#dear livejournal
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I've been, on average, writing 1.5 poems per day, while still working on my novel + other prose pieces.
Last Sunday, during a meeting of my poetry critique group, we were talking about "page poems" vs. "stage poems." One of the members said that he thinks there's rarely a poem that does both equally well—then he went on to add that, in his opinion, my poems naturally fall right in the middle.
Today, for International Women's Day, I had the kiddos learn about important women from the past/now. I let them each choose the profession they wanted to learn about. C. chose astronauts, and learned about famous women astronauts; D. chose doctors, and learned about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor in the U.S.
Today, I figured out part of the piano from The Replacements' "Androgynous," and that made me so happy, you have no idea. I also made guacamole as part of dinner.
Tomorrow night, I get to go to a swanky catered dinner for free, and I also get a plus-one, so my husband is coming with me.
#rust belt jessie#personal#friday five#good things#dear livejournal#don't ask me why i've recently been posting my personal/current things here rather than on my sideblog#it will switch back again at some point i'm sure
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tested positive for mono for the 20th year in a row ✌️ (not really, i stopped testing years ago even before i got healthy, because i figured i was just throwing good blood after bad lol)
i only asked to test because i thought there would be a viral load count in the results that could show that Yes It's Bad in a dramatic sort of way, but it's just pos/neg. the result is completely expected, especially given how i have felt for 2 months, but seeing it in print still somehow took the wind out of my sails today.
reality check for myself is that i feel sooooooooo much better than when i was fully disabled by this. this isn't even close to that bad! but i still only have a few hours of useful energy a day. i was doing so well for so many years that this is bringing up old fears i thought i'd put to bed.
so now i'm playing that mental game again, when i really don't have spare energy to devote to it. will it get worse before it gets better? how long will it last this time? how much do i push through vs take time off that maybe i should hold onto for when/if it gets worse and i need it more? is it going to ruin my life this time? what did i do wrong? what am i doing wrong now?
#dear livejournal#add in the more frequent migraines (which neurology is looking at) and i'm really not as useful as i would like to be these days#turned that corner on the sleep thing where we've gone from 'sleep isn't restful' to my body just going 🤷♀️ so we won't then#like no babe i need the opposite of that#if there's a way y'all need me to tag this lmk
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Halloween night, after taking the kiddos out trick-or-treating in the snow (oh, Wisconsin), I sat alone in my room for a while. I lit the candles on my altars, put a shotglass full of whiskey out for the ghosts, sipped a little whiskey, and listened to the new and final World/Inferno album, Valhalla, Definitely, while giving myself a tarot reading with the Weimar Tarot deck. It was perfect.
The next day, and the Day of the Dead after that, I lit more candles and left more offerings. (Coffee, cake, pomegranate tea.)
Life, since then, has mostly been about trying to do what I can activism-wise while also doing what I need to do to take care of my family and myself. By that I mean work and chores and the dailinesses of life, etc., but also—
In the days leading up to Halloween, P. and I stayed up really late, drinking and talking and watching movies, several nights in a row, and it wrecked me. I forget sometimes that I can't drink like I used to, especially because—on none of these nights did I actually feel drunk by the time I went to sleep (at most I got mildly tipsy), but the next morning I'd be hungover as fuck. And after a few nights of that, yeah, I felt like pure shit. So on Halloween night, I only had the one small ceremonial glass of whiskey, and since then, I've abstained from drinking any alcohol at all, and just let my body detox. Until tonight. I'm sipping on a glass of white wine now, and I will maybe have one more glass after dinner, but that will be it.
And I've been trying to focus on the small joys. Like eating honeycrisp apples from a local orchard, which a friend gave me. Like drinking tea and reading a lot. Like taking my kiddos to the park during what is probably the final slightly warm spell of the year. Like helping my kids build solar-powered robots as a school project. Like watching the sky turn the perfect shades of blue just after (the now way too early) sunset.
I have two poems I have to finish up in the next few days, because they’re for a project I committed to which has an imminent deadline, and I really should be working on them right now, but, well—I’m finding it difficult to focus on them today. Mostly because it’s the first day of my period and I’m in massive pain from the cramps/lower back pain, and, also because of it being the first day of my period, I can’t stop crying. So I’m just going to eat dinner and drink this glass of wine, and then maybe after that I’ll be able to get some writing done.
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when i was 13 i wrote an essay explaining the rationale of puppyshipping to some guy in a skype chatroom. found the essay again. wanted to rewrite it. without further ado:
HERE’S HOW PUPPYSHIPPING CAN STILL WIN: THE SEQUEL: 2 PUPPY 2 SHIPPING (4.3k words)
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kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship stands at an awkwardly undefinable place in canon: they're not on good terms, but they're not enemies either. they know each other too well to be called passing acquaintances, but kaiba hardly acknowledges jounouchi as a duelist, let alone a potential rival. at best? they're mutual nuisances.
or, that's how jounouchi and kaiba choose to define it. both of them would love if their dynamic were that simple, nothing more than a back-and-forth of petty insults—but that’s not the truth. and they'll dance around the truth for five whole seasons, purposefully downplaying why they’re so obsessed with provoking each other whenever they’re in the same place.
they're foils.
—but the term "foils" is so dulled within fandom lexicon now that it can mean literally anything from two guys who just disagree with each other sometimes, so i'll sharpen this further. jounouchi and kaiba see their counterpart less as an individual person but more a representation of who they could have become if they had respectively, in their eyes, never learned the lessons they needed to. they project their own ideals onto the other and come away thinking they already know how the other operates, and the fun thing is, even when working from conjecture, their assumptions of one another happen to hit far closer to home than they have any right to.
so really, they can't leave each other alone because they can't stop seeing their failures reflected back at them. the other is a defective version of themselves that they need to correct because they can't stand constantly acknowledging who they used to be, so they try to bend the other to be more like their own image—an "i can fix him (by dragging him down to my level)".
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jounouchi and kaiba’s parallels run down to their origins, both set up against abysmal family situations they have no choice but to make the best of. seto and mokuba are orphaned at a young age until seto gets them adopted, while katsuya is separated from his sister and stuck with a deadbeat father who can't carry his own weight. trapped in an environment where nobody expects anything worthwhile from him, katsuya joins a gang and lives out a self-admittedly miserable existence before befriending yugi, while seto is in a battlefield of his own, faced with protecting mokuba while enduring against the nightmare that is gozaburo kaiba’s parenting.
what they do to survive those conditions determines the outlooks they carry for the rest of their lives: jounouchi learns that losing is inescapable and the best you can do is learn how to cope with it, whereas kaiba learns that losing is something you must protect yourself from because there's only so much you can afford to lose.
jounouchi is positioned as the underdog, fighting tooth-and-nail for every victory he can manage, while kaiba has power in excess and holds to the belief that it’s all he really needs. one would argue that they have the perspective the other lacks—they argue that they have the perspective the other lacks. but in my opinion? it doesn't actually matter. what interests me is how they treat each other as a result.
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side: seto kaiba
kaiba degrades jounouchi a lot. like, to an uncomfortable extent. you know that one post that’s like “why does bullying exist? why are you mad that i’m ugly?” why is kaiba so mad over the fact that jounouchi loses so much?
it’s projection. he’s just holding jounouchi to the same standard he holds himself to. you need to be powerful if you want to play the same games as kaiba, and seeing jounouchi so openly lean on his friends, ask for help, and have the audacity to lose sets kaiba off because he’s not playing the way he’s supposed to. kaiba rubs jounouchi's losses in his face because he believes that's what loss is supposed to look like, and that it’s jounouchi’s fault for not understanding that yet. kaiba is trying to teach him. to kaiba, this degradation might as well be an act of generosity.
while kaiba stayed true to his own ambitions, seizing kaibacorp from gozaburo and turning it into a children's entertainment company, he beat gozaburo at his own game not by inventing new rules but by playing it better than his adoptive father ever could. and as impressive as that is, it’s not sustainable. gozaburo kills himself when faced with his own defeat, and kaiba internalizes this lesson: that all losses are final, and it’s better to die than adapt to the consequences of a defeat. gozaburo’s death was a suicide, but in the context of their game, kaiba might as well have killed him regardless.
he mirrors this when he threatens to kill himself in duelist kingdom, his heightened emotions catastrophizing losing the duel to immediately equal failing mokuba and coming to the conclusion that if he loses mokuba he’d rather be dead. being someone so fervently self-reliant, any alternate solution, a possibility that he can lose here and still find a different way to rescue mokuba never crosses his mind. and, look, this isn’t his fault. this is the only way of living he’s ever been taught. he’s never learned how to cope in the event of failure because he’s never had the luxury to fail to begin with.
he's burned and rebuilt himself over and over again to survive in the world he operates in, and that’s why jounouchi pisses kaiba off so personally. jounouchi loses so much and so messily, and kaiba tries to show him that if he doesn’t start reinventing himself from the broken pieces of his defeats until all that’s left of him are jagged edges the same way he has, he’s never going to win. but jounouchi…does win. and keeps winning. and even when he does lose, it’s as if he creates new victories for himself, like there’s still value to playing a game with someone when you don’t win it—power of friendship bullshit and whatever. jounouchi is still here, a competitor that kaiba can no longer write off as much as he desperately wants to. (and, yeah, it is pretty ironic how jounouchi will jump through a million hoops to get kaiba to look at him, but he doesn't realize that he doesn't need to do anything to keep kaiba’s attention, only continue being himself.)
jounouchi refuses to compromise who he is and still manages to get far when in kaiba’s mind, that shouldn’t be possible; he’s supposed to be punished the way kaiba was. jounouchi is proof that you can take a devastating blow and move on from it, that even when you do fuck up spectacularly, there’s still something worthwhile in starting again tomorrow.
so kaiba constantly needs to prove that he’s better than jounouchi, that jounouchi isn’t even worth his time in order to justify his worldview. because if kaiba isn’t right, then he'll have no choice but to confront the fact that the war is over. that his circumstances aren’t instant life or death anymore and that even though he’s freed himself from gozaburo’s influence, there’s still further growth as a person he could stand to undergo, now divorced from the harsh conditions of his upbringing. jounouchi is a testament to how it’s possible to make peace and move on from the past without constantly bleeding for closure, that maybe, kaiba’s headlong quest to get the last word on his rivalry with yami yugi may not actually be as fulfilling as he thinks.
but admitting that you might need to change the way you live feels like a defeat in and of itself—it’s infuriating to hear that after everything you’ve had to learn, the way you live now isn’t good enough. that surviving insurmountable trauma doesn’t inherently make you better or more worthy than other people—it just traumatizes you, and is something you must heal from. so, instead of reflecting on these revelations, it’s so much easier for kaiba to tell himself that jounouchi is only ever graceful when he’s dead.
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side: katsuya jounouchi
jounouchi is very stuck on this idea that he needs to be useful. his dad is an alcoholic with a gambling addiction and he believes it's not only his duty to pay his father's debts, but to be the household's sole source of income. his sister needs eye surgery and he believes it's his responsibility as an older brother not only to pay for it, but to act as her primary emotional support to get the surgery and throughout her recovery process. haga throws yugi's exodia into the ocean and jounouchi blames himself for not stopping it. jounouchi gets mind-controlled by malik and blames himself for causing his friends anguish from it. mai literally gets jounounchi’s soul stolen and he apologizes to her for messing up and making her sad. it's habitual, jounouchi doesn't know how to stop taking on the burdens of other people.
if you live with the mentality that you’re inevitably going to fail for long enough, you’ll come away with the belief that caring about your own wellbeing isn’t worth the effort. it depends on how pessimistic you want to read it, if it’s just his love language or jounouchi compensating for the damning act of being himself, but jounouchi quantifies his worth by how much he provides for other people. he’s always jumping in the line of fire for the sake of others because if you constantly undervalue your own wellbeing, you always have less to lose. as the underdog, he may not be as overtly powerful as kaiba or yugi, but he can still give himself away, and he’s convinced himself that it’s what he’s supposed to do. jounouchi is still new to this whole friendship thing. after a lifetime of supporting himself by himself, he doesn't know when he's allowed to ask for help yet—he’s supposed to be the help, dammit.
a key distinction between jounouchi and kaiba’s upbringings is that while kaiba’s biological parents died in an accident, jounouchi’s parents are still alive and they choose not to be responsible for him. jounouchi is conditioned to fend for himself by himself because having a parental figure actually present in his life isn’t a luxury he gets to have. to jounouchi, there has to be a reason why his mother only takes shizuka and never goes back for him in the six years he’s left with his father, and he rationalizes this with his notions of masculinity: he’s a strong man who can handle it. jounouchi is not delicate, he can endure it. men are responsible for their own circumstances. kaiba is hyperindependent out of a mixture of spite, paranoia, and self-defense. jounouchi is hyperindependent because he believes he deserves it. it’s the reason why he believes he’ll finally have a good relationship with his father if he just wins enough money to pay off his gambling debts—jounouchi can fix everything if only he were man enough to, and he can get people to stay if he demonstrates himself useful enough.
so death doesn’t carry nearly as much weight to jounouchi as it does to kaiba. in kaiba’s eyes, death is the punishment for failure, but to jounouchi, death is just the natural consequence for the kind of life he leads. he can't stop himself from fighting for the people he loves until he’s spent everything and forced to stop (read: dies), so during the several times jounouchi is confronted with his own death, he meets it with a solemn acceptance. like, yeah, it sucks, but he doesn’t regret the actions he took to end up here—he’d do it all over again, frankly. it’s better to die than not give everything he can, and at least he was able to give his life in service to someone else. it’s not necessarily good to die, but it doesn’t matter as much if he does.
so where kaiba is afraid of losing, jounouchi is afraid of outliving his usefulness (and being abandoned as a result), and kaiba disrupts jounouchi’s worldview specifically because he puts his ideology on the defensive. to jounouchi, kaiba’s presence never demands a question of “what can you do for me?” (nothing, kaiba doesn’t want jounouchi to do anything for him, and frankly, he’d be insulted if jounouchi even tried) but “what makes you worthy of standing on the same level as me?”, and jounouchi can’t sacrificial lamb get set on fire die a billion times into getting kaiba into seeing it his way (rather, that would only prove him right: kaiba would love nothing more than for jounouchi to lose the ability to fight and finally align with his preconceived notions of how the world works), and he can’t argue that his value is in how much he provides for others because that’s a non-answer. kaiba doesn’t care.
kaiba’s presence forces jounouchi into a position of self-reflection: jounouchi works so hard to preserve the friendships he’s created, but who is he—what does he value about himself in the absence of it? jounouchi needs to acknowledge something inherently valuable about himself if he wants to counter kaiba in any meaningful way, and it’s not like he doesn’t have valuable qualities either: he’s tenacious, he’s resourceful, he’s a quick learner—it takes intelligence to rank as high as he does in tournaments, but he undervalues all of it. these traits are all to be expected, they don’t actually count as extraordinary when it’s him. they’re only remarkable when they’re being applied to something greater. jounouchi believes he has the potential to become strong (and valuable by extension), only with the stipulation that he’s never actually there yet. he focuses too much on his inadequacies, constantly pontificating on how he needs to become a “true duelist”, but by the way he speaks about the title, the only way to be a true duelist is be named yugi muto, i guess.
so it’s very jounouchi-esque for him to miss this point with near deliberate precision and try to make himself useful to kaiba anyway. while kaiba is bent on seeing jounouchi fail to prove that his cynicism is superior to jounouchi’s altruism, the inverse is that jounouchi sees his old self in kaiba and he’s dying to teach kaiba a lesson. during battle for bronze, jounouchi states that they used to be the same, people who only relied on themselves and thought they’d be fine living like that. the argument jounouchi makes is that living that way is fucking miserable. he calls kaiba out: you’re supposed to be having fun. why are you playing duel monsters if you’re not having fun? he’s trying to show kaiba that he can be useful and teach kaiba things if kaiba would just let him, but for reasons mentioned in both of their sections, kaiba isn’t interested in being taught anything.
while less malicious in display, it's important to note that jounouchi’s method of trying to teach kaiba doesn't make him the better person here. jounouchi isn’t coming from a place of understanding when he lectures kaiba, he’s coming from a place of misdirected self-flagellation. and from kaiba's perspective, jounouchi is just dispensing unwarranted advice for the sake of his own ego. the most egregious example is when jounouchi picks a fight with kaiba in duelist kingdom, demanding they duel when kaiba is clearly not in the mood, busy with more pressing matters like, i don’t know, trying to rescue his abducted brother? so, okay, maybe a little bit inconsiderate on jounouchi’s part.
they're two ideological extremes: kaiba lashes out at the world while jounouchi gives himself to it, and jounouchi will keep barging in on kaiba with his life lessons because it’s the only way he wants to engage with kaiba’s arguments otherwise. jounouchi interprets kaiba’s rejection of his ideals as the equivalent of the stubbornness jounouchi had before befriending yugi, and he uses it as a reason to keep pushing, not understanding that while he may have found the most honorable path for himself, you can imagine how constantly burning yourself for others isn’t very…appealing. or sustainable. and that maybe it’s something you need to work on, actually.
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conclusion: how i WIN
what’s fun about jounouchi and kaiba is how wrong they are. they genuinely can't live the way the other demands them to, their respective environments won’t allow it. if jounouchi chased victory with the same cutthroat relentlessness as kaiba, he probably never would have left his gang. or, at least, he’d lose the selfless devotion and consideration he has for others, traits that helped him build his support system, and he never would have found the friendships he values in his life—his willingness to change and start again was how he was able to befriend yugi to begin with. (and if you wanted to get really extreme with hypotheticals, his self-destructive tendencies could have grown so severe in the absence of a support system that he probably would wind up getting himself killed somewhere. lol.) inversely, if kaiba granted himself the freedom to worry less about the outcome as long as he enjoyed himself, he’d put mokuba’s safety at constant risk. kaiba’s guarded nature isn’t without reason, there are powerful corporate executives who would love to see him fail, and there are very real consequences if kaiba slips up for even a second and gives his opposition any leeway. the way they live works for them because it’s theirs. it’s not so much that either of their lifestyles are in dire need of correction, but that the other represents the possibility that they could be living better.
and this is fantastic because it means that, despite what they think, neither of them are in the “wrong” and must learn to change their idiot ways or that the solution is to strong-arm each other into some kind of compromise. it’s a battle of perceived weakness. they need to, naturally and individually, accept that the traits they’ve always deemed immature and beneath them can be just as vital for survival, even when it’s not necessarily their own.
jounouchi and kaiba are essentially the most extreme example of two people who want what’s best for each other (gone wrong!) and puppyshipping is appealing because them getting together requires that they stop punishing themselves for who they used to be. they expect too much out of themselves and then inflict those demands onto each other, but if they’re not wrong for the ways they’ve overcome the circumstances they were left in, then it’s equally true that the ideals they abandoned to survive weren’t inherently naïve just because they weren’t given the space to utilize them. sometimes life will push you to your limits in the hope that you fail, and there’s no deeper meaning to it. it’s not life’s way of teaching you a necessary lesson to make you stronger or a test to see if you deserve to live, or that it’s your fault when it breaks you. sometimes there’s no great meaning to suffering. things happen, and you will adjust to it in order to live. when kaiba and jounouchi believe they know each other as much as they know themselves, pairing them is the hope that they’ll respect themselves enough to respect each other, that they’ll one day be able to embrace the parts of themselves they’re the most ashamed of.
(or, you know, for the alternative crowd, they most definitely can make each other worse.)
for two men who claim to be so self-assured in their own lifestyles, jounouchi and kaiba are fascinating because there’s so many layers of denial at play: the denial that they see anything in each other, denial that there may be aspects of the other that they’ve come to envy, denial that they even care, and it's so tempting to imagine if all of it was forced open. jounouchi and kaiba choose to maintain this delicate equilibrium where they never actually confront anything because the idea of admitting vulnerability viscerally disgusts them, and it begs what would happen if the balance irrevocably tipped for once. watching them is like watching a pencil teetering on the edge of a desk, always this close to some kind of breakthrough. i won’t even lie to you puppyshipping pisses me off half the time because i just want to shake them around until something metaphorically breaks.
kaiba and jounouchi never let each other become complacent in their pasts: whenever their personal tragedies and childhoods are brought up in the context of one another, it’s never because they are being vindicated for continuing to dwell in them, but because they are being contested on how much the mindsets they’ve carried over from their pasts should be allowed to determine their futures.
returning to canon, kaijou operates through the language of competition. jounouchi tries to prove himself as a competitor so remarkable that kaiba can no longer deny him, while kaiba already knows he’s remarkable, and that is precisely why acknowledging it pisses him off so much. so they’ll play their game: jounouchi will provoke kaiba into fighting him because he enjoys going up against challenging opponents in the hopes of becoming stronger, whereas kaiba keeps trying to set up situations where jounouchi will lose to the point of letting him die because he wants so badly to believe that losing does equal death and jounouchi’s existence is the most inconvenient counterargument of all. and obviously, jounouchi keeps not dying. and it's endlessly infuriating—almost slapstick at this point, that much to kaiba's frustration, no matter what he does, he can never make jounouchi submit for very long.
jounouchi and kaiba spur each other on to a ridiculous extent: kaiba enjoys pushing jounouchi past the breaking point, whereas jounouchi enjoys getting pushed to his limits to test his own capabilities. whether that’s necessarily a good thing though is…well…hmm. anyways.
their dynamic is the type of messiness only two prideful high schoolers can get up to. maybe it’s just kaiba's repression and jounouchi's recklessness, but there is a fascination with each other that they’re incapable of leaving alone. there’s intimacy in knowing someone so well and fearing that fact, but kaiba and jounouchi never respond to this fear by avoiding it—they’re engaging with it time and time again. they infuriate each other with a passion that never sits still. kaiba and jounouchi seek a validation from their counterpart while simultaneously denying each other from it, and it’s mean, but invigoratingly so.
at some point, it’s not even about wanting validation anymore, but point-blank wanting its keeper by any capacity: wanting a visible reaction to their effort as proof of reciprocation, proof that says “i’ve finally affected you just as much as you affect me.” because kaiba and jounouchi want to leave a mark on each other, they want their counterpart to fully understand how much they’ve affected them, and they want to witness that reaction themselves. it’s no longer this big, nebulous ideological debate with a reflection: the pull between them is made both physical and personal. so, like, not to go the trite route of arguing that two men who can’t stand each other were ~secretly attracted to each other this whole time~, but how else are you supposed to word this?
in some hypothetical universe where they do come together, even the ways they love manage to compliment each other in its own clumsy way. seto kaiba never does anything in moderation: if he hates something he will destroy it, if he loves something he will possess it, and if he is obsessed with something, he will single-mindedly pursue it at the expense of everything else. his repression manifests itself in a passion so pressurized it’s all-consuming against everything it comes to contact with. inversely, katsuya jounouchi loves freely and transparently: showing affection comes as naturally as breathing to him. he embodies the belief that love is not only about the grand gestures, but the day-to-day acts of warmth and casual acknowledgments that it's there. a man who wants to be wanted by someone so badly it aches paired with someone who makes no reservations as to what he's committed to, capable of a love so overwhelmingly insatiable that it is neither fickle nor delicate, and a man who finds the act of trusting others with his affection so unthinkably humiliating that he’s convinced himself it’s something beneath him paired with someone who makes it look infuriatingly easy. they are going to invent a new language to love each other with. i believe in them. i would not write two separate essays titled “here’s how puppyshipping can still win” if i did not believe in them.
ultimately, it feels cheap to build kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship off what life lessons they could "teach" each other reformation-style when they already have a legitimate dynamic in play. they can be good for each other, or they can tear into each other in ways they’d never expect to be capable of. there’s something exhilarating in knowing there’s someone who has that kind of power and wanting to keep them within your reach, a buzzing excitement in knowing someone who can not only withstand you at your worst, but fight back at you with twice as much vigor. sure, there’s potential for growth here, but that’s because there’s potential for literally anything.
kaiba and jounouchi inspire reinvention and self-determination from each other at the best of times and enable each other’s most self-destructive tendencies at their worst. so i think. puppyshipping is the most fun. when you ship them the same way you leave a fork in the microwave to watch it explode. the end.
TL;DR: me x the guy who keeps breaking my worldview and forces me to reevaluate myself every time i see him which i hate so much that i just want him to DIE
#puppyshipping#violetshipping#seto kaiba#joey wheeler#ship analysis#character study#not intended to convince anyone of anything this was a silly project to do on the side for MEEE#also i genuinely dont think any of the points i make are new#in my quest to be as holistic as possible and read every puppyshipping-adjacent meta analysis i could get my hands on#defense essays. criticism. livejournal blogposts#ive found several times that every point i make has already been made before in some kaijou 200k longfic posted in like 2011#so if this essay is for ANYONE who isnt me.#its for the kaijou fic authors who have put in the work. god's strongest soldiers etc etc#actually. might reblog with an actual afterword citing my favorite ygo analysis i read in prep for this lol#i allude to a few of them in certain sections but i think youd have to be REALLY chronically online to notice#(coughing)#anyways special thanks to the friends who kindly beta read a document titled 'YAOI THESIS FINAL.docx'#fer + voski + cherry + sully + eric + cleo + gabby + chris + clover + vio#dear god i have inflicted this essay onto so many people#i love you.#you have enabled me and now we're all paying the price#yugioh
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anyway yeah I gotta say my already somewhat fragile mental state has not been helped by *gestures* all of this, & it’s all very well to say ‘just take a break from looking at it’ but unfortunately professionally speaking that’s not an option, like yesterday I mentioned how constantly being bombarded by footage of bombings and dead bodies and crying children was getting to me a bit & my coworkers offer to turn off the TVs my desk faces for a bit, but I was like…there’s no point, we can’t turn off ALL the TVs in the newsroom, they have to have some of them on to see what’s happening, the only way for me to escape this is to Not Be Here, & unfortunately capitalism won’t allow that, so…a great time to work in news!
I’m hoping I can finish this short assignment I have due on Monday today (it’s Saturday) so after work tomorrow I can come home, throw myself on the couch & watch the next few ofmd eps I’ve been saving as a treat to dissociate a little bit, & then next weekend I have booked myself a long weekend up in the mountains, including a Japanese spa visit on Friday, so I’m hoping that’ll reset me a bit. I’m going to take some books, do some journaling about my feelings (hopefully it’ll be nice enough to do that outside), maybe take myself to the Taylor swift movie because I wasn’t going to pay for the actual tour but I’ll pay movie prices to experience it, just a nice lil mini break before my final exam hopefully of my entire stupid degree where I don’t do anything much, I’m excited tbh
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saturday, december 24, 2022
4:47 am
obsession. infatuation. maybe it even borders to love. i am hopelessly enamored by you. i dont know what it is. my desperation, my selfishness, my need to be needed. i only hope i dont delude myself that you could like me too.
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5 January 2023
I chose a coffee today based on the word "crunch" being in the name. Crunch- in a hot liquid- impossible yet so appealing
Too much caffeine after weeks of not much caffeine is a miserable state to inhabit
I will never be done doing laundry. The laundry cycle and the life cycle are the same.
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I miss the live journal, MySpace comment section even heck tumblr personal posts kind of days. I’m tired of the overly-perfected, hyper-curated, designed for SEO all the time sort of posts and craving an internet with… more.
I think we all do. We traded weirdness on the internet for perfect curation. We traded personal stories for personal follower growth. We traded the details and touches - without focusing on the finer details
I want to create online spaces that are the equivalent of cheers. A place where everyone knows your name and the quirks that you have and loves you nonetheless. I want to foster this type of feeling for people and spaces, even in just a minimal virtual sense. And if that isn’t worth it - I don’t know what is.
#journal#livejournal#travel#reflections#personal#writing#diary entry#personal diary#dear diary#online diary
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KAKUHIDA fic recs 💴🩸
Everything in this list is either M or E-rated. Very low possibility of anything T-rated. Most links are ao3, but some are livejournal, fanfiction.net or ficbook or pixiv.
Disclaimer: I do not actually know 4 languages; I just use Google Translate or Depl because I am insane.
TOP FAVES in no particular order
[Mandarin]【角飞】都市谋杀之夜 by Liebestorm
Ballet dancer Hidan + black alley doctor Kakuzu. Incredible story, full of casual cruelty, there’s death, there’s body horror, there’s physical and mental suffering - all things Kakuhida. I think about this story a lot. The accuracy of their depiction in the modern setting is stunning. Head the warnings. There are many.
Content Warnings: abortion, amputation, violence, abuse, cruelty.
By the same author 【吸血鬼AU】以圣灵的名义…
Vampire AU! A small, fun story about two vampires hunting together. Some really cute romantic cannibalism.
[Russian] Мертвый сезон by Tiferet (taubenblautiferet)
PART 1 | PART 2
“Can a country boy and a big city man fall in love?”
Hot spring worker Hidan and ex-yakuza accountant Kakuzu on vacation. Lots of ghosts (well, just one, but oh man), curses(???), sex, Tokyo life and a demonic God that wants to have a talk. Very dear to my heart. Watching Kakuzu drop his guard down when faced with Hidan’s relentless naivete and determination makes my brain go all mushy.
Literally, anything by this author is top-tier storytelling writing, and you know you are always in for a fun ride!!
If you are looking for something more lighthearted, try ХИДАН ЛАЖАЕТ. It’s a fun story about video game streamer Hidan and his secret admirer, Kakuzu.
[English] Is it Life or Art? by lilac_bramble
This story is just so much fun, London socialite/model/”personality” Hidan and investment banker Kakuzu. Truly like peak Kakuhida to me. I really enjoy their relationship here. Their chemistry just works so well. This story is nearly the same word count as Game of Thrones. I am not joking. I am obsessed with authors' in-depth, detailed little tidbits of life in London.
[Japanese] 【角飛】めまゐ【web再録】by Puola
I love stories about characters told by someone completely unrelated, like a view from outside. I think this story does it so well. I loved seeing the tiny glimpses into how other people see them. It’s a short but a very special story. They cannot escape ‘These two really care for each other’ allegations.
[Russian] Небо класса S by бабаягапротив
*DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE DEIDARA FAN OR SASODEI FAN
It is a truly amazing story from start to finish. I couldn’t stop reading it. Cruel, funny, witty dialogue, violence, great character insight, everything juicy remains in subtext and subtext alone. Lots of fun revelations are left up to the reader's interpretation, which I really enjoyed. Great example of how a sex scene can be used to show more hidden aspects of a relationship and how the two come together. The whole premise is really unusual and refreshing.
[English] Like steps of passing ghosts by Sneakend
The storytelling reminds me of an official Naruto light novel. The same like tempo and the dynamic between them just feels very much like them. The story premise is simple but satisfying. I love it when Hidan is affected by the supernatural.
[English] In Limbs and Joints by orphan_account
Zombie AU. Loved, loved, loved the ending. I hate reading zombie AU, where characters survive for a bit too long makes everything drag on and on. This story is perfect. We get them coming in, and then the end feels even more gut-wrenching but also super satisfying. Really well done!
[English] Kakuzu and the Temple of Jashin by fauvester
Ultimate comfort story. It’s camp; it’s scary, it’s gory, it’s funny. I just love everything about this story.
Genre clusters
Genre: “Corrupt Priest Hidan”
[Russian] Ничего святого by меровинген
Church Cardinal Hidan + Thief Kakuzu. Really hot!
2. [English] Madness by JonShiiiiiDesu
Holy Son Hidan + Black Plague Doctor Kakuzu. The premise and the setting is really fun!
Genre: “Kakuzu goes to a bar, spots Hidan being his weird, insane self, and then simply has no other choice but to fuck him in the men’s washroom.”
[Russian] Оседлавший торнадо by Tiferet
Calgary stampede Kakuhida. Insert cowboy emoji. Great story! May be helping with translation soon.
2. [Russian] Горючее by AmberWha1e
Hidan picks Kakuzu up at a bar but loses his number.
3. [Russian] 5:49 в Стерджен-Бей by Neverhere
Pure romance. Modern AU, as well!
Check out another fic by the same author Таинство любви
Hidan gives head in a church! Fun!
4. [Russian] Чистюля by меровинген
Casino coworkers Kakuhida, I love this authors Kakuzu!
+There was another fanfic that was like so unhinged, but it got deleted, I will miss it forever.
More
[English] Beloved Schism by ThisCatastrophe
Saint!Hidan+Mercenary!Kakuzu. Really interesting setting packed with catholic tidbits.
[English] Evolution of Us by SenkoWakimarin
I remember reading this story on LiveJournal, a classic.
Gentleness by the same author. They are an OG!
[English] True Intentions by sweetdreamz
Unfinished, but it’s so hot and cute I don’t care. Virgin!Kakuzu is a rare commodity.
[English] take the hand and arm by shannyan
Sex pollen! Check out more from that author.
[English] Bring Me Back A Dog by W0lfism
Fuckfest AND a really fun plot!!! All in one!!! Any KKHD by Wolf is top-notch porn.
[English] Gentle Rains Trailer Park by HidansCrazyLaugh
Trailer park AU! Really love this one
[Russian] The Third Weakness by Цагн
Modern prison AU focused on Kakuzu and his fateful meeting with Hidan.
Their other works for them are awesome too
[English] Irredeemable Paradise by ManicR
This style is rare nowadays I like this.
[English] Heaven by Crystaline-Crimson
Similarly rare style.
[English] Another Mess by Un.filltered
A short and fun sex session on a table.
[Japanese] どうぞこの身を召し上がれ by Kiyo
Cake and Fork AU, it’s a variation of omegaverse, but with more focus on cannibalism. Romantic goreporn!
#kakuhida#kakuzu#hidan#fic rec#akatsuki#brainworms#i have a ton more in my bookmarks but i think this might be a good starting point rec list
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Dear Career Fair enthusiasts!
We are extremely excited to announce that the The Career Fair [AO3 collection here] will start shortly! You can look forward to more than a month’s worth of amazing goodies!
If you are planning to support our participants and enjoy all the Career Fair entries this year, we have a fun game for you!
[TAKE OUR H/D CAREER FAIR QUIZ] to see what Wizarding Fan team you should join! Then read the linked Livejournal Post at the end for more details!
Cheers,
H/D Career Fair Mods
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I'm currently participating in a month-long intensive writing workshop from Selah Saterstrom/Four Queens Divination. Which is fantastic, by the way—if she ever offers the Write Now! workshop again, I highly recommend it. The project I'm working on is somewhat autobiographical, and the autobiographical parts all come from approximately spring 2003-spring 2005. It's kinda funny, though, to be writing about a time in my life when I was a self-destructive trainwreck, while I'm here now in a time when I wake up, do school stuff with the kiddos, make myself a small breakfast of yogurt + granola + banana, and then do my stretches, before I sit down to write. (To quote myself: My life is easier now, but it's also less shiny. Or to quote W/IFS: Sometimes I miss those days—that's right, you heard me. Other times I could not give a damn.)
As research for my writing project, I've been rereading journal entries from that time period. Some thoughts/observations I've had while reading through them include:
1 - Wowwwww, none of these pass the Bechdel Test. Haha, I know a personal journal entry can't be measured with the same criteria as a film or whatever, but still. For a couple years there, I was very much "The Ugly One" from Teen Girl Squad. You know:
2 - I was actually surprisingly astute about my issues and patterns, even at the time. Astute enough to know how to stop them? No. But give me a break, I was in my early 20s.
3 - One thing that's the same as it ever was is that I am always lamenting about not writing enough. Like: I need to write more. Or: I've been writing a lot, but not as much as I want to. I think I'm just one of those people who, no matter how much time I spend writing, will always feel like it's not enough.
4 - I was reminded of an incident I'd—well, not forgotten about, but forgotten about an aspect of. So, for a couple months in the summer of 2004 I was traveling/couch-surfing. A., one of my roommates at the apartment I'd been living in prior to that, told me I could keep some of my stuff stored there until I found a solid place to live. When I did, I went back to get my stuff, and she informed me that while I'd been away, she'd had a party, and some of my stuff got stolen. Including my bike, and a bunch of my favorite records. In retrospect, I think she stole them, or gave them away, because she was a mean, fucked-up, vindictive person. And it just seemed really fishy. My stuff was the only stuff that got stolen; none of A.'s stuff got stolen, none of the stuff belonging to the person who'd moved in to take my place got stolen. Plus, it was only my most favorite records, not the ones I felt so-so about, and how would some random thief know what my most favorite records were or have the time to sort through the bin to find them? Anyway. That's not the part I'd forgotten about. What I'd forgotten is that when I got upset about it—and I wasn't even blaming her, I was just fucking upset—she called me something like a 'privileged crybaby' for being upset over 'little things like a bike and a few records.' Reading about that again just made me go: Uhhhh, what??? Like, I feel like getting upset about your bicycle and favorite records getting stolen is a pretty normal response for anyone to have in that situation? Especially when you're broke and can't afford to replace them?
In other, more recent news:
My oldest kiddo got an electronic drum pad for Christmas, but I asked him if I could mess around with it when he's not using it, and he's fine with that. So I'm teaching myself to play drums! That's like the only type of instrument I have no experience playing, so why the fuck not? I'm not good yet, but it's hella fun. And if I get better, and become a real drummer...well, if I'm an O.G. zinester and a drummer, I really will be the (nonbinary) girl Cometbus, haha.
I also found out that my county has launched a big harm reduction campaign re: drugs possibly being laced with fentanyl. They are giving out test strips, and Narcan, as well as doing one-off training courses in how to administer the Narcan. So I've signed up. Just because I don't do those type of drugs anymore doesn't mean I'm never around people who do, and I want to make sure I can help people if necessary. (I'm also really, really proud of my county for doing something like this. Harm reduction for the win.)
And, one last thing: I just discovered yesterday that if you type the word 'emo' on an Apple device, it suggests the black heart emoji. Amazing. 🖤
#rust belt jessie#personal#dear livejournal#on writing#ye olde days#i have a crush on every boy#ARROWED!!!!#currently#drums#i am the girl cometbus#drugs#harm reduction#don't call me emo. it makes me cry.
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aughhhh my coworkers are having to do a bunch of my work and my students are suffering because i’m operating at like 20% capacity because of this chronic immune And Relates Symptoms flare-up, and one of the students (who doesn’t know) just told me they’re struggling with X which is definitely something i would have mitigated if i was at 100%, so they’re all either blaming me or like 🥺 we love you why are you abandoning us 🥺 (these are all adults; this is no one’s lifelong trauma origin story) and i feel so exhausted so i just want to cry about it!!! i remember when this illness ruined my life before and i’m trying not to assume the worst!!! i feel so selfish for deciding to not spend Every Last Minute of my useful consciousness at work because i want to keep a little energy in reserve every day to be able to wash my hair and eat off clean dishes!!! i’m so worried this isn’t going to be better in time for my next big work project when no one else has overflow capacity!!! i just want to quit so i can sleep with no guilt!!! why can’t i be at 100% all the time!!! and i still have to go to meetings!!!!!!!
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I want to tell you about crisis after crisis, but I hate to bore you
I had this whole post I was gonna write, about how tired I am, and how I’m mostly tired because I’m stressed, and I’m mostly stressed due to (lack of) money, and then I decided not to write it. Because being broke is a crisis, but it’s a fucking boring one. Everything I was gonna bitch about in the post is stuff I’ve bitched about before, and bitching about it doesn’t change anything, it just makes me even more exhausted. So. I’ll leave it at that, and get back to posting things that are actually interesting.
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Oh dear, there’s been a Wattpad purge of explicit content. Just like with ffnet and livejournal, peoples works have been deleted and there will probably be an influx of wattpad refugees coming onto Ao3.
o7
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happy birthday, krabapple <3
Your fics have brought me such joy since the LiveJournal days, so here, I knocked up Remus for you. I hope you have a great rest of your day <3 @lizlemonbennet
(many thanks to the discord for doing a plot spitballing session with me many many moons ago regarding remus getting pregnant and his students being mad about it, y'all are the real mvps. also I hope someone writes the 100K version of this someday.)
---
At first, Harry didn’t bat an eye at the owls that swept in periodically throughout breakfast that morning, dropping off letters for Sirius before flying off again. Out of everyone in the household, Sirius got the most correspondence, and it wasn’t unusual for there to be a flurry of owls in their home for the first few hours of the morning.
He did take notice when the pile grew to be twenty letters, and then thirty. Even more noticeable, Sirius wasn’t even opening them.
“Er, Sirius,” he said, after the fortieth owl swept in and then out again. “You didn’t get voted Sexiest Wizard Alive again, did you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry,” Sirius said, giving him a smile that was only slightly strained. “That contest isn’t until May.”
“Do you have another fan club?” Teddy asked.
“No.”
“Okay,” Harry said, “then why aren’t you opening your mail?”
“I want to enjoy breakfast with my boys!” Sirius said, though the cheer in his voice sounded slightly forced. “It’s your first day home from school. I can read the mail later.”
“Isn’t that Hermione’s handwriting?” Teddy piped up, pointing at a letter near the top of the pile. Before he could stop himself, Harry snatched it up, his Seeker’s reflexes outwitting Sirius’s.
“Dear Lord Black,” he read out loud, fending off Sirius’s attempts to grab the letter with one hand, “I am incredibly disappointed to learn that Professor Lupin will be unable to teach for the rest of the school year--and, most importantly, will be unable to oversee our NEWTs--thanks to your actions, and I hope that you take this into consideration in the future should you decide to procreate again…”
Harry wrinkled his nose and tossed the letter at Sirius. “Gross, Sirius.”
“I didn’t write the letter! Take it up with Hermione.”
“Are they all like that?”
“At least there aren’t any Howlers this time,” Sirius said, slumping back in his chair. “I’ve been getting them for days, ever since Remus announced his pregnancy and his intention to take a leave of absence starting at the holidays. Your classmates are very upset.”
“Your timing could have been better,” Harry said. “In more ways than one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Sirius.” Harry rolled his eyes. “Remus is almost five months, yeah? You know what else was almost five months ago? My birthday. You two are gross and I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” Sirius got up for more coffee. As he passed behind Harry and Teddy, he kissed them both on top of the head. “Your friends do, though.”
“It is your fault their favorite and most competent professor is out of commission for the rest of the year.”
“I will personally write every single OWL and NEWT student a glowing letter of recommendation. No matter what their scores are this year while Professor Lupin is on sabbatical, they will have their pick of jobs after graduation. Happy?”
“That includes us, right?”
“Yes, of course it does.”
Harry stuck out his hand. “Deal.”
Sirius shook his hand, and then Teddy’s, and at that moment Remus came into the kitchen. He had stopped being able to fit into his own clothes, and was now stealing Sirius’s sweaters and joggers. Those wouldn’t do for much longer, Harry thought, but figured that was a battle his guardians could fight on their own.
“Oh, dear,” Remus said, spotting the pile of letters. Several had fallen to the floor. “That’s…”
“At least a quarter of the student body,” Sirius said.
“I’m sorry, love.”
“As your eldest has so helpfully pointed out, it is all my fault.”
“Well,” Remus said with a wink, “not all your fault.”
“Right!” Harry said, standing abruptly. “I’m off! Come on, Teds. Let’s get out of here before they get more disgusting.”
#okay i'm sorry that remus was only in this for like five lines#but he's still very pregnant and it's sirius's fault!!!!!#lizlemonbennet#wolfstar#sirius black#harry potter#sirius black raises harry potter and teddy lupin#remus lupin#breed that old man 2024
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thursday, november 10, 2022
i havent thought about you in a while. im surprised, honestly. surprised i got over you so fast. surprised i think of *him* more than you. theres nothing more unattractive than jealousy, and you were filled to the brim with it. at first it kind of hurt, seeing how okay you were. but i know you. youll just burden the next one with your memories of me and your other ex lovers.
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