#they were big in it but it feels like a joke writ large which makes it fun

[jlf23tumble]

do you have any thoughts on rbb/sbb in relation to a larry breakup in 2015? i always have a hard time reconciling the idea that they were broken up with the existence of the bears even though i do think they were very hot & cold during that time period

Eh, my own head canon is that the rift in 2015 wasn't some kind of I'm never speaking to you ever again, it's just the way more public-facing f/w/b situationship, none of which negates what was goin' on with the bears

#that promo season meant they were in pocket and bored out of their collective ghords 24/7 so why not fuck around/find out #i also don't think it was JUST the two of them w/r/t the bears #they were big in it but it feels like a joke writ large which makes it fun #like some things are pure them (just reviewing that masterpost #and rbb puking in the toilet IS teenage harry doing the same for example) #but i wouldn't doubt some other pastiches in that whole fever dream of a tableau represent multiple somethings to someones #and i truly love that idea #and since none of us knows shit about it #i'll run with it lol #(more accurately--sit with it--you get me)

[lost-inthedream]

Swimming time leads to heated moment with SF9

☆★ Requested for the writting party

NSFW alert, but it’s more sensual than smut.

For this reaction, let us consider the following ambience: a quite large pool of a rented house in a Summer night + dim yellowish lights + starry peaceful night + holidays.

Scenarios under the cut. Have fun!!

➹ Youngbin:

Likes the idea of swimming at night as a way to relax your bodies from the exciting day you spent together. Helps you at floating on the water, delicately gliding his palms through your back. You feel your spine being crossed by nice caresses, which are also somehow inciting. You know he is not trying anything with you because he said he was tired but, as the man you love, he easily awakes your needs. “I won’t relax with you touching me like this.”

You make the poor guy confused. He stops his motions, resting his hands on your low back instead. You look into each other eyes and he fades his serious expression away replacing it with a loose smirk. “ash, you!” It is not a repressive comment at all.

He takes you to the pool deck in his arms and lies you there, only to lifts himself too and cage you with his arms and legs, water dropping from his hair to your face “I know an alternative way to relax you good.”

“Tell me more about it.”

He leans closer, now propped on his elbows, his hips land on yours and you close your eyes imagining the beautiful love that both of you are about to perform.

➹ Inseong:

Loves that a perfect pool is available only for the two of you whenever you want to jump in. You both orbit around one another with these child-like smiles, softly moving your limbs without fighting the water weight. He extend his arms to call you for him. The affable gesture makes you feel attracted right away and lead to hi. You always craves being grabbed in his zealous embrace.

He holds you in a way that your feet cannot touch the bottom of the deluxe tank. His digits pressing onto your back close to your butt and, higher on your shoulder blade. His neck is right before your face, so accessible that you cannot help setting your lips open there. Inseong sighs 

“Y/N, why are you sucking me now?”

“I don’t know” you confess now wrapping a hand on the area right under his hair. 

He plays with the knot that tights your bikini bra and lets you be. You get sure that eventually your bra is going to be discarded and floating on the water. Your hands plunge again into the water to scratch his broad back and draw some new groans off his mouth.

➹ Jaeyoon:

After actually swimming around and using so much energy, you and him eventually rest on the shallow area of the pool, the soft night breeze being tender to your cool skin. “I am living my best life. Can I say the same about you?” You peck him on the lips and nod. Being alone in a fancy big pool is something hard to top.

You are still looking into each other’s eyes, so you can see when some idea crosses his mind like a comet. “Let’s make it better” he suddenly says.

You tilt your head but take pleasure in his excitement. He pulls you close to him and slicks your wet hair back. Your chest touching his bare one only having your bikini thin fabric as a barrier.

“What about a last swimming?”he suggests before sliding to the deeper area and you observe as he does something that you can’t discern because the dim lights don’t really help. Despite that, in some seconds he shows you his swim briefs in his hands, a daring smirk. You would be too stupid if you not swam completely naked and then did something else underwater.

➹ Dawon:

Being there with his bae makes him so calm and silent. You both feel completely free and inaccessible to the worries from the outside world, plus your drinks are near at hand. What else can you need? You sip from your cup as he remains ethereal in front of you.

 “Can I drink a little bit from yours?” you ask.

 He handles you his cocktail, that was still laying in the deck, right away. You suck from the straw and let the cool liquid cross your tongue and throat. Your feedback is a soft smile, the stick still between your lips.

Before you sip one more time he takes the cup off your hand and give you his lips instead. For a brief time your cold tongue touches his, still warm, still into the nice water his own flavor.  “It surely tastes better from your mouth” he says pulling back for a brief moment.

His words turn that key inside you and all you can do is smash his lips again and feel his back muscles underneath your hands as he forces your panties down by its side straps without pulling them down for real. You slide your hands down and drag them into his swim briefs.

➹ Zuho:

Takes you up on his back and roams around in the water. It starts as a playful activity but you eventually run out all of your energy and just stay there close one to another. You snuggle on his hair and feel your body so lazy. He lets you go down and reach the bottom with your feet. Now that you are face to face you give some attention to the light that reflects on the water and projects wavy sparkles on his face.

“Ju, you’re so pretty.” You sigh.

“You’ve already told me it earlier and millions of times” He chuckles.

You cup his face and sweetly explain the water reflects. He Notices it happens with your face too and takes you by the hand towards the pool degrees.

“Why don’t you take it off?” You are sitting by the stairs and half of your torso is out of the water. You know what he is thinking about, so you just shake your head slightly faking disapproval and untie the knot behind your neck, letting the bra cup fall down and expose your breasts. “Listen, you are the prettiest under this light” he complements you as he comes over and shifting his gaze between your face and your tits.

➹ Rowoon:

Seokwoo has not really noticed how much he needed a holiday out of city until you tell him that you wanted to lend this house with him for some days. Now you were both spending your first night swimming in that luxurious pool. “Now I’m sure you are my angel, Y/N” he speaks out when you reach the pool edge together after crossing its entire extent in a lazy speed. “Why?” you ask him finding it a funny comment.

“Because you brought me here and I’m feeling so good.”

“Of course, I brought my little baby here” you joke at his word choice and poke his nose.

He lifts you so you can wrap your legs around his waist. “Maybe not little but yours and I like when you carry me to especial places.”

You stay like that for a while, without moving more than your mouths and tongues, tilting your heads in opposite directions and breathing through little pauses, until you stop. “Should we get out of here?”

He rejects your idea with a head movement and puts you sitting on the deck, his hands softly part your legs.

➹ Yoo Taeyang:

You and him end up occupying the same sun lounger, being bathed by the moonlight and watched by the stars that night. You even tried to stay each on your own chair but it was impossible. You were now sitting between his legs, your bodies and swimsuits still wet despite your already dry skin. “Baby, I guess I saw a shooting star!” you shout excited.

“Really?”

Taeyang’s reaction makes you furrow your eyebrows. You thought you were both looking at the sky. So you rearrange yourself and face him, now kneeling on the space right in front of his crotch. “Where is your mind at, Tae?”

He laughs it off but you keep waiting for any answer from him. “Okay, I was trying to not get a boner and I’ve succeed. You see.”

You look down on his swim briefs suddenly feeling your lips curl in excitement. Your hands fall like a feather over his soft clothed member, you draw minimal caresses. “Why do you think it would be a problem?”

He pulls you on his lap incite you to move with soft pats on your butt.

➹ Hwiyoung:

You do not notice it, but you are, in fact, tiptoeing towards the pool. Inside it, your boyfriend waited. However he is now distracted because you took some (a lot of) time to go downstairs and meet him. You stare as he crosses the pool by swimming, and getting away from the edge where you stopped at. He looks at your direction as he reaches the opposite end. “Good job, Kyun!” you cheer loud.

He smiles slicking some hair back. “Why are you wearing that?”

How are you supposed to answer to such question? By “that” he certainly means your bikini but what is wrong with it?

“We’re alone. We can swim in a more comfortable way.” He explains getting suddenly embarrassed.

You don’t remove your items but enters the water graciously and floats to him. You first action after he takes your arms is getting your hands down on him and checking his bottom parts. As expected, you find his dick free and hold it. “Be honest. Do you really asked me to swim?”

➹ Chani:

You have just swum to the edge so you could eat some grapes. There was some fresh fruits set over a pretty silver tray. You had your back to Chani as you pluck some purple spheres from its bunch and inserted them into your mouth. You do not see him coming but, his arms wrap around you and he places his chin on your shoulder. The grape that you have in your grip you offer to him, who opens his mouth and chew on it.

You keep taking fruits and feeding both of you. He sometimes peck your shoulders, his rubs are nonstop all over your waist and stomach. His chest glued to your back, you can even sense his soft clad cock, until it is not soft anymore.

“Chani?”

He hums back while chewing, now his hands are crossing your panties line.

You turn your face to the side and look him into the eyes until he fades that serious face and actually tell you what he is planning.

It does not take much until you hold the side of the pool and let him rub himself against your butt.

#sf9 reactions #sf9 imagines #sf9 scenarios #sf9 smut

[fandomsyoulove]

All the events that lead to Sirius running away from his family.

Sirius Black x reader, Sirius Black x Potter reader, Regulus Black x reader.

Summary: A ball in Grimauld Place doesnt end as expected either for Sirius Black or Lena Potter, James´s sister.

Author´s note: Okay, this is a part of a story Ive been writting lately. I never post what I write, but I just felt like sharing it. If someone wants it I can upload more parts. Thank you xx. PD: Enlgish is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes.

Words: 3200. 

Lena breathed deeply standing in the mirror. Regulus had invited her to their family yearly ball and she was mortified. She was so done with that family, they were ruinous, bad people. Her mind drifted to the two brothers. Regulus would be glad she was going, and she also felt that Sirius would appreciate it. After their rendevouz in the Room of Requirements their friendship was as strong as ever. She would spend more time with the Marauders since then, distancing herself from her Slytherin boys, to the Gryffindors joy. She knew how bad the two boys had it and wished time and time again that she had any power over them and she could just bring them home, away from those irresponsible parents.

It was not only Walburga and Orion that she had to worry about, it was also Bellatrix, and Narcisa's boyfriend, Lucius. Pureblood supremacy talk was the usual take in these events and she really dreaded to go. How in their right mind would want to spend hours in the same room as all of those racist supremacists? It was tiresome, to say the least. Still, as always, she couldn't help to want their approval. So she had bought a green dress with some straps on the back. It was silky, and she hoped to blend in. Obviously, she had Reg in mind. She wanted to make an impression on him. They had been together for the whole year and she felt the need to constantly live up to his standards. Of course he had the same pressure, they both shared it, that's why the two had to be perfect.

Ever since the room of requirements incident, in which Lena and Sirius had almost kissed each other, on multiple occasions, she had tried not to think about his words. That confession she was not supposed to have heard. Well if it had been for Sirius, he would have woken her up and told her. But she knew he had his brother to think of. And so did she. Thats why she concentrated hard in being his friend now more than ever. She figured that if she was to keep on with these confusing feelings, she would have to maintain their friendship, not talking would just make her want to see him even more.

All of these thoughts clouded her mind as she was putting on her make up. Her lips a bright red, his eye shadow dark. Just in that instant, his brother made an appearance.

- My, my, sis you look stuning.- he complimented her as he turned her and the dress lightly swayed.

- Thanks, James.- she smiled and soon James turned serious.

- I need to ask you something. - he pleaded, the girl just nodded asking him to continue. - Can you please have an eye on Padfoot?- he asked preocupied for his friend.

- I will, dont you worry. He is my friend as well.- she responded taking his hand.

- I know, I know. Its just, I wish I could be there with him. He never talks about it, just curses his mother over and over again. - the girl nodded.

- I know, dont worry about that. You are a good friend. - she was quick to reply.

- I try.- he smiled once again, hugging his sister before they made their way out to where their parents were hanging out.

- You look absolutely gorgeous.- Euphemia Potter took her in.

- Thank Merlin Regulus is a chivalrous kid.- Fleamont raised his brows.- You really are stunning, Lena. - he complimented. She smiled once again, lightly caressing her curly short hair so it would fall into place.

- I better get going.- she finally spoke making her way to the fireplace.

- Grimlaud place 12.- she shouted, careful not to get ashes on her dress.

When she arrived, the room was abandoned, except for Sirius Black.

- Lena!- he greated smirking as always. He quickly hugged her, not really taking in her appeareance until they backed from the other. His hand grabbed hers.

- You look so amazing! That dress fits you in every place.- he spoke bewilded with the girl who had a large smile on her face.- I wish it were red but hey, at least it has a slit on the leg. - his eyes roamed over her, who was already red from all the blushing.

- You look great as well, Siri. I mean you usually look good, more than good. But that tunic is working miracles.- she began talking, not knowing what had come over her.

- Be careful now. One would think that you wanted some of this.- he gestured to himself. The girl laughed loudly, and suddenly, Regulus was at the door. The two quickly separated.

- Reg!- she screamed, hugging him tightly, not noticing Sirius threatening expression.

- I thought you couldn't be prettier, guess I was wrong.- he looked at her adoringly, just as Sirius had a few moments ago.

- Well I thought the same, none of us was right.- both laughed before kissing. The older brother gagged behind them before making his way to the ball on the living room.

- I missed you.- she spoke while she caressed his face. He smiled at this, finally in comfort in her hands.

- I did too, more than you know.- he replied grabbing her hands and linking them over his chest.

- Well, we shouldn't keep the others waiting should we?- she smiled, trying to cheer him up.

- We will leave them breathless, even Cissy and that Malfoy.- he replied and both laughing made their way to the ball.

The black hall was decorated with plenty of silver and green decorations. Lena stared at the room in awe, and also a little bit disgusted. It was dark, with the black walls and all, the only light coming from the gigantic lights.

The two tried to walk with confidence. Her hand on his, holding it tightly, reasuringly.

Soon everybody's atention was on them. Some compliments from Walburga, Orion being proud of the Slytherin colours, Narcissa loving the hair. All viewed by a lurking Sirius that already had a glass of wine in his hand.

- You love her, dont you?- his favourite cousin stood next to him, in a gorgeous black dress.

- I dont know what your talking about.- he tried to play it cool, drinking some more wine.

- Cmon, Sirius. It is quite obvious. You cannot keep your eyes from her. - she replied, trying to get him to confess.

- Maybe I do. But I cant do anything about it.- he said lowly, dwoning yet another cup, this time champagne.

- It is a terrible situation you find yourself in. Both options ahead of you, you can try to be the good brother, or go for the girl. - she reasoned.

- Where is Ted?- Sirius tried to change the topic but his tone was harsh.

- Shhh, keep quiet will you?- she pleaded hoping that no one had heard.

-Ah, but that is a terrible situation.- Sirius spoke bitterly. To which his cousin just replied.

- I dont care that you are heartbroken, dont mention him here. That is a very sensible topic.- she spoke, serious all of a sudden.

- Im sorry. Alcohol and anger are not a good mix.- he tried to sound remorseful. The older Black understood and just left him.

Over and over again Sirius cursed himself. He should've told her over the moments he had this past year. Why hadnt him? How could he let this happen? Lena was dancing gracefully with Regulus, both laughing at something she had said. His hateful parents stared at the couple grinning. Lena and Reg were the perfect couple and everybody knew it. How could he have allowed this to happen. It should be him, dancing with her. It should be him making her laugh. It should be him, who his parents would gaze at with pride.

But there he was, already having a few too many drinks. Making a show of himself, perpetuating the view his family had of him. It was crazy how much he despised every single one of them. He wanted to take the girl, runaway with her and never turn back.

A few hours passed and nothing seemed to change. Every once in a while his parents would scold him for drinking too much or asking him to stop sulking around. But what else could he do? When the girl he adored didnt leave his brotherss side.

Even Andromeda was dancing with the couple, seeming to be very close with the Potter. Slytherin budies, Sirius thought. He felt betrayed, miserable, this was unberable. He needed to leave, he could only hope that the night would end soon. But oh how wrong he was.

- It seems like you are having a great time.- the only moment he had taken his eyes off her, she had made her way towards him.

- Haha, youre funny. - he resorted.

- Cmon, Siri. Ive seen you all night only moving to grab more drinks. You are the life of the party.- she continued to joke.

- Well this is hell. - he added staring at her with anger.

- I know, right?- she replied laughing to which he raised his brows. - What?- she asked taking his cup and drinking from it.

- You dont seem too bad with Reggie and my lovely parents.- he said bitterly.

- How have you sneaked firewhiskey in here?- she wondered taking another big gulp from it, without ackonwledging him.

- shhh. - he tried shutting her up, but her laugh was contagious.

- Oh Cmon. - she laughed again grabbing his arm.

- Lena, Ive had way too much to drink and I see that you are served as well so maybe try to lay off the booze. - his attempt at being responsible was cut off by the girl.

- Im not that bad, you aren't either. Now, we should dance.- she reached for his hand.

The boy just stared at the gorgeous girl, this was his dream, wasn't it?

- Cmon, Reg is dancing with your mum and I really dont want to dance with your father. So please.- she pleaded with puppy eyes. Sirius felt like he couldnt move, not saying a word, his eyes fixed on her. - Sirius, are you with us?- she asked when she didnt get a response. Finally, breaking from his trance, the boy took her hand and smiled.

- Ive been waiting the whole night for you to ask me to dance.- he whispered in her ear once they linked arms at the dance floor. She just smiled, squeezing his hand tighter. He, in response, gripped her waist. She found it hard to breathe, not daring to look at him. Soon they were waltzing around the room. Neither could say a word, only the music could be heard. Their eyes fixed on the others. They moved gracefully, without paying much atention to the rest. They didnt notice the stranged look on Sirius parents, or Regs anoyed look.

- Im sorry. Ive tried to come to you a few times, but Reg wouldnt allow me to leave his side. - she finally spoke as a slower song played and they continued moving through the hall.

- Dont worry, the wait was worth it.- he replied, and another smile crept into her face. His grey eyes on her hazels. Suddenly, Sirius turned her around, and when they were back face to face, she noticed his stern look, she mimicked him, not knowing if she had done something wrong. - I dont like Regulus treating you like that. - he stated, his eyes everywhere but on her.

- He needs me, Siri. - she quickly replied as they tilted to the side. - Besides, I knew I would be able to see you after some time. - she added. - If I really had wanted to, trust me, I would have come. - Sirius frown became wider.

- I knew the wait would make this more worth a while.- she whispered in his ear, her lips barely centimeters away. He breathed in deeply, closing his eyes, smelling her perfume, she was so close to him.

The song ended abruptly and they separated to applaud, still gazing at the other.

Andromeda made her way towards them looking stunning.

- Im sorry darling. - she referred to the girl. - I havent danced with my cousin for the whole night. Would you mind?- she pleaded, looking at the younger Black that still hadnt processed what had happened.

- Of course, Drome.- she said lovingly to her friend. - Ill leave you to it.- she added smiling, her hand reaching for his arm for a few seconds.

The boy turned quickly when she walked past him, but soon, his cousin moved his head with her hands to fix his gaze on her.

- You are so in love.- she smiled, her dark eyes filled with love for him.

- I cannot help it. - he turned them around so he could stare at her once again. - She is perfect.- he added, lovestruck. His lips parted, adoration clear in his eyes.

- I dont know how this will turn out, but either way Im invested.- Andromeda joked, messing with Sirius hair, making him turn towards her annoyed, but smiling deep down.

A few more hours passed, without much trouble. Sirius had some laughs with Andromeda, Lena was able to dance with him for another long while. He supposed this was the best he could have expected for the night. Of course some of the firewhiskey he had drowned in helped too.

Everything seemed to have turned out fine in the end. That was until he heard Malfoy speak. He had tried to avoid listening to them, staying as far away as he could from them. But he was next to his cousin that was tying her shoe when he heard a name too familiar to him.

- Take Lilly Evans, she is a mud-blood, but she tries to seem smarter.- Sirius was used to them boasting about blood superiority, he could pass that, knowing that if he reacted, only Andromeda and Lena would help him.

- She is a know-it-all. But when we put them into place, theyll know what is good. All of that intelligence wont be worth much.- Bellatrix added, disgusted.

The boy balled his hands into fists, his breathing erratic. If James were here, he wouldnt allow any of this. How could he? He was no better than any of them. He was sick and tired of this. Next to him, Lena appeared grabbing his hand.

- I cant wait for the day those people dont atend Hogwarts. The school would be just as it should be, without mudbloods. Just as Salazar Slytherin would have wanted. - Lucius agreed with the Black sister. Narcissa keeping quiet.

Andromeda stood next to the couple, also trying to think what to do. Sirius parents were on the other side of the hall, with Regulus, talking with some ministry people. The boy felt the anger boiling in him, his heartbeat racing.

- Malfoy, the school wont be perfect until you are gone.- he quickly made his way towards him, the two girls following him.

- Ah, blood traitor, you are the next, after the clensing of the mudbloods. - Bellatrix hissed at him, Rodolphus joining them.

- Im so ashamed to share your last name.- Sirius resorted, going towards her, wand in hand. But Rabastan stepped in front of her and Lena grabbed his arm.

- Sirius, its not worth it.- Lena tried to reason with him, pleading him with her soft gaze and calm voice. The boy began calming his breathing before turning around.

- A blood traitor and a coward, you have it all, dear cousin. Why Orion and Walburga put up with you scapes my knowledge. - Bellatrix lunged for him, ending in Rodolphuss arms, holding her.

- Shut up you crazy bitch!- Sirius didnt have time to think about what he was doing, before grabbing his wand again.

-Sirius!- Lena shouted but he was already gone.

- You dare talk to me like that? Gryffindor.- his cousin kept trying to get him angrier.

Soon Sirius and her were face to face, wand at the other. Everyone had turned to them, including Sirius parents. Their son had his back towards them, one look from his wife and Orion knew what to do.

- Expeliermus!- Sirius ended up on the floor, his wand on the other side of the room. Bellatrix and Lucius laughed while Walburga began shouting at his son.

- What the hell?- Lena screamed, having too much of this family, quickly reaching Sirius.

- Are you okay?- she asked taking his head on her hands, supporting him on her knees.

- My head hurts.- he exclaimed, his hand reaching hers.

- Leave with me. - she pleaded, tears on her eyes. Both stayed like that while the party ended.

The people from the ministry left, and soon only the closest Black family members stayed. Regulus made his way towards the two, after being scolded by his mother on how Lena had acted.

- Lena, you have to go. - he tried grabbing her arm standing, but she yanked him away.

- You should leave. Both of you, come with me, now.- she begged time and time again, her vision now blurry.

Both Black brothers saw her in distress, not knowing what to do. While Walburga cursed his son, and Bellatrix accompanied her, Sirius took her hands and moved them from his face.

- Its okay, Lena. You dont want to be on the other end of her rage. - he said lowly. Regulus just stared, not knowing how to feel.

- I can´t leave you here.- she said between sobs.

- Ill be fine, I always am, arent I?- he tried to smile to the girl that held his heart. She nodded before helping him up.

- I love you.- she whispered in his ear as she hugged him goodbye.

- I love you too.- he responded, before she kissed his cheek.

Then, drying her tears, she made her way to Regulus that was still in shock. When she reached him, he reacted, leading her to the living room. None could speak, both feeling too many things all at once. Rage, horror, impotence, love. They didnt even share a single touch on the way.

- Bye, Regulus.- she said bluntly before turning for the chimney.

#Sirius Black x reader #Sirius Black x Potter reader #regulus x reader

[gement]

Venn diagram of least popular sub-genres

Full title: Venn diagram of no one’s gonna click it (but the readers who found me are real gems)

I’m wrapping up my Batman/Some Dude fluffy-kinky-queer romance novel this week, and pondering the things I’ve learned about fandom trends in my endless combing of the metadata. (I’m a librarian and an author craving validation, it’s what I do.) It’s doing phenomenally well within its niche, but oy, the niche.

Disclaimer: I’m not judging anyone’s taste here! You wanna read what you wanna read. (In library nerd: “Every book its reader; every reader their book.”) I’m just a data nerd talking out loud as a record for myself while it’s top-of-mind.

How are people less likely to click on my fic? Let me count the ways:

1. Some Dude: Average general fandom readers and M/M readers (usually myself) aren’t much interested in OC-centric works. There’s a preponderance of canon men to choose from for pairings and a perception that the average quality bar is lower on self-insert writing. (As an aside, I suspect this is just Sturgeon’s Law writ large. The top 1% of 200 fics is 2 great ones. The top 1% of 45k fics is 450 great ones including 45 heartbreaking works of staggering genius, and never dipping down past page 20 to find the also-rans.)

I expected this, and was relieved to get some “I usually don’t even click these, but wow, yours is good!” comments, because it meant my summary/tags were reaching at least a few of the larger audience.

2. Batman: I’m writing a Bruce Wayne-centric fic, which is fundamentally less popular in the AO3 Batman fandom than Robin-centric by an impressive margin. (The exceptions are Superbat or Batjokes, see point 1.) I did not expect this.

3. Some Named Dude: There is a thriving little sub-genre of Canon Character/Reader fic! (News to me!) I was initially excited by this potential readership! Which... overwhelmingly focuses on Female Reader characters and likes them as generic as possible to the point of writing “Y/N” (Your Name) instead of giving the character a name or characteristics.

CC/Reader is the preferred tag; it has substantially more works and more kudos per work than CC/Original Character, even when the content is the same down to calling them Y/N.

Ditto CC/Female or Unspecified vs CC/Male.

So my named male original character with a Very Opinionated Queer Identity and big social activist subplot did not get a lot of pickup from that direction.

Strategies that did work and ways that my readership has made me ever so happy and grateful:

A. I am a metadata monster and was very clear with both findable and interesting tags and summary, so anyone who might be willing to give it a chance at least has an attractive cover to consider.

B. It’s long, it has a lot of chapters, and I had a clockwork 3x week update schedule keeping me on or near the front page for four months. Even though new readership has leveled out, I still get about 2 new Kudos per update, someone commenting for the first time about twice a month, and presumably some silent subscriptions I don’t know about.

C. I reply to all comments in the same level of detail and enthusiasm as the commenter, and use that space to give behind-the-scenes info and jokes, like director’s commentary. People have really responded to this; my measurable fanbase has leveled off, but the ones I’ve hooked are steadfast. I have multiple people who comment almost every chapter and our conversations are GREAT. People have also asked me to have opinions on Tumblr and, hello, yes, thank you, you are wonderful for my ego.

I have more than 3x as many comments as kudos, in a sharp reversal of all possible trends. Not so great for search results and hooking later readers, but seriously. I am currently in the top 0.3% of Batman fics sorted by comments and how is that even real. How do I have over 700 comments? Half of them are mine, but that’s true of many thriving comment sections. Sometimes I just go roll around in them and feel happy like a dragon with a hoard.

My heap of comments is more than enough to make me feel proud of the uptake my fic has gotten. Yes, I’m always greedy for kudos because I’m a filthy author and want to be at the top of the search results, but that number going up is a (delicious) one-time rush. Comments I can chew over and over and feel gleeful that I made that connection with someone.

My fic gets marked Complete this Friday. I know many people don’t commit to reading an epic until they know it’s Done, and many people don’t comment until they finish reading a work, so I’m curious how that will affect my stats. (Maybe a few recs? Fingers crossed.)

There is no punchline. I’m writing in a deeply weird niche. My commenters are amazing and I’m grateful to them. This has been a post. 💚

#batman #statistics #ao3 #fanfic #my writing #Batman: Millennials in Love

[my-world-travel]

British Museum, London, England

First of several posts. I visited twice, in May with Jo and in September with Kate, and both times I took way more than 10 photos worth sharing. These are some (not all) of the top from the May visit; in September I had a different set of priorities.

1&2: If you know about one thing in the BM’s collection, it’s the Elgin Marbles (and also, you are a museum nerd). The Parthenon (Athens, Greece--post forthcoming) was covered in beautifully sculpted marble, and most of the carvings survived over two thousand years of history. But in the early 1800s, the Earl of Elgin ordered about half the remaining sculptures removed and brought to England, where they were sold to the British Government and put in the British Museum. Unfortunately for Elgin (and the BM), it’s unlikely he had Turkish permission to do this, and he certainly didn’t have Greek--now the Greeks would like them back. Archaeological rights squabbling aside (and to be clear, I absolutely think the marbles should be returned to Greece), they’re gorgeous. They’re absolutely stunning. Look at them! Despite 2500 years of wear, you can still feel the motion of the horses as they lunge forward. And the technical skill is exacting; man fighting a centaur is carved from a single piece of marble, so thin struts have to be left in place to support the limbs. Sometimes they have fallen--but sometimes they haven’t. Absolutely phenomenal.

3: From the very big to the very small. These are model clay dogs found at Nineveh (~645 BCE); they were buried to protect the property from demons, just as real mastiffs would protect the property from just about anything else. But most importantly, they were named! Loud Is His Bark, Biter Of His Foe, Don’t Think Bite!, Catcher Of The Enemy, and Expeller Of Evil. Feel free to rename as you would ;)

4. The Sutton Hoo helmet. Found in Suffolk, this helmet is one of the most iconic early English pieces--play spot the helmet with fantasy book covers, it’s a good time--despite consisting of hundreds of tiny fragments. The present reconstruction dates from the 1970s and is considered accurate. This was one part of a ship-burial dated to the early 600s of a king of East Anglia, and the helmet probably served both ceremonial and practical functions. Also, it’s gorgeous. Go ahead and look up the replications, they’re stunning.

5. This is a carving of the Royal Game of Ur on part of the palace gate of Sargon II (721–705 BCE). What makes it memorable--aside from things like “we know how to play a game first recorded 4500 years ago”--is that this is graffiti. We have game boards, and they’re gorgeous! But this was most likely carved into the lamassu statue by a bored guard looking for entertainment, and that’s delightful.

6. This, despite also being carved on the lamassu, is not graffiti, but rather a proclamation by King Sennacherib (704-681 BCE) recording, among other things, the tribute he got from King Hezekiah of Judah. It continues to absolutely rattle me every time I see an artifact that references events in the Tanakh; it reminds me of the difficulty discerning what is legend and what is history.

7. The Lewis Chessmen! I’m glad I got a picture of them in May because in September I didn’t have the time, and in between the two I was on the Isle of Lewis and biked by where the chessmen were discovered. No good historical artifact can be without its controversy; in this case, it’s over whether they are actually chess pieces and if so, how the game differed from the present. Whatever. I care that they’re gorgeous, delightful, and Scottish, and it just adds to it that they were found in a sand dune with a handful of backgammon counters and a belt buckle, and nothing else. Gotta love a good mystery.

8. First of what will be many bizarre Greek vases on this blog. This one is circa 8th century BCE and dates to the “geometric” period of Greek pottery, something I’m sure will be a relief to the ridiculously stylized horse. 

9. Lion from the Ishtar Gate, which will be covered in more detail when (if?) I get to posting about Berlin, which has the majority of the gate. Artifact acquisition is a hot topic I briefly touched on above, but there are many artifacts where there is no cut and dry answer. Between the time when the Ishtar Gate was removed from Babylon and the present, the site has been damaged twice: Once when Saddam Hussein carved his name all over it (I am not joking, unfortunately) and once when the US housed tanks on it (not joking here either). It’s uncertain what damage would have come to the Gate if it had remained exposed; similarly unclear is the role of reconstructions in the modern world. What is the relevant difference between seeing the Gate and seeing a true-to-method reconstruction? Ship of Theseus writ large.

10. Last but not least, these are Assyrian lion-hunting dogs. Coincidentally (I don’t think) they look nearly identical to modern day Kangals, which are used in nearly the same area to protect sheep and goats from wild predators. I have a lot of thoughts and theories on the preservation of dog physiology through the years, but leave you with this: For 2500 years, people have been enamored with their dogs. These hunters are portrayed doing something instantly recognizable to any dog owner. Awooo!

#animals #historic dogs #artifacts #museums #london #england

[albionscastle]

Man or Beast Reprise

I have failed as a human, I posted the first part of this fic over two years ago and NEVER posted this second part. I honestly thought I had...I’m a dunce.

So anyway Part two of the best BATB fic I wrote back in the day.

NSFW

Part One Here

Masterlist

MAN OR BEAST REPRISE

The day dawned fresh and bright for your wedding. Flowers bloomed everywhere the eye could see and from your tower window you watched birds searching for their morning meal. Dusk was the appointed time for the ceremony, a small party planned for after...a fraction of the size the last celebration had been. Both you and Adam had been adamant that this most important of events be spent only with those closed to you, your loyal and beloved friends and your father. Humming under your breath you dressed and ate from the tray Mrs Potts had left. Your hands shook as they smoothed your skirts and tied your boot laces. You weren't afraid, far from it in fact but the fact remained that today….and tonight….would change you forever. The early morning sun was streaming into the library, you knew Adam would be there, sitting in the window like a cat. He sought sunlight and warmth now and after so many years in the cold and dark of the curse, you more than understood why. Looking around, you found him, stretched out on a chaise placed in the window just for him. For a moment you simply watched him, the sunlight glinting off his golden hair, his lips pressed together in concentration as his eyes scanned the words on the page. He forwent the garb he had once demanded as his former self, instead he was almost always to be seen in simple breeches and a billowy shirt. Stockings and shoes were reserved for meals or walking outdoors and waistcoats and jackets only donned for company. He had completely left that prideful, preening part of himself behind and instead was content to be a simple man who took pride in his people. “You know we aren't supposed to see one another before the ceremony.” he chuckled without looking up from his book. “ Do you really believe in that?” you queried, climbing the ladder to the landing where he lay. “It's tradition, but to be fair I think we have exhausted our share of bad luck for a lifetime, don't you?” He sat up long enough for you to take a seat before laying back down, his head resting in your lap. “I think it's all good luck from here on in.” you smiled down at him. “Well since we are throwing caution to the wind, will you read?” Taking the book from his hands you looked at the spine with a chuckle. “Shakespeare? This is getting to be a theme.” “At least it isn't Romeo and Juliet. Besides, I guess a little romance doesn't hurt.” He smiled widely up at you and your breath caught. Adam’s eyes were bluer than the sky outside the window and as a man, he was quite simply the most beautiful creature you had ever seen. Opening the book of sonnets you turned to your favorite and began to read, even though you knew it by heart. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:” Absently the fingertips of your free hand traced over his jaw, revelling in the feel of his stubble. He had not gone so far as to grow a beard, and despite your initial joke about it you were glad. You had to admit that the feel of his rough jaw against your skin sent shivers down your spine every time. “O no: it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his          Height be taken.” Absently you caressed the line across his forehead, threading your fingers into his hair. You stopped reading at Adam’s slight shudder, your fingers stilling in his hair. The past weeks had done wonders for your comfort with one another, Adam no longer avoided the tough of others and in fact many times acted rather like a puppy when you touched him, which delighted you to no end. After so many years of being denied even the most basic of human touches, Adam now leaned into every one of yours with relish and you were in no mind at all to deny him any enjoyment. There had been no repeat of the interlude you had shared the night of the celebration ball, not from a lack of want, rather more because of. The feelings that had stirred between you had not abated and if anything you found that you longed for a repeat, to feel his lips against your skin, his hands. Oh you had laid awake so many nights imagining just how that night could have finished, wishing that you would hear his knock on the door to your room in the dark hours of morning. There had been moments, of course. Whispers in corners, stolen kisses in the library and long days like this, reading, with always some part of you touching him. Such comfort and security as you had never felt before. His voice took up where you had trailed off, apparently he too knew this one by heart. “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and                            cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and                            weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.   If this be error, and upon me prov’d,   I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.” You smiled down at him in the sunlight as his hand lifted to graze your cheek. Leaning down, you pressed your lips against the bridge of his nose. You were rewarded with a growl, much like he had given you that evening, a sound that sent a jolt through your body to settle warmly in your belly. “I can see us like this, years from now.” He murmured, wrapping a strand of your hair around his finger. “Sitting in the sunlight, reading to our children, our grandchildren.” “Can you see my grey hair and lined face?” you laughed. “You will still be just as beautiful to me as you are now, even more so because of a full life together.” Tears gathered in the corners of your eyes as you pressed your lips to the palm of his hand.

“There you are Dearie! You know you aren’t supposed to see one another before the wedding!” You and Adam both flew up from the chaise looking guilty as Mrs. Potts dashed into the room. “Come along, Belle, time to get you ready.” You descended the ladder with a sheepish look back at Adam. “Will it really take 6 hours to get me into a dress?” you laughed as she took your hand and pulled you from the room. “It might, but there’s also a bath various other things to take care of, so hurry along now.”

It really had taken 6 hours, you thought later as you looked at yourself in the mirror. And 6 hours well spent, if not a little awkward. The gown was exquisite, simple as you had hoped, a stunning, graceful fall of bright blue with gold embroidery. Adam hated white now, the color reminding him too much of the parties he had once hosted. You would wear no veil, no extra trappings, nothing at all that would remind anyone of the life once led. This was a new life now. Mrs. Potts had taken it upon herself to act as your mother and your bath and subsequent drying had consisted of a conversation about what to expect later that night. After reminding her that you had, in fact grown up in the country and that you weren’t ignorant of the mechanics she simply laughed. “There’s a big difference between knowing a thing, and experiencing it, my dear.” she tutted as she brushed your hair. “It can be very overwhelming.” “I’m sure it will be,” you knew that to be true, his kisses alone left you breathless and trembling. “But I believe I shall manage well.” Mrs. Potts drew her lips together as if she had something unpleasant on her mind. “You know of course that, before….before the curse,” Mrs. Potts broke off. You understood immediately. “I understand, he had….lovers.” “If you can call them that.” she muttered. “In my reckoning his experience should make things go a little more smoothly.” your cheeks flamed, you didn’t like to think of Adam’s past, but in this case the idea was….strangely intriguing. That thought stuck with you for the rest of the afternoon and by the time you stood on the stairs by the gazebo you were in a quiver of excitement and anticipation. Adam stood there, looking splendid in his pale blue coat, his golden hair tied back with ribbon his smile wide. Everyone you loved stood around him and as you walked toward him they each handed you a white rose, a symbol of everything that had led you both here to this place. Such a rocky and terrifying start, to have such a happy and wonderful ending. You gave your vows in a daze, smiling and crying the whole way through. When Adam slid his arm around your waist and pressed his lips against yours you felt as though there was nothing on the earth that could ever be happier or more perfect that that moment. You were his wife. For better or worse, and forever. The evening party came and went in a whirl of laughter and dancing and before you knew it the candles had been doused and you stood with Adam outside the doors of your new suite. There was an awkward silence between you, a thick whirl of tension in the air. You shivered as his breath brushed your neck, his arm reaching across you to push open the door. “I hope you like it.” he whispered against your ear. “As long as I am with you.” “With me you shall be.” The tone in his voice caused a tremble to run down your spine. With him. Visions danced in your head as he followed you through the door. Visions that would soon become a reality. Very soon. The room was stunning in its simplicity, he had worked hard to make it perfect. Your father had been put to work painting a mural of summer trees and white roses along the walls which were interspaced with well stocked bookcases. A large canopied bed occupied the space in front of a large window, draped with royal blue and gold fabrics. A fireplace stood waiting for wintertime with rugs and chairs nestled snugly beside. “I don’t think I will ever want to leave!” you exclaimed, looking around in delight. His arms came around your waist, his nose grazing the bare skin of your shoulder. “If you like we can at least hide away here for a few days, I don’t know that I will be willing to let you leave.” His voice was deeper than usual, more as it had been in the early days. “Do you intend to make me your prisoner then?” you breathed as his lips pressed against your neck. “A willing one I hope, and a rather more lovely cell than before.” You allowed your head to fall back onto his shoulder as his teeth worked at your earlobe, his fingers trailing down the length of your arms to tangle with your own. “Very willing I would say.” With a groan Adam’s lips found yours, stealing your breath and bringing your heart to pounding in your throat. He devoured, took and gave in return. Your fingers left his to reach back and tangle in his hair, your skin breaking into goosebumps as his tongue slid across your bottom lip. You had wanted this, a kiss like this, a touch like the one moving across your shoulders. You wanted so much that you couldn’t put into words. His fingers met at the laces for your gown, pulling them free with practiced ease all the whispering in your ear. How much he loved you. How beautiful you were to him. How happy you had made him. Your gown loosened, you turned to face him, your fingers pulling gently at the snowy cravat he wore. You hated it, you told him so now as you struggled with the knot. Adam chuckled, grasping your hands in his and placing them at the buttons for his waistcoat. He, naturally, had the cravat untied in moments while your fingers shook against the fabric of his clothing. He noticed and his eyes shone with concern and desire both, boring into yours with an intensity that made you shudder. “If it's too fast we can sit for a while.” You shook your head. It wasn't too fast, it was your concern that your inexperience was going to make this...awkward. You wanted to stop thinking, to stop overanalyzing and just feel.

“We can wait, I won’t mind. We can read.”

You looked at him, standing a foot away. His cheeks were slightly flushed, lips swollen. He looked at you with such love, need and concern. The snowy cravat twisted in his fingers as his front teeth worried his bottom lip. He would do anything for you, no matter what, but what now the only thing you needed from him was to take control and ease your anxiety.

With a split second flash of intent, you stepped forward, thrusting a hand into his hair and pulling him down to you. You pushed all your need, want and love into your kiss. It was your tongue against his lips and teeth as you pressed yourself against him, never close enough.

His arms came around you and he groaned against your mouth, loud and low enough for you to feel the rumble of it in his chest. A shiver of delight ran through you as his lips met yours measure for measure, slowly easing himself into control. Your fingers untied the ribbon in his hair, tangling through the strands.

He broke away gently,his cheek resting against yours, his breath warm and ragged in your ear.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” he whispered, growling under his breath when you tugged at his hair. Pulling his head back he gazed at you, his hands sliding over your shoulders, knuckles running up and down your neck. There was a question in his blue eyes, a look of desire and even fear. Even now, a part of him still feared rejection, and loss. The Beast, your Beast, still lived on inside him. Your answer came as your fingers trailed over his jaw, down his neck and under the collars of his coats. Your palms slid over his shoulders and arms as the fabric slid away, leaving him standing in much the same condition as when you had first seen his human form.

His own hands followed suit with your gown, his eyes flaring as the silk pooled on the floor at your feet, leaving you in only your shift and a petticoat.

There was a moment, two deep breaths where time stood still and then…. He scooped you up in his arms like you were a feather, carrying you swiftly over to the bed. You were deposited on the edge so carefully and gently before he knelt on the ground at your feet.

He looked up at you with a smirk as his hand slid over your ankle, sliding off first one shoe and then the other. Rising up slowly, his fingertips blazed a trail up the back of your calf, your knee and the outside of your thigh. Lips marked damp spots along your shoulder and up your neck before crushing against yours in a kiss so full of want that it stole your breath away.

Wrapping your arms around his waist you pulled him with you as you fell back, giggling when he broke his kiss long enough to position you both fully on the bed, before capturing your mouth again. Languidly he pressed at your lips, opening them so he could slide his tongue deep into your mouth. Moaning into him, you felt the smooth, warm, wetness of his tongue stroking over yours, the heat and weight of his body as it pressed down onto you. Your hands tugged at his shirt, freeing it from his breeches so you could stroke the smooth skin of his back.

Adam shivered and growled as your palms caressed his bare skin, pressing his lower body more firmly against you, his hand on your thigh moving higher, adjusting your leg to cradle his hips. Your remaining clothing now felt cloying and cumbersome against your skin and you almost itched to have it removed, to be able to breathe, to feel his skin against yours. Almost desperately you pushed his shirt up his torso, unable to put into words what you wanted from him.

He knew, his lips brushing their way to your ear, his fingers easing apart the laces of your shift to expose more and more skin.

“God, I want you.” his voice was low and raspy in your ear, strands of his hair falling over your neck.

He rose over you, thumb rubbing your bottom lip, eyes catching yours. The intensity of his look made you shiver, your whole being ached to be closer, though you suspected that with Adam, you could never be close enough to ease the ache.

“Adam.” you murmured, your body moving restlessly beneath him. “I...I…”

“Shhhh.” he whispered, sliding the sleeve of your shift off your shoulder, fingertips following the path of newly bared skin across the swell of your breast, down the front of you to your waist and back again.

“This petticoat is in my way.” he chuckled. “Don’t move.”

He rose up, your hands slipping from under his shirt to lay helplessly on the duvet. Smirking, he pulled the shirt off over his head, tossing it to the side.

“That too.”

“Your eyes raked hungrily over his bare skin, golden in the candlelight. The muscles in his arms rippled as he unlaced your petticoat, pushing it down your hips. The offending garment found its way into a heap on the floor alongside his shirt.

Adam’s eyes blazed over you, from your bare thigh to your face, a languid look of heat and want that made your insides clench and your cheeks flush. He moved over you, catching your hands in his and lifting them above your head. His look could only be described as predatory...beastlike, his teeth bared in his famous smirk as he pounced.

On a gasp your breath was stolen as his lips came down on yours, tongue filling your mouth as his lower body pressed against yours. One hand held your arms in place, his other clutching at your thigh, hitching your leg over his hip. You shifted beneath him, the few inches that he held himself above you seeming like an ocean of separation.

His hips ground against you, his palm sliding over your waist, ribs and bare shoulder. You felt him, the hard length of him pressed between your thighs, still not close enough, but sending a dull throb of pleasure throughout your body.

Your back arched as his palm pushed aside the fabric of your shift, closing over your bared breast. You sucked in a ragged breath as lips and tongue traced the line of your jaw up to your ear. He sucked the lobe into his mouth gently, his fingertips grazing the swell of your breast, nipple hardening under his touch.

“I want you so much.” He growled in your ear, his teeth nipping at your skin. “Do you want me?”

You wanted him. For the first time in your life you truly understood desire, and need, at least the physical aspects. You had needed Adam when he was still a beast, wanted his presence, his voice, his arms. With Adam it was all that and still more. You wanted his skin on yours, his hands and his mouth, his body inside you. You wanted to give him every part of you and take every part of him in return.

“Yes.” you managed on a moan, his breath loud and hot in your ear, his fingers stroking and plucking at your aching breasts. “Yes Adam, I want you. I love you.”

“I love you too, my Belle.” he murmured,  freeing your hands, which came to rest on his shoulders.

You felt emboldened by the look in his eyes, the love, the desire and the invitation. Pushing at his shoulders you manoeuvred him onto his back, straddling his hips to feel his length hard against that one aching spot. Even through his breeches you could feel the heat of him and you ground against him slightly, rewarded by the sharp hitch in his breath and the purring rumble from his chest.

His hands slid under your shift, palms stroking the bare skin of your thighs. He watched as you drank in the sight of him. His golden, smooth skin, the scattering of darker hair across his chest and down his stomach. You allowed your hands to explore his torso, the hard lines and soft, warm skin. He moaned when your fingers played with the hair on his stomach, his back arching when you traced a line from his navel to the laces of his pants, dipping under and back again.

He muttered your name under his breath, eyes widening when you pulled your shift off over your head, leaving you completely naked to his hot stare.

“Good God!” he groaned as you felt a twitching movement beneath you.

A feeling of purely feminine satisfaction came over you as you leaned forward, tasting his neck with your lips and tongue, biting gently at the flesh of his jaw, then sucking his lower lip between yours.

“Belle, Belle, Belle…” he almost chanted your name as your hand slid boldly down between your bodies.

The laces of his pants were simple compared to that ridiculous cravat and your fingers took seconds to loosen them. Adam was practically panting, his hands stroking your bare back, along your spine. You brushed your lips across his, your fingers following the dark trail of hair. You felt the heat of him, his back arching as your fingertips traced his length. You reveled in the way he moaned against your mouth, his fingers tangling in your hair, holding you against him. Your breasts grazed against the roughness of his chest, shivers of pleasure running through you.

You ached between your thighs, an empty, yearning aching that you instinctively knew could only be eased by the feeling of him inside your body. Your hips rocked against him, your fingers exploring but unsure of what you needed to do to progress to that point.

“Adam.” you moaned against his tongue, breath ragged. “Adam….what…”

The question remained unspoken as he let you pull away. You took one another in, swollen lips, flushed cheeks and hooded eyes filled with need. His hands shifted, one gently easing yours from his pants while his other arm wrapped around your back and waist. He smiled, a wolfish, predatory smile that sent a shudder through you. Before you knew what had happened he had pulled you over and under, your back hitting the bed with a whoosh of breath as he came down on top of you, holding your arms above your head.

His mouth closed over your breast, tongue raking hot and wet against your aching nipple. A cry left your throat as he started to suck gently, sharps points of pleasure shooting down between your legs where his length ground against you. Hie free hand pushed his pants down until he could kick them off, his nakedness against yours feeling so….right.

His mouth worked magic on your breasts, alternating licking, sucking and biting as you writhed beneath him. His hand slid from your ankle, up the inside of your leg, pushing your thigh down to open you wider beneath him.

“Adam!” it was your turn to pant his name as his long fingers moved between your thighs, stroking gently until he found the hidden spot where your aching want lay coiled. One finger rubbed and slid over that tiny spot as your toes curled in absolute ecstasy. The aching deeper inside began to throb insistently, bringing with it a feeling of heat and damp. At that, you saw him smile against your skin, his fingers moving down, thumb stroking while one fingertip teased the entrance to your body. For a moment you were embarrassed as his fingers slid in the wetness that had escaped you, until with a groan and a muttered ‘yes’ he slid one finger inside you.

Your eyes flew open, back arching with a cry of pleasure and desperation. Your hips writhed against his invasion, wanting still more. Adam licked and kissed his way up to your lips, letting your arms go. Your fingers threaded into his hair as he drank from your mouth, thumb stroking, finger moving slowly in and out of you.

He was met with a mewling whimper as another finger joined the first, stretching you slightly, moving deeper. It felt so good, but you still wanted so much more. You arched against his fingers, begging for something you didn't have words for.

Adam chuckled against your mouth, his teeth scraping across your lips.

“Easy, my love. This can’t be rushed.” his fingers moved leisurely, keeping you on the edge of….something.

“Adam!” His fingers curled slightly inside you, sending shockwaves through you.

From head to toe, your skin felt as though it was humming, vibrating. You wanted to burst.

“Please...Adam…..please.”

His fingers stilled ass he heard the pleading in your voice, the desperate need.

“There’s so much more my darling.” he whispered gently.

“I need….I feel like…”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes!” your answer was loud and raspy as he shifted himself fully over you, fingers pulling away and leaving you feeling even emptier than before.

You pushed your hips against him, begging. He nodded, his expression one of tenderness and adoration.

“It will hurt.” he whispered. “I wish I could spare you that.”

“Only for a moment.” your hands cupped his cheeks, thumbs grazing over his lips. “I trust you.”

The amazement that was etched across his features brought tears to your eyes. Still, after everything, Adam still found it hard to believe that someone could care, could trust, could love him. He continued to wrestle with the man he had once been and the beast he had become. He had whispered to you one evening by the fire that he felt unworthy of your love, of anyone’s after the way he had treated people for so long. You would make sure you spent the rest of your life ensuring he knew that he was loved and trusted, unconditionally.

You nodded your head, pulling him down to kiss him gently, your arms wrapping around his neck, fingers stroking the smooth, warm skin of his back. He moved slightly, hard heat nudging at your entrance. As his hips pushed forward slightly you gasped against his mouth. There was no pain yet, but the size of him inching inside you felt impossible and incredible. For a moment you felt trepidation, mixed with a feeling of completeness and pleasure you could not have even begin to describe. He felt you tense and stilled, looking down on you with wonder and concern.

“It’s better if I do this part fast, it won’t hurt you as much. Just watch me, don’t take your eyes off mine.”

With a deep breath you relaxed, staring into his bright eyes as though he was your lifeline. Which he was. Fingers moved between your bodies as he adjusted and your hips rocked slightly, bringing him further inside you.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry darling.”

With a loud, animal groan he pushed forward hard, breaking through the barrier quickly. A tear escaped at the sharp pain, worse than you expected and you had to fight the urge to buck him off of you. He lay still, buried deep inside of you and the pain receded into a dull throb as you regained your breath.

He kissed you again murmuring apologies against your skin. You could feel the tightness of his body as he fought his natural urge to move. You felt sore, but not pained and even that sensation was quickly being overtaken by another one as you raised your hips experimentally.

Adam hissed as you moved, sweat beading on his brow with the exertion of trying not to hurt you any further. He moved inside you, just a tiny thrust and waves of pleasure radiated throughout you. You didn't feel that ache, that emptiness anymore but rather, full, stretched and whole. It was pure bliss. It wasn't enough.

“Let go, you won't hurt me.”

To encourage him you shifted your thighs open wider, causing him to slide in even deeper, his palm sliding over your sweat dampened skin to pull your leg over his hip. That movement tilted your hips differently bringing him closer as though you could feel the burn of him all the way into your stomach.

Hands slid down his back, tracing the line of his spine. He smiled gently, testing as he pulled back, leaving you panting, your body not ready to relinquish the sensation of him inside you. He slid forward again slowly, too slowly but this time you could fully enjoy the feeling of him filling you without the pain. There were no words that could describe the sense of completeness, the mind numbing pleasure of having him inside you. But he was torturing you, keeping you on the edge, always wanting, aching and needing.

“Belle.” he growled, leaning over you, his elbows resting above your shoulders, his hands tangled in your hair.

He positioned his body flush with yours, the roughness off his chest and chin rasping against your heated skin as he began a rhythmic rocking motion in and out of you.

“Oh.” you breathed in wonder as every smooth thrust of his hips brought you to new heights.

You wrapped your arms around his waist, pulling him even closer, almost his full weight on you. Your lips found his as you tried to drink in the taste of him on your tongue. Hips rose and fell together, instinct drove you as your fingers ran over every inch of his skin that you could reach.

He growled in your ear, his shoulders shuddering as your fingers ghosted over his hipbone. When your hands clutched at his rear his whole body clenched up, his teeth grazing your neck.

“Oh darling...heaven, you are heaven.”

The movement of his hips was faster now, less controlled, his lips kissing wetly across your collarbone as you both panted and moaned. Heat radiated from inside you, from him, from every inch of his body that touched you. Your eyes fluttered shut, heels digging into the bed as you pushed up to meet his every thrust.

One hand left your hair to slide down the front of you, palming your breast before trailing to where your bodies met, easing his fingers between your thighs he stroked, sending hot shivers throughout you.

“God yes!” he purred against your neck, your muscles clenching around his length.

Your fingernails dug into his skin as you writhed beneath him, the pace of his thrusts becoming erratic, faster and more powerful as he lost control.

You never wanted it to end, your toes curled as his fingers worked magic, the deep, hot slide of him inside you setting fire to your senses.

“Adam!” His name was ripped from your throat as a pressure built, radiating from between your thighs, encompassing every part of you, every nerve ending, every hair on your head exploding as waves of bliss and release surged through you.

Your back arched high off the bed, muscles clenching and relaxing as stars seemed to burst behind your eyelids. Adam’s breath was hot against your skin as he moaned and growled harshly in your ear.

“Yes...Belle.”

His body stiffened with one last hard jerk of his hips, his mouth mashing against yours as he cried out against your tongue. He shuddered and you felt a rush of wet heat inside you.

You held him tightly as his head collapsed against your shoulder. Fingers traced patterns over damp skin. You felt his breath return to normal along with yours and the air began to feel cold on your bare skin. You shivered, clutching him tighter. His head lifted, long golden hair tickling your skin. Your fingers found their way to his face, tracing the lines of his jaw, his cheeks even his nose, giggling when his teeth nipped at you playfully.

Your heart swelled with so much love for him you felt certain there was no way to contain it.

“Tell me I didn't hurt you.” his thumb was trailing through the tear that had escaped.

“No. Adam, you didn’t hurt me. I'm just so happy and I love you. “

He kissed you gently, smiling down at you.

“I love you too. That was…..amazing.”

Your cheeks burned as images of your lovemaking flashed in your mind. Adam chuckled at the sight.

“I never expected it to be quite like that.” you admitted, shivering again.

Deftly, Adam shifted from you, repositioning your body under the duvet and curling you in snugly beside him.

“That was just a taste, my love. There's so much more that we can explore together.” he whispered in your ear. “I did mention that I planned to keep you as my prisoner in this bed.”

“I believe I said that I would be willing.” you smiled, stroking his chest.

“Well the,” he smirked. “Let's talk about what I can teach you next.”

#batb fanfic #batb2017 #dan stevens fanfiction #dan stevens growl #older writing

[wahoo-stomp]

I’ve never really been a big listener to One Direction.

Okay. That’s a lie. I literally don’t listen to One Direction. Got nothing against them – just never really had any interest, and my music tastes are…limited. So I was more than a little surprised when my Spotify playlist led to a 1D song in the Year of Our Lord 2019. I know Spotify can sometimes select a song that it thinks you’ll like based on what you listen to – but the artist I’d been listening to wasn’t even in the same genre. So imagine my surprise when I’m greeted with—

You're insecure Don't know what for You're turning heads when you walk through the door.

Okay first of all, what?

This is roughly when I reached for my phone to change the song, but then my brain did that thing where it went “eh what the heck” and I let it play a little longer. It didn’t take long for me to see that this is one of many songs with a theme of the singer talking to someone and telling them they’re more attractive than they realize. It’s not the most original concept, but there was nothing particularly offensive to me about this iteration of it, so I let the song continue further. I admit I like pop styled tunes, probably because of a whole bunch of stuff a music theorist could better explain than I can, so it was fun to listen to – and then suddenly something jumped out at me.

I hardly believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to recommend listening to the song to see what I’m talking about if you don’t know it, and NO, this isn’t a plug for a defunct boy band.

Okay, you’ve listened to the point where they go “If only you saw what I can see—” you can pause it there. 

So far the artists have stuck to what I would call pleasant but superficial comments. Hair flicking is…not really anything that stands out to me, since frankly I care more about eyes and anyways we’re talking from the perspective of a guy who might be asexual and aromantic (can I say that? I’m still trying to figure it out, so I’m not sure I’m right anyway and hopefully I didn’t irk anyone just now). Lighting up the world, yada yada yada. Heard it all before, will hear it again. But then, when the line mentioned above played, my attention was instantly grabbed.

Now before I explain why that is the case, I’m gonna let ya’ll in on a little secret. I’m super, super duper, super duper duper insecure. I know, right? You never would have guessed*. Nah, but all joking aside, one of the things I struggle with most is a feeling of…worth. Now I do have people in my life who tell me they love me – I have friends who (I think) think pretty highly of me, and I have a job and am overall doing okay for a millennial trying to survive as a liberal arts major in this economic nightmare we call “capitalism.” But even all that granted, I struggle everyday with the idea that I’m really worthy of love or interest or anything along that line. This is largely because I am acutely aware of my faults, including the ones I (gasp) try to hide from others. Fact is, I have a scrolling list of ways in which I bungle things, sometimes daily, and it’s not all that easy to see myself as valuable when I have said list.

*You literally guessed after three seconds.

I can hear you saying “no one is perfect, Josh.” Yeah, I know. Heck, the characters in my other blogs are learning that as we speak (even though I think Rocky is pretty darn close). Still doesn’t keep me from berating myself. Sometimes, if we’re totally honest, the internal and external pressures I face are nearly enough to make me give up on myself as a lost cause.

“Okay, um, this is depressing. Does it get better?”

Well, I have one more thing to add. I’m a Christian.

*cue sirens*

Christians are a scary bunch to some folks, and, uh, I don’t always blame them. Some people claiming to represent Jesus suck immensely at it and there is an extensive list of people who do so that I wish I could just tell to shut up. But, with your permission, we’ll skip over the common stereotypes associated with radical Christianity and, for now, summarize my faith perspective as the following statement – I see God as my friend, and I believe the converse is true.

Good. We’ve got that out of the way.

Here’s the problem. If my faith is to be believed, God knows me inside and out – meaning God knows what an idiot I can be. That’s disconcerting. That’s unnerving. That’s freakin’ terrifying – not because I expect God to drop a bolt of lightning on my face (again, not that kind of “Christian”), but for the same reason I don’t tell all of YOU how messy I can be – I don’t want you to hate me or give up on me and decide I’m not worth it.

Okay. That’s a lot of laundry, but I promise I’m getting to a point.

When I say I see God as a friend, I recognize how that might sound. Many faith traditions not only disagree with that statement, but disagree on the nature of God, period. I’m not here to argue with those folks. Disagreement and respect are compatible. If you don’t mind hearing me out, though, perhaps my perspective on God in relation to a 1D song will provide you with either (a) some encouragement or (b) the final confirmation you need that I am in fact a lunatic. We shall see.

If only you saw what I can see You'll understand why I want you so desperately Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe You don't know You don't know you're beautiful!

Okay, that rolls off the tongue well. What does it have to do with what I mentioned above? Well, if I may be allowed to withdraw a sample (emphasis on sample, I strongly encourage reading the full context of this thing) from the pre-Christian writings of Scripture, more specifically the book of Psalms, chapter 139, verses 17 and 18:

“How precious to me are your thoughts, God!    How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them,    they would outnumber the grains of sand—    when I awake, I am still with you.”

“Okay, great. Where’s the connection?”

Well, although this particular piece doesn’t mention it, there are a variety of instances in scriptural writ where God’s thoughts towards people, be they individuals or nations, are referenced as positive. (Yes, there are negative examples too, often stated as part of a judgment passage, but I am not skilled in the subject of God’s judgment and will not attempt to go into depth on it right now). The chapter at large acknowledges God’s presence throughout the writers life, even predating birth. For the record, the writer of this particular Psalm, was, uh, messed up. David did some stuff right but whoa nelly he really did some screwball stuff (to put it incredibly lightly) – so we’re not looking at someone who’s perfect when he talks about God’s thoughts.

If we take this piece of writing, therefore, and slightly change the perspective of the speaker…we might end up with a (rather less cliché sounding) 1D song. Now before someone burns me at the proverbial stake, let me clarify what I mean. (NO, I’m not equating holy writ with pop music, promise.)

Let us assume, that these positive examples of God’s thoughts, can be applied to ourselves – or to you and me, to bring it home. If this is the case, when we regard ourselves as unworthy of love, or not valuable, or ugly (a struggle for me personally) or whatever else, is it entirely unreasonable that God’s reaction might be something along the lines of the chorus above?

I think that if we refer back even earlier to that venerable writ in the Torah known as Genesis, we can encounter God’s initial thought on the creation of humankind. Essentially, “It was very good (1:31).”

(For the record, it goes downhill from there as far as the whole “being good” thing goes, but for that moment, at least, God was pretty excited with the state of humankind.)

So let us now take the (limited) textual context and apply it to the, song, taking some creative license (and removing any romantic preconceptions).

Dear one I’d light up the world for nobody else To see a smile on your face makes me smile as well No matter what you may think it’s not hard to tell I still know, oh oh You are just so beautiful If only you saw what I can see You’ll understand why I care for you constantly Right now I’m looking at you and I can’t believe You don’t know – you are just so beautiful.

Okay, now here’s something I feel obligated to clarify. I’m not a fan of fluffy faith. I’m also not a fan of reducing suffering and emotional struggle to a single sentence. Band-aid solutions and glib encouragement irk me. So I am not pretending for a moment that I know what anyone reading this is going through. Really, I’m just writing something for myself and hoping that something in it provides encouragement for others.

Essentially, I believe God’s perception of our value is not tied to ours, and I’m encouraged by the idea that someone smarter than me knows just what I’m capable of, and loves me despite all my dirty laundry.

That doesn’t mean I recommend using 1D as a source of spiritual encouragement.

I do recommend considering the possibility that your favorite love song or the things that encourage you could very well be used by God to try to communicate God’s thoughts to you. Furthermore, I do recommend acknowledging your value is not caught up in only your perspective, and that there are so many ways in which you are valued…beautiful, that you may not even see.

After all, perfection isn’t attainable – but if you don’t dismiss something because it’s imperfect, why would God?

Everyone else in the room can see it, Maybe it’s time you did too.

#josh's journals #long post #faith? #1d #if that set of tags isn't strange i dunno what is lol #but i've had a week™ #and this stuff just...came to me

[popculturespiritwow]

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #33: YOUR DERIVATIVE SHIT (AKA TWIST AND SHOUT)

This cover. Black to me signals death, or something awful. And I was certain that we get all-black pages somewhat regularly in WicDiv, but you know, it’s not true. Both when Luci gets “killed” and Laura herself “dies”, we get pages that are black but for two tiny almost exactly duplicated comments.

The Underworld is obviously a land of darkness, and there are two moments – during Laura’s first trip down there and then when Persephone first gets her hands on Woden – where we get a splash page of endless black into which the character is falling.

But the only time in WicDiv that we’re given a non-dialogue-y black page is when Sakhmet takes out her dad in issue 17, and again in issue 28 when she massacres her party people after coming to believe they’re all laughing at her. That last one does give one tiny little glimpse of her, though.

So if there is a “language” to the all-blacks (non haka version) (love you Kiwis), it would seem to be something to do with violence and lost time.

But we’ve already done all the blood and nightmares in this arc, and this issue is instead filled with twists and reveals and honest soul-rending conversation and reunions and new friends and overall kind of a lot of reader satisfaction.  So a very different thing.

Another take on the all-black is this is what you put on your cover when you’re terrified anything else will give something away. But for as much anxiety as Kieron talks about in his notes about “keeping the secrets” of this issue (and also his sense of what nonsense that fear is), he and Jamie have never had any trouble obscuring  reveals before.

So here’s my thought: Maybe it’s like Disneyland. Disney theme parks are built in such a way that on the way in you have to go through a tunnel of some kind, and before you do you can’t really see inside to all the happy happy joy joy good stuff.

The idea is, Disney wants you to feel like you’re entering into a whole different world than the one you left behind, a better world where you can be happy and spend money and want to take the same picture in front of the castle that everyone else does and still feel like it’s special.  And part of that is creating a clear sense of boundary; there was where you were and there’s where you’re going, and the tunnel stands as passage in between.

Maybe that’s why you do a black cover: Not to hide anything or signal violence but to create a boundary, a sense of a passage into something new. 

PHALLUCIES

So we begin with the Vibrator as key. I want to say it might be the perfect Gillen/McKelvie image – it’s naughty and seems like a joke and has been sitting there for so long that we no longer think much of it when in fact it is absolutely essential.

Nothing in WicDiv is superfluous, minor or irrelevant. Everything is trying to express something important. (TELL US ABOUT THE VEILS KIERON.)

A bigger question: does the fact that Jon (and not only Jon but the truth about Laura) is released into the story via a phallic device that vibrates have even more to say? Is pleasure or self-care in a sense the key in WicDiv, a path to freedom and life?

Have I not mentioned already I was an English major?

READ ONLY MIMIRY (#SorryNotSorry)

After an arc that seems very caught up in how the characters are all caught up in/pinned down by stories, suddenly out of nowhere we have Jon, this breath of fresh air who sees that path for the garbage it is and refuses it. He will not fit the options Ananke poses, or any duality, thanks very much.

He is the one who builds.

Of course he is then force-wrapped into stories – the Pantheon (I love the horror of his reaction to his ascent), this weird Odin/Thor thing (complete with the nod to Thor’s alter ego Donald Blake) and also the biblical Abraham and Isaac story, the father sacrificing his son to God (now comes with beheading!).

And if I understand the father/son dynamic, as much as Jon sees the Mimir thing for the lie or trap it is, he still can’t quite help himself from being a builder. There are rules he can bend (see: vibrator) but he can’t quite enact a full break.

His call is really quite beautiful. “You walked among your foes for the sake of love,” the spooky Ananke heads say. “Struck down you are raised up, the Sky King’s grandest treasure.” It’s pretty much the absolute opposite of his Dad’s call.

How crazy is it that we’re 2/3rds done with the series, we’ve just been introduced to a major new character (okay we saw him once before but still), and he fits in so well?

Probably we’re being set up for betrayal and heartbreak, but for now I love it with all the loves. 

MACK THAT KNIFE

Can we just talk about the knife for a second? Like, how exactly does it work? Clearly it somehow enables the user to disengage the head from the body while keeping the head alive. But whereas with Jon that might have happened literally – put your elbow into it, David! – in the case of Luci, Tara and Inanna Ananke used her signature head pop. So what’s the deal? It’s enough to have the knife in your possession when doing with the murdering, or something else?

Also, post-beheading, we see Ananke referring to Jon as “it”.

Is this because he’s now “just” a living head? Or is this how she actually honestly sees all the gods?  It’s um, upsetting to say the least. 

Of course so is Woden’s take on things: Jon stole my life (by being born, you horrible human looking meat puppet), so now I get to steal his.

I don’t know how it would have been possible Woden could sink lower in my estimation than he has (#Dio4Vr), but in fact it is and he has.

CASSANDRA VS. THE DESTROYER ROUND II

As much as I love the Jon reveal, the thing that really rocked my world was actually not that but Laura explaining what she’s been going through. I just – this poor girl. And though we still have two arcs to go, in a way this moment is the heart of the series. Kieron seems to say as much in the notes, talking about how the artist lives in this awful reality of getting what they dreamed of, but it involves awful stuff happening to oneself and others. 

“I’ve talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv’s success. Laura’s arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.”

Art is built on suffering and loss—and that means on the back of horror done to others. To wish to be an artist is in a sense to sacrifice those relationships in a fundamental and sometimes literal way, in fact that seems a necessity to one’s success. Being a storyteller may be incredibly nourishing for others, but it’s built on harm done to those you love.

Jesus Christ this is dark. And we haven’t even gotten to the point yet of facing the question that society’s survival is supposedly built on those artists’, those children’s destruction. We love you so much, you inspire us, but what cements that for the century is your deaths.

What do you make of this follow-up moment where Laura suddenly turns it to 11 with Cass?

It only happens after Cassandra calls Laura Persephone for the first time, which seems like it’s meant as a kind of respect. Knowing what she’s been through, she is now worthy of her name in Cassandra’s eyes. She is an equal.

Except it seems to set Laura on the path of what – connection, for sure. But through sex, which is actually more escape than intimacy.

What is “The Destroyer”, in the end? Less a malevolence associated with Laura, it seems to me, than the character of all the gods when they get lost in their stories about themselves.  

(More to the point: What the heck is the Machine? Jon says it does nothing. Whuhhh?)

A STEP A HEAD/STOP MAKING SENSE

So, after quite some issues away from it, in the end we return to the heads. Lots and lots of heads. Jon’s head (god that’s a delightful reveal), then Sakhmet’s slice of head – and Minerva – and then finally, the big finish.

I would say my head exploded except I feel like that gag has already been played.

As he has mentioned often in his notes, Kieron loves to hide much bigger reveals within the reveal we know that’s coming. In this case, we knew there was this other Daft Punk member hiding in the darkness somewhere, and we knew there was something up with Laura we needed to hear about.

So we get that and say thank you, and then there’s still four incredible jaw dropping can we please do a happy dance for Luci pages.

Kieron goes into a ton more detail on this writing strategy here, and the particular nightmare challenges posed by this issue. I’ll post excerpts below, but you should read them in full. They are fantastic.

But if I can just ask one question: What the hell happened with Minerva? Am I to believe she did not feel bad about Sakhmet, that she’s that good an actor? Je refuse! And also isn’t the point of the Sakhead reveal that still-Minerva blew it with her fearfulness and lack of skill?

#CRAFTSERVICE: ON TWISTS

Okay… twists.

In reality, for me, it’s a case of once you’ve decided that this is the plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this. Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.

(You could argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)

It’s been strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on. Seeing who got what and who didn’t, and how people reinforced people has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise – though I’ve had people talk about that directly and personally. Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.

When Ray Fawkes told me “There’s a reason you’re doing all the decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I’d overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3… but it turned out fine.

“Played the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it’s impacted every single conversation I’ve ever had about WicDiv. Like just writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song… and then realised there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist? No, someone may notice that, and it’s against my rules anyway. I quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.

As if anyone is watching that closely, y'know?

That’s an extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent (the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I’ve been telling friends that I’ll never write a story that operates like this again. Partially that is because I wouldn’t want to repeat myself, and partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don’t think I want to do this to myself again. I’ll find some other way to torture myself.

 So apparently Mini has been off all this time. I’m stunned by that.

#CRAFTSERVICE: MORE ON TWISTS!

I’d note that setting up twists that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey – pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the actual sleight of hand over here.”

Oh you’re expecting a big reveal are you, cool cool cool here it is and also SURPRISE.

He talks about this again later, in response to the reveal that Mimir is just a talking head.

When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the new information.

Oh you’re blown away by Mimir are you? SURPRISE, there are three other heads.  And also Minerva is not Minerva.

It’s a great insight, too – if you fear one bit of new information is going to naturally lead to others, drop it all right now before they even have time to think about it.

#CRAFTSERVICE: ON WHAT WRITING IS FOR

I know this is a lot of quoting the author, but hey it’s a big issue and the author has some great stuff to say and it is helping me. 

How do I actually feel when someone guesses something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…

I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop” and shrug.

And then you get over your ass, because you know all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m winning.

Certainly I’ve heard many writers talk about their writing as coming from a personal place. And as a writer myself I’ve had to learn (again and again) that having a sparkly fun idea is not going to be enough to get me up and writing every day, even if people like it. That I need what I’m writing to come from something more specific in me.

But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard an artist talk about their work as well, their work. The journey they’re taking to try and deal with something or figure something out or to let go and get free and be a better version of them. It makes so much sense, and man does it challenge me to have another think about my own work. Because I think most of the time I almost think of the journey as the thing that has to come before the work, the thing that prevents the work – Ima just get my act together and then write this script in fifteen years or so. And reading this it strikes me  oh wait, that’s just the thing I tell myself so I don’t have to do the work.

 There’s so much more to say about this issue. But it’s taken me the better part of a week to say this much already so maybe I’ll just leave it there. Suffice to say, it’s a giant of story.

(And yes, that’s my exhausted end of words attempt at a Mimir pun.)

I’ll be back next week with the two specials. And then, Mothering Invention!

#wicdiv #kieron gillen #jamie mckelvie #masterpiece theater but with severed heads

[laliofficial]

Lali Explains How a Single Person 'Can Generate a Revolution,’ Every Vote Matters! (Exclusive)

Lali Esposito wants her fans to know that “we are the change we need.” With Election Day around the corner, the Argentine singer shares with ET exclusively her determination to be part of a generation that uses its voice and strength to achieve greatness, a generation that believes in unity and a generation that wholeheartedly cares about who is going to be the next president of the United States.

In her own words:

Election Day is near...

The entire world (no joke) is talking about it. Your social media feed is awash with politics. For 24 intense hours you have to brave the faces and promises of the candidates and their fans alike. Your family WhatsApp group chat is suddenly filled with family members who, all of a sudden, are the most patriotic patriots you’ve ever met. Meanwhile, some of us, let’s face it, are filled with a quiet anxiety, eager to know who’s going to win.

It could be just another day, a relaxing one, where you’d go on about your day as always. You could scroll through your social media and let the algorithm feed you what it thinks you want. But this is no ordinary day. It’s a day that will decide what the next few years will look like in the place you call home, and, arguably, in the world writ-large. Oof! I mean, at least we got them memes to get us through days like these, right? I get it, I really do!

I’m 28. I was raised in a household where sometimes we had a lot and sometimes we had very little. I’m an artist. I’m sensitive. I put all of my energy into things that excite me, that move me, that matter to me, that entertain me. Music, for instance, is one the most magical escapes there are.

We can all agree that, for a while now, AI (Artificial Intelligence) has allowed us to build a perfect virtual escape that lets us get away from what’s happening in the real world — even what’s happening around the corner, if we so wish. (Sidebar: you should really watch The Social Dilemma, available on Netflix.)

Like me, perhaps, you grew up listening to grown-ups telling us we were a “Lost Generation.” That we were uninterested and unbothered by it all. I don’t agree. More to the point, I believe that kind of rhetoric is the laziest way to burden us with a world we’ve inherited. A world weighted down by generations of dishonest policies, selective and unfair economies, and environmental disasters.

Don’t be fooled, though. I don’t mean to draw up a boogeyman to somehow absolve us from our own apathy toward, say, voting, or politics in general.

I think it’s easy for us to feel comfortable sitting at the sidelines of these questions and to think, in turn, that nothing we do or say will change anything whatsoever.

I mean, at the end of the day, “it’s the same old story,” no? A vote here or a vote there — what difference can it make when you count them by the millions?

But wait! Even as I ponder all these things myself, I admit that on election days, I feel an urgent sense of responsibility.

As an artist I’m constantly making decisions and agonizing over every single detail. I’m challenging myself. I’m looking to evolve, to better myself, to change what doesn’t suit me for something new and trying, however silly this may sound, to touch the hearts of those who follow my work. And, as if that wasn’t ambitious enough, to reach those who don’t actually follow my work.

It’s all starting to sound a bit political, though. I apologize, I have gone on a kind of political rant. But it’s true: doing all of this gives me time to think and to plan.

We’re constantly making choices, voting as it were, for things that bring us happiness and improve our life. We cast daily votes for things both big and small. We choose what music to listen to, who to follow on social media, which friendships to keep, what subjects to learn about, and a million other things that make up who we are.

The question is, isn’t it ironic that we’re constantly pushed to make life-altering decisions about things we want to have, to improve, or to change, with the courage and effort that this demands, but we dare not take time out of our day to vote and exercise such a right?

Isn’t it ironic we care so much about likes or followers on social media but not about who’s gonna be the f**king president of the United States?

Even as the options, generally, may not excite us, I think we do care. Our generation can be responsible for changing things. Of course we want a better ruling class committed to improving the livelihood of those less privileged. Of course Black Lives Matter. Of course we’re sick and tired of political apathy and of its familiar vicious cycles.

We want something better, whatever that looks like for each of us.

The Greta Thunbergs of the world make us realize that we are the change we need. They remind us that a single person can generate a revolution. That a single vote can matter.

When you get up from your couch, brave lines and cast your vote, know it speaks to your strength and will to become, like me, one of the heroes of this "Lost Generation."

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Martín Luther King Jr.

With love,

Lali.

https://www.etonline.com/lali-explains-how-a-single-person-can-generate-a-revolution-every-vote-matters-exclusive-154078

#lali esposito #lali #entertainment weekly

[englishchinesetranslations]

This is a piece about me visiting Riyadh, several times, for Formula E.

Formula E is an electric racing series that says OK, boomer to 20th century petrolhead culture.

I am a high-performing, self-absorbed diva who writes about cars for a living.

Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh. It’s not a place, in the western imagination — which despite my scattershot efforts to broaden my horizons I definitely have — it’s a synonym for the Saudi Arabian state. Which, again, in the western imagination is one millennial and a network of shadowy contract killers.

The name Riyadh inspires fear, like a monster under the bed, something unknowable and threatening that doesn’t say anything about a city nine million people live in. Like most people, I hate admitting I’m afraid of anything real so in my mind it’s never been more than an imaginary metaphor to shield my own delicate ego.

I don’t think about the place much outside headlines. Or well, didn’t used to.

If you asked me if I’d ever imagined going to Riyadh a few years ago, I would’ve had to first work out if I could imagine Riyadh. In my mind — and I have an international relations degree so this is extra embarrassing — it was a mediaeval fortress. Perhaps some heads on spears on the walls. I’d seen some pictures on the Daily Mail or something and for some reason never considered whether this was a bit racist.

This starts in Berlin, 2018. Formula E, a street-racing electric motorsport series, announce the championship is going to Riyadh. Which is a ridiculous concept because Riyadh isn’t even a place with streets, in my mind, because I have not yet managed to stop being racist about this and actually learn anything.

More ridiculous is that I can’t go — I’m one of half a handful of full season journalists in this series that I decided to upend my life for completely a few years ago and I can’t go to the season opening race for the next ten years.

Because of strict Sharia law in the Kingdom, I can’t work in Saudi Arabia without my dad or husband giving me permission. Which at then-31 years old, divorced and resigned to my parents disapproving of everything I do for some time now is extremely laughable. I can’t work in motorsport there at all, classed as a dangerous profession. And how the hell am I going to get in in the first place?

There is some quite emphatic shouting on a street near Tempelhof when a fellow journalist asks me what I think of it and accidentally triggers the nuclear codes on my brain. I can’t do this, are they joking? How can I even continue in the series, I used to work in the humanitarian sector, for crying out loud.

I spend a night stewing in my hostel bed and wondering how all this can be thrown back into my face so hard. And then, trembling with rage and the less hot emotion I don’t like to think I’m capable of, demand answers from then-Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag in a press conference where he’s meant to be passively introducing Nico Rosberg.

The press conference is important because he tells me that there will be women there, that there will be arrangements made, that I can go. Which is the moment Riyadh has to stop being a fictional, mythical fortress to me because if I can, then I can’t not. No matter what else I think right now, I can’t let my male peers go and exclude myself so now even worse than being banned from Riyadh I have to actually go there.

Then my handbag gets stolen on the U-Bahn and I have bigger problems in the immediate, because the British embassy’s closed for a royal wedding.

Why is going somewhere so bad? Especially if you’ve already sucked down the moral serving of working in motorsport, gone the distance and done the deeds to get there.

I don’t want to shy away from the facts, here. Firstly, that motorsport is an intensely conservative world — all sport is. Formula E is by miles and miles the most liberal, even confrontational element of at least the cars bit of it but there are no openly gay drivers at a top level, there are very few women.

It’s bizarre to me, as someone who lives in London’s very leftwing queer scene, to work somewhere where shaving half my head was a bit edgy not just ‘had a breakdown on Tuesday, lads.’ I am more left wing than most normal people and motorsport as a whole is considerably more right.

I love my job. I whine about doing it, constantly but I love motorsport. I am obsessed with it, it’s what makes me feel the most and I am fascinated by the tech and I adore my friends in it, this is a job I have worked insanely hard to get — not something I am being forced to do, disinterestedly. But there is a disconnect between the realities of it and myself as a person.

Even motorsport people, however, were shocked by us announcing we were going to Riyadh. Until this event, the FIA (motorsport’s global governing body) had never sanctioned an event in Saudi Arabia, not because there was no interest from the Kingdom (Saudia, the national airline, have been an F1 sponsor for decades) but because until recently, women were completely banned from driving.

That changes, in the months between the announcement and the race — because it had to, as a condition of the event happening. You can view that as the Eprix clearly directing positive change or not if you want but the fact that it had to is important as part of the situation, as part of understanding why people were shocked we were going there.

Saudi Arabia operates a guardianship law for women, who require their husband or male relative’s permission to do things like open a bank account, get a job or a passport. Women are required to wear an abaya (the usually-dark coverup garment that covers you from foot to neck) as well as modest clothing and muslim women must wear a hijab. All Saudi Arabians must be muslim and a religious police force exists to enforce strict adherence to sharia law.

Kissing in public is absolutely banned, as is alcohol and western music. There are no cinemas and media is restricted. LGBT acts can get you imprisoned, publicly whipped or even executed. Human Rights Watch lists the “dissidents” who are detained on long charges in Saudi Arabian jails — they are women’s rights activists, people who have criticised the government, protestors who in most countries would be considered very mild. Torture is documented by HRW as being widely used as an interrogation tool against detainees.

It’s not fully whataboutism to say “well, other countries have terrible records on human rights, too and sport still happens there.” But Saudi Arabia has been off the table for a long time, not least because events like this — people congregating and especially in mixed gender settings — have been banned for a long time by the government themselves.

So is Formula E so financially or morally bankrupt to take the Saudi Arabian money and go there? It’s not like the country has a longstanding connection to electric technology and green solutions — absolutely the opposite, Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest producer of crude oil.

It’s complicated. WWE were the first big sports brand to announce an event in Saudi — but WWE isn’t really a sport and isn’t governed by a sporting body, wrestling a strictly choreographed entertainment product, despite the athleticism. As a consequence, the event in Riyadh could be bent to meet existing Saudi restrictions — no female wrestlers, no women in attendance, etc.

The FIA couldn’t do that and neither could Formula E. The event was somehow going to have to cater to, well, people like me. And they could have done that by spending the Saudia money on ferrying us around so we never saw anything but for whatever reason, they didn’t. They’ve never told me what to tweet or what to write about it. I don’t work for them, they didn’t sign this off and if anything happens to me as a consequence of writing it it’s not their problem.

They’ve got me access to princes to ask questions and put me in front of an exhaustive list of local TV and newspapers to prove that, yes, there is a woman — I’m aware I’m a bit of the PR to all this. And that that’s why people question whether what I think about it is true and why I’ve spent over a year writing this and why it’s so long.

I am incredibly sick of the persistent accusation Formula E journalists do not ask about this. That the media has not had to think about it, that nothing’s been written. So here you go, I’ve written it all.

There’s a view that these big, international events happening in Saudi Arabia is ‘sportswashing’ — that the intention is for Saudi Arabia’s international reputation to be rehabilitated by being thought of as a sports venue. That brief, highly-controlled environments are giving an unrealistic view of life there.

The events are short, for sure. I have made three brief trips to Riyadh and I am not about to pretend that I know about ‘normal’ life there in any meaningful way. This isn’t intended to be documentary about Saudi Arabia writ large, it’s about what it’s like to go there as a journalist to cover the events and what I’ve seen and the people I’ve spoken to. A lot of it’s just about what goes on in my head during the weekends — it’s part travelogue.

I don’t think about Riyadh very much for the next few months because I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, until Formula E call me a few weeks before testing and ask if I’d like to go on a trip. Would I. My entire method of managing my fragile psychology is dependent on going off somewhere every few weeks and the pent up home time is sending me scratchy, I say yes before I’ve even heard where it is.

It’s Riyadh, obviously. They post me some abaya and I read some not very reassuring travel advice, most of which doesn’t make much sense, while trying to work out a way of covering up my confrontationally queer hairstyle.

At Jaguar’s season launch I scope out who else is going — it’s all men but then again, there are not many things like me in motorsport. I contemplate my own death in a mediaeval fortress a lot, because this, for some reason, seems likely to be something Formula E would be sending me to.

The flight over is blandly sober. My hobbies and interests are pretty much covered off by “getting extraordinarily lit on flights” so the self restraint to ask for coffee instead of wine, before we enter Saudi airspace and they stop serving it, is an immense struggle. I also keep falling over my abaya and still can’t do anything with the headscarf to save my life.

My male peers are not having these problems. One of them has a gin and tonic, for a start.

In my head, Riyadh airport is a jail. The entrance to fortress Riyadh, machinery of a despot. In my mind, this is where it goes wrong — where my hastily-issued travel authorisation is judged invalid, where the men are let in but I’m not, where somehow this turns into The Gang All Go To Saudi Prison. Sitting nervously on plastic chairs, we wait for our visas to be done and I try to be sanguine about my upcoming, certain death and consider if I could actually fancy one of the dudes or if I’m just surprisingly horny about my own mortality.

Spoilers: I am not dead.

When we get through customs, the Saudi fixer shakes my hand. My very limited googling has informed me this is absolutely illegal unless we are married and my heart leaps out of my chest because oh here we go, here’s where I die. It’s so stupid it’s unreal, my tabloid-mythological Saudi overlayed like VR on what’s in front of my face.

I’d say it’s the fact it’s 40 degrees centigrade at 1am but realistically it’s just me being ignorant as all get-out and believing whatever I read, especially the most ghoulishly outrageous bits, instead of being willing to find stuff out. Which is a particularly stupid situation for a journalist.

Riyadh is, through the window of the taxi, very clearly not a mediaeval fortress. It has Starbucks. It has Nando’s. Its late but there are people walking around and when we get to our hotel, it’s easy enough for me to buy a coffee, go for a quick wander around the block and then stare out of my thirteenth-story window at a sprawling city glittering with lights. Not as built up with forbidding glass as Dubai, not quite as antiquarian-ramshackle as my beloved Marrakech and there’s something somewhere to it, a little chaos and disorganisation, a little… rule-breaking tendency that twangs on strings tied to Tbilisi.

Riyadh suddenly isn’t a story to scare naughty children with, it’s a place — where nine million people live. And I realise I have been quite stupid about this. Embarrassingly, shamefully so. I don’t get anything like enough sleep, thinking about it because I hate being wrong and I’m not quite sure how I so bullheadedly was so off the truth.

At the showcase I interview some Saudi princes. In the back of my mind lurks a vociferous argument I had with my ex-husband once, where I called him morally bereft for even considering working with the Saudi state. It is funny when you schadenfreude yourself.

My image of a Saudi Prince at the time is very limited. And by limited I mean I can name one.

I have not thought about HRH Abdulaziz bin Turki AlFaisal Al Saud. At this point, he’s the person personally tasked with making Formula E happen and he is vibrating with anxious tension about making it work. In my steady realisation that Saudis are people, too, I clock that they’re as nervous about screwing this up for us as we are of doing something wrong. Maybe a lot more so.

Abdulaziz is funny. I worry halfway through the interview I’m going to get in trouble for flirting with him because when I listen back to it, we laugh a lot. It’s the slightly anxious giggling of people doing something weird they’re not sure will work, at the start and then just genuine jokes. We “do a bit” about everyone telling Saudi they need to make changes for decades and then telling them they’re going too fast when they do.

I find out most Saudis, in fact almost all Saudis, are aged between 15–30 and think about what that means for the life expectancy in this bakingly hot, dry country. 90% of the population works in agriculture, which must be backbreaking in the extremities of the peninsula’s climate and that quality of life is poor, especially compared to the state’s wealth. It is very obvious he is a devout reformer and wants to urgently improve things for Saudi Arabians, starting with what he knows (he used to race in Blancpain GT in Europe) by bringing motorsport and technology to push the country away from the oil enriching — and endangering — it.

He’s not a cold despot, or a charismatic liar — there are plenty of both in motorsport let alone other fields I’ve covered — he’s a little bit thousand-miles-an-hour, talks more like Formula E’s bouncy kiwi Mitch Evans than a politician and with slightly more honesty, not offended when I push things and offering more to ask about than he tries to hide.

If the whole trip has wrongfooted me a little by just bringing Riyadh out of the mythical then this does something else. I do some gormless, rapid recalculations, brain as vacant as that meme because despite my almost unshakable sense of western entitlement it has finally got through that there’s a chance the race in Saudi is not actually about me.

In all my righteous, ask-a-manager fury about having to do this myself, I haven’t thought about the Saudi equivalent of me. Who wants to watch motorsport, work in it, has been denied it right up until now unless she was privileged enough to get to other states — and 90% of the population isn’t. Doing the maths in my head, that 70% 15–30 year olds includes about 13.6 million women my age or younger who’ve just got the right to drive as part of the FIA negotiations for the race. And the right to work at it. And here I am pitching a fit because I have to comply with what might as well be a uniform, to a tourist, for a weekend.

Ok, somehow I have got some perspective. But that doesn’t make this all automatically fine, does it.

Aseel Al-Hamad, a Saudi woman who’s just driven an F1 car at the French grand prix, is there. There’s a flamboyantly camp young Saudi YouTuber or something who is flirting with everyone. I still can’t drink coffee without dripping it on my headscarf.

Everyone keeps saying “it’s just a normal place.” Which is true — it has coffee shops and supermarkets and I eat an extremely salty salad with two other journalists after we get back to the hotel and none of us get arrested for not being married to each other. But also that dumbs it down, to just our own flighty concerns about how to exist here.

I can’t stop thinking about those stats. Saudi, which I’d thought of as ruled by old zealots, is so modally young that I am above the average age here.

There are young, excited Saudis at the showcase. Obviously, because that’s what 70% of the population are. 39 million people live here, who I’ve either thought of as generically oppressed or generically oppressive, drawn on some very primitive gender grounds. When I worked in humanitarianism, no one ever mentioned being humanitarian to Saudis and to my genuine horror, against all my ethics, I’ve casually dehumanised an entire population.

Don’t tell me, sitting from the west and spitting blood on social media at the idea of racing series going to Riyadh, you haven’t done something the same. Because I’m pretty good at this and yet somehow I can get my head around going to New York while toddlers sit in ICE detention, can get on with living in the UK despite knowing full well the horrors my own government is committing but I didn’t know any Saudis, you see. So somehow it hadn’t occurred to me they might want things like entertainment and sports and other things I take for granted and don’t assume I should be denied just because the prime minister’s done a racism again.

Formula E wasn’t taking a compromised event — not like WWE’s male-only show for a select few. It was going to be an Eprix like any other, bar the podium champagne. Not only that, there’d be women on track.

Saudi Arabia was about to go 0–60 by never having had women driving to hosting an event where, during a test, the largest number of women, anywhere, ever would be driving current, top flight machinery alongside men. A statement, yes but not intended to me about Saudi but to Saudi women about motorsport. I mention it to the prince, who thinks it’s quite funny as a statistic — he’s raced in Europe, after all, he knows what the numbers are like in our glorious egalitarian societies.

(If you don’t: they’re atrocious. I can name every woman who’s ever got as far as single seater racing, while I can’t remember which men were in F1 5 years ago, there’ve been so many.)

I tell someone on Twitter that if other countries wanted to do it they’ve had the preceding 70 years and well, where is the lie?

The flight to Dubai, en route back, is weird. I rip my hijab off in the airport terminal, no longer able to cope with my own inept wrapping and try to stop the side-shaved bit of my hair standing up. A male journalist asks me why I bothered with it in the first place and I try not to give him too much of a death glare because actually it’s becoming apparent things aren’t what I assumed.

I absentmindedly delude myself into thinking I’ve been invited to hang out with the guys, not just tagged along by proximity, for the rest of the journey and it hurts for about half the subsequent season that I’m incapable of learning not to make assumptions, despite the big ol’ wisening experience I just got lavished with. But those are other places.

Jamal Khashoggi is brutally murdered in an embassy in Turkey shortly after our showcase trip and the number of names of Saudis most people can think of increases to two. One deceased.

I nervously ask Formula E, at testing, if we’re still going. We are. It’s fuel for some very gory nightmares for a few weeks and can I really go there? I feel pretty strongly about dismembering journalists.

As the days tick down to going, mythical Riyadh re-descends on my mind. I forget the place I saw in broad daylight and brood on the fact I’ll be arriving at 1am, totally alone. It’s stupid fear, not the healthy respect I have for the fact travelling so much on my own, anywhere, is generally dangerous.

My usual attitude to being presented with a dangerous opportunity is to immediately take it. My sense of self-preservation isn’t impaired but my survival skills are over-developed, it’s left me with some excellent stories I can never put my name to and which I often only tell softened versions of, to avoid upsetting anyone. I can think or… Well, let’s say manoeuvre or lie or cheat or manipulate myself out of almost anything and the things I can’t, I can chalk up to a big bucket of Things That Are Making Me Weirder And Weirder But I Just Can’t Stop Doing Them.

I don’t think that will work in Saudi Arabia. And I’m so incapable of behaving myself. I’ve already forgotten the manifest demonstrations I saw that Saudis handle strict rules the same way everywhere else with them does, ie by each pretending they must apply to other people and look like you’re doing it when it matters, my own MO for everything.

Meanwhile my own unelected leader in the UK nearly tanks us out of the European Union for the first of what will be several, increasingly grim times and I have this vague feeling of unassailable doom.

All the thinking about going to Saudi has stopped me doing any thinking about actually going to Saudi, which because I booked my flights late and am permanently broke, is via two Ryanair flights, a gruelling overnight layover in Milan Malpensa (0/10, do not do) and 11 discombobulated hours in Jordan that I thought I was going to enjoy but it turns out the fear is kicking in.

The silly thing is, the thing that scares me is a taxi driver in Ammam who I throw some Jordanian dollars at while bruising my thumb forcing the lock down at some traffic lights to escape after he tries to essentially extort me. But if I can’t handle Ammam how am I going to handle Riyadh? A lot of me wants to turn around and go home.

I get to the airport for my final flight much too early and when they tell me I can’t check in yet, it all suddenly hits and I unexpectedly sit down on the terminal floor and cry hysterically for ten minutes.

By the time I get on the plane, I’m delirious with panic. The insane idea I am going to get arrested at the airport dominates my entire thoughts — after all, last time I was with Formula E but I’m not normally in the group, the showcase a one-off excursion.

Also, most pathetically given I’m 32 not five, I have not told my mother I’m going to Saudi Arabia. My mother disapproves of most things I do but I feel like there’s a relatively legitimate case for that here and also that I am a gutless coward for not being able to take that on. Gutless cowards afraid of being told off probably shouldn’t be trying to do this.

I cry so pathetically with fear the Flynas staff, who are spectacularly kind, give me a free coffee and one sits with me, thinking it’s the thermal-buffeted take off that has me hysterical, not the country they live in.

It is, obviously, not Formula E’s responsibility to check I get anywhere. Or where I’m staying or in particular I’d really rather they didn’t attempt to regulate what I’m doing because I reserve my right to get up to all kinds of things without them trying to stop me. But sometimes there are moments when I think anyone would quite like to think there’s someone who’ll know if they don’t make it to their hotel and I’m having one, feeling much too vulnerable to be able to do this. The monster under the bed is scaring me, mooom.

Needless to say, it’s fine. Uber is very well-regulated in Saudi Arabia and the process of transferring to my apartment hotel is extremely straightforward and despite my sudden inability to do maths convincing me it costs three times more than it does, really cheap from a London perspective.

The guy at the check-in desk thanks me for respectfully wearing Saudi-compliant clothes; my hair at this stage is still difficult to not look aggressively asymmetrical and I’ve finally learned how to do a hijab but it sort of unnerves me. Am I either appropriating or colluding with something, here? After all, I’m not muslim. I’d be a terrible muslim, I already miss wine.

I really need to sleep but don’t, which turns out to be basically what I spend most of my time in Riyadh doing because my brain won’t stop turning over and there’s not enough hours before I have to get up and go to the track anyway.

Here is where things get interesting, of course. Because I’m not staying in a hotel full of Formula E people, I’m not staying with anyone else at all, I’m just any old regular person in Riyadh, staying in the kind of place an average-income Saudi might if they were visiting from Jeddah.

Formula E don’t have my address, I didn’t have to put it on my visa application (handled by the championship so I have no idea how difficult it would be to get one as a journalist otherwise) and unless someone very carefully trailed me from the airport then I’m just out here alone. I’m staying in Al-Aqiq, which is a neighbourhood sort of near Diriyah and as decentralised as the whole of Riyadh seems to be.

Riyadh is a weird city, from my perspective — it seems to have no centre and there’s motorways everywhere. In any 500m walk, you can find at least two demolished buildings with the rubble in situ and another one under construction, a petrol station and a kebab shop. Every road feels like a dual carriageway and I don’t understand the shops.

Not for the reason I assumed I wouldn’t understand the shops, which was more specifically cultural issues. I don’t understand the shops because they sell things that make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever — I’m staying in an apartment hotel and there’s a petrol station nearby, a coffee shop on the forecourt.

That’s reasonably sensible to me. I can also get my head round the oddly Roman-themed kebab shop and the phone shop the other side — fine, that’s how modern life works right?

What I do not understand is the stationery warehouse that also sells party gear and interior design trimmings that seems, by all accounts, to be the big shop in the area. It’s sized for a DIY shop and stocked by the crazy crap aisle in Lidl and although it sells me an exceptionally good pencil sharpener that I’ve jealously guarded ever since, I cannot work out what the heck its deal is. It opens at like 7am and has supermarket trolleys available but every time I go in everyone’s buying like one box of paper plates?

There will be no answers. Some elements of Riyadh, I have to accept, I will not fully understand.

But I find myself going in a lot. I buy some weird new stationery that doesn’t really set me up for the season, because Al-Aqiq doesn’t have much else going on. I get really invested in trying every type of latte flavour the petrol station coffee shop does because it sort of gives me a sense of direction in my attempts at exploration that are otherwise coming up short because I can’t find anywhere to poke around, sleepy residential and mosques the main features of the area.

I assumed it was because I was sort of on the outskirts but this continues to puzzle me a year later. I’m used to cities with centres, high streets — I don’t know if it’s the heat or just a different, dispersed way of doing things or because (and I definitely have noticed this) Saudis don’t really have a culture of congregating places, turning up in crowded scenarios or what. But the structure of the town kind of makes no sense to me, and maybe never will.

There’s, seriously, no public transport on the enormous roads and coming from London that confuses the heck out of me. Contrary to the imagined SUVs of gulf state, most of the cars on the road are old and Japanese — Toyota Camrys and Hyundais, clearly proudly cared for but long in the tooth on mileage. There are almost no European or American cars and the ones that exist look weirdly out of place, a Renault Megane looking like an undersized curiosity in a line of Honda estates.

From that, you can probably gather I walked around a bit. I actually walked around a lot more than I initially intended to, especially on the first day I was trying to get to the track.

This is where it gets a bit technical about the business of motorsport, which is that for the first and only time this year, I need to get to the accreditation centre and pick up the pass that will let me into the circuit — and the rest of the season. This is a very minorly stressful process — and only so because I haven’t been to the circuit before so there’ll be a degree of wandering around trying to find the right place.

What happens is that I initially book a taxi to the wrong place, as it turns out there are several bits of Riyadh called Diriyah. Then I rebook a taxi and it goes to a different version of the wrong place, including having to get through several military checkpoints that my taxi driver is increasingly confused why I think I should be going through — and to be fair, so am I. There wasn’t any of this last time.

I bail out when I see some Formula E hoardings on the basis I must be nearby. This is a stupid idea. I’m the wrong side of the track and have to walk through it to get to the thing that will let me get the lanyard that says I am allowed to go through it but there doesn’t seem to be any other sensible way of making it there.

This feels like the sort of thing you could get into a lot of trouble for. It feels more like that when I get to some catch fencing that hems me in so totally I realise the only thing I can do is walk a long way back, to possibly not be able to find a way through or to climb it. Reader, despite the clothing situation and the fact I am carrying a rucksack full of precious scarred Macbook, I climbed it.

Jumping down the other side, I realised one of the reasons was because it was next to what looks really like a military compound and there’s a bored-looking dude with a gun staring at me. To quote Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye: ok, this looks bad.

There’s a sort of weird thing that happens when you are in a genuinely bad situation. Like, this is obviously not what I am supposed to be doing and it’s hard to guess whether the FIA or the Saudi government will get angry at me wandering into places I am clearly not meant to be first — or most severely. Technically I haven’t signed my behaviour waiver with the FIA for the year yet and also they probably have fewer guns.

As you can probably guess by the fact I’m writing this a year later, the next 45 minutes are quite stressful but ultimately end up in the accreditation office with extremely smudged eyeliner but no permanent damage. And for the record, the Saudi soldier I end up speaking to through Google Translate is nothing but helpful.

Which should probably be the end of me getting lost in various places in Riyadh except it’s kind of only the beginning. I very rarely get lost, I’m great at yeeting myself round the world and reading cities from their layout alone — I don’t know if it’s just that Riyadh is so decentralisedly alien to me or if it’s just the same thing that happens where I cannot stop myself trying to read Arabic the wrong way round and it’s just that I’m too stupid to understand it.

Whatever it is, I get lost a lot. Nearly continuously. I have to develop an uncharacteristic level of chill acceptance for not knowing where I am or when I will next be able to work that out. For sometimes wandering at length down motorways, in the rain, trying to hope that there’s a point on the horizon where GPS will work and maybe I won’t run out of road before then. It’s never that horrible, as an experience — Riyadh actually has fairly decent pavements — it’s just slightly bizarre and adds to my sense of being constantly wrong-footed and out of my depth, which is the kind of on-the-edge-of-fear feeling that makes me crotchety and unobservant and the whole problem ten times worse.

Anyway, that’s for later.

Occasionally, people call me inspirational. How inspirational of me, pursuing a career in a male dominated field. How inspirational of me, tootling round the world on my own and with no budget. How inspirational of me to not have ended up dead given all that.

It’s a weird feeling. I am outrageously flattered by it but I don’t feel very inspirational; I’m broke, I have a professional respect level probably best described as ‘tolerated’ (and barely that) and I’m hardly out here getting awards. When I finish a season I mostly feel a crushing sense of disappointment at myself for not having done that better.

Which is the kind of thing, when the drivers say it, you feel moved to say something encouraging. But it’s true — I’m frustrated by the number of times the titanic effort to get to a race limits the ambition of what’s possible there. And I’m kind of breaking myself a bit and in denial about it.

Anyway, should I really be an inspirational figure for dragging myself to Saudi Arabia on budget flights and white-knuckle bracing to hang on for another season? Probably not. After all, the whole reason I can do this sort of thing is because I’m an overpaid London media professional with a devastating sense of entitlement about travel.

It gnaws at me a bit, because all weekend when I’m in the Riyadh paddock young women keep coming up to me. They grab at my media pass, newly-minted and full-season heavy in the folds of my abaya and we stagger through conversations in Arabic via google translate or if they know enough English to talk.

It’s very exciting and inspirational, seeing a woman journalist succeed. I know because a few months previous to this event, I got amazingly drunk and embarrassed myself telling Suzi Perry how much she inspired me. I look up to the broadcasters and the journalists I find digging through old magazines and suddenly realise that’s a woman’s byline, often from a point when I assumed there weren’t any.

To be honest, I think most people just assume there aren’t any of us either way. Women in motorsport are grid girls or PRs — at least, in that same spooky, popular imagination where Riyadh’s barely a map location but you definitely have an opinion about it even so.

As far as the young women grabbing at my pass are concerned, I’m as ludicrously mythical as I can’t seem to stop myself thinking about their city if I let my mind wander for even forty seconds. A female motorsport journalist, travelling around on her own and from their perspective the most extraordinary thing, which is that I’ve apparently come to Saudi Arabia of my own volition. In fact, I’ve had to work really hard to do so, when I could have just… not.

This is kind of incomprehensible, to the Saudi teenagers. They’re excited by the idea I’d do it but when I live in London and can go anywhere, why would I? And on my own? I must obviously be the kind of incredibly celebrated and important person who thinks they can get away with that sort of behaviour and I don’t have the heart to tell them I’m actually panicking a bit about whether I can get anywhere to even take my coverage this season.

Riyadh’s one of the problems, actually. Editors don’t want to be seen to be endorsing it and the ones I can get to take it say they have to include critique of the situation, which is maddening when they won’t let me write about anything I’m actually seeing.

Ok, yes. Here is the situation: the Saudi government has paid for the race. Someone, somewhere, always pays for a race — championships sustain themselves on hosting fees and Formula E doesn’t go for the scalp like F1 but ultimately ‘who is willing to pay’ is a major persuasive factor to an events’ viability. Not to peel back the final veil but this is how big sporting events work, everywhere.

It’s proved controversial in the past. Montreal paid extra to host a season-ending double-header over several seasons, then it turned out the (I’m compelled by journalism standards to write the word ‘allegedly’ here) corrupt mayor had made promises the city wasn’t willing to keep.

It put Formula E in a position where, contractually, they had to sue the city for a settlement — not the most popular thing to do but FE itself can hardly just wave away a contract or they’d look like mugs everywhere else. Also probably, you know, needed the money for something because no one knows more about how much doing all this costs than my Ryanair-seat-shaped arse.

And why? Why wheel and deal to make a global car racing championship happen. Well, I don’t know — there’s no actual point, is there? There’s not a moral at the heart of this, a heartwarming lesson for humanity that’s perfectly illuminated by the chance to watch one millionaire athlete smash another millionaire athlete into a concrete barrier in a shower of carbon fibre.

You’ve got to tell yourself something to sleep at night though, right? There’s got to be some reason you’re doing it. We make it up for any job, the reason you’re logically doing these things. Here’s mine.

The planet is dying. That’s not hyperbole — the seas are emptying of whales drowned by plastic as fast as they fill with Antarctic meltwater. We can’t put either of those things back, there isn’t a fix except prevention.

The sky is choking, we’re shutting off the stars with satellites and smog and after a few hundred years of building a world dependent on massive — and mass — mobility, we’ve realised we can’t use the types we’ve been reliant on. We talk about the screaming, hurtling destruction of the only place we can live in bland, corporate terms, these words like ‘mobility’ and ‘transitive economics’ neatly editorialising the end of the world as the closing remarks of a conference on disaster mitigation.

It’s terrifying. It’s so incomprehensibly, mind-crushingly fearful that even if you can somehow get yourself together enough to think about it, it’s really hard. Scientists say the risk numbers are into the bit where human minds actually don’t understand them because we just can’t really be that scared.

Which is a problem, because the last thing we need right now is numbness. A few years back, I’d slipped a long way into it — not really specifically the planet but more that some very immediate things were going very wrong in my life and the only way I could continue to get up and go to work instead of lying down and screaming was to just not feel anything. Which isn’t very sustainable, you need a cathartic ability to make sense of things even if they’re terrible.

There’s lots of crutches people use — alcohol (a generally reliable and disastrous one for me) and other mind-altering distractions, getting overinvested in box sets, obsessively hyperfixating about your OTP, pinning your emotional wellbeing on the success of a sports team.

I went for pinning my entire psychological and professional future on Formula E being the thing to dive into right that moment. In the moments where I couldn’t think of a reason to carry on, there’d be another race on the horizon. In the long nights where I didn’t want to live anymore I could motivate myself with the sheer, stubborn desperation of throwing myself into getting in.

Frivolous, yes. But Formula E does also have a point: on this dying earth, amidst the keynotes on the end of transport, we need to do something. Just stopping flying or transporting or using the massive systems we’ve rigged to plug the earth in won’t work. Same as we can’t put the whales back in the barren sea, we can’t just pull the brakes on a tangled juggernaut we’ve spent decades chaotically assembling because as much as we urgently need to, to save lives, if we do then people will literally die.

It’s complicated. It’s those things too big to think about and we needed solutions before I was born, are living through the dying moments of panic while we scrabble for a fix that makes things least-bad. The trolley dilemma between apocalypse and slightly mitigated endtime.

We’ve got to be brave. We’ve got to do things like say ‘we actually cannot use oil anymore’ — for fuel, for plastic, for millions of things that keep us alive in abstract or direct ways. The 20th century was built on such a proliferation of oil products it’s hard to imagine extracting them from your home, you can’t even extract them from your supermarket trolley without making a very contorted list.

And there’s so little time. There’s so much to do. We’ve got to fix cars and planes and medicine and supply lines and food and it’s really hard to think about it all because there’s nothing you can do, you need some sort of thing to rally around.

Yes, it’s cruder than a barrel to say that Formula E can be that thing. It’s a racing series, it’s a day out, it’s entertaining sport — but it’s also a test of shame for automakers caught out in dieselgate, it’s an on-track annoyance that says actually it is possible to make electric cars populist, you can do this.

If all the absurd, awful things we have to deal with now were built in the panicked competition of the twentieth century, then welcome to the 21st edition of that scrap. There’s no time to tear into the companies and people that have orchestrated it — half of them are dead and none of them care but if you can make a system where to succeed, they have to do what you want then that’s something else.

There’s never been and I hope there never is again a moment where motorsport, as inch-grabbing competitive hot lab for transport, has had such a crucial moment. All the years of F1’s development need to be drowned out in the next half-decade by the wind-up banshee howl of electric technologies making up for decades in absence.

And you can’t politely do that on the streets of Monaco as a nice little spectacle. You have to go where you’re not wanted and explain that, actually, you are what is needed. You can’t disrupt anything without causing a little chaos and you’re gonna have to do some stuff that scares you and other people might not approve of.

So for all that, I’d better be fucking inspirational. If I’m the in, I’d better live up to it. If I’m, somehow, the lens that someone can see something worth getting excited about through then I’d better wipe off the grime and get on with it. If I’m how someone can see themself being part of this, across whatever incomprehensibly vast gulf, then I’d better not be churlish about it.

Yes, I am a colossally privileged westerner. Yes, I am ignorant and disastrously naiive — no one looks at me in a paddock and takes me seriously. Formula One journalists consider my curious electrical proclivities like discovering the intern is into something kinky and I’m never going to get a Pulitzer.

But in a paddock in Riyadh I’m a thing people haven’t seen before because all that colossal western privilege means I get to do things they’re not allowed to. And things people have never seen before are inspiring, whether they’re race series screaming round a UNESCO world heritage site or grandstands where women sit with men or Jason Derulo’s shiny jeans.

And the government paid for it, yeah. It’s a little incomprehensible. Why would the Saudi government pay for an event that’s hardly aligned with an oil state’s economy?

One answer is the propaganda. A greenwash over ARAMCO’s continued production of the majority of the world’s crude oil. But New York has an Eprix and no one looks across the Atlantic and says ‘well, the US is green now’ any more than anyone thinks of Oman as the home of football.

So if you talk about greenwashing, you either think the Saudi government is hopelessly naiive or that the entire world is, stricken by lack of knowledge about the place. Formula E is part of a plan, though — the Vision 2030 programme of reform and transformation, which includes a focus on opening Saudi to visitors.

Saudi Arabia has a lot of visitors per year, to Mecca. But visas for non-Muslims were very hard to come by until recently, with tourist visas not at all and a lot of the country restricted.

The first year, lots of journalists were flown out by the Saudi tourism board and taken on an ultra-luxury, whistlestop tour of the Kingdom. I obviously wasn’t one of them. This doesn’t come from a place of delusion where I think those lovely people from Saudia took me on such a nice trip, I learned so much during the cultural briefings between private jet flights…

The thing about being the unexpected element, that weird thing no one expected to see in a paddock anywhere let alone Saudi Arabia, is that no one notices what I am doing most of the time because they assume I’m just recording a Vine or gazing wistfully at a drivers’ hairline or something. I don’t really get fussed around by teams or pushed out of garages or moved away from conversations because despite it being pretty obvious by this point that I do know what I’m looking at, I am also still the comedic relief.

It has turned into a bit of an act. If I actually am I tremendous dumbass then I can’t get mad when everyone treats me like one.

And no one cares what I do or where I go. As soon as I leave the circuit I’m a black shape as swaddled as any of the others. Which is why I think I can trust what I saw and what I think about Riyadh, why I don’t think anyone there was trying to impress me.

The teenage girls, after all, were there for the Black Eyed Peas concert. It was purely incidental that they discovered nice western ladies women could be motorsport journalists in the process, that my big, heavy permanent pass drew so many eyes because I couldn’t get the lanyard to bend to sitting right yet.

One of the women I speak to wistfully says she’d like to be a journalist herself but she’s been arrested before and couldn’t face it happening again. Which is where the teenage excitement melts away.

The reality is that I’m seeing Saudi Arabians get to do stuff they haven’t been able to previously which I take wholly for granted. I’m not inspirational, I’m just an exotic glimpse of someone who, for all my bleating and crying about going to Riyadh, is in absolutely no danger whatsoever.

And when I blend away into the night the only thing that stood out was I have no cocking idea how to keep an abaya out of the puddles from the unseasonal downpour. But going to Saudi is not about me.

I don’t think you can fake teenage girls. You can fake loads of things but you can’t pretend it’s plausible a restrictive state faked teenage girls’ enthusiasm. (the next year I’d get in a mosh pit with them but that’s later)

I meet a really lovely, wonderfully dedicated Saudi journalist out there. She’s a credit both to her youth and frankly to motorsport and I don’t think she even half realises how great she is at making both internet content and quality traditional journalism.

(I’m not putting her name here because this is a reasonably low-risk piece for me, I think — but I wouldn’t force anyone else’s name to be put to my words, any more than I was willing to let my own be edited)

So there are Saudi women doing this. And you should listen to them about the race far more than me and what they say is obviously the same thing I say about the London Eprix; of course you want the sport you love in your city.

Boris Johnson’s an odious prick and I’m allowed to say that. I don’t have to express gratitude to him for facilitating the event, when it happens next year. He didn’t have anything to do with it and I can be British without having a single miligram of respect for the people running the place.

I can’t tell you what Saudis think about their own leaders because I don’t know — but the attitude is definitely quite different. The situation is different, the structure is different. I don’t want to say that people are lying when they say they’re grateful to the leaders for bringing sporting events there because I don’t know that they are.

The politics of anywhere is complicated. There’s not a requirement to engage, except when there is. When you have to go somewhere the issues loom in massive print or your prime minister keeps straight-up lying about things that will get people killed.

People think we don’t ask about this. But what is there to say? I can tell you what was said in a press conference, I can tell you what I inferred from the total disregard for a lot of the stricter rules that’s obviously running through Riyadh.

Saudi Arabians like being Saudi Arabian. Much more than I think most British people like being British but that’s kind of cultural. It will come as no surprise that a young population finds strict religious law grating and wants reforms, that the handful of cinemas that have opened in the past few years are popular, that people like being able to go on dates and go out for dinner without being strictly separated into male and female and they love to party. Some of them probably wouldn’t say no to a beer.

If I tell you that Saudi Arabians (largely) approve of the race, will you approve of the race now? If I tell you that there’s young Saudis, especially women, getting the chance to do stuff they really want to do because we bring the circus to Riyadh, are you onboard? Not if you weren’t before.

I would say: why do you think you deserve the opportunity to go to things and they don’t? What are you gonna tell my friend, ‘hey, an accident of your birth location means my politics ban sport from your country?’ I don’t know if that sits right with me, personally.

Here’s some tea: the Riyadh paddock, in that first year, is the nicest motorsport paddock I’ve ever worked. As a woman. I mean, I always work in paddocks as a woman but like in terms of me being there, womanly, it was the nicest.

Within the Formula E paddock, people behave pretty much like they do in a lot of the rest of Riyadh, from what I can tell. Western women uncover their hair and some fully do away with the abaya, by year two that ratio increases to pretty much everyone but me shedding it as soon as they’re through the gates.

Women have never been banned from motorsport, in liberal western Europe. We make up 1.5% of race license holders — over the course of 125 years of motorsport events — and it’s conventional for men in racing to be able to say wildly misogynist things without it affecting their careers but we’re not banned and never have been.

Women always have been in motorsport, working and as pure fans. Most people in it start as one, end up as a combination. It’s a passion field, you can’t commit to the schedule otherwise.

But we’re a minority. And people quite often either forget we’re there or forget that any group who are so completely marginalised actually kind of needs some extra catering-for. You get used to it after awhile and kind of forget but you will never be one of the boys.

Riyadh isn’t like that because this is a totally new event. They have to make sure that it caters to a population not used to attending these kind of events at all and also that it specifically advertises to and makes itself welcoming to women, because otherwise they’re at risk of getting in trouble with the FIA. The organisers here 100% have to prove how liberal and reformed they are.

Which means everything includes me. People add “and ladies” every time they say “guys,” everyone asks for my opinion about things, I get brought to the roundtables and possibly actually given more time with people than the men.

It’s so strange and flattering, it gives me not a weird impression of Saudi Arabia, who I completely understand the motivations of about this and yes I know it’s PR and an act. But it’s an act that’s working, I do feel welcomed not specifically to Riyadh but to motorsport in a way I simply never have back home. It makes me a bit genuinely hysterical about having to go back to normal paddocks.

I don’t think Riyadh deserves a medal for it or anything — but it makes me think a lot about the ‘regular’ motorsport events.

Back to that first year; it’s fine. I distract myself by looking after one of my friends, who is finding it all much harder and who I designate myself the food and drink carer for the majority of the season.

By the time we’re leaving the circuit I promise to come back for a week next time, to see more of the city. I’ve already made myself a playlist for the way home and although I’ve been cheerfully, relentlessly convincing myself I am coping fine and the kilometre and a half down a dark motorway I’ve walked every night doesn’t bother me and I feel perfectly safe, there’s a cathartic reason it opens with the Pet Shop Boys’ Home & Dry.

But it’s done. We’ve been to Riyadh and nothing bad happened and I ate some really great falafel. Also had one of the best experiences of my life when I walked up to media pen on the test day and there was a near-equal number of female to male drivers due to a test stunt where teams were allowed to run a second car if a woman drove it.

Yeah, it’s a stunt. But it’s the one that means Saudi Arabia has now had the most women driving in a mixed-gender, top flight motorsport series, simultaneously, of any country ever. If anyone’s mad about that then motorsport has been happening for 125 years and somewhere else could have done it first. I mean, this is just sport. Somewhere could have done that. Somewhere could do it now with a larger number. In the interim, well played HRH Abdulaziz.

I decide maybe I don’t want to drink any wine in Cairo airport on my way back, for roughly the amount of time it takes me to get off my plane, walk to a place that sells wine and immediately order some. It tastes so good, I have a little cry.

Thus ends year one of what’s going to be ten years of me taking myself to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a lone woman and trying to get around.

Something weird happens the day after that season’s final race in New York, which is that I go to a lunch with a load of other journalists. They’re all F1 and important and cool, I probably shouldn’t have even been invited. Especially given I’ve just got off a heavily delayed overnight flight from JFK and I am not feeling it.

Anyway, I inevitably mention I’m from Formula E and this guy goes off at me about Riyadh. Then when he discovers I actually go, he goes even more in on me and my moral decay. I’m genuinely shocked by the ferocity of it, especially from a group of people who go to Bahrain.

I’ve got used to having to explain myself but this guy just won’t let it lie, says I’m dancing on Khashoggi’s grave and and mocking the idea of journalism, supporting crimes against women. I kind of think, privately, that that’s a bit much coming from the lofty podium of working in, uh, famous humanitarian agency Formula One but then at the time I also do that so perhaps that’s not a great stone to start throwing in a room full of people who do too.

I don’t manage to get my brain together enough to sell it to him. I mean, I don’t know if I want to sell it? Do I actually think it’s good that we go, not just survivable?

You know what, I do. I think it’s difficult and it stresses me out and every year it makes the season opener tough and you know, people shout at me over lunch and things. But look, if you just close the door on Saudi Arabia then how’s there gonna be reform? How is freedom of the press and rights going to improve if you don’t know anything about anything that happens there? Or anything about the country? The people that live there?

It’s 2019; the same way that Saudi Arabia can’t stop the flow of information as a young, internet-savvy population gets extremely online, you can’t stand in the way of things

My most succinct summary of why I think we should go, though, is simpler: Formula E getting paid to race in the home of oil and sit there going ‘that’s bad’ without getting censored is the biggest middle finger move.

Ah, Riyadh alone: round two. Now, surely, I would be armed with enough knowledge to not screw up constantly by disappearing into my own bizarre alternate reality.

Guess what? I absolutely do not. If anything else I’m even worse. I get really, really anxious in the runup — partly because this year my mother knows I am going and oh boy am I getting told off. Which is pathetic, what the hell, what kind of tiny, baby child am I?

I booked my flights really early this time, before testing. They were way better flights and I was excited to be going home via Beirut because apparently I am a lot better at inventing fictional versions of countries that sit in my brain like mirages than I am at reading the news.

Anyway, great life choices aside (it’s not like this is even my worst one) I, in theory, should be really chill about this. Except I miss the FIA email to apply for a visa and end up doing it late and it doesn’t turn up for ages and I get really stressed and then also ill and I start a new job and everything is really full on and I want to throw up.

I don’t do my packing until the last minute, then prepare by drinking too much wine and sleeping through my alarm so I have to book a last minute Uber to Stansted. Which isn’t ideal because I’m not sure if I’ve been paid but better than missing the whole thing.

Anyway, my point-blank refusal to ever check my bank balance is very much a me thing rather than anything directly connected to Saudi Arabia. So, off to Stansted and I have to re-buy everything I need and obviously forgot in the airport but again, this is pretty standard behaviour for anyone who’s as much of a total mess as me.

This doesn’t seem like the way to do it. I can get most places half-cut and sloppy but this is not most places. Nevermind — also it turns out Pegasus serve surprisingly pleasant in-flight wine and by the time I get to Istanbul I’m feeling quite relaxed; I have hours of stopover for it to wear off in, don’t worry.

I don’t want to go. It’s got into my head. I’ve been getting all these weird emails with hate-filled fantasies about me getting killed and I keep thinking about the guy at that lunch and also about the texts from my mum and the way I don’t feel cavalier enough to be doing this.

Why am I going? Because it’s my job to go. Because I have stuff to do. Because I have this endless compulsion to do it and it’s a massive privilege. I don’t know. It’s all weighing on my brain, am I an instrument of state PR now? I wouldn’t put up with that from anywhere and besides, I don’t think I am. I’d probably be on a fancier flight if I was.

But getting onto my late-night flight in Istanbul, I know it’s descended again. The fictional, fearful Riyadh is in my head and every radical thing I’ve tweeted from the past year is haunting me. What the hell am I doing going to Saudi Arabia?

And the thing is, I can’t (at this point) recognise it’s the VR. Yet again, I’m expecting to get arrested at the airport, to get trailed, a million paranoid things that won’t happen. But now they’re incredibly real in the sort of simulated reality everyone’s told me definitely exists and is more important than my own memories.

I’m not normally like this. I haven’t been sleeping enough (I’ve had ten hours sleep over five nights) and it’s really starting to show.

Still, on the plane now so better live with it — obviously I get to Riyadh without incident and am through the airport with a warm bag of falafel and a coffee, into an Uber where I manage to stagger through a mostly-Arabic conversation and send a selection of my wilder and more enthusiastic tweets about politically safe but morally questionable topic: Lando Norris is really hot lately.

I know I said I’m never going to win a Pulitzer but with that kind of bold reporting, I really should.

Finding my hotel takes a bit (it’s another, different dubious apartment hotel) and by the time I’m in and arrived, it’s like 3:30am so I just pass out in the massive bed. By which I mean, look at memes on my phone and rewatch the camping episodes of It’s Alive and wonder at which point I stopped just writing about semi-teenage idiot sportspeople and actually became one.

Nevermind, anyway, soon enough it’s time to revisit ‘finding the accreditation centre.’ This year I am determined not to have to climb any catch fencing so pick my Uber dropoff point VERY carefully. It is to absolutely no avail and I end up lost in the enormous Diriyah Season compound down near where Ruiz and Joshua will be going at it in a few weeks but certainly there are no electric cars currently.

Because I’m still freaking out and only managing to psychologically sustain myself by internally commentating on the situation it gets steadily worse as I wobble across the paddock on a combination of caffeine, adrenaline and inadvisable 4am hotel tap water. Once I actually find the place, collect the thing and get in the media centre things feel less out of control, except that I need to write two season previews before anyone wakes up in the UK still.

At least there’s fruit and coffee.

Thursday is a bit of a mess, for me. I don’t eat enough (I’m vegan and it’s a genuine problem in paddocks) and I’m so sleep deprived I’m really not coping very well and keep having to watch Calming YouTube Content to get a grip on myself and churn out another thousand words. To be fair, all of this is just the business of being me, doing journalism so can’t really be attributed to Riyadh or anyone there.

A team are doing an event later where I’m meant to be interviewing someone who I inevitably don’t get to interview because scheduling is a nightmare and also it’s really obvious that I am about one second from falling asleep on the floor and considerably over my stress limit. Another woman in Formula E asks me why I’m letting the side down by wearing an abaya (most team personnel are taking them off the second they enter the paddock) and I just snap.

It’s because I’m on my own. Because I arrived at 1:30am. Because everyone’s spent the last month telling me how stupid I am by going here and how certain I am to get killed and it turns out even I have a limit to self-determined risk enthusiasm. Because if anything happens to me, no one knows where I am and Formula E don’t look after me -

This comes as a surprise. They don’t? Surely no one lets me run round Saudi Arabia totally on my own?

Oh, they do. And being alone is psychologically testing and I feel so pathetic at how pitiable it all sounds. One of the drivers sympathetically tells me that sounds “really fucked up, to be honest.” It, err, doesn’t help.

By the time I get back to my hotel the absolute most I can manage to do is go to a shop and buy the ingredients for a big night in in Riyadh. Which is to say, some crisps, some mystery thing in a jar that turns out to be definitely not vegan kind of fake cheese with the consistency of mayonnaise that tastes amazing on crisps (food waste is bad) and one of everything from the drinks section.

I love foreign supermarkets. Full of weird stuff. This one is crucially full of men who are understandably surprised to see a western lady wandering around shaking like she’s on a billion drugs and trying to find the hummus (I can’t) or work out which colour of water is fizzy in these parts.

Obviously there’s no beer in Saudi Arabia but there is a wide selection of like beer-adjacent malt drinks that have weird fruity flavours and also cider-adjacent things with frightening coloured labels. I go for a beer-adjacent thing in flavour ‘original’ and a threatening can of Mirinda which poses the question about itself: watermelon or cantaloupe?

(my investigative powers don’t stretch that far, it mostly tastes of heavy-handed corn syrup)

I’m freaking out, though, because when I was in the supermarket the guy packing my bags gave me a present. It was just a chocolate wafer thing and I was concentrating on understanding what number I needed to pay so didn’t really pay any attention until I left and suddenly thought: what if they’re setting me up to be done for stealing it?

There was no evidence for this at all. Every Saudi I’ve met has been genuinely helpful or openly friendly, the worst reaction being a kind of morbid curiosity about why anyone would do what I am doing. But instead of using all 10ft-across of my weirdly gigantic hotel bed to get the sleep I really, really desperately need I obviously just send myself insane googling ‘setup to be arrested Saudi shops’ and variants thereon. It’s so stupid and I am only getting stupider as I waste precious resting hours on doing the opposite of that.

Now fully convinced I will be in jail before the end of the day, it’s time for the Friday race. Either you’re into motorsport and therefore know how race day works or you’re not and so don’t care but basically a lot of things happen all at once and I have to stop writing worryingly thirsty things about drivers in other series and do some work for once.

I’m really in the toilet, brain-wise, by this point and have to cry in the loos three times during the day. Which is difficult when the loos keep being closed because of some kind of water supply issue (Formula E uses temporarily-built paddocks so these things happen) and requires quite a lot of timing effort.

Also people keep interviewing me, which actually now seems to happen more than I interview other people and the whole thing feels completely ridiculous. Why are you interviewing me? I’m an idiot and I can’t remember my own name or feel most of the left side of my body because I last had ‘adequate sleep’ about three weeks ago and for some reason I forgot to bring any socks with me so I have these really aggressive blisters and I’m probably going to go to Saudi jail over a chocolate bar.

A lot of stuff is happening to me and very little of it is conducive to doing anything useful. Which then gets in my head more and this is how every weekend goes, except with an added, imaginary carceral threat.

I relay my woes to one of my friends who advises that maybe it really would be a good idea to eat something that isn’t crisps and get more than three hours’ sleep and like ok, I can believe that.

My Saudi friend notices I am having a meltdown and says she’s worried I hate her city. It finally kicks me into functional gear — I can’t be coming over here, making people feel bad about the fact I have a wholly imaginary version of their country down over my head like a visor.

So that night I first go to the concert after Formula E and purchase ‘potato,’ the most vegan thing I can find to eat. This helps somewhat and gets me into the mindset where when my taxi drops me off, I head off to the malls near where I’m staying (which are not the grander, designer sort you find in some of Riyadh) to complete the incredibly trivial task of buying socks and ordering stir fry.

Socks it turns out are easy, as there’s a shoe shop nearby and I could’ve saved myself a world of pain really easily. Which is pretty much the moral of this entire episode: stop making your life really hard and driving yourself insane and instead of just doing things like a normal, woman.

Dinner is also easy in that I get an absolutely monumental quantity of stir fry vegetables from a mall food court place and eat them in a sort of blissful semi-coma while listening to the sounds of Dr Dre’s seminal album 2001, over the mall tannoy. I seem to be staying in a very Asian district this year and most of the restaurants seem to be authentic Indonesian places.

This helps the sleeping problem enormously. It turns out just ‘not being scared’ is really key to getting six straight hours in bed and so being able to operate normally. And that’s the thing, what am I even scared of? Myself?

(to be fair, I am definitely the biggest danger to me)

It feels better. But I’m still relieved when I leave — it’s all the things: my own stupid ideas, the judgement from other people, the pressure of trying to make sure I’m doing it right.

Before I do though, I go to the last concert with a group of Saudi young people who I’ve tagged along with. Everyone is covered in glitter and dancing suggestively and jumping on each other and starting mosh pits. It feels like being at a gig I am about 15 years too old for in any other country, except that unlike if it was in London no one sloshes a pint of Tuborg down my back at any point.

It definitely does not feel like government collusion when at the end of his set, a Lebanese rapper does a dubstep version of Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do (I Do It For You) and I, an old person, absolutely lose it in front of this surreally gigantic stage, surrounded by excited young people.

For me, I could go to a gig like that every night of the week in London. But this is one of a handful. The first western music concerts were played at the Eprix the year before and there’s something there that feels big. You can claim the sport is a distraction for the rest of the world but you don’t televise concerts, these are for the Saudis.

(The concerts actually caused a really problematic ticketing situation this year where people were buying them, looking like the Formula E numbers were good because it was a combined ticket and then not turning up — when the organisers were asked they admitted they screwed up and would be trying to fix it next year)

This is what it comes down to, about the race. It’s a good track, it’s one of the best ones we have in fact — it’s produced two exciting races this season and despite torrential rain making the first year difficult, it worked then too. And yes, we have done all the bits about turning up to torrential rain in Riyadh; it snowed on the Sahara when we were in Marrakech once, too.

Climate change doesn’t really deal in imaginary metaphors.

So it’s a good track, the drivers like to drive on it, it produces a genuinely good sporting event. It takes electric racing and green principles, confrontationally, to one of the homes of oil. It has forced some small changes — which should not overshadow the achievements and struggles of Saudi Arabians themselves in getting those.

If you think it is just sportswashing then that’s too simple, it isn’t. It depends if you think the Saudi 2030 Vision plan is for you, probably sitting in the west and still thinking of this as some distant horror theme park, or for people there.

There’s an open PR angle, but those stats — the ones from way back at the show case, about how low life expectancy is in Saudi Arabia and how generally Saudis have a poor quality of life — well, a lot of this is not about how you see it. It’s about things like the massive investment into grass roots sport (especially motorsport, a nice upside to the now-head of the Sports Authority being an ex-racer) might improve things for regular Saudis.

You want to know what going to Riyadh is like? It’s a bit boring. People want stuff to do, same as you. And to meet people — each other and weird, jetlagged British women who can barely hold a coffee without tipping it down themselves.

So long as we acknowledge the other stuff (and we should do it everywhere) then I think you’re taking the wrong side, if you believe your opinion trumps their right to access that.

Ok here’s some more tea: Riyadh is covered in rubbish. If you want proof I’m not lying, here it is: the whole place is absolutely bedecked in trash.

This happens a lot in places with poor infrastructure, which Riyadh absolutely has. Because making life easy for people to get around and to meet up and to get places hasn’t been a social or specifically political priority, Saudi quality of life suffers in more ways than one. Who cares if the streets are filled with garbage if you never go out?

But people do now. Young Saudis go out in big groups and nearly all Saudis are young. Stepping around overspilling rubbish becomes the first thing I get the hang of keeping my abaya out of because man, it does not smell ok.

Rubbish in a city is a pollutant and I really hope, for the people living there, that Riyadh sorts this out. It’s all the ‘being a metaphor’ thing, isn’t it? Metaphors for governments don’t have extensive municipal recycling programmes.

I can’t tell you to unconditionally support Formula E racing in Riyadh. I don’t think you should unconditionally support anything, really, apart from maybe Lando Norris but we’re all just having a big one about that at the minute.

But anyway, this wasn’t to tell you what to think. It was slightly just to write about going there because not many people do and slightly because everyone keeps insisting no one in the Formula E media is thinking about this stuff when I have tortured myself for weeks with it. Also some of the anecdotes are funny. I could write a lot more, from my run-ins with ‘rose Lattes’ to the time I bought a lime juice and recklessly refused extra sugar in it only to discover I’d got an actual pint of just undiluted lime.

But this is long enough and it’s already much too much about me, for something that really shouldn’t be. We all have to live in our own heads.

[prorevenge]

I was doing you a favor by playing the long game...

I too was playing yet another long game by holding on to this for so long.

SO I had read earlier today the owner of a previous job of mine passed away. This was a place that tried to screw me pretty hard and I took some pro revenge on. It drug up some angry old feelings, so why not take an equal dose of catharsis?

WARNING: This is a doozy so strap in if you dare, no TL;DR it wouldn't do justice.

So this takes place almost a decade ago. I was working as a department manager for a fairly large privately owned pest control company. Their color scheme was black and yellow, much like the taxi's the owner's dad used to drive. Since the taxi industry would be around for ever(hello Uber/Lyft) so would this pest control company, (this is important later) or so the owner used to parrot constantly. My job was to over see the techs doing treatments and set their stops and generally manage assorted insect control services, inventory, payroll for that dept, etc etc. I had taken the job from the owners son who took it from the previous manager who they demoted and yet stayed in the dept...this is important later. The owners son was a late 30's early 40's man child. I mean if he had dialed it back a few degrees he would have been an awesome guy, but anytime booze was involved he was a mess. If it was weed, he turned into the stereo typical obnoxious stoner making nothing but bad Jamaican accented jokes. He also hit on anything younger than him that moved...while being married w a pregnant wife. But I digress, the owner was a piece of work too, old Jewish guy who was as racist as he was old, not with any kind of seething hatred. Just a "this is the way it is" type attitude. My fave line of his, "The sky is blue, Ch#@ks know math, N@&ers are lazy, Jews know gold. What else is new" Like it was the most clever thing of all time. Finally now on to the revenge and need for such.

I had been at said job for about two and a half years, while there I had gotten engaged about 6 month earlier. Due to the awesomeness of my staff I invited about 10 employees to my wedding(it was going to be big due to the wife's family and mine's tiny so..) including the owner his son and the previous manager. I should have felt the ripples in the water when I had planned the trip to propose. The day before I go the owner comes in to do something with a big job and I tell him of my vacation plans as he is looking at the schedule. After I tell him of the somewhat expensive accommodations (I was proposing to my then gf), he literally says, "that's a great idea I haven't been there in years, I think I'll go tomorrow too!" I think he is joking, but he immediately tells his son who was taking over my work that he needs to take over for him and be a presence at the job site. Then tries to demand I clear a day out of my booked vacation schedule for us to meet up with him so he can take us out to some expensive place or some crap. On that one day during the trip he ended up no call no show-ing after we invited him to meet and hang with our family. We spent about an hour trying to call/message/email the guy and he never responded the entire trip. I get back he starts cracking lame jokes about how I ditched him to get engaged...that really pissed me off.

It gets better. Over the course of the next few months strange shit starts happening. I am forced to let go of a few of my techs for BS reasons like the 3 strike rule of attendance randomly being enforced without writ-ups or even verbal warnings. One guy had a 3 month old kid with his GF and I had to let the guy go because of a 3rd lateness of over 5 min from almost 90 days earlier and the previous two being almost 2 years old with the notes of in-climate weather and no routes that day (they also denied him unemployment and tried to enforce a 90 day no compete clause that would have stopped him form getting a job w the competition). Then I get a high priority job of going through back logs of unpaid services and start trying to preform collections with me receiving a % of what I collect(that I was never paid). Over the next month or two I keep getting odd things thrown at me to make money which don't have much to do with my regular job. Till one week where the entire office gets the flu. The owners son, previous manager(now just an officer worker), my assistant and about half the techs call out over the course of the week. I still come in with a 102 fever and goddamn doctors note in case I need to bail, just to get everyone set up and do as much as I can before almost passing out 3 days in a row. I get the entire day's work done by 1pm and leave all with the boss's son's approval. He was thrilled things were still working while the plague rampaged on. But not the owner apparently. I got pulled into the office and yelled at about not taking initiative and calling out all these days...he sounds like he is about to fire me before he asks me if I have anything to say for my self. So I correct him and he looks really shaken and then tells me some BS about the EPA stepping in and making us reduce the number of services we are allowed to do from quarterly (4x a yr) to a trimester schedule (3x) all while paying the same price. Guess who got to call almost every paying customer and try to get them to swallow that? ::raises hand::. So I take care of that over another two weeks and once again get called in to the office. Saying we cannot have this anymore and the EPA is crashing down hard on us and I just keep giving out too many services because the EPA really said we are not allowed to treat more than 2x a year and they lied to me throwing me under the bus(turns out that was a lie too they were trying to get up to stop treatments all together). Knowing I never had the power to authorize a single extra service without consent from the owners. So they had to let me go...only 4 month before I was going to get married. It got a bit intense as emotions ran high, the asshole of a son tells, "My dad told me to fire you a while ago for attendance but I knew you were getting married and I didn't want to mess that up so I played the long game for you man...." In an office with no strict punch schedule for the office workers as we were salary and constantly did things like get food for the office or have to run errands for the business and get stock from another location. Along w/ the EPA bullshit he tells me he just couldn't have a dept with two other managers in it who made less than I do doing the same job. They also tried to block my unemployment with falsified paperwork, claiming unsatisfactory attendance. Tons of bullshit and I never got a strait answer as to why I was let go till I did some investigating. Turns out the old manager who was just an office hand was being put back in the spot she was fired form because she offered to take a 33% pay cut form her old salary and the son just didn't want the extra work.....So they tried to scapegoat me for EPA violations and tried to tell the rest of the office my fuckups were the reason people were let go and the department was going to close.

So now that you've read all that you may have a bit of a feel for why I took my revenge so far and for so long. Luckily I had snapped a few pics of the paperwork I signed upon leaving stating it was due to the EPA infractions. That gets printed out and sent to the department of labor with the rest of their awesome tactics(shorting over time and flat out not paying for paid vacations, time card edits). That lead to tens of thousands of dollars lost in pack pay and fines being levied. The guy w/ the 3 month kid I had to let go told me he eventually settled for almost 35k in back pay... My next stop was the EPA, who much to their surprise didn't even know the company had kept doing the treatments at all as it was supposed to be stopped altogether. Luckily they knew the deal and that it wasn't just me making treatments all willy nilly like. More fines, for each and every treatment performed by them from about 3 months before they fired me. That had to be in the 6 figure range as there was well over 1.5k treatments done in the time and the fine was supposed to be over 1k each. The problem with the treatments were they were too effective, and were wiping out the type of insect that has beneficial and necessary environmental roles. So the mfers were actually hurting the ecology of our goddamn state for their own profit. I created a few fake FB profiles to still be able to follow the owner and his son on FB and find out not 30 days after their EPA issues my department closed down.

Okay so that was 2006ish, two years pass and I keep seeing my POS old boss, speeding around the area (I lived near the place) in his old ass little red Mercedes. Guess who called the cops worrying about the safety of those on the road around this dangerous car? Guess who eventually got caught for DUI at 2pm in the afternoon?

Fast forward a few years to 2011. Mr Whiz Kahlifa drops the song Black and yellow. Decent track. But remember how my old boss was a super racist fellow? Remember the business' color scheme? So I spent about a month sending him different youtube links to that song, from random email accounts. And finally one of a commercial for the company with Whiz's song over it vs the lame jingle they used. Not two weeks after I stop they change the goddamn color scheme of the place to a horrible red white and blue one. But not exactly red white and blue like the American flag more like the Blue white red of the French one. I wait about a month after the Black and Yellow attack and send him a vid of the French national anthem while a the flag is waving in the background. The next goddamn day the place is covered in that cheesy car dealer red white and blue American bunting and American flags everywhere.

Fast forward again to about 2014 and fuck me if I am not out for a walk, and see that company's sign in a lawn advertising that same old treatment on the same old signs from 06'...guess who got sent yet another email to the EPA w pictures? That one got them in major and local news as being "no friend to the environment".

Last time I went by their place they seemingly had half fleet of what are now used blue white and red covered mini trucks. Plus their call center building was emptied of furniture. Unfortunately they are still in business but are sitting at about a 3 star rating on Yelp and that was after they did the damage control to get it back from 1.5 stars.

Sorry(not sorry) guys, I was just playing the long game for you....

(source) (story by StendhalSyndrome)

#pro revenge #by StendhalSyndrome #prorevenge #pro revenge stories #revenge stories #pro #revenge

[ihfsttinuf]

Screw It, I’m Making a Webcomic

So, as I made it abundantly clear on Twitter mere moments ago, I have a real honest-to-Glob New Year’s Resolution for 2017.

I am going to create a webcomic.

I am going to write a sequential art narrative which I will draw and provide various artistic accoutrements to and post it on the Internet. This is going to happen by the end of this year. I am doing this.

Perhaps this sudden outburst and declaration of artistic intent seems a bit out of left field, both in its overtones of grandiosity and relative lack of context given what most of you guys know about me. So let me provide some of that much needed context, both to show you why I am doing this and what I am really saying, which is probably even more ambitious (and maybe pretentious) than you think it is.

I’ve been writing weird little stories and drawing accompanying illustrations for them since I was a wean, as most of us did at that age, but since that point I’ve never really stopped. At a very young age I encountered not only excellent children’s books ranging from the charming and heartwarming to the downright mind-bending—Peter Sís and Henrik Drescher were big in my household—but also illustrated works whose contents and subtext were far too old for me yet entranced me nonetheless, particularly the works of the great New England illustrator and satirist Edward Gorey. By the age of six or seven, I had memorised “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” and would recite it with morbid glee to anyone who would ask (or didn’t). I discovered books through Gorey’s cover illustrations, first accidentally discovering the alternate history genre through his work on Joan Aiken’s Dido Twite series, and was only drawn deeper into John Bellairs’ junior Gothics when I discovered that Gorey had provided the frontispiece and dust jacket to every one of the entries in the series he’d written up to his death—which I mourned, with a mix of vague incomprehension, sorrow, and creeping disappointment. I was eight at the time.

Parallel to this, I spent a lot of time at my town’s local art centre, which provided free classes in all sorts of artistic endeavours. I took most to theatre and improv in particular—I was a wee ham; now I am a large ham—but what stuck with me was drawing and, to a lesser extent, animation. As I fixated on Gorey’s superficial techniques and aesthetics, the simple sunken eyes and odd little triangular noses, I’d also more subtly acquired his less obvious techniques: The way he used cross-hatching and simple, intense linework to suggest different textures entranced me, and indeed still does. I am told that a very strict art teacher, who I thought disliked me and of whom I was somewhat afraid, freely admitted that a sketch I’d done of a horned figure playing a flute on a rooftop by the light of the moon had taken her breath away.

Which is not to say that I was, or am, some prodigy of form, or that I lacked for more prosaic influences. The former, I will get to, but the latter is best expressed in the fact that a recurring scene which I have since revised and transfigured many, many times began life as... well, thinly veiled Darkwing Duck fanfiction, minus the duck part, given a sound twist of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter”. I was maybe eleven or so at the time.

It was in one of these classes that this weird little scene deep beneath a ruined graveyard was born. It was also there that I made plans for an elaborate series of beast fables, set in a world quite unlike our own.

It is perhaps worth noting that one of the handful of these early sketches which sticks in y mind to this day was a tale of two young male lizards falling in love only to be torn apart by a disapproving society. Even at an age when I was functionally unaware of homosexuality and bemused or outright repulsed by what I knew of sex, a queer romance was perhaps the most emotionally intense thing that I had conceived of up to that point. But I digress.

The setting in question and certain characters in it would perennially re-emerge in my other writing, which I was quite certain would be my career path throughout late elementary and middle school. In seventh grade, I was part of an experimental programme where middle and high school students were allowed to enrol in a creative writing course at a nearby university. Only two students wound up attending: Myself, and a classmate of mine who had skipped a grade and would later become known in my high school as something of a mad and insufferable genius. (We got on pretty well.) After several semesters of studying poetry and short fiction, there was a presentation. One of the selections I made for my reading was a list-poem, from the perspective of an older character trying to live day by day with the memory of his deceased wife hanging over him, with the distinction that the final entry was a reminder to keep his claws neatly filed.

It was around that time that I began to come under the influence of Thomas Ligotti, and it was with this exposure to the refiner’s fire of such elegant horror—the kind that brought the same sort of visions into my mind that Gorey brought to the page—that I realised what form my true opus should take, at least in plot. I took it with me into high school, and beyond into the wilderness of these past six-and-a-half years of confusion. The polestar of this mad endeavour formed here.

I had been thinking a lot about epic high fantasy at the time—I was eleven when The Return of the King hit theatres, and I had read enough in the genre and in styles adjacent to it to be aware of the tropes—and it occurred to me that the moral framework and cosmology of a lot of such works rang a bit hollow to me, not because right and wrong did not exist, as certainly people do good and bad things to one another all the time, but because there was always this sense of certainty that the side one was meant to root for was indubitably in the right and some great objective force of Good deemed it so, blessing their struggle against a force similarly ordained by some great objective Evil. It was that last dimension which particularly irked me. It felt reassuring in the most painfully reductive and philosophically trite way possible. And so often the battles were so... literal. I never much cared for war films to begin with, and by putting such struggles in a fantastical framework, you subtracted the one thing that made war films kind of neat: The recognition that these were people doing the fighting and the killing. Not symbols, people.

Very middle school analysis, yes, and unfair to some things I quite enjoy, Tolkien included, but the ultimate conclusions were the important part.

Which is where Ligotti comes in. Much has been made of his non-fiction opus The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, but in terms of his philosophy and its influence on my thinking at the time, I’d rather stick to his fiction, as that was what I was reading and that is what made me. In brief, Ligotti is not a reassuring writer. The universe of his stories reflects his views of our own, which are, in essence, a wholesale rejection of the commonly held notion that human consciousness and life in general are good things that we should all be even remotely enthused about, instead proposing that the very idea that we are aware of ourselves and that we should think of ourselves as individuals for whom some higher power might just be watching out is more likely an obscene and sadistic joke on that hypothetical power’s part or else, more likely, a horrible accident. His stories are filled with personal totems and surreal motifs, the fates of his characters determined by blind chance or the detached malicious prankstery of a party with whom they cannot bargain or reason, the sadistic frenzies of Poe’s maniacal villain-protagonists writ large, often on a cosmic scale. There is the feel of a nightmare and yet also of the sleepless hours after, alone in the dark, thinking, where wakefulness and dream bleed between one another and all the world is a nightmare to which the hells of sleep might well be preferable.

If I’ve lost you, well, I’m sorry; but you and I probably have something to talk about if your first reaction to all this was, “I’ve certainly had *those* days.”

And if you’ve had enough of those days, the rest probably follows easily enough.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, I thought, if one took that quest narrative key to so many epic fantasies, and put it through a world where the rules of the game were so utterly reversed? If our well-meaning hero—of course, as in Tolkien, basically some poor backwater schmo, by no means stupid nor necessarily naïve but very, *very* far from the classical man of virtue—were to bear with him some artefact of power that could, perhaps by its very existence, rend the veil of normalcy that should keep all of the sane and happy citizens of this world from confronting what writhes beneath all that they see, what might he choose to do with it, particularly if he were, say, by some inexplicable invisible bond, *tied* to it?

Now, what makes a fitting antagonist for such a tale? What sort of character provides the ideal foil for a kind-hearted soul confronted with all the horrors of what may be in a neat little package? Rather than some cosmic sadist intent on throwing us all under the bus, why not something a bit scarier: Another kind-hearted soul. Someone who has seen behind the veil their whole life. Someone who has seen the truth and the agony of this world and seeks nothing less than perfect closure

And there it was.

And then it began to get complicated.

For every character that I created to flesh out the story, another came into being, and I wanted to know more about them. A side-plot salvaged from some other silly project merged seamlessly into the new whole, and suddenly there were whole new plots, full of new characters with motives that I wanted to understand. Characters grew, changed, lightened and darkened as my thoughts steeped. Exposure to other writers through classes and forums and variably disastrous shared writing projects made me realise what I did and did not know, what I could and could not do.

It was also in high school that I began taking music seriously, first toying around in Garageband and singing in the school choir and then as part of a band with several close friends. I wrote a lot of poetry, and I sang a bit, so we had lyrics; I still drew sometimes, so we had art when we needed it, although we rarely needed it. I was always ambitious with my lyrics: One of our most successful songs was structured to simulate one character murdering another during a snowstorm in a glade where they had played and hidden as a child. Morbid character studies were common; I was always taking grim little vacations in people’s heads, my own or otherwise. Informed by my middle school studies of haibun and my lyrical adventures, my prose grew more experimental, collapsing into poems or switching into strange persons and tenses. My mind was full of images, yet where to go with them?

My path to sequential art was an odd and rocky one. As mentioned, I loved picture books and illustrated stories as a child, and while I failed to touch upon them earlier (mea culpa!), Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side were pretty important in their own right. I even attempted to create something of a running series at around the time I was in that poetry programme, mainly for the amusement of myself and a very affable art teacher who found the premise amusing. It was only a year or two later that I would read Doom Patrol—the first superhero comic that I would ever admit to liking, and still one of the chosen few—and realise that Grant Morrison, the bastard, had stolen my idea before I’d even been born: Of killing one’s own imaginary friend, only to be tormented by their vengeful spectre years after the fact at the least appropriate of times.

But the comic idea sort of fell by the wayside for the longest time, for the simple reason that I am, to my own mind, an atrocious draughtsman. I cannot reproduce figures to save my life. Hilarious, seeing as I can draw you a teeming alien cityscape, or a perfectly detailed mosquito in flames, but in terms of doing the same thing twice, I’ve spent years hanging my head in shame and self-loathing.

The secret is, though, not that I couldn’t learn this, but that for such a long time, pride had kept me from allowing myself to be bad at things until I was good. As someone to whom a lot of fairly complex ideas just come naturally, someone who just absorbs information like a souped-up Dyson vacuum, the idea of having to draw the same damned thing ten thousand times just to get decent at drawing that same damned thing was a horrifying prospect. It still is.

I got pushed into it. My own fictions put a knife to my throat and told me, “This is what needs to happen.” But it took two different interconnected experiences to understand how, both courtesy of my boyfriend being a huge dork.

The first was his recommendation that I read LAMEZINE 02, at that time the latest salvo from the wonderfully deranged comic artist Cate Wurtz, then going by the moniker Partydog; the second was his use of a Bec Noir avatar on a forum we’re both on, which got me to finally bite the bullet and read Homestuck.

Wurtz’ Lamezone comics are a trip. Her art style is by most technical standards fairly primitive, but it’s a very *refined* jankiness, part and parcel to her overall embrace of scuzzy punk ‘zine aesthetics, immediately recognisable and all-around immediate. Her approach to story and tone is just the same, at once surreal and ridiculous and incredibly emotionally potent, ranging in tone from giddy B-movie absurdity to crushing Carver-esque sorrow, composed of as many little side-stories that flesh out what sort of world these characters live in as of its “meat” and all the better for it. The way that her comics are often framed only adds to the ambience: DVD menus of hit TV series that never existed, tales from the everyday lives of people living on the precipice of madness (and/or suburban Kansas), the wild Lynchian adventures of a man who talks to the spirit of the good ol’ USA through Twitter while traipsing through other people’s comics and the comment sections on furry porn sites. She was even working on a video game at one point about a woman trying to battle her way through deformed iterations of her past selves while maintaining a sufficient ganja supply. I have no idea if that’s still happening. It looked awesome.

Homestuck has already had much said about it, so I’ll keep it brief. Comparisons to Pynchon are not unwarranted. It takes the hypertextual potential of the webcomic to the next level, and is longer than many novel series. The art is, quite intentionally, all over the place, and uses collage surprisingly effectively. The story is a beautiful mess that is, fundamentally, about the process of storytelling and how “things that happen” become “stories” in the first place. It’s very oblique about this, and generally quite funny.

And so I looked to the story I was writing.

I looked at the multiple plotlines growing out of one another, intersecting, snakes devouring their tails, thematic parallels on parallels, spirals of mental imagery with bits of torn wallpaper making the fabric of waistcoats and cathedrals made out of lines of scripture and trees bearing watches like fruit, and I went: “This should be a comic! A hypercomic, in fact, McLuhan-style! This should be a wondrous blend of visuals and text and...

“I...

“I can’t draw. Fuck me. I should stick to prose, like a good loser. Get rejected that way instead.”

So I waffled. For months. And then for years.

But you know what?

I’m done waffling.

Limitation is power in its own right. Ever since I learned of Oulipo in that long-ago three-person poetry class, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of innovation through defining what you cannot do, or what you must do, no matter what. Of forcing yourself to start from a set place or end at one, no ifs, ands or buts.

I am limited. Within that, I am omnipotent.

I am going to draw this comic. I am going to write it and I am going to draw it even if it starts out looking like total shit and the process drives me half-insane. If things that I love, in sequential art but also in music and painting and writing and animation and all sorts of other forms, can make a perceived deficit into a key strength, I can do it, too. Even if I can’t be a classical master, I can be the best at that crazy thing I do.

I guess this is also my grandiose way of saying “fuck last year,” where I made so much progress that felt so thwarted by external circumstances and my own failings, and where so much went wrong for so many of us. So I’m embracing this year as a year of progress. Even if everything else sucks, I’ll be running up that hill.

And just so there’s no mistaking it, I will still be making music and probably writing at least a smidgen of prose fiction and poetry on the side. In the former category, I might even start a band.

Oh, wait. We’re not doing half-measures any more.

I’m starting a band, too.

Tell your friends.

Happy 2017, everyone, and have a lovely rest of your night.

#Writings #my artwork #New Year's resolutions #important #rant #so many words my laird #DOING THE ART #comics #so many tags

[brajeshupadhyay]

In Indore's COVID-19 hospital, patients help lighten the mood, motivate health workers to keep up fight against coronavirus

Editor's note: This series will focus on the difficulties faced by the medical fraternity at COVID-19 hospitals, their duty hours, access to protective gear, facilities they get during quarantine, how are their families coping with this new reality across different states in the country. This is the third part of the series.

Amid the sombre mood in the quarantine hospital in Indore, a seven-year-old patient, who the doctors won’t name, brings moments of relief and lightness. The coronavirus-positive boy insisted that he be allowed to carry his cricket bat and ball before being shifted. Now, he challenges doctors and nurses to cricket matches every now and then. A bundle of energy, the child is a favourite among the medical staff.

***

In a sort of role reversal, whenever the medical staff of the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS), one of the designated COVID-19 hospitals in Indore, are in low spirits, the patients seek to lift their mood through conversation. They share laughs and jokes with the former. “Doctor sahab, what’s wrong? You look grumpy this morning. Listen to this joke...” Whether it's a simple query or a joke, patients play the part in making the heavy atmosphere less unbearable.

***

In the COVID-19 facilities at Indore in Madhya Pradesh, the healthcare staff and patients have built a unique bond. They have been staying at the same place, sharing the same food and living the same fears and hopes ever since they have arrived there. It’s like a family. There are minor incidents, but there’s also a strong sense of mutual responsibility.

Away from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi, which have seen the highest number of cases as well as casualties, Indore in central India is fighting hard to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus that came relatively late to the city but has since then spread through its neighbourhoods with greater ferocity.

The Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Science (SAIMS) at Indore has been at the frontline in the fight against COVID-19 with 500 beds. Debobrat Ghose/Firstpost

By 21 April, Indore, the commercial hub of Madhya Pradesh, had seen the deaths of 52 of its residents due to COVID-19, forming the bulk of the 80 deaths in the state, bringing Madhya Pradesh next only to Maharashtra with 251 deaths, in the national table.

It's been nearly three months since the first positive COVID-19 case was reported in India — on 30 January in Kerala. The virus subsequently started appearing in other parts of India but Madhya Pradesh was a late entrant to join the list of affected states. The first COVID-19 death in Madhya Pradesh occurred in Ujjain on 25 March, the day the lockdown began in the country.

Click here for Coronavirus Outbreak LIVE Updates

However, in the weeks since then, the state and its two most prominent cities — Indore and Bhopal — quickly climbed the charts, accounting for 52 and seven deaths, respectively, as on 21 April.

Death looms large at Indore

However, fear is writ large on the masked faces of Indore’s coronavirus warriors who are at the frontline of COVID-19 duty as the city, along with Madhya Pradesh's capital Bhopal, is one of the 20 high burden districts in the country affected by the pandemic.

Indore alone accounts for 915 of the 1,552 cases across the state. What scares those on coronavirus duty more is the fact that two city doctors and a police officer have succumbed to COVID-19.

Daily deaths of patients have created a kind of fear psychosis in hospitals not only among people who’ve been tested positive but also among the medical staff.

“The death of two doctors in Indore had put the entire medical fraternity in shock, panic and fear. But we ensured to be doubly guarded and extra alert because we can’t work from home as in many other professions. We’ve to be at the forefront,” said Salil Bhargava, professor and head (respiratory medicine) at the government’s Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College and Manorama Raje TB (MRTB) Hospital, which is one of the COVID hospitals in Indore.

Despite taking adequate precautions, the fear of getting infected is still there whether at the OPD or inside the COVID-19 ward.

“Nothing can be predicted. There is no guarantee that doctors, nurses or sanitation workers won’t get infected. So, the fear is there, whether it’s among health workers or the police – whosoever is at the forefront,” said Ravi Dosi, head (pulmonary medicine) at SAIMS.

The chances of getting infected are high in cases when a large number of patients from a hotspot arrive in a hospital's OPD or due to accidental coughing by a patient during the process of incubation or ventilation.

Sharing his experience, Bhargava said, “It’s a very tough time for doctors and health workers, and their families. Every day, I receive six to seven calls from relatives and friends as they are worried about me. The situation is the same with other doctors as well, who are in this fight against the novel coronavirus. But I’m more concerned about those health workers who’re working in smaller places and tehsils because they need to have good quality protective gear and precautionary measures. We’re much better in Indore, Bhopal and bigger cities.”

Doctors respond to call of duty

The frontline warriors in Indore’s COVID-19 hospitals have overcome their fears and engaged themselves in treating patients.

“Initially, I too was scared but I was reminded of Hippocratic Oath, and then there was no looking back. Same is with my other colleagues as we joined this profession with the basic objective to save people. This thought gives us the strength to counter and conquer fear. None of us has ever seen anything closer to this pandemic,” Dosi said.

It’s not just about doctors; the nursing and sanitation staff too have jumped into this battle with full force, without caring about their individual problems and pains.

A resident of Akola in Maharashtra, 48-year old Kalpana Pillai or Kalpana Didi, as she is fondly called, is the nursing in-charge at SAIMS and one of the most loved ones among the staff and patients.

During this lockdown period, Pillai broke her ankle but continued to serve patients, without taking any leave. She didn’t mention her injury during her telephonic conversation with Firstpost. With a limp in her walk, Pillai crisscrosses the COVID-19 block of SAIMS throughout her duty hours to reach out to patients.

“We forget our personal problems and pains while attending patients comprising one-and-half-year-old baby to a septuagenarian," she said.

"These patients usually come all alone to the hospital, with no one from home by their side and they look up to us as ‘God’ to save their lives. When I see them, I think that I could have been on that bed as a patient, but by the grace of Lord Christ, I’m not. So, it’s my duty to help them to get well so that they can go back home safe and join their families,” she said.

Pillai has been living in Indore for the last 30 years.

As Indore saw a rise in COVID-19 patients, the founder chairman of SAIMS, Vinod Bhandari promptly converted a newly constructed block of the medical research university-cum-hospital into a COVID-19 hospital with 500 beds and a 66-bed ICU on 15 March to manage the crisis.

Dr Ravi Dosi of SAIMS hospital in Indore checking up on a patient in a COVID-19 ward. Debobrat Ghose

Today, SAIMS has the highest number of COVID-19 patients in the country – nearly 450 are admitted and a team of 276 doctors and 300 nurses, headed by 39-year old Dosi attends to them.

“We’ve developed a new virology laboratory for testing. In between, I’ve experienced so much from this pandemic that I can publish nearly 100 papers for research in future,” said Bhandari.

Desperate times need desperate measures

These frontline warriors feel that it’s a long battle against coronavirus and won’t end soon, so the workforce needs to be protected.

“Our only goal is to save coronavirus positive patients. The need of the hour is to keep doctors and paramedical staff healthy and alive because this battle against COVID-19 is not only big but long,” said Bhargava.

To overcome their fear, a few doctors and health workers had to even seek psychiatric help in Indore.

“In some cases, psychiatric help was sought for a few doctors who were attending to COVID-19 patients. We can’t dismiss the fear within the medical staff, as this the first time ever that they have faced a pandemic of this proportion. After all, they are at the forefront of the battle,” Bhandari said.

The spread of the deadly virus, erratic work hours and lockdown have compelled most of the medical staff in COVID-19 hospitals to isolate themselves either within their campuses or in their hotel rooms. They don’t want their families to get infected. And as a result, they haven’t met their families in nearly a month. Back home, they too have small children, old parents or someone sick, but they have no choice.

“The hospital is our second home. Sometimes we do feel that had someone taken the responsibility for our domestic issues, it would have been a relief for us. But frankly speaking, our parents and family members provide us with mental support by telling us not to worry and focus on saving lives. That’s our inspiration, or else we would’ve crumbled,” said Dosi.

The hospital's attempt to create an alternate family – for the doctors as well as the patients – has also helped in allaying fear that hangs uneasily all around.

An important element of this alternate family is the common SAIMS kitchen, which serves food to both the patients as well as the medical staff.

Bhandari’s 81-year old mother Usha Bhandari, a retired teacher, has been instrumental in developing a strong bonding within the hospital. She regularly coordinates with the kitchen staff about daily meals in the hospital.

“As she is unable to visit the hospital at present, she coordinates from home with our health workers and kitchen staff every day. She keeps track of every requirement and people approach her even for small things, as they treat her as a mother figure,” said Bhandari.

Video calls and WhatsApp chats, etc., have also helped the health workers remain in touch with their families.

“Nowadays, children at home love to interact with their parents more on video calls than face-to-face. So, we don’t miss much by staying away from home for such a long period. Moreover, photos are being shared daily about what’s happening at home,” Dosi laughed.

Motivation is the key

Motivation has been a key element that has kept both doctors and patients strong during this crisis.

Inside a COVID-19 ward at an Indore hospital. Debobrat Ghose/Firstpost

Citing the example of Mother Teresa, Dosi said, “Her determination, faith and selfless service to mankind for decades, won her Nobel Prize and she’s a perfect example for us on how we should deal with this crisis and look at our patients. This motivates us.”

“Moral support, empathy and mutual trust are important in motivating patients. I try to enhance their will power by motivating them. This helps them to overcome the fear of death and in the recovery process,” said Pillai.

A member of an extended Muslim family, all of whom have been quarantined at SAIMS after the death of one of their relatives due to COVID-19, told Firstpost, “Though I’ve been tested negative, I’m here for my safety. The love, care and compassion of the entire medical staff in this hospital, have made us realise that we’re a part of a big joint family and not away from home.”

Appreciation from patients has also proven helpful in fighting this battle.

“One of our coronavirus patients – an Indian origin banker living in France – told me while leaving the hospital that the care with a personal touch he got in our small government hospital at Indore was unthinkable in a European country right now. It’s overwhelming,” Bhargava shared.

Both Bhandari and Bhargava also thanked the government and local administration for their support in the form of funds, logistics, medicines, security, etc.

“Despite being in a government hospital, there’s no dearth of funds. The government has opened its coffer and in a single day, we get approvals and funds are sanctioned. And, that’s why we’re in a position to provide good treatment to patients,” Bhargava said.

“The real reward for us is to see these acutely serious patients gradually recovering and walking out of the hospitals,” he said.

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[rolandfontana]

The Dangerous—and Delusionary—‘Big House Syndrome’

Almost a decade ago, Bruce Ramsey, a 47-year-old lieutenant at Washington State Reformatory (WSR), died in a tragic motorcycle accident. He had been a longtime member of the WSR staff, and his professionalism, along with his personality, not only garnered him the respect of his colleagues—but also, uniquely, the respect of many prisoners at the facility.

I cannot attest that his reputation was justified, since I had not been at the facility very long and had no interactions with him before he died.

However, several of my acquaintances who weren’t prone to hyperbole spoke of their affinity for the lieutenant and assured me his reputation was well earned. They wished that the other officers at the facility would try and emulate him.

Jeremiah Bourgeois

I understood their sentiments. I know several correctional officers and staff who execute their duties in a way that has earned my respect, too.

That said, when I saw the flyer notifying inmates that a memorial service for the lieutenant was going to occur inside WSR’s chapel, I was perplexed. A few weeks later, when I was heading to the law library and saw the long line of prisoners patiently waiting to get inside of the chapel for the memorial service, I was taken aback.

When I later learned that a prisoner in attendance (who is a sexual psychopath and compulsive liar) cried on stage, and with quivering lips told the dead man’s family that the lieutenant was his “friend”—I was absolutely disgusted.

For years thereafter, I could not get to the bottom of why this entire episode troubled me so much. Older and wiser, I can now explain the strange phenomenon that was writ large that day inside the prison chapel that caused my negative feelings to boil over.

The “Friend” Delusion

Inside a penitentiary, there’s something called “the Big House Syndrome,” which bears a resemblance to the Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages develop a psychological alliance with their captors.

It is most prevalent inside Medium and Minimum Custody facilities, especially those that are not overly repressive.

The longer prisoners are confined within them, the more susceptible they are.

The symptoms are manifested in more mundane ways than prisoners attending memorial services for those who in life were paid to kill them to prevent their escape attempts from succeeding. For instance, I often see the same prisoners laughing and socializing with the same officers throughout their shifts five days a week, as if they are best friends or close colleagues.

To a convict, these interactions are justified only if the prisoner is endeavoring to prevent being targeted, to corrupt or compromise, or to cloak the prisoner’s illicit activities. However, those with Big House Syndrome actually believe these staff members are their friends, ignoring that the duties of correctional employees make befriending prisoners and maintaining professionalism mutually exclusive.

How could an officer be the friend of someone that he might have to gun down from the watch tower to stop a fight or riot?

How could she countenance confiscating items she believes do not threaten security from a “friend” who holds them dearly?

They can’t—and they shouldn’t try to convince themselves or pretend otherwise. The orderly operation of correctional facilities is enhanced, I believe, when custody staff remain aloof from prisoners, restricting most interactions to those which are necessary to perform their duties.

An occasional joke or friendly exchange is one thing. But overall, it is best practice for correctional officers to not entertain endless small talk from prisoners, especially those with Big House Syndrome. Feel free to move them along when they try to stop and preen.

Knowing Your Place

I don’t recall such chitchat and other foolishness during my 15-year span confined in Level Four (Closed Custody) prisons, which are one custody level above solitary confinement. In that highly secure and dangerous environment, everyone knew their place, and almost everyone stayed in it to ensure their well-being.

Staff members who were impudent enough to buck the separate-and-unequal system of social relations with prisoners were slandered and ostracized by colleagues, especially in the case of apparent fraternizing between female staff members and prisoners who seemed too familiar.

Prisoners who refused to stay out of correctional officers’ faces would be warned by other convicts to desist. If they persisted, they would get pummeled and stomped by associates, run out of general population by threat of further violence, and then have to spend the remainder of their sentences in protective custody.

Being polite and respectful was accepted, mainly because being rude or disrespectful could unleash aggressive reactions from prisoners and correctional officers alike. But as a rule, keeper and kept did not distort the truce nature of the relationship, no matter how friendly or sociable the other presented themselves to be.

To suggest that a friendship existed between a correctional officer and prisoner was actually offensive because it implied one was compromised and would violate his duties for the prisoner’s sake, and the other had bonded with the officer to such an extent that he is prone to snitch.

Quite simply, the prevailing prison norms require that each maintain a cool distance.

Otherwise, the maltreatment of prisoners would be difficult for many officers to countenance, and they might be unwilling to validate the lies in a colleague’s incident report narrating how some prisoner supposedly committed a disciplinary violation. Likewise, prisoners might refuse to stand aside when an officer was being assaulted and could feel compelled to rescue their “friend” in distress.

The only way that both parties can, with equanimity, witness cruelty and be cruel when necessary is to harden their hearts.

Being forged in this way essentially immunized me against Big House Syndrome.

The Flim-Flam Men

While Big House Syndrome ensured that plenty of prisoners would attend a memorial service for a correctional officer, the real executive producers behind the production are prison administrators for whom this approach satisfies their own interests.

WSR is unique in that officials at this facility have a long history of holding regular meetings with elected prisoner representatives, as if the conditions of confinement come by way of a collaborative process.

Both parties are motivated by self-interest: Make no mistake about it.

Administrators create the fiction that they are open and responsive to the concerns of prisoners. Meanwhile, the prisoner representatives often play along to curry favor and maintain the ability to have personal issues addressed due to their proximity to those in authority.

Why these prisoners are motivated to collaborate is often the result of their sentence structures rather than Big House Syndrome.

They are lifers.

They want to be freed.

This will only occur through executive clemency.

Desperate times call for chicanery

Consequently, by shucking-and-jiving, these prisoners hope to craft a narrative that will someday convince the Governor that their rehabilitation is extraordinary and they are worthy of being set free.

Desperate times call for chicanery, so it seems.

One such prisoner tried to parlay his donations to a fund for the family members of four murdered Lakewood, Wa., police officers into a play for a sentence commutation by this means.

I am convinced that an elected representative with a mind such as this suggested pitching the idea of having the memorial service for the lieutenant to administrators, and the rest of the representatives jumped on board to further their own interests. Then, once they got the go-ahead, they set about trying to persuade as many prisoners as they could to come and attend.

Reflecting on the statements that were made prior to the event led me to draw this conclusion.

“If the officers see how we’re willing to honor one of theirs who was decent, maybe they’ll see the value in acting more like he did,” I heard one explain to a group of naive youngsters under his sway.

“If we convince these fools that we really care about this bullshit, maybe the administration will loosen up and let us have more shit,” another candidly explained to me, believing I was so jaded that his logic would appeal to me.

Cynicism, peer pressure and self-interest led to a pretense of humanity. But I truly wish that administrators and prisoners would have never troubled that deceased man’s family.

No matter how the service came into being and the pews were filled with prisoners, Big House Syndrome is the only sensible explanation for what caused the quivering lips of the rapist to tearfully bawl out from the stage that the lieutenant was his “friend.”

The Model Prisoner’s Demise

My friend is dying from a blood disease.

He has long been a prisoner at WSR, and his model behavior and personality not only earn him the respect of his peers but also, uniquely, from many officers at the facility.

But when he dies there will be no flyers inviting prisoners to attend a memorial service in his honor. Correctional officers will not be lined up to get inside of the prison chapel to pay their respects. Life will simply move on as it did the day before.

This captures why I never entertained the idea of entering the prison chapel all those years ago to honor that respected lieutenant. Life simply moved on for me as it did the day before, protected by a hard heart and enduring the life sentence imposed upon me when I was fourteen years old.

Jeremiah Bourgeois is a regular contributor to TCR, and a Washington State prisoner who has been serving a life sentence since he was 14 years old. He is due for another hearing before the Washington State parole board in early August. Those who wish to support his release, can sign the petition here. He welcomes comments from readers.

The Dangerous—and Delusionary—‘Big House Syndrome’ syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[lermanguidetololitatranslat-blog]

Introduction

So what is EGL, exactly, and Lolita, more broadly? (the grammar is such a big issue with this fella)

Mana is, for the most part, a gothic lolita. A large section of his clothing line, Moi Même Moitié, is devoted to the gothic lolita style, while the other bit is "elegant gothic aristocrat" (i think). (Great way to start, they don’t even introduce the style properly, not even explain Mana’s long history wit lolita fashion and they don’t have any idea about the brand) A perfect example of the style would be his costume (coord) with the floofy little skirt from the live concert DVD "Bara ni Idorareta Akui to Higeki no Makuake". It's been around for quite some time according to my advisor, but I don't believe it's gotten much attention until recently. (giving opinions into a informative article without knowing shit about the subject matter is okay? no) There are more lolitas than ever now, and I can't help but think it had something to do with Mana. In fact there is now a randomly (four times a year is not randomly) published four-volume magazine called the Gothic & Lolita Bible (I'll be calling it "The Glub") (GLUB) devoted entirely to gothic lolita-ism, that always has a large section dedicated to him and his clothing brand. (lolitaism: the philosophycal movement fonded by mana-sama in which in order to be superior you must have all the burando) It also features drawings by Mihara Mitsukazu* and has recently begun to use other Jrock celebrities to promote the different brands of clothing. Some of the most notable are Kana, Dada, Miyavi, and the Pink Psycho. If you're interested, it's about $16.00 or so at www.fujisan.com.

I guess it's a little hard to define a lolita, (this entire section should have been first).  since there is such a wide variety of styles and extremes (you know, the far left and far right are present in the lolita fashion) in the clothing. They range from punk to dolly dresses and everything in between, including punky dolly dresses (this exact phrase made me open a bottle of Rum). Originally, Lolita was the name of a young girl in a book by Vladimir Nabokov . The book is about an older man who falls in love with her, and this is where the term "lolita complex" came from (Rorikon in Japanese). (this is a very akward way to try to distinguish the lolicon from lolita fashion, it feels like the writter tried to just include all the stuff they knew while they were thinking about it.) A lolita complex is used to refer to and older person who has an interest in children. The Japanese took the concept and, as they do with seemingly everything, related it to anime and manga. The lolita (loli, not lolita, even in the old school times they tried to separate the two concepts by calling the sexual lolicon and the fashion gosurori), a cute, innocent, very well endowed little shojou that usually wears skimpy clothes or schoolgirl salior suits, was named for this. In gothic lolita terms it means frills, lace, ribbons, knee undershoes, and poofy skirts in pastel  and flowered cloth. (i think they just mixed all the styles alltogether. Pastel colors are from sweet, flower patterns are mostly classic, this is not a old-school vs modern thing even.) Rather than "lolita" in the original sense,  its definition is closer to a western princess/french doll look. It really does look a lot like something you might find a porcelain doll wearing. (well, porcelain dolls are usually collected from some decades or centuries ago. If you have ever had some kind of doll you have noticed that people usually dress the dolls with clothing that mimics the fashion of the time, same goes with old french dolls. Lolitas clothes are not doll-like, they have past times inspiration. I know this is a nitpick but i also want to inform people a bit)  Being such, it doesn't mean that anyone who likes the lolita style is a pervert. Mana is very careful to inform people that he doesn't have a rorikon. (oh boy, don’t even get started into ddlg and sissies here please) Recently, according to a Hanumaru Cafe special, it's become popular to be either an angel or a demon gothic lolita. As far as I can tell, it just depends on whether the lolita wants to wear black or white. (unrelated anecdote for the win) For more information, see the guid up top.

The gothic part of the lolita goth is, well, gothic (no shit Sherlock). Vampires, black, heavy make-up, middle age European clothes, whatever else a goth is. (The writer does not only have an idea who mana is or lolita is... they don’t even know what gothic is, wow)  The two styles combine in different ways. You can get complete doll dresses and then find something gothic at a different store, or something with punkish shredded cloth and bondage undertones. (you guys know how some not-so-short time ago i commented about opening a bottle of Rum? Yes? This two phrases decreased my IQ to the half i had remaining after the drink. I don’t know how this person looked at this and said: “this is totally alright, i absolutely know what the fuck i am talking about. ) Sometimes they're blatantly bondage, I suppose. They also seem to like silly hats and parasols, and were probably into humongous platform shoes until the government banned them because people couldn't drive well in them and were getting into car accidents. (wait what?) Or something like that. Now some of the more bold loli's may carry a doll around.   But, as you can see, each brand has its own unique style. Or use to. It is my opinion that they've all been meshing together and there really isn't much variation in any of it; they've been conforming. The prices are outrageous by american standards, and still slightly high by Japanese standards. Maybe $150-$450 for a dress, $125 for a skirt.. ( except that the second hand market and the handmade comm have been a thing since long time ago, handmade being practically the origin of the fashion) Anyhow, back to the glub. I suppose I would consider it a sort of bible, although I've only been to Japan twice so I don't know much about what else is out there. (Welp, there is gosurori, kera and zipper) The interesting thing about it is that it not only provides clothing guides and celebrity interviews, but also a long list of "gothic" products (oh, you mean like almost all the magazines?). They like puppets, angels, and vampires a lot. They're also really into Tim Burton and Edward Gorey*, who they call Edward Golly in the typical Japanese fashion*. I'll add a section on him later since I firmly believe that everyone should at least read "The Dwindling Party" before they expire ^^. That aside, there is always a poem or article of some sort somewhere in the magazine to introduce the whole ideology behind the magazine and clothes. Yup, there's an actual ideology behind it. Surprised, ne? (Holy mother goose, i really do regret to joke that lolitaism was a movement based on a brand hierarchy. This person must think that lolita has its own political party or something like that. What do they promise? That AP will start to do dresses that are wearable to people with human anatomy? or that VW or Excentric will come back from the dead?) I don't know if everyone really follows it though. Last time they had a street shot of a lolita who probably had no idea what Jrock was; she liked Ayumi for goodness sake. She was probably wearing the dress because it was "kawaii" (cute), a word that the silly shojou pop-culture followers seem to idolize, but which is only fine when used in moderation. Truthfully, they are cute ^^ but you have to be prepared when you first see one or it's a little creepy. (Judging people from the street snaps from their tastes and also mixing weeb culture with japanese vocabulary is now a thing)

They refer to the style as "youfuku", or western clothes. But they're really not, since very few westerners ever wear anything like that, and if they do they've gotten it from Japan. (I did a quick google search and found that the therm is used for whatever garment that doesn’t follow the japanese traditional clothing line; things like jeans, blouses, jackets.. all of them enter in the category. So, yeah, this is wrong) The Japanese tend to blame wierd things on the west, even if they're almost completely unrelated. (unrelated to the subject) The words they've borrowed from English are interesting because they show the same thing.

Welp guys, this is all for this text. Just gotta say that this persons writting is atrocious even for me (being english my third language. I hope some of you survived to the experience or didn`t give up into psychoactive substances.

Source

Stay classy

#lolita #lolita fashion #commentary #lolita fashion 101 #gothic lolita #egl #ega #egl community #lolita humor #mana-sama

[junker-town]

The Egg Bowl is the story of who you *think* you are

Or, more specifically, who you want everyone to think you aren't.

This story was originally published in 2013.

We’re recirculating it again ahead of the rivalry’s return to Thanksgiving Day for 2017. Most of the names below have since left their respective schools. Star players are now in the NFL, Ole Miss fired Hugh Freeze amid multiple scandals in the summer of 2017, Scott Stricklin is now the athletic director at Florida, a years-long NCAA investigation into the Rebels has since tangled up a star MSU linebacker, and Dan Mullen still looms over Ole Miss as Mississippi State’s head coach.

The Rebels have even since changed mascots again.

What hasn’t changed: the stuff besides the names.

Starkville, MS - Ole Miss defensive end Robert Nkemdiche, the brand name of college football's freshman class, is running the ball for the second consecutive play in a scoreless Egg Bowl.

He's dragged to the ground in part by Mississippi State defensive end Chris Jones, also a five-star freshman. That's 10 stars worth of Magnolia State hype, all colliding on Thanksgiving.

One is a Bulldog, and one is a Rebel.

Since they're defensive ends, the pair was never expected to meet on the field. But now that they have, everyone in the stands is sure one or the other of them boys is an evil, cheatin' prick who's everything wrong about college football. The other's just a young man who loves his new university.

Nkemdiche, the highest-rated prospect in the country last year, chose the unlikely Rebels. This infuriates Mississippi State fans to their cores. There's no way Ole Miss should've landed the nation's top talent, and out of Atlanta of all places. Never mind that his brother — once an ignored, grade-risk, 'tweener-DB — came to Oxford as a Houston Nutt fire-damage special in the summer of 2010, and that years later their mother wanted them on the same campus. Cheaters.

Jones is a home-grown Missisippian, a native of nearby Houston. His is a fine example of the path taken by a top in-state football recruit:

Declare interest in one of the two local SEC programs.

Weather a barrage of hype, rumor, seduction, and accusation from both fan bases until Signing Day.

Be forever loathed by one.

So Ole Miss fans swear the five-star Jones was in love with joining an already-stocked 2013 Rebel class and pairing with Nkemdiche. He had visited the Oxford campus late in the recruiting season, but his family had been bought by MSU boosters. Poor Jones was held captive by a Bulldog shadow government that even forced him to bait key Rebel boosters into potentially offering him money on tapped phone lines. Cheaters.

The moment will be writ large on message boards for months to come, and maybe end up on a billboard.

Billboards rank just above spray-painted overpasses in tact and subtlety among advertising mediums, which is exactly why more and more college athletic departments are using them.

"When I worked at the University of Kentucky, we had a similar campaign for an existing slogan: 'Welcome to Big Blue Country,'" Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin explains. "We wanted to do something similar, something direct, but spent several months really struggling for what to do exactly. I remember, in a moment of frustration, just telling our team I wanted something direct, like, 'Hey, welcome to our state.'"

"I can say they're highly visible, and they create feedback from our fans. I know I hear from Mississippi State fans every time they pass by a new one about how much they love seeing it," Stricklin said. "But I don't know that the R.O.I. is really worth what you're paying for them, other than the non-quantifiable good feeling. I don't know how you put pencil to paper to explain that."

In the 2007 Egg Bowl, MSU's Derek Pegues, one of the rare standouts at Batesville's South Panola High School to eschew nearby Ole Miss (22 miles) for MSU (121 miles), broke a 75-yard punt return for a touchdown. It would push the Dogs to a win and certify Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron's pink slip.

The following summer, a billboard appeared in Panola County on Interstate 55, near the Highway 6 exit to Oxford. The junction is the most common route for drivers headed to Ole Miss from either Jackson or Memphis and considered the heart of Rebel country. Now a maroon-and-white billboard read, "Many Happy RETURNS For Bulldog Club Ticket Holders," featuring a picture of Pegues.

The archduke of outdoor advertising had been shot dead. The modern Mississippi Billboard Wars had begun.

"It can be July and no teams competing, but people will see [the billboards] and instantly gauge where their teams are at," then-Mississippi State AD Greg Byrne, now at Arizona, said. "That's the real value, and it's not a television ad you can mute and ignore."

In 2008, Houston Nutt's Rebels sealed the fate of the embattled Sylvester Croom with a 45-0 walloping in Oxford. As if such a complete dismantling wasn't enough recompense, Ole Miss flashed a message on its brand-new Jumbotron (MSU would complete its a year later, exactly one cubic foot larger in size):

"When they shellacked us in the 2008 game and put up 'Many Happy Returns,' I just told our people that's clever. That's not obnoxious. We had that coming. That was very cleverly, subtlety done," Stricklin said.

"I think on that level, that stuff is kind of fun. And anytime you do something from a marketing standpoint, you open yourself up to [a response] if you have a bad day."

Ole Miss is 7-4 in Hugh Freeze's second season, while Mississippi State is 5-6 in Dan Mullen's fifth.

The night is less about the Rebels and more about a growing anxiety around the home team. Mullen's offense, his trademark, has faltered this season. MSU fans are impatient despite the current staff's streak of three bowl bids.

On this night, MSU’s wearing Adidas-crafted solid maroon with solid gold numbers and letters topped with gold chrome helmets.

Getty Images North America

STARKVILLE, MS - NOVEMBER 28: Brandon Wells #30 of the Mississippi State Bulldogs takes the field prior to a game against the Ole Miss Rebels at Davis Wade Stadium on November 28, 2013 in Starkville, Mississippi. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Mississippi State is all in on the brand association with the Golden Egg trophy, named not for any connection the state has to poultry, but for its poorly constructed golden football that, over the decades, became nicknamed "The Egg."

Much of Mullen's persona has been built around a zeal to humiliate Ole Miss. He validated his claims, winning three in a row against an increasingly hapless Houston Nutt from 2009-‘11. He calls them "TSUN, the school up north" and even let himself be videotaped promising that MSU was "never losing to this team again" after the 2010 game.

He did eventually lose. Last November, 41-24. As deft as Mullen was at rallying Mississippi State, Hugh Freeze was at washing Ole Miss' local elitism in the blood of the Lamb. A son of Tate County, he's yet to miss an opportunity to publicly preach about a team winning for the love of each other and not the hate of an opponent, all while recruiting with Mullen's same fearlessness.

Even after finally losing his first Egg Bowl, there's no restraint from Mullen, no dampening of the mission statement. if anything, MSU has doubled down and lacquered itself in rivalry lust.

"Let's face it, our fans aren't telling us that the one game we absolutely have to win is against some FCS opponent," Stricklin says. "I don't think it matters what we wear, really. Our fans aren't halfway in, so there's no reason for us to be."

MSU has come to claim Mississippi as its state, or specifically, "Our State."

As Stricklin tells the story, the "Our State" campaign was created and put in motion well before Mullen's second Egg win.

"They were actually scheduled to go up around the first of the new year, but the sign company was ahead of schedule, believe it or not. Almost as soon as the second in 2010, the billboards started going up, and fans on both sides took it to be a shot, which it really wasn't intended to be."

The billboards sprang up on graduated schedule across Mississippi, on the state line of every major interstate, along with major highways and cities. And gold trim started making its way onto the MSU uniforms for each Egg Bowl.

"I don't think there is any reaction. It's hard to say this in a blanket statement, but I don't think people see it as a big deal," counters Ole Miss senior associate AD for marketing and communications Michael Thompson.

Thompson is the Rebels' image maker, to a degree, an ex-ad man who's worked to overhaul everything from the specific hues of red and blue used in the Ole Miss logo to the meticulously planned change in mascots two season ago.

"I need to make sure I clarify that," he adds. "That game is a big deal, but I don't think that our people want us to put out a uniform change or tweak for that game. That's not part of our brand standards guide. It's just not who we are."

Since Mullen and Stricklin's embrace of beating all things [school name redacted], Ole Miss has opted to aim its nose even higher. The Rebels responded to the "Our State" campaign with a series of non-State billboards around Memphis and the state of Mississippi, never acknowledging their disdain for MSU's growing confidence.

"I think Dan Mullen might pick the billboard locations personally," Thompson jokes, referencing a recent wave of MSU billboards that seemed specific to the location of key recruits. In early 2012, MSU was hit with a secondary NCAA violation for a billboard in Oxford that read "Play with the Best," which the NCAA considered a call for prospects. Ole Miss fans felt it was because highly sought-after Oxford recruit Jeremy Liggins was about to sign his LOI.

And it's not just billboards. Shortly after Donte Moncrief split the MSU secondary for the second time in the Rebels' blowout in 2012, Ole Miss cued up video of Mullen's promise to never lose the Egg again:

Hey it was a promise that wasn't kept," Thompson says of the clip.

"There was a lot of talk about that clip leading up to the game. It had surfaced online a good bit. Our athletic director [Ross Bjork] happened to ask if we had that clip queued up, and we happened to have it available. At a certain point in the game, he asked us to play it."

No fan base is a homogenous group that's the opposite in every way of its rival.

There are ag schools and business schools and private schools and commuter colleges, and at some point, all fans become classless trash by somebody else's standards. But there are gray areas.

However, in Mississippi, a sparse state population and a feeble economy strangle out the periphery. There's little in the way of outside immigration, and not only are you loyal to either one team or the other, you personally know your town's next great linebacker prospect and the opposing school's local bag man. You know for a fact they're up to something, because you heard from the guy who saw it all.

As both universities slowly grow, each is discovering it's impossible to keep an entire student body and fan culture in step with any one image.

But on Egg Bowl week it's still suitable to boil everything down to the rednecks vs. the country club.

Before the game, you notice how willing the participants are to play to their own stereotypes.

This is not the Iron Bowl. There are no national titles at stake. There haven't been since the early 1960s. The Egg Bowl is a potent distillation of Mississippi as compared to its neighboring Southern cultures, a stronger high and a harsher burn.

Live in Mississippi long enough with an open ear and you can learn to hate everybody. Trust me.

You're either a red-dirt, hillbilly dipshit, kin to farming families outside Tupelo (and a cheater) or a racist, fork-tongued Jackson lawyer (and a cheater). And tonight everybody's a damn cheater, a "cheeeetin son of a bitch" precisely, as it echoes through the stands.

I've often wondered out loud around Oxford and Starkville that if everybody's cheating so damn much, is anybody really cheating? The answer around Thanksgiving week is, "yeah, those sons of bitches are."

If you ask one side, you can find much to hate about the Rebels.

Ole Miss, a postcard town stained to the bone by a cancerous, self-created mystique that's so vapid, so invalidated by modern culture that one extra cufflink, one extra bow tie, one extra flair on an already obscene cocktail dress would implode the whole damn Grove in a fit of pretentiousness, like a dying star with a little alligator embroidered on it.

The Grove: that giant, ham-fisted paean to a world that either never really existed or did and should be forever forgotten. A WASP Freaknik of doctors, lawyers, and politicians blocking traffic seven times a fall.

Ole Miss: a grown-ass man, bereft of self-awareness, wobbling around his fake fiefdom in an outfit straight from the boys department of a Dillard's after-Easter sale in 1986.

So to hell with Ole Miss.

If you ask the other side, you can find much to hate about the Bulldogs.

State, a lot so ignorant to their circumstances that their baseless pride becomes downright noxious, a poison in the air. Mississippi State, the worst of all nondescript land-grant institutions, a sorry smattering of brick buildings and hills and as war-torn as a Serbian armpit without the excuse of having suffered an actual war. There's no way to explain away the alarming amount of local self-regard for so much hopeless blight.

Starkville: a Springsteen song without melody or lyrics or any remote significance to the fabric of American identity. A people united by the cultural mantra of scorched-earth, fit to forever wage a kamikaze war over the last bunk of a basement cell in the SEC West.

Mississippi State: a churlish, bell-ringing, camo-coated Flannery O'Connor villain trapped inside a 3 Doors Down chorus.

So to hell with State.

He was a brazen, smirking carpetbagger from New Hampshire who trolled an entire state of old-money blowhards.

Watching Mullen work the postgame press conference in the wake of a surprise upset win over the Rebels is witnessing a master.

"I think now at this point we certainly expect to be considered for the best bowl available, especially when you consider we've now got a better conference record than the school up north," he beams, the Golden Egg freshly returned to his side.

In the course of the evening, Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace fumbles away the game while diving into the end zone in overtime. The gaffe ends with the quarterback face down on the maroon grass, a maneuver that will become a (local) internet trend hashtagged as #Wallacing. Ole Miss fans will fume, especially when extended clips show State safety Nickoe Whitley squatting over Wallace to celebrate.

Nkemdiche will become, as one lifelong MSU fan tells me after the game, "the most hated Rebel in Starkville since Eli Manning." He allegedly spent the fourth quarter smack-talking MSU players and fans while Ole Miss' defense struggled to stop the Bulldogs from moving the ball.

Mullen’s voice cracks when talking about the "medical miracle" return of injured quarterback Dak Prescott to win the game. Prescott, thought to be suffering nerve damage in his shoulder and out for the regular season, entered the game late to spark MSU's comeback. This will enrage Rebel fans, convinced Mullen is willing to trade on his players' health.

A week later, Stricklin admits with equal parts pride and sheepishness that more billboards are on the way.

"It's hard to make too much of a rivalry game," he says.

Thompson, in response, holds the company line for Ole Miss, now losers of four of the last five Egg Bowls.

"No, as of right now, I know of no plans for any kind of advertising specific to that game. I think that you have to choose those things wisely. On any campaign you have to look at all the potential scenarios that could occur. You don't want all your eggs in one basket," he deadpans.

Above the smoke and the Egg and the university-issued golden pom-poms flying into the air is State's Jumbotron, with a giant hashtag: #WONTHEDAY, mocking Freeze's oft-repeated catch phrase for Rebel football.

"That one was not run by me. I promise," Stricklin says with a bit of a laugh. "Our marketing staff must have come up with that one during the week. I've asked in the future they run all of those by me."