is just something off about her... like even someone like me could sense it. Right after Sarah told Lexi G that she was flipping the vote to Robin, the news started to get upset in the main chat. And honestly, I don't begrudge them for it. I mean, it seems like every time something would go their way something else would go in and stop them. They swap fuck Sarah and Ashley, we send them idols, Jaiden finds an idol, the hosts blurt it out in the VL, They finally get someone to flip to their side, SARAH GOES APE SHIT INSANE. If stuff like this happened to me on a day to day basis I would probably have a similar reaction. Hell I did have a similar reaction in Malaysia, though I was more mopey and passive aggressive. Also some chick named Julia (I think it's the magical one but I'm not really sure?) might be harassing Lexi L. And the hosts are allegedly talking shit about the contestants, the newbies in particular, and that's kind of messed up. Lexi L seems to be on the verge of quitting or she is just playing it up for our pity, at this point I really don't know. Like I want to empathize with her and the other contestants but I don't honestly know whether or not I should. Like sometimes it seems like there is layer after layer beneath them and every time I think I find a genuine emotion of some kind it turns out to be a lie. Like this shit happened all the time in High School, I don't exactly want to relive it in here. I know this differs from my usual calculating yet spacey confessionals about conspiracy theories or how weak I am but this is supposed to be fun, not just for me and my allies but for everyone around us. We should be enjoying coming up with strategies and trying to fight each other. We should be talking and having fun but we aren't... everyone seems to genuinely hate each other. And any reach across the aisle is seen as some sort of threat. I liked being friends with Robin, I liked talking to Lexi L about the 100 and other things, fuck I even liked talking to Jaiden and his day to day life. I didn't want to betray them or be mean to them, even when I talked shit in confessionals I mostly did it for my own amusement. Yeah things are going well but I can't help but feel like this is undeserved. Like power came at the cost of everyone else's enjoyment. It's like the final battle with Master Hand in Super Smash Bros Brawl. You go through all these stages against the master hand, from beginning stages to the end but then... he just turns into an orb. He doesn't fight back, he doesn't do anything he just lies there waiting to be defeated. If this is all just an elaborate ploy to get us to lower our guards then seriously fuck you. I hate it when my emotions over power my brain and if you guys did it on purpose that is a new fucking low. It's not smart it's not clever it's just unnecessary cruelty and I hate you for it. But if it's the truth... then I'm sorry.

Well Sarah decided to play her Ruby Idol... I am probably fucked... Well if I go home know that I am not going to stop spamming the confessional because fuck you that's why.

Well Sarah decided to play her Ruby Idol... I am probably fucked... Well if I go home know that I am not going to stop spamming the confessional because fuck you that's why. Well, Haven't made on of these in a while. Oops. So the game is going okay, Sarah and I are working together pretty closely. Though she usually lives up to her villain title so I will forever be on guard with her. Gavin and I are still okay I guess, I think he might be getting closer to the other "side" or he just is getting closer to Alex, who knows. Pretty much our group is me, Sarah, Gavin, and Alex, from what I can see right now. We haven't talked much in that chat because we are still working with the bigger group but as number dwindle I can see us talking much more in our alliance chat. I am not too salty about Jordan leaving (A while ago, I know) but I do miss his strategic ways. We just did touchy subjects, and I didn't receive the answers that I usually get, which is cool because I am trying to play this game a bit different than I usually do. In fact, I got the "who do you forget is playing?" Majority vote. Yeah, that would be because I am doing shit behind y'all's back, duh. I think by the end of this game, my stance as a "hero" will not quite be true anymore and I am excited. Should be interesting.

Alright, so I found the negator that my whole alliance has been looking for. But tbh I ain't going to tell them because it could come in handy for my game later. I don't want the game to end up being just my alliance and have my ass end up on the bottom unable to do anything so hopefully to shake things up later I can keep that I have the negator under wraps. Maybe they will "forget" I am even a person that could have it. ;)

#youdontgetmycrownjustcause