Maurice: Communication in Practice

Maurice, written by E.M. Forster, has found its niche to the people of the world that recognizes the universal queer experiences depicted in the book. Maurice utilizes communication methods, both verbal and nonverbal, to express queer identity in high society England. 

Artifacts are used to display one’s identity. In the faithful 1987 film adaptation of the same name, Alec wears flat caps; trousers; and boots to communicate his status as a working class man, but he is clean of dirt, despite his outdoor work, to show his family's status as respectable business men. The only time he is seen wearing a suit, resembling Clive’s personal style, is when he goes to the city to visit Maurice. This communicates a challenge to the class system itself, which Alec expresses verbally when he tells Maurice “I’m as good as you.”

The terms “gay” or “homosexual” were not commonly used in Maurice’s time. Despite the book never using the word, the book still describes this identity through ambiguous imagery and coded language. Maurice Hall describes himself as an “unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort”. This disproves the theory of linguistic determinism. Linguistic determinism states that “we cannot perceive or think about things for which we don’t have names,” (Wood, p. 113). Maurice used Wilde’s public trial, a concept the general public knew, to describe an experience that he doesn’t have words for. This is so he can understand his own identity as well as communicate that identity to others. 

During Maurice’s final goodbye to Clive Durham, he explains that he has  shared “All I have. Which includes my body,” (Forster, chapter 46) with Alec. “Share” not only refers to the act of sex, but everything else that comes in a romantic relationship. The word itself was intentionally ambiguous for people to assume the complexity of a romantic relationship without explaining everything that comes with it. Maurice doesn’t say the words “trust” or “love”, but its existence is implied because you cannot share nothing in a relationship.

Maurice is as much about Clive as it is about Maurice. Clive agrees with a certain speech community so he can please his mother, appeal to the public, and keep his position as a politician. A speech community is when a group shares an understanding on how communication works (Woods, p. 120). Clive aligns himself with an interpretation of Plato’s Symposium about male friendship. As Clive puts it: “The sole excuse for any relationship between men is that it remains purely platonic,” (Forster, chapter 46). Any physical contact is friendly, nothing more. When Clive kisses Maurice’s hand, it is an act of platonic friendship while remembering the past. For Maurice and Alec, however, this gesture is a sign of romantic and sexual intimacy. Clive expresses disgust when Maurice suggests it meant differently than Clive’s intentions. 

Greenwood is the abstract concept of a place beyond society where queer men can express queer love without punishment. Greenwood is only mentioned a handful of times, and it is never described. Greenwood is only shown by the association of embracing human nature and the beauty of the outdoors. This imagery evokes different feelings in different people, the most common one being “hope”, another highly subjective feeling. Forster himself struggled with writing Maurice and Alec in Greenwood because of this. What does living in hope look like? 

Maurice is dependent on the language of the time. Without the expectation of behavior depending on things such as gender and social class, there would be no conflict. Maurice would have already been living in Greenwood. 

References:

Forster, E. (1971). Maurice. W.W. Norton & Company.Woods, J. (2016). Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters. Cengage Learning.

KEN KANEKI SUPPORTS LQBTQIA+ RIGHTS 🏳️‍🌈

hmm.... Jake's labels for this exhibition being filled with codes and references only the rest would understand in hopes that's they were drawn to the museum

Jake labels being a perfect mixture of informative and poetic, passionate and practical. They're emotional (Brooke cries the first time reading them. Jake spent countless hours perfecting them because they had to be right, they had to be perfect. He couldn't let his friends down)

mfw i spent yeeeeears in college aaaaaagonizing about how to turn a short fanfic of mine into a full-length original work and was working on it with my professor and through all the editing became really embarrassed of the original fanfic version thinking it was immature and shallow but could also never make the rewrite work so i moved onto other projects and then today after a very long time reread both of them only to find that the original fic is concise and heartfelt with clunky execution but solid and gripping emotional beats and the novelization is overwritten self-obsessed garbo

Why is it that whenever I have an unintentional nap it always makes me grumpy. Or amplifies any previous grumpiness by 1000%. And then I see something on my dash that is completely unrelated to the thing that I'm annoyed about and then that unrelated thing annoys me and the grumpiness is amplified by another 1000%...

Ok so I wrote “mr. (Last name) best teacher frfr on my momma” on the whiteboard today after school and his cute little smile when he read it 💞💞💞💕💕

omg i finished my paper yay

Feminism: Not Just For Lesbians, Hippies, Manhaters, Feminazis, and Angry Women

I was a freshman in high school when Trump won the presidential election and Obama left office and I remember very vividly how two girls from my English class reacted. They wrote “Obama” on their foreheads. Needless to say, the overall reaction wasn’t all that positive because 14 year olds are mean. And despite being a little bit judgemental - because I’m not excluding myself from the mean 14 year old description - I remember being really impressed. Because as much as I claimed to be a feminist, I was still more concerned about what people thought of me than what I thought of myself. I compromised on too many of my own values so that I could earn the respect - if you could even call it that - of my peers. I was already the first person in my grade to come out as loudly as I did, I didn’t want to give them anymore ammunition against me. bell hooks (2000) writes in her piece “Feminism is for Everybody”, “they find it easier to passively support male domination even when they know in their minds and hearts that it is wrong” (p. xiv). Feminism doesn’t always have to mean writing Obama on my forehead, but it does mean standing up for what’s right and I feel like I missed out on a lot of opportunities to do that growing up. This just goes to show that no one is immune to biases. I’m a nonbinary queer person and even I was afraid of identifying as a feminist because I knew the shame that came with that word. I like to think that I’ve grown as a person since then, and I know I’m growing each and every day. I just hope that I’ve done enough to make up for the way 14 year old Lisa let things slide.

For so many people, I feel like their issue with feminism comes from a place of misunderstanding rather than a place of sexism. They’re not malicious in their hatred of the word, they simply don’t understand what it really means. hooks (2000) says, “I believe that if they knew more about feminism they would no longer fear it, for they would find in feminist movement the hope of their own release from the bondage of patriarchy” (p. xiii). When you grow up in our world, you’re told from the moment you’re born that men are in charge and men are better than everyone else. If you’re lucky enough to have people in your life to tell you differently, then you can break the mold and fight for change. But if you don’t, you have almost no chance of finding your place in feminism - and everybody has one. You’ll live your life believing that feminism is just for straight, white, cis women and that you don’t belong. You’ll think that they all hate men and want to see the world burn. But those viewpoints aren’t always your own. That’s what hooks (2000) means by the “bondage of patriarchy” (p. xiii). It’s restricting, it’s damaging, and it limits your view of the world. But if people can find a moment to step back and look at feminism for what it really is at it’s core, they might look at the world a little differently afterwards. hooks (2000) asks us to “imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a version of mutuality is the method shaping our interaction” (p. xiv). She wants us to imagine living without that “bondage” and to ask ourselves if that’s a better world. Feminism is not about being better than someone else or being perfectly equal all the time, it’s about living in balance and harmony with one another.

Depending on who you ask, they’ll define feminism differently. Someone might say it’s “protecting and supporting women”, another might say it’s “full of man-haters”, and someone else might just give you the dictionary definition. I think that bell hooks does a fantastic job of summarizing all of those together. She defines feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (hooks, 2000, xii). Feminism is - based on it’s name alone - about women, but that’s not all that it is. It encompasses everyone and everything in our world because we’re all affected by it whether we know it or not. Many men perpetuate sexism unknowingly and feminism could bring that to their attention and help them change their ways. Or they might not realize just how damaging masculine expectations are. Feminism isn’t about making women above men or about killing all men, it’s a matter of tearing down the sexist world we live in. And if a few men happen to fall with it, that’s no fault of the movement. While it may begin on an individual level, feminism holds no grounds if we don’t tackle the system.

Brene Brown once said, “people are hard to hate close up” (Brown, 2017). 14 year old Lisa wasn’t close enough to the feminist movement to really understand it. They just weren’t at a place in their life where they had been exposed to enough of the world and learned enough about how their actions affect other people to truly understand what it meant to be a feminist. So, as I try to give grace to my past self, I hope other people can join me in giving a little bit of grace to those around them. Instead of pushing people away for saying the “wrong things” or doing something “bad”, let’s bring them in. hooks (2000) dares us to “come closer to feminism [to] see it is not how [we] have imagined it” (p. xii). We’re not all a bunch of hippie, gay women who don’t shave, who burn bras, who hate men, and who write Obama on our foreheads. Feminism is a truly beautiful movement. It’s multifaceted and it has a place for everyone and their passions. There are branches focused on climate change, fighting toxic masculinity, fighting domestic and sexual abuse, supporting queer people, supporting people of color, anything you can imagine. The one thing that they all have in common is the desire for a better future. Our current system is just not cutting it anymore - I don’t think it ever has to be honest with you - and it’s time for change. The feminists who come after us will thank us for our hard work. There is so much to be done and so little time, so let’s bring in as many people as we can, as close as we can, and grow feminism as much as we can.

what if i just pick up my community notes right where i left off

there’s a 99% chance that your bad future therapist is in my cohort :DD

Content Warning- this will discuss various triggering themes relating to mental health. What would you do if you woke up one morning, alone, with nothing but a pile of your mother's clothes on the bed as a clue for what had happened? For thirteen-year-old April Ajoy, this immediately led her to think of the worst- her family had been raptured, and she had been left behind. Immediately, her mind went to survival plans- would she be forced to take the Mark of the Beast? What if she ended up beheaded, like the characters in the Left Behind books? While this may seem like a funny story in hindsight, this shines a light on a real problem in our faith- Religious Trauma. While Religious Trauma is not officially in the DSM-5, it is a term widely used by psychologists to describe the trauma that stems from abuse under the guise of religion. This usually takes the form of shaming, harassment, or humiliation. It can also take the form of physical abuse, though this is more common with youth and teenagers. Clint Shnekloth from The Christian Century describes it as, and I quote; "Religious trauma is particularly insidious because it is a betrayal at the deepest level of attachment. Often those who have experienced religious trauma were intimately connected to their religious community-and through it, to God." Oftentimes, people with religious trauma will leave the church, as it was their abuser. This process of leaving Christianity after being traumatized; and unpacking the beliefs that come with it is known as Deconstruction. Those who go through the deconstruction process after leaving the church are usually known as exvangelicals, which is a portmanteu of the phrase 'ex-evangelicals'. As of November 1st, 2022, there are over 100 thousand posts under the exvangelical hashtag on Instagram. Some of the most common causes of Religious Trauma are queerphobia, Christian nationalism, and purity culture. These are often the most cited causes for people to leave the church and to develop signs of religious trauma. 

Queerphobia can be described as "Hatred against and aversion to the LGBTQ+ Community". In Christian spaces, this trait runs rampant, as Biblical passages have been weaponized ito excuse outright hatred against our LGBTQ+ friends and family. According to the Trevor Project's 2022 Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, LGBTQ+ youth are over twice as likely to attempt suicide if they are from non-affirming households rather than accepting ones. This is an especially important statistic, since the majority of American churches are not queer-affirming, and approximately five percent of the American population identifies as some form of LGBTQ+, or nearly one in twenty.

Another Cause of religious trauma is purity culture. This stemmed from fears of the dissolution of the traditional family and sexual purity in the 1990s, and was especially prevalent in Evangelical Christian spaces. Purity culture taught that any sexual desire, thought, or activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage was inherently sinful and dangerous. While there is nothing wrong with encouraging your teens not to mess around for their health and well-being, it can be extremely psychologically damaging to live under constant shame for their natural human feelings and thoughts. Purity Culture is largely driven by books such as I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris, which advocated for tighter control over relationships with the opposite gender, limiting physical and emotional contact with them, and only engaging in relationships with them with the intent to marry, which was referred to as 'courtship'. 

Not only does Purity Culture force young people to repress themselves, but it also pushes the dangerous idea that a woman's modesty, or lack thereof is responsible for a man's sexual urges. This idea is extremely damaging, as it not only places all the blame for a man's actions onto a woman's choices, but it also has been used as an excuse for assault and other crimes against women. 

Additionally, purity culture advocates for a lack of sex-ed, which has been proven to reduce teen pregnancies and to help teenagers to understand their bodies better. Purity Culture's approach to this is to only teach abstinence, which is dangerous because it increases the chances of a person engaging in risky sexual behavior when they finally do become sexually active, because they were not educated on how to stay safe when engaging in intimate activities. Finally, Christian Nationalism is another source of religious trauma, as it is a strong proponent of white supremacy and patriarchy in this country. This is particularly traumatic because of the vast difference between the Jesus of the Bible, who was a strong supporter of peace and equality for all, and "Gun Slinging, White Jesus" that Christian Nationalism preaches. For a person of faith, reconciling these two portrayals of God may be traumatic because they are completely incompatible. Because of this, it may cause them to feel detached from their religion, as if they 'don't have enough faith' to understand why God supposedly is the way that Christian Nationalists portray him. A person might also be ostracized from their church family because of Christian Nationalism, especially if their political views differ from the ones promoted by the Christian Alt-Right. 

Religious Trauma is a very real, very serious problem in the church that is massively overlooked by our leaders and our elders. Because it has not been addressed, young people are leaving the faith in droves, and the ones who leave often cite the reasons I stated as the thing that made them break away. For the church to survive, we will need to address these behaviors and strive to be a place where all people feel welcome and can thrive.

oof. ouchie. i got two Bs last semester, one C, and one F. i love that. i dont even wanna know what the semester gpa was. even then its still better than i expected

"the public education system is intently evil and all teachers are abusive because it was the worst experience ever for me personally"

guys, look, I'm legitimately sorry that happened to you. that's fucked up. it shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen again to you or anyone else. I'm sorry.

public school was hard for me too, at times, and I'm still suffering the consequences for the harsh grading, the arbitrary deadlines, the hours of completely useless-to-me homework. I could name a few teachers who have been pretty fucking terrible. the fact that nobody considered getting me evaluated for ADHD has had an impact on my self image and academic success that I can't erase.

and also.

I grew up in an area where education, in particular, is incredibly progressive-leaning. educators are working really hard to create and try out education philosophies and practices that prioritize kids and their learning, rather than teachers and what they think kids should learn.

My sex ed was comprehensive, and came entirely from school. My gay sixth grade teacher taught me about HIV/AIDs in a useful, accurate way. In high school, I learned about the way orgasms work & I was prepared not to feel shame for normal stuff.

I learned that Communism was not what the USSR actually practiced, and what it really means. I learned about atrocities and, specifically, the genocide of indigenous people committed in/by the US. I learned about the military industrial complex, the school-to-prison pipeline, and I learned about manifestations of racism specific to my local area. I learned about Stonewall, and the intersection of the civil rights movement with gay rights and disability justice.

My creative writing teacher taught us about LSD, and the real reasons we shouldn't do it, after a hilariously ineffective assembly run by some local cops. He spoke gently, carefully, and emphatically about his friends and his own experiences. Later in the semester, he read us a story he wrote about two gay men finding each other in a deeply homophobic environment.

My sci-fi teacher made me feel safe & seen as a kid with "weird" interests. My US History teacher helped me research and put together a 10-page paper on the modern relevance and mission of Feminism. My government teacher made me feel appreciated for the work I put into the class, and the thought I put into what I said in it, even though he disagreed with a lot of it. My sixth grade teacher bought me books to read with his personal money, whichever ones I asked for. My third grade teacher made me feel safe. My science teacher in middle school made me excited for and passionate about science, and saw and nurtured the effort I put into her class.

A lot of stuff sucks, absolutely. But I am seeing new teaching methods being tried out all the time, and I am watching teachers get really excited when I teach their students about the roots of modern graffiti in US black history & to question property laws, and just...

There's hope. there are so many people doing so much work to make things better. so many people agree with you on what education should be, and are trying so fucking hard to put that into action, and so many public schools- not just teachers, but whole schools and even districts- are really doing that work. so much is getting better.

I had more to say, about necessary childcare and trusted adults and outside contacts and time away from abusive family. But like. Please just sit down and listen to more people on this, and please talk to educators and education professionals about what's really going on in this big huge world of philosophy, science, and practice.

could i have anything with a married vox x reader pleasee? i'm so obsessed with this television it isn't even funny 😭

okay im FINALLY publishing this — in my defense i wrote like five vox x wife!readers after getting this and couldn't decide which to publish to this ask but now yall are getting over protective husband vox cus i love him and now i wanna make an actual fic also i originally read this request as wife!reader so i made reader fem but I'm just now realizing it's married i hope that's okay!!

warning: vox is a little crazy and reader does not care

No one knew Vox was married — and it wasn’t because he wanted to hide you, or he felt ashamed. He could never feel ashamed; you were basically his pride and joy — It was because he couldn’t stand anyone trying anything with you. Especially because of how much he doted on you. Someone could easily see how much he cared and use it against him — they could hurt you, manipulate you, maybe even force you into a soul-binding deal. He couldn’t risk anything happening to you.

That was why you lived very separate lives… Well, not entirely separate. He couldn’t stand letting you work for someone else (they could take advantage of you, or try to flirt with you), and he couldn’t handle being too far away from him during the day, so you worked at VoxTek. You had a job where you never interacted with your husband, and it left your days feeling exceptionally lonely. Especially because he claimed that he “didn’t want to overwork you,” which meant he stayed at the office much later than you did and you were left at home. Alone for most of the night, usually falling asleep before he got there, and waking without him because he went in earlier than you. 

You also had weekends off while he worked a good portion of the day, which let you “go out on the town” of course, but it also left you, again, very lonely. He did email you throughout the day, but that was because no one could see those emails. It was “an outdated form of communication” as he called it, which meant no one looked through them. 

Of course, when you did get to see him, you were ecstatic. He went on and on about how much he missed you all week, subtly asking if anyone had bothered you at all. If they did, they very coincidentally disappeared, so you often told him “no” for the sake of your coworkers’ souls.

And of course, after some time, people did start to bother you. They would get promoted, and get the chance to work with your husband directly, while you stayed exactly where you were and didn’t even get a call from him. That led them to teasing, which turned into snide comments and remarks, which became little “accidents” like spilling hot coffee on you or ruining and deleting your work. 

One day, after someone dumped piping hot coffee all over you, and a very expensive blouse your husband bought, you had enough and backhanded her. 

You were an overlord’s wife, and he gave you everything. Even and especially power. That meant the employee was flung across the room while screens burst and crackled around her, and you were dragged up to Vox’s office. 

“What is it now?” Vox asked when your supervisor knocked on his door, ignoring your wincing as you tried to get the scalding hot coffee-stained blouse as far from your skin as possible. 

“Another low-class bitch ruining our image,” was the response that made you laugh, knowing this person would be dead as soon as they opened the door. 

“Ah…” He sighed, but you knew he was smiling. “Come in.” He was probably going through his weaponry, pulling out just the thing to get rid of the “low-class bitch,” but as soon as the door was opened, you were shoved in front of him, and his weapon went off, you weren’t the one to fall limply to the ground. 

The two employees who opened the door quickly dragged the supervisor away and left you alone in the room. 

As soon as they were gone, he discarded his weapon and went to you. “What happened to you?” He wiped under your big eyes as he cupped your cheeks, which were dry, but he could tell you were upset and he was doing his best not to go out and get rid of everyone in your department. 

“I hit someone,” you said, and he found it adorable. There wasn’t much you could do wrong in his eyes. 

Clearly. 

“What’d they do to make that happen? I’ll kill them,” was his quick response before he cleared his throat. “I mean, I’ll talk to them about it.” His eyes drifted down to your blouse, his screen blinking and hands twitching on your face before they went to your blouse and began unbuttoning. He didn't say anything else, electricity zapping between his fingers as he fumbled with the buttons until he cursed and ripped the blouse open. The buttons clattered to the floor as he muttered, “I’ll get — get — get you a new one,” screen buffering and electricity zapping over his entire body. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” You knew not to tell him how much it burned with the way he was reacting already. “Vox—“

“After I take care of you, you're going to point out who did this, and who watched it happen. Understood?” He knew you tried to spare your coworkers from his temper, but he wasn’t going to let that happen this time. 

“It’s happened before—“ A loud whir of electricity sounded as Vox’s screen flashed and blue jolts of electricity burst around him. You shrunk back at the overwhelming power, quickly telling him, “I’m fine–”

“You didn’t tell me?” His voice sounded electric, making you swallow as he removed his overcoat to use as a towel to pat your chest dry. He couldn’t even enjoy the sight of you at work, topless, when this was the reason. He watched the way you winced with every touch of his jacket on you, fingers sparking at the redness he could see beneath the coat. His body jolted and the overcoat immediately sparked fire. “Fuck!” He tossed it to the ground, stepping on it to put the fire out. 

“You need to relax,” you told him pointedly. “I’m fine. You’re overreacting.”

“You’re underreacting,” he said childishly, taking in a deep breath before going to a closet in the large room and grabbing a spare blouse for you and an overcoat for him. At the sight of the many things he had to give to you and spoil you with in there, he calmed only slightly. “Did you at least hit her hard?” He asked as he handed you the blouse. You hummed, nodding and making a very prideful smile come to his face as you buttoned up the blouse. “Do you like this one?” He asked quickly, his evident mood shift into wanting to please you making you chuckle. “It’s not as expensive as the one that cunt ruined,” you hummed along to satiate his ego, “but I thought you’d make it look good.” Before you could say anything, he continued. “I have some more I got for you; do you want to see those instead?”

“I like this one. You picked it.” His screen buffered as he cleared his throat, a pink glow on his cheeks that he quickly got rid of. When you noticed he began to relax, you took the opportunity of being in his office to your advantage, sweetly asking, “Can we have a moment together before you go down and fire half your company?”

“Anything you want, dear,” he said, much more cheerful than he was moments ago. “Do you want anything to eat? Drink? I’ll call something up.” He went to the desk at the end of the room as you went to the seating area and sat on the sofa. “Where should I order from?”

“Vox, you’re at work. You shouldn’t order anything,” you had to remind him of his own rules he set for himself. “They’ll see me here–”

“Are you wearing your ring?” He asked, speaking over you.

“I’m always wearing my ring.”

He nodded, looking down at his matching golden band. “Let them see.” In the moment you gave him to think, he’d come to the more rational conclusion that he wouldn't harm anyone. Just that he’d terrify them to death by making it known that you were not to be touched ever again. “I’ll make sure everyone knows who they decided to fuck with today.”

i'm used to it, and how bad it is, and how often it's so bad that it rings like a bell inside of me, drowning out everything around me. and the truth is that i get frustrated with myself about it - again? we're like this still? again? it's not that i feel weak, precisely. it's just this sense almost like - i've already been pushing against this thing for years now, shouldn't i have gained more ground?

i get frustrated because i'm sick of picking up the loose ends every six months. i get frustrated because it's always this same shit, same problem - i lose myself in a matter of months; spiral out of control, lose touch with friends and loved ones. i stop taking care of myself and therapy gets hard and i let everything around me wilt and shrivel and fall off; start somehow both sleeping too much and not-enough. i panic-attack and cry in my car in a target parking lot, pulling my hair out and hurting my ribs from sobbing so hard - and later, when i'm better, i'm embarrassed because how could i let it get that far?

it feels like - i already have done this so many times. isn't there a way out of it? isn't there a point where i've just... won? that it never happens again, that i just get to be done? maybe this is weakness, i guess - that i still (so often!) succumb.

i am used to it, so i forget exactly how hard it gets. do you even know how many times i've laid in bed, exhausted, blank and numb and listless and said - i can't anymore. i just can't. i'm not even really upset. it's okay. i've been here long enough. so much of my life was beautiful.... i'm just... done.

do you know how many times i woke up and i said - i can't and put my feet on the floor and said i can't, i don't want to and took a shower and walked the dog and bought myself fresh bread and put a nice playlist on and said i really can't, there's no end to this and i went to work and i called a friend and i made myself cookies even if food tasted like ashes and decided that i really should wait for the new album from that artist i love and i thought i can't, it's not worth it and then i washed my hands and cut my hair and drank more water and wrote a poem and signed up for an art class at the local community college and said i can't, i can't, i won't do this again, and i paid my rent and let the dishes rot in the sink but still made myself eat anything fresh even if it meant overdrawing my account on a stupid bag of plums just because they looked delicious and do you know how often i closed my eyes and thought this is it i really fucking can't, something has to give and i have nothing left that it can take and then i went to bed and i got up and i fucking survived anyway

yesterday the local ice cream place opened up for the first time this season and they were giving out tiny samples of their new dairy-free options and i tried a mango sorbet. three months ago i was positive that februrary was going to be my last month on the planet. i am teaching my dog a new trick and i just discovered a new band i love. i got a plant from the clearance aisle and repotted her and she's been perking up. i made salmon for alison and we ate it in her new house with her new beautiful baby girl. my manager told me he keeps recommending my work to others just because i always include a stupid number of puns. tomorrow i'm trying a new dance class. tomorrow i'm maybe going to buy more plums.

i forget, you know? it's not some bone-deep strength or some magical power. it's that some part of me knows - i need to stay. in all of this; out of all of this - i just want to choose love.

hi! what are, in your opinion, must-read go fics?

OMG this is the worst thing to ask me, i love to yap about good omens fics like i'm teaching a literature class. i'm so thrilled to have this opportunity, here is my good omens required reading list:

Lie Back and Think of Dinner by jessthereckless (M, 11k) - THE looney tunes sex fic. every time they're intimate, natural disasters happen. it's part of a series, but but this first fic is REQUIRED!! love it, i'll never think of golden syrup the same way ;-) An Angelic Disposition by iamtheenemy (E, 3k) - established relationship, aziraphale uses every tool in his disposal to give crowley what he wants (despite crowley so dedicated to service topping), and it overwhelms him. MUST READ!! you’re not a religious person (but) by isozyme (M, 20k) - very true to the spirit of the show and their eternal refusal to communicate while desperately wanting more. this is THE BEST fic re: divine ecstasy being synonymous to sex for them, which is a killer combination!! roots by darcylindbergh (M, ~10k) - lovely established relationship/south downs fic. it's revealed that aziraphale has always dyed his hair blonde, and the thing that makes this fic VITAL is the acknowledgement that they deliberately choose their presentation and the way the world sees them. more parts of the fandom need to understand this somewhere, a place for us by aglaophonos (T, ~2k) - i'm biased because i love char and her work, but seriously. read this. if you're ever wondering why me and her are constantly talking about 1941 s3, this 1941 continuation fic she wrote encapsulates every reason WHY Lead me to the banquet hall by obstinatrix, wishwellingtons (E, 15k) - i mean. i mean. it's The Cheesecake Fic. why is crowley content to watch aziraphale eat, and how does he cope with that same hunger when aziraphale ISN'T there? you simply have to read this if you haven't, and reread it if you have affection and other cravings by JustStandingHere (E, 30k) - this is THE post s2 fic you need to read. through its historical flashbacks and precarious re-introduction of aziraphale and crowley's relationship following their fight, all through the lens of food... honestly that's what it's all about!

these are what i would consider to be required reading, as in - you will come away from these fics with a better understanding of the canon, which (in my opinion) is what elevates a fic from the rest. but if you'd like to check out the other fics i adore, my bookmarks are where i save every fic i enjoy reading, and it's about 99% good omens so you can always visit that if you're looking for something to read that'll be true to the spirit of the show!!