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whydoyoucare866 · 10 months

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hai :3 can i request an enemies to lover miguel o hara fic where they get stuck in a closet together and reader kinda has to sit on his lap because there isnt any space and so after a few minutes of being in there, reader pisses off miguel and miguel kisses them to shut them up and then the rest is history ig 🙇‍♀️

PLS AND THANK YOU! 🙇‍♀️

also pls make the reader speak spanish im BEGGINGGG.

CLOSET

hi! ofc you can! I did my best! I’m sorry that it sucks and is cringy😀😭

Miguel O’ Hara x Hispanic Reader

Masterlist

Warnings: Suggestive Language, Maybe a glimpse of smut, and Miguel being an asshole

You were one of Miguel’s first recruits, you had been working in the spider society for as long as it had existed, you and Miguel were close (or you would like to consider that) since you both shared the same culture and language and it was easier for you to communicate with him when your English wasn’t as good as it is (since in your universe Spanish was the predominant language) and he would be one of the few people who could understand your accent or you speaking Spanish when you forgot a word.

He took it as his personal job to teach you English until you perfected it and people who didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to guess that it wasn’t your first language( though sometimes you still would forget words in English or express yourself better in Spanish) you would both mutually bring food for each other or bond over music, so yeah you considered yourself close to him.

That was until he started becoming way more stressed about everything, yeah he has been a sour asshole ever since his canon event, but people were at least able to get small responses and have conversations that weren’t all about work with him, but as the spider society grew, he felt a lot of pressure on him and started drowning himself in work to the point that he would isolate himself for days until he got everything he needed done, he could spend weeks without sleeping and eating, and obviously as he became more stressed his memories started to impulse even worse emotions on him than they did before.

Of course this made you and your other teammates worried about him, so you started to bring him lunch, make sure he slept, and just went to see if he was okay, but you checking up on him started to annoy him as he got more irritating because of the lack of sleep and the accumulation of stress, so one day he just decided you annoyed him and soon that annoyance turned into hatred, or that’s what he thought it was.

This made him become snappy at you and we all know he can be the greatest asshole, at first you’re patient with him, thinking it will pass, but as it gets worse you reach your ending point and lose all patience starting to respond to him the same way he talked to you.

The sudden change weirded everyone out, but they also noticed that ever since you started hating Miguel back, his mood became even worse, well everyone noticed except for you, which surprised everyone since you were one of the smartest people in the spider society.

So thats why everyone refused to go to a mission with Miguel when he asked them to, arguing that they already had a mission, or that they had something really important to do, until Miguel had no other option but to take you and you had no other option but to go with him.

“Do i reaally have to go with him? I mean can’t he just ask Ben instead?” You said to Jess

“Nope honey, Ben has a really important therapy session”

“Okay? so then ask Gwen? Pavitr? Hobie? anyone else?”

“He already did, they’re all busy”

“Then why can’t you go”

“As important as the spider society is, I have an ultrasound appointment today, so I can’t go even if I wanted to”

“Well the world just hates me then doesn’t it”

“Maybe it does, or maybe it’s doing you a favor”

“Trust me, being alone with him is not a favor, i don’t want to be screamed at about how i’m annoying and a fucking- what was the word? uhm una carga? how did you say that?”

“A burden?”

“Yeah that! I don’t want to be called a burden and shit like that”

“You’re no burden, but I’ll tell you what you sound like, a teenage girl, come on, you’re an adult, you can take things in a professional way”

“Well the one that’s childish is him not me”

“Uh huh, well i’ve gotta go, good luck!”

“Yeah whatever”

You were now approaching Miguel’s office while wishing you were dead ‘Puta madre neta me lleva la verga, ahora si ya no tengo de otra más que ir’ (Fuck this shit, now I really don’t have any option but to go), you were starting to grow nervous as you approached his door, you hadn’t been alone with him since your last fight where he directly called you annoying and a burden, but now you had no other option.

After finishing the mission without actually talking to each other unless necessary, you both came back to the HQ, when you arrived it was weirdly quiet and no one seemed to be there doing their duties even if it was not that late, which was really weird, that was until you saw Peter B. approaching you with a worried look

“Hey y/n, have you seen MayDay? I can’t find her, usually it takes me an hour, but it’s been four hours and I haven’t been able to find her and I’m starting to get worried” Peter said to you while still running up to you and then catching his breath

“Oh, um I’m sorry but we just got back from a mission so we haven’t seen anything, but we can help you look!”

“No we can’t” Miguel said

“Yes we can, anyways where was the last place that you saw her Peter?” You said after glaring at Miguel as if looks could kill

“Well, I think it was in that one room that has a closet.. I always forget what it’s called”

“Okay yeah, I know which one you’re talking about, let’s go take a look”

Miguel followed them even if he said he wouldn’t be helping, Mayday being on the loose could press a lot of buttons and break a lot of things and cause a lot of problems, so there he was, inside of the closet with you, while Peter “looked” around the room, until they heard a loud noise of the door closing and now he was trapped inside with you, the worst thing is that because of the lack of space you ended up in his lap.

“Great, just what I needed”

“You know I’m not happy about being here with you either okay?”

“Oh is that so? or was this your little plan to get me trapped with you and to get all up on my personal space”

“WHAT? I would NOT do that, and I do NOT want to be in the same room as you you fucking asshole!”

“Oh yeah am I an asshole? sorry I couldn’t understand you with that accent”

“WHAT? okay now you’re being unreasonable, you want me to say it in Spanish? I will, Yo no planee esto wey, yo no quiero estar en el mismo lugar que tu, yo no quiero que me hables, yo no te quiero hablar y mucho menos molestar tu pinche espacio personal, así que neta hazme un favor y cállate un rato que ya no te aguanto cabrón, neta deja de cagar el palo y de ser un pendejo de la nada y ni me trates de culpar porque yo ni se que chingados te hice para que me odies tanto-“. (I didn’t plan this, I don’t want to be in the same place as you, I don’t want you to talk to me or to talk to you or even less to be all on your fucking personal space, so please do me a favor and shut up a little because I can’t deal with you anymore, please stop being such an asshole out of nowhere and don’t blame me because i don’t even know what the fuck I did for you to hate me so much-) That’s when you felt something on your lips, and it took you some time to realize he was kissing you, Miguel O’Hara was kissing you, you sure as hell felt as a teenage girl, butterflies in your stomach and everything.

On the other side Miguel was starting to get nervous as you didn’t return the kiss, he was starting to pull away and about to say he was sorry and he didn’t mean it when he felt you pulling him close and kissing him again, at first it was just a sweet kiss, but then it started to get heated, he couldn’t help but moan when he started feeling you grinding against him, with each second passing making him harder, he started kissing your neck and sucking “Fuck Miguel- you’re gonna leave marks” but he didn’t care, he continued, hearing your moans was paradise to him, he wanted to take you there so bad, until, they heard a knock “Um guys? are you okay?” Peter B said as he unlocked the door and opened it making Miguel groan in annoyance “This isn’t over.” he said before the door completely opened and revealed a Peter with a smiling Mayday in his arms.

#miguel o’hara x reader angst #miguel o’hara angst #miguel o hara x reader #miguel o'hara smut #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o’hara x reader smut #across the spiderverse #miguel o hara x reader smut #miguel o’hara x reader fluff

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fitgothgirl · 2 months

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I keep not updating because it's just felt like more and more of a weight the longer I go since the stuff I'd update about just keeps accumulating/progressing. But I'm just going to triage some things since updating on everything has apparently become a barrier lol.

Dealing with my four infections (quadfection?) is wrapping up soon; I've been on a total of five antibiotics for over three weeks straight, but I'm down to my last one and it finishes on Saturday. Been worried about how fucked my system is after all these since I've never been on antibiotics for this long, let alone five different ones (or even more than ONE), but I'm trying really hard to help out my gut microbiome. It's expensive but I've been having a kombucha basically everyday, and I've gotten some prebiotic sodas as well. Also I usually have a Greek yogurt everyday, and just am generally trying to eat well with lots of fiber and water.

Weight loss/fitness gains have been on pause during this, or technically even longer since the 10 days prior to all this was when I was in Costa Rica. Rest is good for all the fighting/healing my body has been doing with the quadfection though. When I got back I did lift a few times since I wanted to get back at it after the vacation and it was before the infections/antibiotics were getting piled on, but then I had a 2-week break from lifting until the day before yesterday. In between though I DID do a Zumba class, which was hard and I'm sure I looked like a fool but it was fun haha (gotta start somewhere!). The class was later in the evening so even though Zumba is popular, there were maybe only 10 people in that class, if that, so that was nice. I always need more cardio and just generally want to incorporate more complex/dynamic movement in my workouts because solely lifting can be kinda like tunnel vision for your muscles. I want more "real" movement, stuff you actually do in life, stuff that uses multiple body areas, etc.

Anyway, not feeling down on myself about the break or anything, my body needs it and it's been good to reassess things now that I've been a Gym Person for over 6 months. A little shake up might be good as I get back into things soon here. Even with the break, I've been trying to at least get in walks; I haven't been successful with my step goal most days and walking is just so good for everything... We're at the time of year where the season changes from day-to-day lol so when it's been nicer out I've been trying to jump on those days (rain is back now through the weekend though).

One thing I didn't even plan to work on but have just naturally fallen into since coming home is my sleep hygiene. Since Costa Rica is 2 hours ahead of my time zone, not only did I lose a couple hours of sleep, but everyday we were up somewhat early on top of that. And so when we got home, I woke up earlier than usual before work (i.e. not one minute before I'm supposed to log on lol), and I've just been keeping it going since then. I don't start work until 8:30am and I've now been waking up anywhere from 7am-8am. This is crazy for me since I've never been even close to a morning person, but the vacation gave me a bit of a leg up and I've just been riding the wave. I'm really enjoying the calm start before work, and going out and getting some morning sunlight in my backyard at least for a few minutes (Andrew Huberman fan here lol). I've even done some little dynamic warm-ups while getting that morning sun, like knee raises, jumping jacks, arm circles, etc. And all this sleep hygiene stuff means I've been going to bed earlier too.

Yesterday was really nice so I got out for a walk. The last year or so, I haven't been taking pictures as much on walks/hikes, mainly due to just trying to be in the moment. But I don't want to never take pictures again lol so yesterday I made a point to take a few. It's the wonderful time of year where everything is green and it makes me feel like we're in Scotland or something haha; albeit a nice summer day if it were Scotland. It's normal for Californian hills/fields to be "golden" for like 9 months of the year and it's even a symbol of the state, but I just love the green. 🥲 But yeah I specifically thought "I'm going to take pics to share with my fellow tumblerinas" so I was thinking of you guys when I took these. 😆😋

Bottom left is a plane-shaped kite and his idol, a real plane 🥺 lol

#mine #spring green

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kinocomix · 4 months

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untitled project devlog 8: themes, and pain

At first, when I said I wanted to discuss the themes of my project, I thought that maybe there would be some convenient article, book or philosophy deep dive I could reference, which does not seem to be much the case, seeing as how my approach to themes is very personal. so… here’s some thoughts.

In case it’s not abundantly obvious by now, the story features a band and music quite prominently. One of my original elevator pitches for the comic was “think metalocalypse meets bandslam, but with the scope of Ernest et Celestine and the presentation of a black and white Wes Anderson film” which is the vaguest shit ever and I’ll eventually get my head out of my ass long enough to stop worrying about spoiling the story. My point is: the act of being creative is at the forefront of the story. What drives it forward is something I won’t mention in this series, but a lot of ideas emerge when you decide to write something as personal as making art. Things like purpose, belonging, self worth, expression, communication, validation are things that every artist or musician deals with quite regularly and no story about creativity would be complete without them.

The first post ever made to this blog was a webcomic name fancomic that, looking back, isn’t bad but remembering the reason why I made it is what makes me cringe. I wanted attention. When I started making art I expected to be famous in 100 days. literally, I wish I was exaggerating.

In every artist’s journey with art, they reach the point where they realize that the only things really worth pursuing are the things they’re passionate about. Sometimes this is drawing commissions, other times people do commissions to keep themselves alive. A lot of times, the art people are passionate about barely gets any attention at all. It's a fact that a lot of creatives secretly know that people who get successful doing something they love are very lucky.

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It takes maturity to be happy for people and proud of their hard work as opposed to being an envious child but that doesn’t mean we don’t secretly want success as well. If I could have enough dedicated readers to make my comics for a living but never be famous I’d do that in a heartbeat. Every big shiny thing is destined to accumulate dust, I don’t want to be a big shiny thing, I want to be a reliable hill you can trust to be there year after year. It took me a while to get to the mindset I work with today. 6 years might not feel like a lot when you consider the insane careers some artists had, but as far as people go 6 years is a lot. I graduated, finished a book, worked on 2 short film productions that have both won awards (one of which for my sound design!!), moved house, freelanced, started a stable job, been to therapy, gotten an operation, nearly lost people, been through an explosion, an economic collapse; and I think that’s just the stuff I’m remembering off the top of my head.

Finding documentation and sources about this kind of stuff is pretty difficult because this is not what gets publicized about media. However, if you pay enough attention some similarities start to appear.

The manga Berserk is pretty famous for its elaborate artwork and story. It doesn’t really need an intro and I’ve been told I need to read it which I plan on, but that’s not the point right now. As you may know, Kentaro Miura, the author and illustrator of the manga passed away in 2021. For fans of the series, while very tragic, this wasn’t all that surprising. The dude doesn’t fill in black. he crosshatches everything. An admirable feat, which makes you thankful that a friend of his, Kouji Mori, decided to finish making the manga after he passed away.

Many other manga share this. Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, has been known to frequently go on hiatus. So has Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi. A lot of times, an artist’s undying faith to their work is because of how passionate they are about it, the people involved in making it or even the audience. I forget the exact interview this is from, but Linkin park has gone on record for saying that sometimes they need to consider the audience. you see them always excited to talk about how experimental their music is, which is great, but when you know someone’s on the receiving end of what you’re making, it’s bound to make you think a bit differently.

This video of George RR Martin and Stephen King chatting kind of outlines the different approaches they have to writing. One of the most iconic quotes is “how do you write so fast?” Spoken by Martin. Now I’m not here to talk about Game of Thrones, trust me I couldn't care less but it does bring up one point worth talking about which is inspiration, discipline and what that has to do about your malleability as an artist.

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This is the trailer for H.E.R.A., one of the short movies I worked on as a sound designer and general handyman. It was written and animated by my friend Alaa Fleifel with the help of some wonderful fellow artists and animators for some of the scenes. Alaa and his studio Phat Chik are an example of what I’m talking about.

pictured: Alaa.

When I talk about being malleable, I don’t mean that in the X-men mystique “I chameleon my way around the world” school of art though that can work in some cases, sure. What I refer to is one’s ability to keep making their art. During the production of H.E.R.A., there were at many points obstacles that would have shot down most movie productions. The sound designer had to prioritize staying alive so he had to unfortunately quit the project midway. Alaa had to juggle a fulltime job, commissions and a rapidly decaying economic system that meant most clients didn’t want to pay well anymore so he had to outsource some of the background art and scenes to friends and animators that he paid out of pocket. The production timeline lasted a year and 8 months, most of that time was spent patching up the team in the background. Working on H.E.R.A. taught me that there is no project in existence that is the result of one human being. Everyone has at least one person to give them advice, someone who goes “hey, I know a guy” and very often that is not just one person. When band line ups change, it’s sometimes treated with an air of disregard.

“oh, it’s just the drummer”

“it’s the rhythm guitarist, their job is pretty easy anyway”

Had Alaa waited around for inspiration or permission to make his film, it would have never happened. Sure, a lot of why we get to watch the absurdist sci-fi acid trip that is H.E.R.A. is due to some luck and connections, but a lot of it is also due to a rejection of the notion that inspiration is what primarily fuels creativity.

So what does that say about the story? usually I find it helpful to present my themes in the form of questions, so here’s what i’ve been able to come up with:

Who does art/music belong to?

How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation?

How do you balance making stuff for yourself and an audience once you have one?

How much does inspiration really matter?

I need to be honest with you about something.

I’ve been kind of avoiding talking about the more… personal themes at play here.

it’s not because I don’t know what they are, really. They just come from a place of deep discomfort and humiliation for me. I’ve obviously become a much different human being over the course of my 27 years on the rapidly traveling rock in space but it’s never not weird for me remembering the dumb things I did or said growing up or while I was finding my footing as a writer. There are entire projects and dozens of pages of things that I threw out the window before I felt confident enough in something to be able to share it. there’s a lot of fucking up you do while growing up and not surprisingly, I feel more comfortable seeing my weird feelings in fiction than I do laid out in bullet points in a devlog. So I promise you this:

the people in the story are going to be human. Faults, warts and all. The only thing I ask of you is to know that while those warts are real, they are not mine anymore. Every day that passes, I grow a little bit more, and maybe at some point I’ll grow tall enough that the light trickling through the trees will feel safe enough to fly.

Merry Christmas, and may every year bring a little bit more sun.

Devlog updates on tuesdays.

#comic #webcomic #kinocomix #devlog #graphic novel #metal #youtube #writing #Youtube

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butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway · 1 year

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Coffee obtained (by a long suffering wifey who took pity on me) and consumed (by me and my greedy sugar and caffeine craving hands)

Delightfully (or perhaps wretchedly) this now means that I am ready to confront the radiating doom.

Time to brace myself and prepare.

For those who don't know why I call the Doom bins, it's because they are containers of Things TM that were once useful as useable storage but eventually hit some indiscernible critical mass where they began to radiate a sense of impending Doom every time I look at them.

Once this starts, the container serves only to accumulate more things, but rarely or never to have items taken or used from within it, because the sense of foreboding I get whenever I am confronted by it is so upsetting that I am apparently unable to do this either for daily use or tidying purposes.

The longer this goes on (and the more items are added to the Doom Bin) the larger a sense of Doom it radiates until at some point merely being in the same room with it causes me severe anxiety, constantly draws my eye, attention, and focus, creates endless spirals of guilt and shame that can take hours to break out of, and eventually after weeks or months of stewing, I finally break. I go on a cleaning rampage, scrub everything in my vicinity spotless EXCEPT THE DOOM BIN, collapse in an exhausted heap unable to clean for at least another week, and continue avoiding the Doom Bin for literally YEARS.

It is a source of deep seated pain, anxiety, shame, guilt, fear, and stress within me, and I truly wish I knew how to break the cycle.

This doom bin has been 2.5 years, 8 traumatic relocations, and several severe mental health crises in the making. I am not looking forward to literally unpacking it.

So. As an autistic therapist with CPTSD and OCD, what am I going to do to help myself confront this traumatic cleaning project from a place of rootedness? I know myself pretty well by now so I've developed a bit of a routine for emotionally intense things like this when needed. It is personalized to me, not general advice, but maybe it gives you some ideas of how to put together your own routine!

Step 0: I would never try to do this on an unmedicated/undermedicated day or on a day when I was too overwhelmed already. I want to give myself the best chance for success.

Step 1! Find noise-canceling headphones. Confirm they have enough battery power (70%), turn on, put on, and begin a stim song on a loop or a stim playlist if I have one. Today's stim is Lasciami Stare by Måneskin. This helps me get started moving and keep me regulated during the task as well as setting a defined time block around the activity of "things that happened when the music was playing" which helps me keep them from spilling over.

Step 2: Heartmath (love it it for me cuz I struggle to regulate my heartrate and autonomic system more generally. It's not quite emdr, but I get the sense that they pair well and if you're an emdr candidate you're a heartmath candidate and vice versa, though definitely don't go around quoting me on that because I am not a provider of either therapy). This is a form of breath and heart rate control combined with mindful visualisations to regulate the sympathetic nervous system and de-escalate it from fight or flight when necessary to my understanding (again don't quote me). I spend 5 min on my heartmath exercises which is about twice as long as I usually would for a maintenance round but half as long as I would to fully anchor myself back in reality, because a little distance and externalization here isn't a bad thing for me personally.

Step 3: text wifey. She worries when I don't respond, and since I'll be in headphones I won't hear anything. Gotta make sure she knows why. Also creates an external expectation on someone else's part that I will be starting soon, which creates the impetus along with my stim music (which has me boogie-ing by now) to get up and start working.

Step 4: write down a list of supplies I will need to use during my project. This is part of why I write my accountability posts here. It means I have already thought through my projects in detail and step by step which helps me complete this step where previously I'd have not been able to. I'll need all the hampers we have, a couple of trash bags, the broom, a washcloth and multipurpose cleaner, my headphones and phone.

Step 5: take 3 deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth and on the last exhale, get up and collect my items so I can get started after. Usually, once I'm moving it goes from there as long as I don't sit back down.

So now that I've shared this big snarly self-help-esque post with you, it's time for me to go confront my Doom Bin. May this (legally not therapeutic advice just me talking about my journey as I'm dealing with my personal experience of this phenomenon in case it resonates for yall to hear it) be meaningful to you in some way 🤝

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procrastinatorproject · 1 year

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I'm back! :D Today's entry comes courtesy of @regionalpancake (by way of @jazzfic's original prompt. Yes, still.)

I was talking about how all the writing I've been doing has essentially just been the same story in so many self-indulgent repititions. To which Pancakes, rightfully, pointed out that many people will, say, watch reality tv that is essentially the same story week in and week out and extremely self-indulgent, too. "[And] they don't even have warp cores!"

So, of course, my brain immediately grabbed onto that and I had to pen another chapter in this ongoing saga...

Context: This takes place a couple weeks or so after the big showdown on Coppelius. As many people, myself included, have pointed out, the crash on the plantes' surface must have knocked out all of La Sirena's Emergency Holograms, which is why they didn't activate during the ample emergencies Picard and Agnes ran into during the climax of season 1. @thelaithlyworm actually wrote a lovely little story about this issue (it makes me cry every time!), and this snippet happens in the aftermath of all of that.

---

“And what exactly do you think you’re doing?”

There was a flash, a bang, and then a rain of sparks followed by a puff of smoke.

“Jesus sufferin’ Christ!” Ian crawled out from under the injector assembly and glared at his colleague. “You do not sneak up on a man when he’s handling live circuitry! I could have blown up the ship!”

The EMH was utterly unfazed. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t be working on live circuitry in your current state.”

“Ach.” Ian waved a dismissive hand and adjusted his hat. “I told you I’m fine. And the injectors have been acting up all week. What if we need to make a quick getaway and suddenly the warp core goes offline?”

Emil raised his eyebrows and gave his colleague a judgy look. “The captain doesn’t seem worried about it.”

“The captain,” Ian said as he got to his feet, “has other things on his mind.” He tucked his hands under his arms and practically dared Emil to find a way of denying that.

To his credit, the EMH didn’t try. “Be that as it may, you shouldn’t be working. You shouldn’t be in here at all.” He made an expansive gesture before shoving his hand back into his pocket.

Ian looked around Sirena’s small engine room. Apart from the relay he’d just blown out, every bit of machinery was in acceptable working order. But between all the recent battles and chases and trans-warp conduits, not to mention a full-on crash landing without any power, a lot of routine maintenance had been neglected. To Emil and the captain, everything might look fine at first glance, but Ian could practically feel all the little problems that had been accumulating over time. Sure, a .078° misalignment in the injectors might not sound like much, but it had almost doubled since the last time he’d managed to check on the assembly., The growing discrepancy was like an itch at the back of Ian’s algorithmic mind.

“I’ll be done in a tick,” he said imploringly. “Just let me finish this wee bit of maintenance and then —”

“You nearly blew up the ship.” Emil sounded almost offended. “Do you really think I’ll just let you continue fiddling with highly sensitive engine parts when you’re so clearly unfit for duty?”

Ian’s emotional algorithms shifted slightly towards defensiveness and he pulled his arms more tightly around himself. “I dinnea mean that. I wouldn’t have blown up the ship. You startled me, is all.”

“Yes and that’s exactly the problem!” Emil took a deep breath, then he continued a little calmer: “Don’t you always say that you optimized your input buffers so much that no unexpected sound or sight could ever overload them?”

Ian could tell where Emil was going and a part of him knew that his colleague was right. Still, he wasn’t willing to give up so easily. “It’s a minuscule lapse in compression efficiency. Barely noticeably. It only means that my responses have slowed down to the same baseline as all of yours.”

Emil didn’t dignify that with a response but simply gave Ian a Look instead.

“Besides,” Ian continued quickly, “there’s no guarantee that shutting down now is going to help. That fundamental field-replicator the synths gave the captain might work wonders on hardware, but it has thrown the computer maintenance routines for a loop.”

Once again, Emil knew better than to argue with the facts.

Ever since Dr Jurati had brought the holograms back online a week ago, they had all felt the lingering effects of both the damage Sirena had taken when the Orchid drained her power and the wonderful new synth tool that was only partially compatible with the ship’s patchwork systems. Raffi Musiker, Dr Jurati and the captain had been trying to get things back into working order, but with everything that had happened over the last month, Ian could understand that none of them had a lot of time on their hands right now. And what little time they did have, they chose to spend together or with their new friends, and who could really blame them for that? After everything they’d been through, they deserved to finally enjoy this bit of connection.

“Ian.”

Emil’s hand on his elbow made the EEH jump again. He blinked, surprised to find the EMH standing much closer than he had been.

Emil’s face no longer showed his typical exasperation, but instead was brimming with deep sympathy. “I know you feel responsible for the ship, and you can’t bear it if you feel like you’re neglecting her. But you’re an essential part of Sirena, too. And right now, that part needs your attention and care more than any of the others.”

“Ach.” Ian grabbed the front of his hat and pulled it down over his eyes for a moment, trying to escape Emil’s unbearably kind look. But he knew his colleague was right. Of course he was. And if Ian hadn’t been so run down, he probably would have seen it a lot sooner, too.

With a sigh he shoved his hat back in place and put his hands on his hips. “Aye, you’re right. I’ll shut myself down for a few hours and let the computer run some maintenance. Just let me finish this bit and then I’ll —”

“Now, Ian.”

“Yes, yes, fine, now.” Ian cast another look around the engine room. The warp core was humming away, its harmonics ever so slightly off from where the EHH would like them to be at rest, but close enough that it still sent his diagnostic subroutines something akin to reassurance. “You know,” he mused, staring at the swirl of colours, “given our recent troubles, maybe I shouldn’t shut off all the way. If I keep my matrix running and merely put all higher processing into standby, it won’t slow down the maintenance subroutines but I can access my cache and restart much faster in case of an emergency.”

Emil made some disapproving noise, but after a moment he huffed: “If that’s what it takes, fine. But I’m putting Enoch in charge of deciding what constitutes a real emergency for at least the next twelve hours.”

Ian looked at him over his shoulder. “Eight. That’ll be more than enough to —”

“Ten,” Emil said calmly, “and that’s final.”

For a moment, they looked at each other, the air bristling with tension, but then Ian’s lips twitched and he chuckled. “All right, you win. Ten hours.” He stretched and simulated a yawn. It seemed appropriate, somehow. “And I’ll set up additional monitoring so I’ll wake up if the computer’s maintenance cycle gets interrupted.”

Emil gave him another long look.

“So it’ll alert Enoch if the computer’s cycle gets interrupted and he can fix it,” Ian emended.

“Good.” Emil clicked his fingers, and suddenly, the large pile of holographic pillows and blankets that was usually reserved for sickbay was settling in a colourful heap against one of the walls of the engine room. The EMH gave Ian a knowing look. “I’d suggest finding somewhere less noisy to sleep, but knowing you, this actually constitutes a ‘restful ambience’, doesn’t it.”

For a brief moment, Ian rested his hand against the gently thrumming warp core. “Aye,” he said, more to himself, “this’ll do nicely.”

#some holo squad fluffiness #because who doesn't need more holo squad fluffiness in their lives?#star trek picard #star trek picard fanfiction #emil (emh)#ian (eeh)#holo squad #la sirena #in a minor capacity #lili's writing adventures #writing accountability #bed rest #it occurs to me that if i post these as standalone fics in a series instead of chapters i'll have to find titles for all of them #that might be the strongest argument *against* that idea yet 🙈

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disappointingyet · 6 months

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Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Director Paul Mazursky Stars Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon USA 1969 Language English (with a bit of inept Spanish directed at the maid) 1hr 45mins Colour

Era-capturing comedy-drama about two affluent couples trying to stay hip in late ‘60s Los Angeles

Saying a film is incredibly of its moment is not necessarily a judgement. By which I mean: the movie could be a fascinating time capsule or a pivot in cinema history or simply an unhappy accumulation of the tropes and cliches of the year it was made. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice seems (to me) to fit well in the first category and is maybe a bit the second and (fortunately) not slot into the final one.

In any case, it certainly screams ‘1969!’. Before we even get to the credits, we’ve seen naked breasts – this is just a year after the final burial of the production code that had restricted what could be shown in Hollywood films since the 1930s. Those breasts aren’t in a sexual context, they are in ‘let’s shake off our old hang-ups’ context. Bob (Robert Culp) has come to The Institute to scout for a documentary, and his wife Carol (Natalie Wood) has tagged along for the ride.

The Institute seems modelled on Esalen (think the final episode of Mad Men), and Bob and Carol take part in a marathon session where a roomful of participants do a long series of exercises and keep going for 24 hours straight hoping to break down their barriers so they can express their feelings without filter.

And when they get back to their everyday existence, Bob and Carol do feel changed, and insist on insisting on full openness when talking to each other and other people – not just with their best friends Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon) but also with eg, the maitre d’ at their favourite restaurant. It’s all a little much, and becomes pretty disruptive, especially to poor Ted and Alice, who are a little less furiously trying to prove they are moving with the times.

Culp was in his late thirties when this was made, the others in their early thirties. I was thinking maybe that’s a bit young to be worrying that you are out of touch with what’s happening, but actually I was already sensing my moment had passed when I was about 20, and undoubtably (without buying into boomer self-importance), the mid and late 1960s could be dizzying times.

Each couple has a kid, and Bob and Ted are well established in their well-paid professions, so these are meant to be grown-ups, and in previous generations would have had no urge to chase what young folks were doing. (And despite all Bob’s beads, these four aren’t in full rejection of the taste of their generation – towards the end of the movie, they all head to a concert… not the Dead or Sly And The Family Stone, but Tony Bennett.)

Probably the most notable stylistic choice director Paul Mazursky (who was the same age as Culp, incidentally) makes here is having some very long scenes – that early one at The Institute, a therapy session Alice has (a session that is nevertheless curtailed just as she seems to be reaching a breakthrough), plus the climax to the film. Like the characters, we’re here to really explore what’s going on with these people, just probably with a little more scepticism. And crucially, that approach works (there’s nothing worse than a wilfully extended scene you don’t care about.)

The cast is an interesting one – all at very different points in their careers. The one true movie star of the bunch at the time was Natalie Wood, who had been acting since she was a small kid. This film should have set her up to take a prominent role in the New Hollywood of the 1970s, but sadly didn’t for some reason – there was not a lot of great work ahead in the final decade of her short life. She’s just absurdly beautiful here, but also sharp and expressive.

Culp I first remember seeing in a regular supporting role in a not-very-good early ‘80s TV show called The Greatest American Hero. Mostly if I think of him these days, it’s as one of those reliable and well-connected actors of the time who got to play multiple Columbo villains. Back when this was made, he had just finished the three-season run of I Spy, a hit show in which he starred alongside Bill Cosby as globe-trotting operatives whose cover was they were a tennis player and his coach.

Meanwhile, Cannon was best known for an unlikely marriage to Cary Grant – she was in her twenties, he was past 60, she was his fourth wife (and there had been always been rumours that he was gay.) That union had ended by the time of B&C&T&A. She was reasonably famous during the 1970s and has worked steadily ever since, although I’m not sure that many people would recognise the name.

And then there’s Elliott Gould, the one who was about be huge. Watching this, it feels like he’s cast against type as the more uptight friend, but this is the year before M*A*S*H, the first of the three movies he made with Robert Altman (the others are The Long Goodbye and California Split*) that defined his star persona.

Anyway, they are all absolutely perfect for this film, believable as a group of friends, plausible in their power dynamics. And Mazursky and his team immerse us in their world: the big houses, the flashy cars, the hip hang-outs, none of which means they are not fundamentally insecure.

From the opening aerial shot of the Bob and Carol driving to The Institute to the great closing images, it feels fully liberated by what cameras were able to do by 1969. So I was a little surprised to check who the cinematographer was and find it was not some young dude who had just escaped from Czechoslovakia but instead Charles Lang, who had been working in movies since 1926 and whose extraordinary list of credits includes The Magnificent Seven and Some Like It Hot.

I was really taken with this film – it’s funny, the cast are immensely charismatic, it captures the vibe of the time brilliantly without bombarding us with tacky faux-psychedelic camera effects or editing, there are some awesome clothes. Very happy I finally watched it.

(I'm always Quentin Tarantino-sceptical, but he's good talking about B&C&T&A here) *He has cameos in Nashville and The Player.

#bob&carol&ted&alice #natalie wood #elliott gould #Hollywood in the 1960s

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parkpavilion · 10 months

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Scriptor Honoratus Senex

How many writers, living or dead, have had an active, acclaimed publishing career that extends for almost seven decades? The number might be as low as one, but fortunately that one is still with us, still writing and still publishing. John McPhee is the cream of the crop where literary non-fiction is concerned, having won almost every award possible for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize. He’s also been a mentor to multiple generations of younger writers who themselves have become award-winners, thanks to his life-long connection to Princeton University.

His most recent book, Tabula Rasa, is his 32nd (discounting many other recompilations of his work), and it chronicles many (though hopefully not all) of his writing projects that did not turn into finished, full-length products. As soon as I heard about its imminent release, I knew it would be the subject of intense discussion between me and another major McPhee fan, writer and friend of Madison Books Matthew Fleagle. Our conversation about the book (as much of it as I thought blog readers would tolerate, anyway) is below.

--James

—————————————————

James: The more love you feel, the greater the risk of heartbreak. Which is why I was both eager and hesitant to read Tabula Rasa. Maybe you felt the same way? Our love for John McPhee is well documented and well earned–the man has won the Pulitzer Prize, published more than thirty books, and written millions of words, not one of which was placed on paper without the utmost care. But the man is 92, and understandably isn’t undertaking projects as grand or ambitious as he once did. Still, when I read that in his new work he “looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, reflecting wryly upon projects he once planned to do but never got around to,” I worried (heck, I assumed) that this would be a binful of substandard pencil shavings. Keeping the old man busy and helping him clear some long-accumulated clutter is the least we can do after all he’s given us, right? Those were my thoughts after obliging another of our mutual nonagenarian faves, John Barth, with a read of his most recent collection. Rueful reminiscence and mild disappointment was not what I got from Tabula Rasa, though. McPhee hasn’t played all his cards yet, and has some tricks remaining.

Matt: I was certainly eager. If I had thought to be worried going in, I'd have dropped that anxiety pretty toot sweet. As always, McPhee roped me in right away. I happen to be working my way through a box of old letters from the previous two generations of my dad’s family to determine what should be done with them (the letters) and so McPhee’s mechanism of the “letter in response to a daughter" as an opening to this journey through his file cabinet of writing project ideas– “Dear Jenny: I didn’t go there with Tim and Wendy. We drove from France straight to northern Portugal . . .” –quite grabbed my attention. Once lasso’d, I was fully wrangled by the third piece’s conceit of the unfinishable project as a means of extending an old man’s life. As you know, that’s the sort of thing I stew on while doing dishes, weeding or performing really any activity that requires me to respire but not necessarily think much about what I’m doing. So I was immediately engrossed.

I kept being startled at first by the brevity of these works. This book seems a little like a printed blog. The pieces are about that long and like good blog posts, they just get you fully interested and then they end, leaving you wishing for more, or in my case propelling me on to the next one. McPhee binging. Most of them end abruptly but they end elegantly, often with a zinger quote. But there is clearly much more in most of these pieces that could be researched and presented, so it's easy to see why McPhee had been holding onto them. I say most, not all, but we'll get to that. How about you? Did you find these stories satisfying though they were such short outings?

James: Very. That’s the most invigorating aspect of this book–even in the twilight of his career, there’s novelty. He made his bones with a kind of writing that’s been described (in a phrase I love and have quoted before) as “requiring a certain readerly patience.” Meticulous descriptions of people and place, methodical accumulation of information, powerful conclusions built with time and pages . . . in McPhee’s house there are many mansions, and you don’t hurry through them. But in Tabula Rasa he’s quicker, lighter, and snappier. The entries here aren’t truncated versions of his older essays, they have a form of their own, and he’s as dextrous with it as he has been in his more expansive books.

With that dexterity, we get the unexpected zingers you mentioned. Who knew McPhee could throw off punchlines like Henny Youngman? The bit about environmental activist Edward Abbey is the best example, I think. What a putdown. I guess Abbey gets credit for the remark, but McPhee knows exactly how to structure the anecdote for full effect. I hadn’t thought about Abbey for years, but it made me want to read more about him. Sounds like you felt the same way about most of the subjects, but you mentioned some exceptions?

Matt: I did, but I only meant that I suspect some of these stories were never intended to be longer. McPhee introduces or extraduces a lot of these pieces with notes about having intended to do a full treatment of the subject and why he never did (profiles of Meredith Willson or of his mother, Mary, for instance, or explorations of Bing cherries or river deltas), but others are little anecdotes standing on their own feet, proffered without a word about any erstwhile plans for them. “Outcroppings of Washington Road'' is one such; it’s just a little story about a number of different things, and the piece can be said to be loosely wrapped around McPhee’s magnum opus, Annals of the Former World, which is a project he most definitely did get around to. “Outcroppings'' is in my view the perfect little McPhegian outing–it's like a canoe trip among tall reeds; there's a beginning, a sudden 90-degree turn, an apparent dead end and restart that makes you wonder where the old man is going, then an unexpected twist, and a final rejoining of the main stream as the ideas come braiding together at the end. McPhee's mastery of structure and timing, as you say, is never more evident than in these snack-sized pieces.

And I don't mind at all the professor just remembering out loud. To pursue the metaphor, I can imagine sitting in a slowly drifting canoe with the author’s voice behind me (he would be the aft paddle, naturally) occasionally breaking a mosquito’d stillness with one of these little stories, each a delightful non sequitur from the one before.

James: The image of this author as an excursion guide is perfect, first because he’s spent so much time being in and writing about America’s still-wild lands, and second because his work always gives the impression that you’re accompanying him on a journey. He’s a wise cicerone of the great outdoors who shares knowledge as well as the experience of obtaining it.

Hmm, the praise is getting a little treacly. Is there some reservation you want to express, lest we sound too sycophantic?

Matt: McPhee can occasionally pitch low and inside. I haven’t yet fully forgiven him for expecting me to agree that no one knows or cares who Wilford Brimley is while simultaneously tossing off references to people I’d never heard of, undermining his own point that you shouldn’t make references in your work to people or things your readers have never heard of. That was a different book, but “points of reference” can still be an issue for me. I spent the whole of this book’s “Time-Out on the Floor” chapter waiting for him to explain to me what time-out on the floor meant, which he never did. I got an idea by the end, but let’s just say readers who follow college athletics or were reared or schooled in the East will have a slight advantage when sports is the topic or when Princeton names are dropping. A significant number of these pieces revolve around athletes, professors, administrators and other figures from McPhee's long career as an educator and even longer life as a sports fan. Still, McPhee usually makes quick work of getting the reader up to speed, and I found myself invested in every story even when I felt some initial disorientation.

I'd like to mention some highlights that I particularly enjoyed but I'm hogging the page and we may be running out of room, so you first. Besides the Edward Abbey coup you mentioned, what were some of your favorite moments?

James: You’ve cited one already. As a Northwesterner, I felt a swell of pride when I ran across “Bourbon and Bing Cherries.” Plenty of good stuff in there about McPhee’s edible and potable interests, but the fact that the most popular cherry cultivar in America was named after the Chinese foreman of an experimental orchard in Oregon, and was so labeled in the 1870s, just as America was gearing up for the racist Chinese Exclusion Act, is the most compelling part. Reminds me of how Seattle’s white founders were able to stretch their imaginations far enough to respect and name their city after an indigenous leader. I was also fond of the productively rambling longer pieces, including “Sloop to Gibraltar” with its portrait of the ancient merchant mariner Captain Washburn, and “The Dutch Ship Tyger,” which links a 17th-century trading vessel, future senator and former basketball player Bill Bradley, and the start of McPhee’s career with The New Yorker. But enough of that; hit me with your highlights.

Matt: So many, but off the top of the old bean:

"December 19, 1943” –It's difficult to say anything about this piece that isn’t a spoiler, except that McPhee doesn’t take this story in the direction that he could have taken it and might even have been expected to take it, but takes it somewhere else, which is why he’s John McPhee and the rest of us are not.

“Ray Brock” –This is one of those delightful little bundles of facts that make you think you know something, but McPhee never explicitly makes the call. This story is about both Ray Brock and Ernest Hemingway, but when it’s about which is the question and he doesn’t directly answer it, only gives us a fact that pushes us toward a certain conclusion.

"Joseph Henry House" –This is a great collection of little scenes set in the eponymous house, just the thing I like. Within a few sentences McPhee moves from architectural history to an intimate little memory and then to the large and sweeping thought of Princeton being visited and honored by colleges hundreds and hundreds of years older than itself. In this piece and several others, McPhee doesn’t seem to be trying to keep the ideas linked and tightly controlled; they seem to be like spirals, like flowers opening or like fireworks exploding.

"Walking the Province Line" –Out of nowhere, this! It’s a longer piece, and next to these little tarns it feels like one of McPhee’s oceans. One wonders as one is reading it why it’s in this book of unborn pieces, because it feels dense and researched. I was all over maps following this one, the way I follow Robert MacFarlane when he goes a-walkin’.

I'd say the same about "La Torre Pendente," which feels a little more like a “normal” McPhee piece. Of course it’s much shorter, but the treatment seems to be a longer look. More research was done, most of it long ago. The details all seem to be there. This one, like so many in Tabula Rasa, makes me imagine McPhee as a Texan defending the Alamo, opening up one musty manila folder after another, loading everything into the chamber each time, all the gunpowder, all the details, whether it is much or little, and pulling the trigger. For an old McPhee fan, there are very few misfires here.

James: A martial metaphor fitting for a writer who has long pursued his craft with military discipline, here commanding squads and platoons instead of his usual brigades and divisions. Although that sounds darker than I intended. Reading this collection is fun, as if McPhee is letting us play with a nice set of vintage toy soldiers.

We’ve pretty well established how rewarding Tabula Rasa is for his established fans (McPhegians, you called us earlier, which I much prefer to an appellation I’ve seen elsewhere, McPhinos), but as a bookseller, I have to consider how it comes across to someone for whom it really is a blank slate. I’m confident that utter neophytes (McPhledglings?) will be entranced by it. Each bite-sized chapter is tremendously satisfying, yet even devouring them all at once leaves one hungry for dessert. I’m not sure how he pulls off this rock-skipping magic, making weighty substance move with light and airy charm, but it must have something to do with the way time has distilled his vast experience into a potent, efficient brevity. A good lesson for us–as enjoyable as this conversation is, we should probably suspend it to give people a chance to read Tabula Rasa instead of our yammering.

Matt: Yup. It’s all in his wrist.

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malstermonkey · 1 year

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Settling in......

The mad rush of Day#1 is over and has been replaced with a sense of what Is required from here on and a (growing) sense of disquiet around whether I can actually do it all?

Hence, have given myself a stern talking to (bordering on self-flagellation) and re-iterated the advice I so happily dole out to others:

1) there are (always many) bridges to be crossed but you can only do so one at the time and, hence, there’s little point in worrying about ravine to be traversed in 4 bridges time: it’s sort of hokey as advice goes but underlying it are some solid thoughts: firstly, it’s about living in the moment, about appreciating the coming day for what it is -- small things, be it a tiny task completed, be it the fascination of dust motes dancing in the slanted sun through the slatted window, be it the heartfelt hug, be it the taste of a peach (the sensuous track of that bead of sweat between you shoulder blades), be it the forecast (high of 18c, mostly sunny & nice)....I could go on and on.......the point is that, secondly, I have found we let imponderables dominate our daily to-ing and fro-ings to the point where we tend only to worry (as this is the nature of ‘’imponderables’) about the future & no longer see everything that is right under your nose (as an aside, you taught me this: when it comes to us I fucked up a lot -- my biggest was to let the future bulldoze the then.............deep-seated insecurity, the worry about “what f it doesn’t work out?” etc etc meant I forced the pace and you got to see the very worst of me). Fundamentally, if you can’t appreciate the detail, the minutia you create a insane blockage for dealing with the big decisions. Lastly, the future cannot be called -- we make decisions with what facts and data we have in our possession at that moment in time (which, pace younger you, doesn’t mean we can’t be wrong (after all, the inputs could be all skewed) but it does provide some context about why we were wrong,

2) you can only do (in any one day) what you can -- and none of us can do without downtime. As an inveterate list maker the length of the effin’ thing often intimidates me so I revert to doing nothing. And when I muster the energy to tackle it I inevitably zone in on the weighty matters (which sees me back on YouTube in a thrice)..........and this is nonsense: whilst weighty matters are, of course, important, so are small wins -- so I try to be diligent and tik off a combination of both every day (ok, not every day.....),

3) recognise that there are a bunch of things you can’t control: the more you accept this idea the more you realise how little you can actually control and how “control” is a slippery sucker and rarely tamed (and when it is it’s fleeting to the point of being illusory). It’s seriously liberating to understand that our lives are, more often than not, pretty random, precarious and entirely bereft of any form of steerage.

Mental order restored, here’s the headline items of the list: clear out L2P -- a less than thorough inspection of the major nooks shows that the accumulated detritus over the last 10yrs is bordering on the criminal. And the more I think about it, the more I realise it’s the best way to improve my French........for instance, I’m totally intent on making sure the 18 (of various styles) in the back shed a re-homed, that’ll require language skills everywhere (if only at the decheterie!). Build a new cupboard in the utility room (as a new home for more detritus?!). Sort out residency status. Keep the Carbon Transition Fund rolling (after all we have an investor now). Get fitter (cycle loads). Lay off the croissants. Make sure I never lose you. Be thoughtful and empathetic and honest and open and better. Sort out (methodically) my Spotify “Favourites” list. Live for the day 1st, tomorrow 2nd.

I have to go and tend to the fire -- it’s down to embers. The coffee was bitter and strong this morning. And you make me smile more than ever...........

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punkpandapatrixk · 3 years

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This is Part 1 of a series of PACs specifically tailored to the theme of self-transformation. All of my PACs naturally carry this theme, however, the ones belonging to this series are imbued with intentions that are closely intermingled with one another. I think, there will be 5 PACs in total to complete this series.

They're all essentially timeless so it doesn't matter which ones you come across first.

[Back to Masterlist] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Part 1 begins with understanding what inner demons you're currently overcoming. You could be fully aware of this process, which makes the PAC a strong confirmation of your being on the right path. Or, you could be semi-aware of it, which the PAC then helps to make conscious of what you've understood just by intuition. You could even be unaware of this at the present moment, to which the PAC acts as a prompt for what's soon to take place in your current state of reality.

Our inner demons sabotage our path towards fulfilment and happiness. Regretfully, they are often implanted in your mind by someone/something else. Could even be part of a past life trauma, man.

Let's unravel the bad spell of the daemon and begin a process of developing ourselves in the direction best suited to our highest good~

Pile 1 - Blockage of Intuitive Intelligence

Queen of Wands Rx, Queen of Cups

Priestess of Love & Green Alchemist (Nicolas Flamel)

Something is blocking your intuitive abilities. It is preventing the melding of intuition and intellect in your being. If you are resonating with being a highly intuitive person, a spiritual person—maybe even a channeller or medium of sort, you may be finding that lately you're not really seeing or hearing anything. There can be various scenarios, but the key thing is, your Crown and Third Eye chakras are exhausted, that's why.

This phase has been brought about by your repressing your emotions up until this point. Yep. Clean and simple. Your Sacral chakra has been neglected by your being hard at work, drowning in worries, preoccupied with the hard stuff life has to offer. In simple terms, you haven't been able to frickin' relax in a loooong while. Your body is retaliating. Your Crown and Third Eye chakras aren't functioning at full capacity so energies can flow to the Sacral chakra instead. You need to take care of your body.

The demon you're battling is a sense of lack of self-worth. In a way, a manifestation of the lack of Love you've experienced practically your entire life. Perhaps up until now you've grown up surrounded by a harsh reality in which people tend to be mean, hard (on themselves but especially on you), judging, or even downright cruel. People never gave you a break, so you came to pick this up and grew to become hard on yourself. In your subconscious, the program says, 'If you stop working, if you're not having a tough time, if there's no challenge to tackle, you're not really doing something right.'

It's really a bullshit program, and clearly this was implanted in your subconscious through years of abusive emotional circumstances. The truth of the matter is, yes, you can prioritise yourself; yes, you can slow down and have an easy time; yes, you can be happy and live in paradise; you deserve to have peace of mind. But this isn't easy to make conscious if you don't beat the subconscious program, and this is where the battle could take years to overcome. But, it is possible to win and you're already on your way.

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 - Lethargy and Cynicism

IV The Emperor, 3 of Pentacles

Priestess of Enchantment & Red Astrologer (William Lilly)

Some things in life have disappointed you, to a point of bruising your ego, even. Things going in discordance with original plans, your being removed from a place of power/authority, hard work bearing sour fruits or no fruit at all... As a result of that, you've accumulated bitterness. It isn't an exaggeration to say you're only able to see the dark and ugly in every situation. It's a shame because you didn't start out this way. The flame in your spirit has been extinguished.

If there's any battle you're fighting now, it is with yourself. With your disappointment in people, situations, maybe even god, fate, chances, wrong timings... and mostly, yourself. At least some of you do blame yourself for things going wrong. While some others may have become professional complainers who see everything wrong in what everyone else is doing. You know this is just a projection of your shame in yourself, right?

The battle that is going on now—or soon to take place, for that matter—revolves around the theme of honesty. Your Soul is prompting you to view the roots of your lethargy and cynicism with clear eyes, and to have the courage to forgive whatever has transpired. Why is this important, you ask? So you can learn to be a bigger person in the face of challenges and adversities. Because, life goes on and more difficult things are still going to present themselves. Surely you want to grow and get stronger from now on to prepare for the future?

Wonderful discoveries come to those who are courageous. You have so much fire in you, very passionate. Rather than wasting such precious ember for hatred and bad speech, wouldn't you like to preciously invest them in passion projects instead? Things that bring back sparks to your life. As you do so, you'll slowly but surely regain your faith in humanity, or the world, or the Cosmos—whatever you're unpeaceful with.

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 3 - You've not Waited in Vain

3 of Swords Rx, 7 of Pentacles

Priestess of Faith & Red Geographer (Marco Polo)

Your Heart chakra is recovering. Whatever has caused you heartache, you've dealt with it for such a long time. Others can't even begin to grasp the sorrow you've had to endure. You've waited so long for things to change—to get better—and it seemed like nothing would ever ever ever change. So your heart was vanquished; you could not believe anymore.

'Heart's been broken so many times, I don't know what to believe~' — you know

First of all, you should know that prolonged states of heartache cause a major damage to your Heart chakra. For a while now, you may have been suffering from lack of energy, lack of motivation, irrational pangs of sadness, depression, just... a general sense of hopelessness. It is understandable given the things you've gone through. This doesn't make you a bad person, nor a failure. And this you must understand of yourself to win this internal battle.

The demon you are facing is the kind that's often categorised plainly and blatantly as self-sabotage. They make it sound so horrible—as if you're sabotaging your own chances of success and happiness. But in reality, it's always much more complex than that, right? You didn't purposefully put yourself through this? It's not like you want to be sad and unhappy? Other people, external circumstances, cruel personal experiences gave you this strange defence mechanism.

-You may want to look up ‘Overcoming the Wall of Awful’ on YouTube or something.-

But you knew this wasn't okay. So you worked so hard on your own internal development. You've tried to heal yourself so many times; people just don't know how hard you've tried. And so, in the process of healing you got hurt more, in different ways. And you began to question if there would ever be an end to the pain you've struggled with. It sounds so unfair, because you're such a good person. But here you are reading this: it is going to end. Much sooner than you may think if it isn't already happening. Have faith, my friend. You've not worked to no avail. Good things are ahead of you.

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boytouya · 3 years

Text

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘖𝘧 𝘈 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦

words:2.3k

WARNING: graphic depictions of violence, blood, angst, open ended/ambiguous ending, descriptions of death.

request: “Can i request sukuna x male reader. Where reader keeps reincarnating with each lifetime for a curse and every time he remembers sukuna, he dies after gaining memories back. You can choose if theres a good ending or angst. Thank you king! I fell in love with him especially after reading that one shot i had to watch jjk and hes hot! Thank you for turning me into a sukuna simp! Much love”

a/n: i went,,,overboard with this request 🗿 BUT IT'S ONE OF MY FAVORITESSIJEHSHE i’m honored to have introduced you to such a foine man

When you were five, only then had you understood the curse deemed ‘Ryoumen Sukuna.’ A rather tall man with two heads, one of which had splattered blood onto your sneakers. You understood the concept of death, of course, but could never truly comprehend the feeling of nothingness after watching your life flash before your eyes until nineteen. But there you stood, clutching the loop of your shorts when you witnessed the murder of your entire village. You didn’t know evil could have a moral compass, but the tall curse seemed to exclude half of the women and children. After the widening of youthful eyes and curdling screams you learned the monster took likings to things too. Women, with shaking forms and broken spirits. He’d stop before them, stare at them with eyes that could- in fact- kill, if they truly wanted to. But then he stopped in front of you.

“Close your eyes, Brat.” Death's hands were just as large as your family painted them out to be, if not larger. Calloused and riddled with blood as they are placed over your ears. You do as he- it says, squeezing your eyes shut and enclosing your eyes behind the meat of your palms just to be extra careful. You can see stars behind your eyelids, just as you can feel the sickening twang of death lingering in the air. You were aware it would happen at some point, Death would find its place for you over and over and over again, you’d been told since the day you were born.

There’s another sound, only muted under large palms. You don’t need your sense of sight or hearing to know what it was, the warm chunks splattering onto your skin was enough. Immediately, you flinched. When you opened your eyes, there were piercing eyes staring straight into your own. It looked so human, but something was off. Uncanny, as if it took years to manipulate its flesh and bone to emulate humans to a T. But there was nothing human behind those eyes, instead a void of nothingness. Death itself. If Death could express interest, you’d have thought that was the expression it was imitating. It offers a hand, one of four. Larger than your face, with sharp claws that could almost be described as talons. Darkened by dirt and remains of your loved ones, if it truly wanted to kill you, it could. It could tear you limb from limb with the wave of a finger. And it knew that.

So you took the hand, and he became your second home.

When you were ten, you learned about the red string of fate. It could never be broken, and those connected by it would always reunite, no matter the circumstances. You often had nightmares, those of which filled with blurred faces and sharp pain that reached you in your lucid state. Dreams of talons, piercing eyes, and double headed monsters. You dreamt under the stars, tasted metal on your tongue, and choked on smoke that wasn’t actually there. You dreamt of facial markings, details that you couldn’t exactly place, a name that you couldn’t quite remember. It left your tongue feeling thick in your mouth, racked tremors through your body, and caused premature dark circles to accumulate under your eyes.

When you were nineteen, you experienced your last breath. The air was stolen from your lungs, crushed under years of heartbreak and terror, and snatched from you in the dead of night. Your eyes glazed over, and nothingness overtook you. It left you for someone else to find, cold and lifeless. A void, similar to the eyes you had finally placed. But that didn’t matter much then, you had already drifted away from your body.

And that was that.

Thus, the cycle repeated. Under different names, different ages, different genders. There was always something gnawing away at your conscience, you felt as though you were forgetting something. But when you finally remembered, it was too late. And there was nothing you could do about it.

It was almost like deja vu, stepping outside your home to find blood splattered on the concrete floor. It made your blood run cold, sent a tremor through your body and made you feel like you were five again. Small and defenseless. You take it as your best interest to go back inside before you pass out, but the second you whip your body around you meet something- someone?- large and sturdy.

“Sukuna.” That was it, the sour taste at the tip of your tongue, the lingering sensation at the back of your brain. Him. He didn’t look the same, no, much smaller with tufts of pink hair. There’s something behind his eyes this time, something almost irrevocably human. For some reason that’s much scarier than what you remember. What you think you remember. He’s much more human, but the way he looks at you is everything but humane. He looks frustrated, angry at something, as if he’ll implode any second and go on a rampage. Dread bubbles up in your stomach, nearly erupting through your mouth as bile. It felt as though something should be happening, like something usually happened when the itch went away. He chuckles, low in his throat as he cranes his neck to put his face uncomfortably close to your own. His hands, still large, find their way to your wrist, gripping your right hand uncomfortably tight. For a moment, you consider how long a trip to the hospital would be if he shattered the bone beneath his fingers. But instead there’s a jolt of electricity that would’ve had you yanking your hand back if he weren’t holding it.

“What? You look different.” He all but purrs, inspecting your palm with long nails. Not long enough to be talons, but longer than those of a claw. It was true, you did look different. He wondered if you spent your lifetimes looking exactly the same. That couldn’t have been possible, he would’ve found you much easier, then. Still quite boyish, as if the body you were in didn’t originally belong to you. Clearly grown out of cargo shorts and polos, much taller than you were before. There was no way he could have forgotten you, the way you jumped when the remains of your loved one splattered across your legs. The way you stared back at him with a look of acceptance, the way you grabbed his hand and allowed him to lead you out of the village. It explained the body memories perfectly, the feeling of large palms on your head and remnants of a brain splattering onto your knees.

“Last time I saw you,” He let’s go of your wrist with a bored expression, then replaces its spot with the top of your head. He shoves you down, and you make an effort to ignore the crack your knees make when they smack against the concrete. Then, he crouches down to stare you directly in the eye, just like he had the first time you met. His eyes were no longer dark, instead a deep shade of red that caught light from the moon. They reminded you of vials of blood. “You were this tall. Much cuter in this century.”

“And you were bigger.” Sukuna laughs as if hearing that was the funniest thing in the world. He leans his weight into you and uses you as a support beam, laughing until his ribs burn and beg for a break. But how could he laugh at a time like this? He didn’t think it was weird? He’s existed for centuries, murdered for millennias and only now has he seen you. That wasn’t how it worked, when you died, you died. But Sukuna was a walking oxymoron to that statement. When he died, if he died, he would return. He’d return through you, the last fragments of his soul would stay bound to yours until the end of time. Perhaps that’s how he knew, how he remembered. Perhaps that’s why he still took the time to find you, even after countless years of failure. It was peculiar, but not as much as being bound to Death himself. It was a sick game of turning the phrase ‘Til’ death do you part,’ because in your case it was literal.

“You’re still a brat.” His voice is closest to something fond, as if he’s reminiscing sweet memories. It was much different on your account, and part of you wondered if Sukuna understood that. He makes no effort to help you up (he explains that you’re “a big boy now”) as he invites himself into your apartment. Nothing special, he doesn’t care much for family photos or if you have them, but the stacks of letters and books on your table peak his interest. He tears apart envelopes as if he owns them, reads through the contents and discards them to the floor if he deems them useless. The way he sits nearly breaks your chair, and, honestly, you weren’t sure what to do with yourself.

So you sit beside him.

“You were so scared,” He says, almost as if he were bragging. But he was known to be arrogant and cocky, that was just his nature. He didn’t truly mean it like that, in fact, he looked quite reverent after letting the thought drift into the air. It was kind of funny, such a powerful thing fawning over past memories. But that wasn’t how this should go, you had your memory back, so why hasn’t anything happened? “When you grabbed my hand you stopped shaking.”

“...”

“It’s a shame I couldn’t keep you long,” He visibly frowns, the skin around his lips worry, but you can't tell if it’s genuine or not. He looks at you with something knowing the second the thought enters your head. “I looked for you, at first. You died young, for a human.”

Ninteen. ‘I should have been there,” he wants to add.

“Why aren’t I dying now?” You interrupt and let the panic sink in, the thought of impending doom sits on your shoulders because, really, it could happen at any moment. But this time, you don’t want it to. You remember accepting death when it came to your door at the young age of five, nineteen, countless times over and over. You had only ever gotten this far, you weren’t ready yet. You couldn’t start over, not now. “Sukuna?”

The question sours his mood in the blink of an eye, and instead of looking through your things, he raises himself from his seat to rest his palms on the table. It seemed he had a thing for staring down at people, making them cower under his stone cold gaze. You note the way his jaw clenches. You open your mouth to speak again, but he seems to have other plans. He squeezes your cheeks, making your lips purse together under the pressure of his large fingers. The movement feels familiar, like he’s done it before. The five years you spent with him were still a bit of a blur, but you remembered holding his hand quite often. He’d tell you to close your eyes if there was something he didn’t want you to see, he’d ruffle your hair a bit too hard, let you sleep on his back if he was out in the town. But that was all you remembered. He remembered it all.

“Respect your elders,” He lets go and sits back down as if he hadn’t just thrown a tantrum over you interrupting him. Sukuna was centuries old, but even then, he’d exhibit immature behavior sometimes. Living for so long had to get boring (and lonely) at some point, perhaps that was why he looked for you. He did consider you something close to family, after all. In truth, there were some lifetimes where you met. Some when you were friends, something more than that, and something inseparable. And that’s why you hadn’t died yet, you didn’t remember it all. “It’s rude to interrupt someone when they’re talking.”

“You’re much more handsome in this life.” His smile is much more intimidating than sweet, the sinister curl to his lips would only ever be associated with bloodshed in your eyes. But it was much more than that. Nights of sleeping together, days of laughter and flirtatious comments, soft moments that only you had seen. And it was bittersweet, because he knew the second he’d jog your memory you’d be gone. It wasn’t just a curse for you, but for him. Maybe it was his punishment for hurting so many people, dragging an innocent soul down with him and hanging them by the red string of fate. The comment makes your skin prickle with heat. Sukuna was quite the charmer when he wanted to be, easily picking at your weak spots with whatever you wanted to hear. But the comment was much more for the sake of his own, instead of yours.

Sukuna stands, hot on his heels as he holds out his hand one last time. If something were to happen to you tonight he’d make the most out of it, just as he did countless times over and over. So many years of starting over, getting to know you in various different bodies, realizing that being trapped away was the only way you’d get to live a full life, it was always on his mind. You were always on his mind.

So you take his hand. And for the millionth time, he’d become your second home.

taglist:

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somnambulants · 3 years

Text

make me your future

summary: set during black widow. Yelena walks into a bar. A bar you happen to work in. word count: 1.6K

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Groaning internally, you roll your eyes at the line, not even bothering to look up at the person who’d said it.

Who even uses pickup lines anymore? Seriously?

“Not in the slightest.”

You continue to clean glasses behind the bar. Lining them up neatly one by one. Whoever it is, they can wait.

You’ve been working at this bar for about a year and a half since you’d moved to the city. It’s a decent job. Not what you’d pick if you had a choice, but you don’t hate it.

You have your favorite customers, too. Some of the regulars. The old man who shows you photos of his grandkids while nursing a beer. The woman with the fixed business-like expression who gives you an exorbitantly large tip every-time you bring her a glass of the already crazy expensive red wine she drinks.

Perks of working in a moderately upscale establishment known for it’s discretion for under the table, not strictly legal activities means you’re fortunate that the majority of your customers are nice and quiet and stay to themselves.

Well, usually anyway.

Clearly not everyone had gotten the memo.

“Weird,” the person doesn’t seem to sense the hostility in your voice, sliding onto the bar stool in front of you. You can detect a faint accent as they continue, more flirtatiously: “Me neither. Well...not until I saw you, at least.”

Raising an eyebrow at their boldness, you finally look up, ready to give them a piece of your mind and promptly lose the words that were forming on the tip of your tongue.

The woman in front of you is your type; so your type that your type doesn’t even describe how much of your type she is.

“Does that ever work on anyone?” You finally force out. You don’t know why you’re saying it; clearly it works. It’s working on you right now.

The woman shrugs. “I wouldn’t know,” she says, propping her elbows onto the table to rest her chin in her hands and looking at you intently. “Never tried it before. Is it working?”

Heat flushes up your neck under her gaze as you scramble for something to say. “Can I -- Can i get you anything?”

Her voice turns playful: “Your number?”

Twisting your lips to hide your smile at that, you also duck your head a little. “I meant anything to drink?”

“Oh,” she frowns a little, thinking. She doesn’t look offended by your clear diversion. “Water, I guess?”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” You can’t help yourself from asking as you slide a glass of water across the bar to her.

Her accent is puzzling to say the least. You’d say slavic of some kind for sure but she has hints of almost American inflections every now and then on some of her words.

It’s intriguing.

She gives you another smile, leaning in closer. “Visiting family,” she confirms. “My sister and her partner just moved here with their kids. She’s a science teacher.”

“That’s sweet of you to visit,” you say. “You must be close.”

She shrugs, taping her brightly painted nails along the rim of her glass. “We were as kids. Now not so much but we just reconnected recently.”

As she takes another sip of her water, you let your eyes linger on her face.

There’d been something about her words as she’d said them. Something that makes you think that her story isn’t as truthful as she’s making it out to be. Or maybe not at all.

Just a hunch of yours.

A lot of the patrons had stories like this they’d recount for you when you’d asked about anything even slightly personal - before you’d learned not to ask; stories that sounded like they could be true but more than likely weren’t.

Or weren’t the whole truth, anyway.

This bar was well known amongst those who needed to know that this was the place to go if you wanted to lay low. Or pretend to be someone else.

“And thankfully for me I came to visit,” she adds after downing the water, getting that playful glint in her eyes again as they snap back to your own. “Because here you are.”

You can’t help but laugh this time. She’s just so effervescently charming without even trying. “Yep. Here I am.”

You continue talking for what feels like only minutes but must be much longer; just about random stuff. The woman is surprisingly easy to talk to and adept at steering conversations to the point that you end up on the most obscure topics more than once.

When you look at the clock at some point, you’re almost blown away to see half your shift has gone by just talking to this woman whose name you don’t even know.

As if sensing where your thoughts have gone, she introduces herself. “I’m Yelena.”

“Y/N.”

The woman -- Yelena -- chuckles. Not unkindly. More like she thinks what you’ve said is amusing for some reason. “I know,” she says and you frown a little until you see her eyes on your name tag, which is pinned to the front of your shirt.

“Oh,” you say, a little embarrassed. “Right.”

As you turn your head, trying to hide the flush you’re assuming is creeping up your neck, you also notice the line of people in front of you that must have accumulated as you’d become distracted by her.

You groan. “Ill be right back.”

You serve faster than you’ve ever served. Practically throwing the drinks at all the patrons in your haste to get back to her in worry that she’ll get bored and leave eventually.

When you finally make your way through all of them and turn around, you find her seat still occupied and her in the same spot as before. Your heart does a backflip in relief.

“Sorry,” you say breathlessly as soon as you’re back in front of her, not really sure why you’re saying it, only sure that you are really sorry you’d had to leave her side.

Yelena waves a hand, unbothered as she tilts her head towards you. “It’s fine. You’re cute when you’re flustered, you know?”

You freeze, not knowing how to react. “I --”

This time, she outright laughs at your reaction, which leaves you no doubt looking even more flustered than before. Her eyes glowing with almost-childlike glee as she grins at you teasingly. “See? Cute.”

“Oh yes,” a voice drawls. You turn, only to find the voice belongs to a weirdly familiar looking red head, who is eyeing you up and down with an unreadable look on her face. “Just... adorable.”

“This is Natasha,” Yelena says, looking between you both. “My... sister. The...science teacher.”

Oh.

So the sister is in fact real. And the sister is also looking at you with a knowing look in her eyes.

She most definitely doesn’t look like a science teacher. You’re sure science teachers probably don’t walk around clad all in leather. Or look like they could snap you in half. At least none of the ones you’d ever had.

You’re also pretty sure that science teachers don’t also double up as members of the avengers, but you don’t say anything to that fact.

You do however recognise the black widow as soon as you see her. She’s pretty unmistakable, after all.

“Oh,” you say. “Can I get you a drink?”

As you ask, you pretend you don’t see the tail ends of the way Natasha is mouthing the words: science teacher? to her with clear quizzicality. Or Yelena’s clearly unbothered shrug in response.

Natasha inclines her head at your words. “No. Thank you. I think we better get going, actually. Yelena?”

Yelena’s lips form into a pout. “Already?”

Heart sinking down to the soles of your feet, you pretend to fiddle around behind the bar as they seem to have a silent argument with their eyes in front of you.

It ends with Yelena rolling her eyes with a little huff. Reaching into her pocket to grab a couple of bills and stuff them into your tip jar, she gives you one last smile. Her smile is so infectious that you’re helpless to do anything but smile back, trapped under her spell.

You don’t know how she managed to do it but in the tiny amount of time you’d spent around her, she’d had you almost convinced that love at first sight was a thing.

And that you were it’s next victim.

And because of that, you’d never forgive yourself for what happens next. You’re distracted for a brief moment, pulled away to serve another customer as they both continue to converse silently and then when you turn back around, they’re both gone.

No sign of Yelena. Or her sister. It’s like they’d vanished into thin air.

You scan the room multiple times but come up empty.

She’s gone.

(You lose hope pretty quickly that she’s ever going to come back. A week goes by. Then another. And another.

Nothing.

Months pass by with nothing and slowly, you start to forget you ever met her. Well, not quite; you never get out of the habit of looking at the door at work every now and then hopefully but you stop expecting anything after a while.

Until one day it changes.

You’re in the middle of serving someone and just as you hand them their drink, you hear a voice you’d assumed you’d never hear again come from behind you.

“So...do you believe in love at first sight yet?”

You turn around so fast you’re surprised you don’t get whiplash.

There she is.

It’s definitely her. She looks a little different, her hair a little longer. But it’s definitely her. That smile is hers.

You grin back at her.

“Go out and come back in and i’ll tell you.”)

#yelena belova x reader

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raininyourblackeyes · 2 years

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An overview of the functions and purpose of the International Judging System

First of all, I am writing this post to talk about the International Judging System, how it is meant to work and how it is being implemented, as well as my own understanding of the rules as a three year national judge in a super small skating fed (in other words what our judges who are qualified to judge internationally pointed out to me). The goal of this is to discuss the objectivity of the rules and to which degree is that achieved. I will be focusing mostly on the jumps since they are the most talked about when it comes to the scoring discourse.

I will divide this into three parts and it is going to get long. Feel free to disagree, I might end up having a number of people complaining how judge no.X scored their fave at worlds in a few years anyways…

1. A brief history of ISU’S IJS and what it stands for

Figure skating is an Olympic sport, meaning that its athletes have a chance to compete at the highest level possible. Olympics are a competition with rich history and lore behind them, it is an honour to even get there. And figure skating has been an Olympic sport since before the Games were split into Summer and Winter. It was first conducted at the 1908 Games in London as a sport with 4 disciplines:

· Men’s singles – won by Ulrich Salchow of Sweden, the inventor of Salchow jump, and the first president of ISU.

· Men’s special figures – won by Nikolai Panin of Russian Empire

· Ladies’ singles – won by Madge Syers of Great Britain

· Pairs – won by Anna Hubler and Heinrich Burger of Germany.

Ice dance made its debut much later, in 1976 at the Innsbruck Games, where the gold was won by Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov who represented the Soviet Union. If Gorshkov’s name sounds familiar, it should be, he is the president of Russian Figure Skating Federation.

For a competition on that level, there should be no mistakes. There should be no options left on the table to discuss after the competition. Everything has to be transparent and objective, else it does not deserve the title of the Olympic sport. There should be no difference between alpine skiing and figure skating in terms of which one deserves the title of an Olympic sport; in skiing the winner is the fastest competitor, in skating the one with highest scores given by judges accumulated across two days of competition. The only difference between the two is that figure skating has a human factor included.

As we all know, nothing in nature is truly perfect. Just as it is impossible to do an organic synthesis with a yield of 100%, there will always be residual reactants left no matter which purification method we use, it is also impossible for humans to be 100% precise when looking for mistakes with their own eyes. We’re not going to be getting into human eye physiology, don’t worry. But the way the rules are structured is meant to reduce the human error as much as possible. Given that there are nine judges sitting on the panel, it is indeed impossible for them to see the same thing from different angles, but the scores should be matching closely. We’ll get into the allowed deviations later on, for now it is enough to remember that the IJS is meant to make this competition around 80-90% objective. Biggest deviation is actually meant to happen within Program Components such as Performance and Interpretation.

What would happen if the scoring system wasn’t objective, you ask. Well, it already almost happened once. I have never studied the 6.0 system and its rules, but they were there, obviously. And at one point, the judging got so rigged, so subjective and corrupted, that the bubble burst at the 2002 Olympics in a really dramatic turn of events. For those who are not familiar with the scandal in pairs: Canadians skated a simpler, yet clean routine. Russians skated a more difficult free but made a mistake. Russians got gold. Few hours later, French judge had a drunken breakdown in a hotel lobby confessing to bribery that happened and deal between her and Russian Federation. Long story short, Canadians and Russians shared the gold. But the more important thing here is the investigation run by International Olympic Committee with a conclusion of: either ISU changes the rules, makes them detailed and mathematically structured in order to achieve objectiveness, or figure skating will be losing its title of an Olympic sport.

ISU sits down and gets to work. International Judging System has been implemented since season 2004-05 until this day with some major changes to it of course. The drastic changes in 2018 ended up being a farce to make the judging more subjective through giving the judges way too much power. It was designed to better distinguish quality of the elements, and yet here we are with “human error” affecting the placements to the degree that the situation is as bad as in 2002.

Back to the point, when the IJS was still in the drafts, Sonia Garbato-Bianchetti who was the first woman in ISU’s head office for figure skating, said that the judging system will not last longer than 10-15 years without going back to the original ways. She was sadly right. She was a judge, a referee, and then a member of the Council. She was famous for traveling to training facilities and talking to skaters, listening what they wanted to change and lead the modernization of the sport in the 90s. The compulsory figures were taken out by her because the skaters wanted them out. She conducted major judging seminars, fought against corruption in the sport, severely punishing those that got caught cheating. In 2004 she even published a book exposing ISU’s inner circle, sport’s money and behind the scenes show-runners. I read it in German a few years ago, but I it’s available in English and that it is called “Cracked Ice”. She was sadly right about the way IJS turned out.

It could be improved, the human error could be reduced even more. Today we possess the technology to make it happen. Build in motion sensors in the boards and under the ice surface. That way it would be possible to create a map of skater’s movements and curves, as well as scanning the entry edges, prerotation and udnerrotation, length, speed, and height on jumps, even rotation on spins could be counted. Just using timers, simple as a stopwatch, or counting crossovers and crossunders via AI softwares, it could be possible to quantify skating skills and transitions. Of course that would require money to implement and test and ISU isn’t willing to do that. As far as I am aware, Yuzuru Hanyu has a master thesis that goes in this direction or so. That could possibly end up being a good starting point.

In its core, the goal of this scoring system is to provide fair chances to all athletes – to score them based on the same standards. That nine judges all have to respect and follow. In a conversation I had with one of the older judges from my small fed, they said “People often say things like skaters are never at fault for their own scores, blame the judges. But at the end of the day, it is only their own performances and nothing else that gets scored, what they do on the ice is on them.” And I agree, it is on them, in the ideal case where ISU’s officials were respecting their own rules. But what when a skater goes out, does a stellar job, and still knows that it will not be enough even though they are aware their performance was the best of the day. What then? That is when the faults in the system, be they actual people or loopholes in the rules, must be weeded out.

The IJS rulebooks are all available online, both the current ones and the older ones tracing back to first version in 2004. And those are the books both fans reference when they are trying to make a point against corrupt judging, and the same books that judges study in order to pass ISU’s examination and later refer them in their work.

We will be returning to IJS in detail, especially looking at GOE specifications in part 3. For now, remember that the human error is meant to be reduced to the level where it doesn’t affect the placements, and rules are meant to be as objective as possible. Now, we’ll take a look into a process of becoming an internationally certificated judge.

2. The process of becoming an ISU judge and the process of live judging

Believe it or not, ISU didn’t find these people on the street and told them to just give scores from -5 to +5 based on vibes.

The criteria for the title of judge is:

They must be a judge at the national level of their federation for at least three seasons.

They must be at least 25 years old.

The one for the technical specialist is not much different:

They must be a judge on the national level for at least three years before taking an exam for technical specialist position.

They must be a technical specialist on a national level for at least three seasons.

They must be at least 25 years old.

Sensible, right?

The exams to become a judge at international level happen in September during CS Nebelhorn Trophy and are constructed of three segments.

a. Written exam – Here the candidates are provided questions from the rulebooks for all four disciplines and are given a time limit to answer them. The questions range from general questions like how many elements are required in men’s free skate (12 = 7 jumps + 3spins + 2 sequences), to TES stuff like which mistakes in a program grant the minimum GOE without taking any other aspects of the element (fall on a jump), PCS things like define criteria for grading Skating Skills (deep edges, steps and turns, balance, rhythmic knee action and precision of foot placement, flow and glide, varies use of power, speed and acceleration, use of multi directional skating, use of one foot skating).

b. Identification and grading of individual skating elements – Those who pass the written exam get to watch figure skating videos, actually just selections from several. Candidates are shown a video of for example spin from a competition from two seasons ago, asked to identify the element and give GOE and explain why that GOE for the examiners who will be comparing their answer to the rulebook specifications and the actual scores given by judges in that event.

c. Live judging – If the candidate proves themselves objective and reliable and knowledgeable enough, they are asked to judge at a Nebelhorn event under supervision. That means that actual judges are scoring the skaters competing, and at the same times the new candidates are judging them (their scores will not of course be taken into the final scores of a skater). Candidates also must provide why they gave each score, and finally, if the committee of examiners find their scores and reason right, they are immediately cleared to judge at future ISU events.

My own experience at the national level wasn’t much different. I did a written exam and almost failed exactly because of the minimal GOE question. As far I understood, the GOE was accumulative (it is), and for a mistake on an element it cannot be higher than +2, so that question confused me. I was explained later, that the rule goes for everything than a fall on jump, that it is some general consensus within ISU since that is the only mistake they define as a “big” mistake. I don’t think they follow their own consensus that well, though.

Second part of my exam was a merge of identification of elements and live judging. Basically, they played me 8 full programs (2 from each discipline) and asked me to grade elements and explain why that grade. I did the exam in 2019 so all the programs I answered on were from 2018-19 season since the rules changes of 2018. Example, the first program they played to me was Yuzuru Hanyu’s Otonal at 2019 World Championships. It was a struggle to stay objective since I am a hardcore fanyu. you see his 2S* and mentally go +5 purely because even his pops look beautiful, but say no score as that is the invalid element since the minimum rotation number for the solo jump in senior men’s short program is three. And so on. At the end they compared my results to the results of those nine judges allowing the normal amount of deviation since seven out of nine scores are calculated into the final score of a skater, and here I was the only person so it is natural that the scores tended to be higher as there is no averaging.

Now, how does live judging work?

There are 9 judges at the panel, each sitting separated enough so that they can’t communicate (in theory). The sitting arrangement will cover nearly full length of the ice rink, giving them different angles that will mean some of them might see something the other cannot, hence slight differences in scores. And skaters now this, there is literally a blind spot on the ice from which you cannot tell edge apart, that is where most Lutzes happen naturally. But that is why the technical panel has the video replay (in real time speed) to notice it and call the edge. Personally, I think this is why we need AI software for judging. It is impossible for human eye to in a fraction of a second notice and rightly grade everything.

Before each segment of competition, there is a short briefing with the referee (they remind you which skaters you have to score how there…). But what is actually important, is the meeting after the event, there each protocol for each skater is reviewed and none of them are released to the public until each questionable score isn’t discussed and the referee doesn’t sign all of them, taking responsibilities for those scores. Now you might be wondering what are questionable scores? So, if you have nine judges scoring a skater with score let’s say -2 and -3 and someone gave them a +1 for a big step out let’s say. The judge who gave that skater +1 is asked to elaborate their choice and if they can’t defend it, they receive sort of a minus point, and if weird scores keep repeating during the briefing, they receive a warning to follow the rules. If it keeps happening, they are risking temporary suspension. That basically means, if all judges but you give Anna’s 4F for example a +4 and you give it a much lower score since she has wrong edge on the take off but no sign from tech panel (GOE -1), cheated take-off (-1 to -3) or under-rotated (-2 to -3), and calculate all the positive things about the element in it and it is still much smaller, +1 for example. It will not be those judges asked why, but you. That is one major fault of the system that allows the real precise scores to be considered abnormalities and be punished. That is how the corruption continues to thrive in this sport.

This was a bit shorter part. Now, onto the mathematics of IJS.

3. Score deviations, specific rules, and mathematics involved in calculation of the scores

One thing that I really love about IJS is that is mathematically structured. Could skating be quantified more? Yes, in terms of PCS. The TES is already completely just mathematics. Now, mathematics as a core science of the universe is objective. Even if you were solving an integral calculus with a method where you assume that the result is 0, you don’t leave it at that. You go on using techniques to prove whether it is actually 0 or not. That is why I believe that mathematics is a perfect way to score skaters objectively. If we get to the point where AI software is used to assist judging, it would be perfect.

· TES is broken down into two segments: the base values and grades of execution.

Base values are indicated in the scale of values charts and are definite. They depend solely on the technical panel and not the judges. If you look at them closely, they are quite logical. Everything is grouped into similar groups by difficulty, level, or number of rotations, and they increase proportionally to the same element of lower level and to other elements grouped with them. The only exception that doesn’t really follow any mathematical pattern are the base values of quad jumps in singles skating. If you look at the values of the triples, how they change in proportion to each other and to doubles and doubles to singles, you’ll see that quads to triples don’t really follow the same proportion. It feels as if especially 4Lo, 4F, and 4Lz were kind of crammed together in an attempt to make their values as similar as possible, there was even a proposition to make them equal which is ridiculous. From the aspects of physics Lutz that breaks the curve could never be same as Flip that is jumped from natural body position. However, this issue isn’t really big and could be easily solved by simply putting back into use old base values for the quads prior to 2018-19 season. The old quad values were: 4T – 10.3; 4S – 10.5; 4Lo – 12.00; 4F – 12.3; 4Lz – 13.6. This is not taking into account the Axels as they are, once again, from aspects of physics, borderline science-fiction. I might do a post on physics in this sport one day, but for now that doesn’t matter. It is just enough to look at the history progress of landing different jumps – first 3A (1978) was landed closer to first ever quad (4T in 1988) than to first ever triple jump (3Lo in 1952) to understand that they are a different realm compared to other jumps.

The grades of execution are the scores awarded by each judge on the panel for the individual elements. In the ideal scenario, where there is no fixed standings, where there is no corruption, the ±5 GOE system would be amazing. By changing the range from ±3 to 5, ISU allowed for a wider distinction between levels of quality of each technical element. Before it was an okay, a good, and an amazing jump. Now we have much wider range that allows to distinguish more closely. That range is the main question that needs to be explored here. Back to human eye physiology: judges indeed do have the best seats in the whole arena, however their panel table spans nearly whole one length of the ice rink. That means that a skater might be doing a jump really close to judge 1, making it super easy for them to spot more mistakes or good things than for judge 8 who is watching from a different angle at a different distance. That is not the fault of a judge, it is simply how our eyes work. However, as they are watching the same thing, they should be able to spot quite similar qualities to the element. Maybe one judge will notice one GOE bullet more than the other, but that is ultimately the same jump, so the scores should be around the same. That means it’s natural for judges to give scores that aren’t the same across the panel. But, the difference between those individual scores that can become a problem. For one same element, it would be normal for the panel to give scores +2 and +3 depending on how they perceived it (human error), however the problem arises when there is a +5 among the mix. That means that majority of the judges saw only 2 or 3 GOE bullets executed well, and/or only the three most important ones, while this one judge somehow managed to come up with first three bullets and another two or three. Remember first three GOE bullet points must be present in the element for GOE +4 or +5, together with another 2 or 3 points. It is quite good that the GOE is accumulative, meaning that all positive aspects are added together and then all negative are subtracted from it. It allows the judges to in moments of doubt go in favour of the skater as all effort should be rewarded. And this goes for all elements in all disciplines, each element has their own GOE bullet points and deductions for certain errors well defined. There are of course exceptions – falls. Even though GOE is accumulative, falls are by consensus all graded by -5. This is a relic from the 6.0 system which I did not study and am not sure how it worked at all, however I have heard that mistakes were treated harshly. Fall is defined as “loss of control by a skater with the result that the majority of his/her own body weight is on the ice supported by any other part of the body other than the blades e.g. hand(s), knee(s), back, buttock(s) or any part of the arm.” Falls mostly happen on jumps of course, but in general fall on an element which grants it a -5 GOE may happen from the moment the skater finishes their connective steps and starts with the transition into the element, until the transition out of the element. Transitions may be as simple as standard set ups into the element (three turns into Flip for example) and simple exits where you just lower your leg and skate on, quite easy to spot on. At 2002 Olympics pairs free skate for example, Xue Shen seemed to have landed the throw 4S for a solid second, but then her edge slipped and she fell. Even in that old system, since she still hadn’t fully transitioned out of the element (even though she was in the process of transitioning out of it) their 4S was not ratified and it was counted as a fall. In case of other mistakes the procedure is standard, all positive points of GOE minus all reductions for errors (final GOE by judge still might end up being -5 if there are enough errors). However, you usually should not be getting positive GOE for a step out for example. Step out is graded with GOE -3 to -4, so for positive GOE a skater should be hitting all 6 positive GOE bullets which with a mistake is truly impossible (it literally cannot be over +2 to begin with because it had a weak landing, it wasn’t effortless throughout, and body position most likely got distorted during a landing with a step out. And then from that +2 you still have to subtract the step out reduction and most likely another -1 for weak landing etc.).

· On the other hand, Program Components are a bit harder to score objectively as they are not truly quantified.

There are five of them and two of them should be quantified to make the judging process more objective. The tiny subjective part of the judging that prevails is in the other three aspects: Performance, Composition, and Interpretation. Even though, Composition while not necessarily needing to be quantified, isn’t also really subjective at all. The components are scored on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0.25 divisions. The only technical thing that affects them is a serious error and the only serious error that ISU has defined is a fall. The thing that bothers me when it comes to PCS is that the way they were structured is to clearly reward growth and maturity of the performance. What does that mean? It means that kids only coming into senior ranks start below, maybe their TES is already super high, but coming from juniors to seniors is a changing tide. People who have spent years in senior circuit have learned and adjusted their skating skills, their transitions to match the music, their skating grew with their maturity. When you come fresh off the junior circuit, you are still not as focused on the same things as the seniors, you are perhaps too young to get some themes, too young for your programs to be really serious and so if you try to skate to some difficult music, it just looks frantic and uncontrolled and unconnected. It is impossible for a 13 and a 23 year old that prioritize the same things in a performance to have same skating skills, as the older person has had years more of experience to learn. That is not to say that young skaters cannot be super good at certain specific component. Anna Shcherbakova has had really wonderful Interpretation of music throughout her career. Compared to other women at 2019 GPF, Alena Kostornaia and Rika Kihira had obviously superior Skating Skills even though they were a first and second year seniors.

That being said, Performance and Interpretation should be graded taking into account ISU’s current guidelines. They are pretty well defined already, ISU just needs to start implementing them based on those regulations and not personal vibes.

Composition refers to how the program is structured, the pattern on the ice, the placements of elements, if you are going to go with 5 jumps in a row in the free skate you should be thinking how that compliments the purpose and theme of the program and be ready for your composition to suffer.

Skating Skills and Transitions may be mostly quantified by the use of AI software and motion sensors. I have already mentioned some of that in the first part of this essay. But apart from that, judges must also look into the quality of those numbers. How difficult those steps were, did the skater loose much speed through them, their rhythmic knee movement, the depth of the edges (which can be visualised further by the arch of the curve they create on the ice), how easily they accelerate without doing crossovers and crossunders etc. (No wait, that also could be seen if they were to measure both speed through the program and amount of difficult one foot steps, or simply count the crossovers?).

The point is, the more the judging system gets quantified, the more objective it will be. But the AIs cannot properly judge performance and interpretation quality so we would still need judges. Not having a robot score the technical elements gives skater a feedback on what different people see and look for within their element while following the same rules and structure that they do, ultimately giving them ideas what to work on both technically and aesthetically wise, while the robots score would just be looking at the purely technical aspects. The judging system is fine as it is, however ISU and its officials need to take responsibility for following those rules. In the last few seasons, we have seen the scores leaving the realm of realistic possibilities considering what the skaters did on the ice. It is harmful to skaters that get scored fairly or underscored, both psychologically, and financially. It is harmful to skaters who get overscored as they are being told their performances are perfect and that there is no need to improve which in some cases may diminish their own motivation for longer careers since they already achieved their maximum early on, and creates a really dangerous system where it is becoming normal to have a career no longer than three years, rapidly reach your peak and later suffer the possible health consequences. No skater benefits from the current state of the sport in a long term, which is most important.

#this is super extra long #i finally finished it!#tbh i had more to say about pcs and it isn't as coherent as i wanted it to be #but you have to bear with the fact that i have exams and a sick tooth #i am always willing to talk about this silly sport however so if you have any questions or thoughts leave an ask or something #figure skating

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makeste · 3 years

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hello! I’ve seen some debate as to whether the 2nd meant allies in general would bolster izuku and although I do think that’s true (ofc any sort of support system that he lets himself rely on would bolster him) I feel like if that was what was meant it would’ve been made clearer? maybe instead of just katsuki showing up, the final panel would’ve had several students burst onto the scene. what are your thoughts?

agreed. and incidentally this is another big reason why it's not Toga. if it was her then Horikoshi wouldn't have devoted any time to OFA II's little hype speech. it just makes it kind of pointless, unless this whole time we've been sleeping on Toga's hidden ability to bolster Deku lmao.

but anyways, yeah. and I mean, Two's commentary here is really just acknowledgement of something we've long since known already. Kacchan is the one who will ultimately be able to reach Deku. we don't actually need a piece of dialogue to tell us this, because the manga has been showing it to us since day one. his resume is fucking stacked. I mean, let's go through it.

he is mean.

I love this you guys. I honest to god love it. because the thing is, if you ask anyone what Kacchan's absolute worst quality is, this would be the obvious answer, right? "he's an asshole" lmao.

but that's exactly what we need right now!! someone who's not afraid to tell it like it is, and won't try to sugarcoat things. someone who's not afraid to argue back and risk hurting someone's feelings. because right now Deku is walking all over anyone who can't do that. All Might tries to feed him lunch and he's like "nah I'm good, anyways bye." Endeavor tries to tell him to rest and he's all "I'm fine" and fucking hangs up the phone. nuh uh. enough of that. what we need is someone who will call him out on his shit. "hah!? don't tell me you're fine when it's obvious to anyone you can barely stand on your own two feet, dumbass."

he is stubborn.

kind of ties into the other thing, but yeah. right now we need a bullheaded asshole who won't take no for an answer if he thinks he's right. good luck trying to sweet talk your way out of this one, Deku.

he understands the situation.

this one is important, because in fairness, simply standing in front of Deku and saying "you shall not pass" isn't gonna be enough to actually accomplish anything here. ultimately he's going to have to be able to reason with Deku too. and so in that respect, it certainly doesn't hurt that Kacchan is someone who understands the OFA situation as well as anyone, and has always had clear judgment about it. he understands the threat of AFO ("they all died young"), and he understands the burden of All Might's legacy. he knows what Deku is dealing with, and that's going to give him an edge when it comes to finding that elusive-yet-critical talk no jutsu knockout blow.

he's been where Deku is now.

Kacchan knows a thing or two about burdens. granted, they've more often than not been ones that he's put on himself, but that didn't make them any less heavy. Deku right now is struggling not just with his feelings of responsibility, but also with all of the misplaced guilt that's feeding into it. AFO is targeting him. if innocent people get caught in the crossfire then that's on him. every minute that AFO stays out there getting stronger and causing more chaos is all on him, because he hasn't defeated him yet. and so on and so forth.

and Katsuki knows what that's like. because he blamed himself for what happened to All Might. that feeling of "if I'd only been stronger" is one that he's intimately acquainted with. that feeling of blaming yourself, of not being able to look someone you care about in the eye because you think it's your fault they got hurt. this is something he knows. this is a road he's already been down. and so if Deku tries to pull any "you don't understand" nonsense, Kacchan is uniquely situated to immediately shoot that shit right down.

he's immune to low blows.

lol I keep thinking of all the different counterarguments that Deku could make, and all the different ways in which Kacchan is perfectly equipped to handle them. anyway, so this particular thing is a very recent development, but very fortunately timed. so as we all know, Kacchan was a first class dick to Deku during their childhood. something which Deku, with his abnormally kind and forgiving nature, has never once confronted Kacchan about, even though he would have absolutely had the right. but anyway, so here's the thing though -- right now I fully believe that Deku can and will do or say just about anything in order to get Kacchan and the others to leave. and that includes hurting them in order to save them. so it would not surprise me at all if Deku goes as far as to throw Katsuki's old, cruel, selfish behavior back in his face as part of a last-ditch effort to get him to back down. desperate times and all that.

and maybe there was a time when that actually would have worked. but here's the other thing -- we know something Deku doesn't. namely, that Kacchan has recently leveled up emotionally and has finally unlocked his atonement quest. he finally understands that it's not all about him. which means that it doesn't matter even if Deku pulls out the big guns. he may hurt his feelings, but he's not going to scare him off, because Kacchan's focus right now is on atonement, not forgiveness. he's not doing this for a pat on the head. he's doing it because it's the right thing to do. and no amount of insults will be able to sway him from that.

he learned from the best.

I said this in another post a couple of weeks back, but yeah. Angsty Nomad Deku has nothing on early Kacchan in terms of pushing people away. early Kacchan was the motherfucking king of pushing peeps away. if you so much as LOOKED at this kid in such a way that SUGGESTED you might even be THINKING about possibly trying to save him, he would straight up throw a ten-year hissy fit lmao. Deku's "All Might, you don't have to tag along anymore"s ain't got SHIT on all of Kacchan's "STAY BACK DEKU"s and "I'D RATHER LOSE!!!"s and "OMFG HOW DARE YOU BE THE ONLY PERSON TO TRY TO SAVE ME FROM THIS RAMPAGING SLUDGE MAN WHO'S ABOUT TO SUFFOCATE ME TO DEATH"s. Kacchan is the undisputed goat here lol.

but anyway, so what this means is that he has accumulated a whole HOST of iconic lines and fateful parallels which he can throw back in Deku's face at a moment's notice. and the best part is that he learned it all from THIS EXACT MOTHERFUCKER, RIGHT HERE. what is Deku even gonna do!! argue against his own past actions?? "well, uh, I guess now that you mention it I should have just sat back and watched you die all those times" OH REALLY?? YOU DON'T SAY. THAT SOUNDS SO CONVINCING.

and so guess what, Deku -- if Kacchan was worth saving, then you're worth saving too. it's an ironclad argument. congratulations son you played yourself.

he always wins.

okay so real talk, we all know that what's really driving Deku right now is his fear of losing people. he's helpless against that. he saw Kacchan get stabbed right before his eyes and it fucked him up. he saw all these other people getting hurt and killed because he couldn't save them, and he straight up could not deal with those emotions at all. he's scared. he's more afraid of that happening again than of anything else. and AFO knows that, and that's why he's resorted to his current tactics, which have isolated Deku even further and caused him to push even All Might away.

what Deku is missing right now, and what he needs to have restored, is trust. trust is the antidote to fear. and when you're as scared as Deku is, it takes an extraordinary amount of assurance in order to ease those fears. basically you don't want to place your faith in anything less than an absolutely sure thing.

but Kacchan is exactly that. this is the exact type of situation that Kacchan's "aiming for the top" overkill confidence was made for. he's the one who never loses!! the hero who's going to surpass all other heroes!! Deku inherited All Might's compassion, but Kacchan inherited his determination. Kacchan is someone who brings reassurance. his confidence is unwavering. and in the end, I think it will be strong enough to pull even Deku back out from the darkness.

he is strong.

Kacchan is Deku's rival in every sense of the word, and I fully believe he's capable of matching him step for step even now. and so Deku can try to push him away, but Kacchan is capable of withstanding that force and staying his ground. Deku can try to run, but Kacchan still has him matched for speed. and as a last resort, Deku can even try to defeat him -- but Kacchan won't ever concede to defeat.

and all of this ties back into what I was saying about trust. because Kacchan is strong. strong enough not to die. strong enough to live. strong enough to not make others worry about him. and that's what Deku so desperately needs right now in order to finally let go of his fears. Deku needs someone who can get him to trust in others again, and to do that, he has to be able to trust in their strength.

and last but not least...

he has a secret weapon up his sleeve.

several, as a matter of fact. his hero name reveal. his apology, if he chooses to give it now (though I could see him waiting for a more sincere moment, rather than whipping it out now when it could be misconstrued as a manipulation tactic). but perhaps most importantly...

never underestimate the power of an iconic role reversal. because that's what I'm getting at here, if it wasn't clear lol. this probably would have worked better if I had a picture of him actually reaching out to Deku. but I mean, that's kind of the point lol. I don't have one because he hasn't done it yet. BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE. good luck withstanding that, Deku.

so yeah. look at all that. he really is a one-man Deku-saving army. which is not to say that the other kids won't have a part to play as well, or that it's not important for them to be there, because it is. but as far as the lead role goes, it's Kacchan. like that astronaut meme guy says. always has been.

oh and as a bonus he was smart enough to finally leave the mask at home today lol. LET DEKU SEE THE SINCERITY IN YOUR EYES. YESSSSSSS.

#bnha 318 #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #bnha meta #bakugou meta #deku meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks

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no-reply95 · 3 years

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I was scrolling through the Beatles topic on Twitter the other day and came across a tweet from Mark Lewisohn referring to a talk he’d given to the Fab4cast podcast on the Get Back sessions and Spring period of 1969. I assumed that it was a recent talk so I gave it a listen but the talk is actually from 2019.

I tend to find Lewisohn’s podcast interviews to be very interesting. He’s obviously got decades worth of Beatle knowledge stored up so you’re almost guaranteed to learn something new or hear an anecdote that you’ve never heard before but more than the factoids he’s accumulated over the years I find his interpretations of the band extremely telling.

The part of the conversation that really caught my attention was when the podcast hosts brought up the fact that John and Paul’s weddings were really close together and wondered if the two events were connected in any way, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this probably got the biggest reaction out of Lewisohn, the main points of the exchange are outlined below (time stamp 47:12)

Host: “Well also in this period there are two events, the marriages of John and Paul, within 8 days of each other… I read that John wanted to marry on the 14th, two days after Paul’s wedding but couldn’t do it because of legal issues, how much was his [marriage] a response to Paul’s marriage do you think?”

Lewisohn: “I’ve read that people say that it was but never heard John say that it was so there’s no validity to those claims they’re just people assuming that John didn’t want to be outdone by Paul… that’s the kind of writing that annoys me because it becomes part of the fact and it’s some writer thinking that’s what it probably was… Unless someone out there can find a Lennon quote in which he actually says it in which case I stand corrected and I’ll be very happy to do so”

There’s a lot going on in these quotes so I’m gonna break down my thoughts on this further:

The illusion of John’s honesty

What Lewisohn displays here is something I believe is pretty common within the Beatles’ authorship. I believe in Revolution In The Head Ian McDonald referred to John as “truth” and Paul as “beauty” and I think a lot of writers do tend to assign those attributes consistently to John and Paul. Reading (or listening) to the Lennon Remembers interview now, it’s hard to believe at one stage people took what John was saying as fact and never even questioned whether there were emotions or agenda behind what he was saying, despite the contradictions (“Me and Paul stopped writing together in 1962” vs “Me and Paul worked really closely together on Sgt. Pepper”) and because John was so charismatic and would speak openly in interviews and to people he knew about both the good and bad in his life I think people, and in this case Lewisohn, assume that John told us everything of note that happened in his life, which I don’t think is a realistic expectation of anyone, let alone someone as famous as John. I think it’s problematic to take John’s or anyone else’s words, especially when they’re said in public, as the gospel truth because everyone has an agenda and John was no different. I also think it’s unrealistic to believe that John would ever announce that the reason he and Yoko got married when they did was in any way connected to Paul, that would have sullied the sanctity of “John and Yoko TM”, I mean, how can you be the greatest love story ever if the reason you decided to get married was because your musical partner who you may have unresolved romantic feelings for got married? I don’t think John would publicly embarrass Yoko like that or risk undermining the strength of the brand he was trying to create with his new relationship by admitting that Paul’s marriage spurred them on. That Lewisohn is apparently holding out for a lost interview of John stating that Paul was involved in the timing of his marriage to Yoko just sounds pretty far fetched to me.

The timing of John’s wedding in relation to his and Yoko’s divorces

As discussed in this podcast, Paul and Linda got married (pretty unexpectedly I believe) on 12 March 1969 and John and Yoko got married 8 days later (and apparently they wanted it to be sooner) on 20 March 1969. Aside from the extremely close proximity of John and Paul’s weddings it should be noted that John’s divorce from Cynthia was finalised in November 1968 and Yoko’s from Tony Cox was finalised in January 1969.

So why am I bringing up John and Yoko’s divorces? Because it meant that they were free to marry each other from January 1969, there was no longer a legal issue preventing them and if John’s bursting out in song about it, you would assume that they would have started planning their wedding ASAP… but curiously they didn’t. How do we know John and Yoko weren’t planning a wedding before Paul married Linda? Because once Paul was married John and Yoko started scrambling to get married ASAP, suddenly there was a rush and need to be married that hadn’t existed before, John suddenly wanted to marry Yoko on a ferry but they couldn’t be married there, then John wanted to marry Yoko in Paris but they needed to be resident in Paris for a period of time before they could get married there so eventually they settled on Gibraltar as they could get married there at short notice. Clearly there was a sudden need for John and Yoko to get married that didn’t materialise until around March 1969, am I and countless other people (including Paul himself) crazy for assuming that Paul’s wedding impacted John’s sudden desperate need to be married? If it wasn’t Paul’s wedding, what was it?

Authorial interpretation and assumptions

I’m really fascinated by the visceral reaction Lewisohn had to just the suggestion that the timing of John and Yoko’s wedding was connected to Paul and Linda’s. For Lewisohn to state it annoys him was pretty shocking to me because, given what is publicly known about this period and the lack of any other logical reason for John and Yoko’s wedding to be so close to Paul’s and Linda’s, I don’t think it’s bad writing to point out the proximity and suggest that the timing was more than a coincidence.

Based on his reaction, you would assume that Lewisohn would be set against any form of interpretation where the principal in question hadn’t confirmed that the interpretation was in fact correct but that would be an incorrect assumption to make. Some of you may be aware of the Hornsey Road shows Mark Lewisohn was giving in 2019 around the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road. During these shows Lewisohn played a clip from the, now infamous, 4-4-4-2 meeting tape and gave a presentation on the Abbey Road period in the Beatles’ history. One of the points Lewisohn raised during the show was that during the sessions, after the car accident in Scotland, a bed was brought into the studio for Yoko so she (and sometimes John) could rest while work on the album progressed. According to Lewisohn, one morning they turned up to the studio and someone had removed one of the legs from the bed, leaving it with 3 legs *dramatic pause* which was him heavily hinting that he thought Paul broke Yoko’s bed on purpose and then bragged about it on the Ram album by including a song called 3 legs, I’m not going to go into the validity (or lack thereof) of this claim but I find it very interesting that Lewisohn was annoyed about authors suggesting that the timing of John and Yoko’s wedding was connected to Paul and Linda’s but he seems happy to publicly speculate that Paul was sabotaging Yoko’s bed in the studio based on the title of a song that he would release on Ram two years later and nothing else.

Is there any evidence that connects John’s wedding to Paul’s?

I’ve already outlined the suspiciousness of John and Yoko choosing to get married right after Paul, when they had been free to marry for weeks prior but is there any other evidence that either proves that the weddings were connected or is Lewisohn right to deem that suggestion as lacking in validity?

Interestingly there actually is unverified eyewitness testimony that does connect John and Paul’s weddings (something not mentioned by Lewisohn in this podcast). I believe there’s an anecdote from Les Anthony (John’s chauffeur at the time) about him driving John and Yoko around when news of Paul’s wedding suddenly came across the radio, to which John apparently said to Yoko that “we have to get married now”… I couldn’t track down the exact source for that story (if anyone knows the source please let me know) so I’m not sure how credible that anecdote is but, assuming it is accurate, then that would suggest a correlation between John and Paul’s weddings that Lewisohn is adamant doesn’t exist.

Why does this matter?

I do think that this podcast interview could be indicative of a few future concerns I personally have around the way the Beatles discourse will progress in the future. Firstly, this was only a podcast interview so it’s unlikely that when Lewisohn releases the final book in his trilogy that he’ll discuss the weddings in this manner (I.e. although he’s adamant the timing of John’s wedding had nothing to with Paul he failed to offer any sort of explanation regarding why John and Yoko were rushing to get married when they’d had weeks to prepare a wedding).

It’s a slight worry that Lewisohn seems to believe that John announced every single thing that happened in his life of note, especially concerning Paul and Yoko. If John had told us everything of interest about him, surely his Dakota diaries would be the basis of a Netflix series by now and not locked away in a vault (assuming they haven’t already been destroyed). To me, like several authors before him, Lewisohn seems to be mistaking John’s emotional honesty with factual honesty. It didn’t escape my attention that several clips of the Lennon Remembers interview were inserted into this podcast and Lewisohn quotes extensively from it in Tune In as well. There’s nothing wrong with using Lennon Remembers as a source but if you do use it you should be analysing the veracity of what was said as we know that John was in a torched earth mentality at that time and even he himself has said what he said in that interview wasn’t meant as a timeless manifesto. It’s a shame that given his ability of analyse sources Lewisohn has never (to my knowledge) critically analysed Lennon Remembers, given that other sources have been analysed this makes LR a strange omission.

Finally, Lewisohn does tend to make some good insights and does have the ability to read between the lines (I.e. him noting Paul’s tendency to say “we” when in most cases he means himself) but with John I do think he has a bit of a blindspot. Why Lewisohn is happy to speculate without evidence in some cases (3 legs) but he draws the line at the suggestion that John and Paul’s weddings being connected is anyone’s guess. If Lewisohn can turn his attention to reading between the lines with John and the other Beatles too and connecting the dots then we should get a Beatles biography that finally addresses a lot of the issues we cover on this site. However, if we take the approach of only using John and Yoko’s PR to understand the events that transpired before and after the band broke up then the story hasn’t moved much further than 1970 and given all that we know now I think that would be a huge shame.

#the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #john and paul #mark lewisohn #paul and linda #john and yoko #double wedding #beatles podcasts #given Lewisohn’:s status it’s crucial he doesn’t just dismiss things he doesn’t like as invalid #interpretation is fine as long as it’s correct #i have other podcast thoughts on a separate show #thoughts #long post

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songmingisthighs · 3 years

Text

[15.08] badboy!seonghwa × reader

⇀ had you known that's why he confessed, would you have accepted him ? Or smack his annoyingly perfect face with your laptop ?

⇁ part 1 / 2

⇁ prologue part 1 / 2 / 3

Things had gone great between you and Seonghwa. You and he would often meet at your dorm or at the diner at least three times a week.

You'd ask him why you both never hung at his dorm but his answer was that he doesn't want the boys to disturb your 'quality time'.

Normally you'd question answers like that, but the way he looks at you and holds your hand made you forget why you even wanna ask that in the first place.

But like all things, everything dissipates with time.

Nearing the end of the semester, group projects lessen and solo assignments accumulate which put a strain between your and Seonghwa's hangout time. You've tried convincing him that you both can hang out whilst doing your solo assignments but you remembered how his eyes trailed after a girl as you spoke at one of your last hangouts at the diner.

Seems like he's lost interest in you too.

Which, it sure hurts, but you both were never official and neither had verbally confirmed to the other about their feelings. It sucks.

But you power through.

You pretend that his silence during class's group discussion didn't affect you, you pretend that when he immediately pack up his stuff to leave the class and only throwing you a polite smile didn't make your heart wrench, you pretend that him ghosting you didn't make you feel both embarrassed and angry at the same time.

You're light and breezy.

Heck, you're so light and breezy, you still go to that diner every Friday all alone. And it's not because you had hoped to see one particular man.

Even though you did.

When he was on a date with some girl who's obviously very pretty.

On the booth you both had 'claimed' as 'your booth' without ever verbally saying it.

"Hi, excuse me," a voice broke your train of thoughts.

You look up from your book to see a really handsome man standing in front of you with a smile on his face. He looks very handsome, definitely mixed-race, and he has this chill aura on him that is honestly refreshing to you.

"Sorry to bother you, but can I sit here?" He asked. You look around to see that there are a lot of other places left in the library where he could've sat.

Sensing your apprehension, the man raised both of his hands, "I'm not a creep or a weirdo, I'm just very particular about where I work,"

He's got a point. So you just nodded, "sure, it's not my table or anything anyways, you could've just taken a seat without asking my permission," he shrugged as he put his things across you, "I mean sure, but you seemed like you don't wanna be bothered and this particular spot has the best walking distance to anywhere at all and plus the secret charging port? Genius," he said, grinning proudly.

You raised your eyebrows at him, "you seem to know your way around the table, mister..." you trailed off to which he immediately caught on, "Hansol, Choi Hansol, but my friends calls me Vernon," he held his hand out for you to shake, "(Y/N), (Y/N) (Y/L/N), and why Vernon?" "My english name, I'm half American,"

And with that, you got yourself a new friend.

Vernon is a computer science major, and the other thing major about him is his nerdiness. And his hotness. Which is a ridiculous combination.

Ever since that day in the library, you both somehow find the other popping up everywhere. Just a day after your first meeting in the library, he came into the café you part-timed at. He came in to order 13 drinks and several pastries, shocking you at first but then he told you he lives in a frat house with 12 other guys and that he's not a caffeine addict.

Then you both bonded over the many sessions in the library which eventually venture out to sitting together during lunch, and then suddenly you both started meeting outside campus.

And this did not go unnoticed by Seonghwa.

"Hey, Seonghwa, how well do you know (Y/N)?" Hongjoong asked, breaking Seonghwa's glare on you and Vernon from all the way across the cafeteria.

Seonghwa raised an eyebrow at him, "(Y/N) from my statistics class?" As if he hadn't considered you as something more at some point, "I'd say well enough as a groupmate, why?" He asked back.

Hongjoong nodded towards you and Vernon with his chin, "Vernon there saw you both working together and he wants to make sure he won't be stepping on anyone's toes when he's making a move on her,"

At that moment, Seonghwa almost choked on his fries. Too surprised with the fact that you've possibly moved on from him so quickly.

It's only been a month and a half since you both stopped hanging out outside of obligation.

Hearing that made his blood boil and he's pretty sure it's not jealousy. Most likely territorialism. HE took interest in you first waaaaay before Vernon did.

The smile and laugh you give Vernon was supposed to be for him. He used to make you laugh so hard at any stupid pun he concocted in his head. No matter how stupid it is nor how much it doesn't make any sense.

To be completely honest, he didn't know why he pulled away from you in the first place. He had been so comfortable with you, never once had he ever let his guard down and just be carefree, not even with his closest friends.

He needs to get you back to him.

No matter what.

So he made his move the next time you both had statistics again.

Unlucky for him though, the professor decided to not have any group discussion that day which threw Seonghwa's plan out the window. But thankfully he still remembered your schedule, you don't have any class after statistics which means you'd be grabbing a simple lunch before your part-time job starts until 8 pm.

So he waited patiently for the bell to ring.

Legs bouncing in anticipation as his eyes flit towards the clock every five minutes.

When the professor finally dismissed the class (10 minutes later than he's supposed to, as per usual), he immediately put all his belongings back in his bag and ran after you. Somehow you've mastered the art of cleaning up quickly over the month and a half without him.

"(Y/N)! Wait!" Seonghwa called.

You stopped in your tracks and turn your head to see Seonghwa jogging towards you with that stupid, charming smile on his face.

Damn his good looks.

"Yeah? Is there something wrong?" you asked him when he caught up to you. He raised an eyebrow at you, confused as to why you'd think there'd be anything wrong.

"Ah!" you suddenly exclaimed, "Is this about my part of the presentation? Don't worry, I'm close to finishing it, I should be able to compile it in the PPT tonight by... 9.30-ish? I have to finish my shift at the café," you explained.

He chuckled at you, deep voice that you oh so missed ringing in your ears, "wha- no, (Y/N), I'm not here to talk about our project, I just wanna... talk with you," he said, tilting his head to the side slightly. It somehow made him look both hot and cute at the same time. Which doesn't make sense.

Now it was your turn to raise an eyebrow at him while crossing your arms, "why? No offence, Seonghwa, but you've kinda been blowing me off for the past month and a half now, what makes you think I'd have anything to talk with you about?"

Those words coming out of your mouth shocked him. It's not like he didn't expect some apprehension from you, but hostility? Boy, you must've been really affected by his shitty doings.

"I-I- no, (Y/N), I haven't been blowing you off," bullshit, even he knows that, "I've just been really-" "really... what? Absent? Ghosty? Hot and cold? Whatever it is, Seonghwa, you don't owe me any explanation," you tried your best to not roll your eyes at him because honestly, how dare he blew you off and now acting like he didn't whilst hoping you don't notice what he has been doing.

What did he take you for? One of his brainless bimbos?

Surprised at your words, Seonghwa was left stunned. You waited for a solid 10 seconds for him to say something. Anything.

Literally, how hard is it to say sorry?

Realizing he wouldn't realize what he's supposed to do, you just shook your head at him, "I'll finish inputting and editing my part by tonight, I'll see you in class next week, Seonghwa," you said before walking away.

You would've thought that he'd take the hint and go back to ignoring you.

But now, of course not. He's stubborn and he plays by his own rules. It's an understatement to say that you were shocked when you saw him entering the café nearing the end of your shift.

Despite the shock of seeing him, you pretended like nothing's wrong and do what you're supposed to do to any other customer as per usual.

Heck, you'd give yourself a pat on the back, head, and butt for being so calm whilst handling Seonghwa. You managed to keep that "strictly professional" smile on your face as you take his orders, you didn't fumble when he made small talks as you typed in his orders into the computer (like really, who the heck said "good thing tonight's not cloudly, love the moonlight," ??), and you didn't flinch when your hands accidently touch as you hand him his strawberry frappucino.

Yes, the badboy strictly and secretly drink sweet, fruity drinks.

You'd thought that his presence was merely a coincidence. As he waited in his table, you had assumed that he's waiting for some girl (who isn't you, sadly) so all you wanna do is run out of there as soon as you can.

"Hey, Jaemin," you called your co-worker who's in the middle of sipping his 6 shot americano at 8 pm, "I'm gonna head out, okay? Think you can hold the fort until Yena's here? She said she has to turn in an assignment, that's why she's late,"

Jaemin just rolled his eyes at you, "(Y/N), I'm drinking coffee that's powerful enough to paralyze a horse, I can definitely handle the slow Wednesday night crowd," he said sarcastically to which you laugh.

After getting your things from your locker in the back room, you proceed to go out through the front door.

Unbeknownst to you, Seonghwa had followed behind.

You were only several steps away from the café when suddenly Seonghwa caught up to you and grab your hand.

Knowing that it's quite late and it's dark, Seonghwa should've known better. You honestly only feel slightly bad for punching his chest.

Slightly.

Like 2%.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Seonghwa you scared the devil out of me!" You exclaimed after realizing that it was just him, pulling your hand away from his grip. He coughed, trying to ease oxygen back to his lungs after you had brutally knocked them out.

"Guess I deserved that," he coughed out, but he was smirking as if he's amused by your attack, "sorry, I was just- I need to talk to you," he said, looking at you pleadingly.

"Well, it doesn't seem like that for the past month and a half, Seonghwa, you seemed just about done with me," you said while crossing your arms, your expression showing nothing but disdain at him. He seems to feel remorse after seeing how you looked at him. Never once did you showed any negativity nor hostility to him during the time you both spent together.

Seonghwa didn't really know what made him pull away from you. All he was sure of is that he felt something so strongly about you to the point that it scared him so much. He never felt the need to be with someone as much as when he was with you. He found himself thinking about you when you're both not together, he found himself only focusing on you and nothing else when you both are together, and he found his vulnerabilities open for you to access.

It scared him to hell and back when he realizes that there is a possibility of him wanting something more from you.

With you.

The man before you sighed, "I... Have no excuse for how I acted recently but believe me when I said that I regret pulling myself away from you because I'm scared, you're too good to and for someone like me, you deserve the best and I wanna be the best for you," he stepped closer to take both your hands in his, his eyes were genuine which rendered you incapable of being too mad at him, "I wish I could rewind the time and take back what I did, I never should have pulled away from you, I should have just told you the truth," he said.

For a second, he forgot about his image and he just let whatever he was feeling out, he wanted to make sure that you understand how he truly feels.

Both of you stood in silence, just staring at each other as he rubs his thumb on the back of your hand. With the way you're staring at him now, he was sure that your initial resolve had completely melted.

But suddenly from his peripheral vision, he saw Vernon coming out of a bookstore across the road and was looking around.

Remembering what prompted him to get closer to you again, he pulled you in close into his arms, a hand to your cheek and lips just centimetres away from his.

"So? Would you please give me another chance to show you how much you mean to me? Not as just some guy from your statistics class," his words made you chuckle and roll your eyes, "but as your boyfriend," he said before he could stop himself.

Your eyes widened, "m-me? With y-you? Boyfriend and girlfriend?" you choked out, not believing your ears in the first place. You wanted to make sure that he's not kidding, making a joke or making a fool out of you.

Instead of answering, however, he simply leaned in and places his lips softly on yours. The kiss was sweet, it conveyed how much he wants and misses you. For some reason it made you feel comforted, he feels like home and his arms makes you feel safe.

So then and there, you kiss him back as a form of an answer to him.

When you both finally pull away, you both could see dumb smiles decorating the other's face, proof of happiness over what just happen.

Remembering that you're in the middle of the road and there are people around you, you pulled away from his arms first but reached to tangle your hand in his.

"Come on, I believe I owed my groupmate my part of the presentation," you started as you walk, pulling him with you.

But as you walk, you turn your head at him to throw a flirty smirk, "boyfriend" you said, making him grin so wide, it could rival a Cheshire cat.

Maybe you and he isn't a bad idea at all.

All you can do now is hope that he won't break you.

#ateez #ateez scenario #ateez imagine #timestamp #ateez timestamp #ateez au #kpop boys #kpop scenario #kpop imagine #seonghwa #park seonghwa #smt #smt timestamp #ateez scenarios #ateez imagines #kpop au

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