hey you. teenage girl writing in her diary. quit talking about the boy you have a crush on and start writing about the current political situation, the valuation of currencies, and the level of technology your people hold. your diary might be the only piece of evidence our society existed after nuclear war fries all of our data backups. future historians don't need to know about damian, they need at least a secondhand accounts of the great water wars and whether or not your leaders truly did worship a deity called "the free hand of the market"
Keep writing about your crush Teenaged Girl. About your clothes, and how that other girl wore the same dress as you. Paint me a picture of what you were like.
Make those future Historians reverse engineer the socioeconomic hierarchies of the 21st century from dreamy descriptions of Damian's current fashions. It's giving them enrichment.
Talk about the things you want to talk about. You never know what mysteries your diary might solve in future generations bc you are the only person who talks about something that other people thought was too obvious to talk about, like whatever that third condiment dish that used to be on the table with salt and pepper was for.
As a professional historian who just spent my morning reading through people's diaries, I'd love to learn about Damian, actually. Tell me all about how much you hate the teachers in X class and what's happening on your social media feed and all that daily life shit. If your writing is going to be the last record of a lost society, let it be real and let it be human.
Happy pride month specifically to folks on the asexual and aromantic spectrum who oftentimes feel isolated and left out of the conversation. You belong here as much as the rest of us and I hope that you are all loved in a way that is comforting to you.
Over the years, I’ve written a bunch of queer stories in a bunch of fandoms. Enjoy! If you want to shoot me some queer-focused prompts for these fandoms, I'll see what I can do over the course of the month.
Agent Carter
Because Girls Love Girls (The Soulmate City Remix) - There’s something in the water and the next thing Angie knows, she’s waking up with the name Margaret Carter wrapped around her wrist. (Angie Martinelli/Peggy Carter)
One Last Kiss (The Final Storm Remix) - You never forget your first kiss with your nemesis. Dottie won’t forget her last either. At Howard Stark’s funeral, she puts a few things in the ground. (Peggy Carter/Dottie Underwood)
Avatar: Legend of Korra
Girl, Gotten (The Heroine After Remix) - As long as Asami’s the hero, Korra’s okay being the love interest. (Korra/Asami Sato)
Leaves on the Wind - Korra, Asami, and the next Avatar (past Korra/Asami Sato)
Ten-Thousand Words (Which Once See the Light of Day) - A series of short stories about the ladies of Legend of Korra. (bisexual Asami Sato/Mako, various het pairings)
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Playing with Fire (The Dubiously Consensual Remix) - People didn’t tell Azula no. (Azula/Ty Lee)
Battlestar Galactica
Persephone on New Caprica - It’s winter on New Caprica and they’re all Persephone here. A collection of short stories. (bisexual Felix Gaeta/Eight, various het pairings) Trigger warning: non-con/dub con
Batwoman (TV)
Trapped in the Closet - Kate was never afraid to come out to her father, but she is now. Episode tag to the season 1 finale. (lesbian Kate Kane)
Pride - A small army of Batwomen marched at Pride. Ryan should be marching with them. (lesbian Ryan Wilder)
Black Lightning (TV)
Comic Book Life - Comic book Thunder’s boyfriend knew what his woman did, so why couldn’t Anissa tell her girlfriend? (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)
Truth Will Out - Anissa’s in the closet about her superhero life. Three times she thought about telling Grace and one time she actually did. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)
Maybe Baby - “Ever think about what kind of power’s you and Grace’s kids would have?“ Jen asked, raising possibilities Anissa had never considered before. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi, Jennifer Pierce)
Sleeping Beauty - Grace had been in coma for over a month now, but Anissa still couldn’t help thinking each visit that this would be the one where she woke up. Maybe today it would be. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)
Cat Lover - When your wife was a deadly jungle cat, it paid to be cautious but Anissa meant to get eaten. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Short and to the Mr. Pointy - Collection of drabbles set across all 7 seasons. (Willow Rosenberg/Tara McClay, Willow Rosenberg/Kennedy, Willow Rosenberg/Oz, Larry/Xander Harris, various het pairings)
Cobra Kai
Make a Wish - Tommy has a different confession in episode 2.06 “Take a Right.” (Tommy/Johnny Lawrence)
Queer Eye for the Karate Guy - “Our hero this week is Sensei Johnny Lawrence,” Karamo read off the pad. “He’s a 53-year-old, 6-foot-tall master of karaté.” Queer Eye/Cobra Kai crossover. (Queer Eye cast)
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
The Beast You Made of Me - The Waverider’s resident shapeshifters compare notes. (Mona Wu, Genderfluid Charile)
Neither Should You (The Real People Remix) - Rescuing her clones was the right thing to do. They deserved the right to live their lives and make their own choices. Ava just wished they’d stop sleeping with Gary. (Ava Sharpe/Sara Lance, Ava Clones/Gary Green, implied Gary Green/John Constantine)
Army of One - Sara Lance was dead. Sara Lance was a clone. Sara Lance was going to need a minute to process. Tag to “Bishop’s Gambit,” episode 6.06. (bisexual Sara Lance)
Downton Abbey
The Hedgehog’s Dilemma - Thomas Barrow’s daemon is a hedgehog. Five warnings, four relationships, and one revelation. (Thomas Barrow/Duke of Crowborrough, Thomas Barrow/Edward Courtney, Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent)
Snakes and Lions - Hogwarts AU. In Thomas, Jimmy finds that courage isn’t exclusive to Gryffindors. Now if only he could find some himself. (Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent)
Genius Loci - Downton Abbey consumes people and it won’t let Thomas go. (gay Thomas Barrow) Trigger warning: referenced canon suicide attempt
When the Wolf Comes Home - Buggery is legal in the army, required even, for wolf-brothers. Bates, Lord Grantham, and their wolves have a certain history. Thomas can’t help thinking about it. Fusion with A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. (Thomas Barrow, past Robert Crawley/John Bates)
Kipo and the Age of Wonerbeasts
Dream Girls - On the surface, Mulholland had given Wolf everything she had thought she wanted: her and Kipo, the two of them buff and tough and together. Her guilt had kept her from really enjoying it, but it hadn’t been why she fought back. (Wolf/Kipo)
The Hero Was You - Benson likes Troy and Troy likes Benson. Great! Now all Benson has to do is figure out what to do about it. (Benson/Troy)
A Post Post-Apocalyptic Romance - It was kind of wild when he thought about it. Benson and Troy had fallen for each other super fast, but, between the rescue and the other rescue and all the running around with HMUFA, they’d never really gotten to know each other. Luckily, without Scarlemagne and Dr. Emilia trying to capture and/or kill them, they finally had the time to get to know each other as Benson introduced Troy to the city. (Benson/Troy)
Miraculous Ladybug
Better Than Ice Cream - Orange, mint, and raspberry could be a tasty combination. The solution to every love triangle should be polyamory, but sometimes it’s just not that simple. Spoilers for Love-Eater. (Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Adrien Agreste/Kagami Tsurugi)
The Old Guard
Take What the Water Gave Me - Quynh drowns and wakes and in between are Booker and Andromache. She would take his life if she could. So she does. (Quynh/Andy)
Orphan Black
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - There’s something magical about Uncle Felix’s flat. Maybe it’s all the art. (Kira Manning, gay Felix Dawkins, lesbian Cosima Niehaus)
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
She-Ra (Modesty) Shorts - Some very short Catra/Adora stories. (Catra/Adora)
Parting Strands - Looking out for each other had been their thing, but Adora’s starting to suspect that’s over. Her thoughts during that scene in “Promise.” (Catra/Adora)
Sick Leave - Back when they were kids in the Horde, they used to hide when they got sick. It’s a hard habit to break, but things are different now and Catra really should be in bed. (Catra/Adora)
Another First Kiss - Five times Catra thought about kissing Adora and one time Adora kissed her. (Catra/Adora)
Spider-man (Ultimates verse)
Queen of Lower Chelsea - Jessica Drew may not be a real girl, but she’s trying to build a real life. (gender-queer Jessica Drew)
Fingertips That Might Ignite - Peter is straight like a straight thing. Jessica isn’t sure what she is. (Jessica Drew/Johnny Storm, Jessica Drew/OFC)
We Were Orphans Before - The first time Jessica ran into Peter after the Wave she grabbed him into a hug. (gender-queer Jessica Drew, Peter Parker)
Gonna Share My Tin Man Heart - Kitty moves in and Kitty moves out. Jessica falls in love somewhere along the way. (Jessica Drew/Kitty Pride)
Star Wars
For Amidala - Her handmaidens had all poured so much of themselves into Amidala, it was like they were part of her now. Padmé didn’t know if she had the strength to let one go. (Padmé/Her Handmaidens)
Dateline Felucia - Embedded with the troops on Felucia, a reporter from HoloNet News paints an intimate portrait of the men of the 212th Attack Battalion. (Obi-Wan/Cody, Waxer/Boil)
Tag - Sabine and Ketsu, bounty hunters extraordinaire, argue about how to sign their work. (Sabine Wren/Ketsu Onyo)
When I Was Your Age - Kanan, Ezra, and the fruits of a misspent youth. (Pansexual Kanan Jarrus)
Stranger Things
Date Night - Everyone and her mother seems to think they’re together and Robin’s getting pretty sick of it. (lesbian Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington)
Umbrella Academy (TV)
Iconic - When Vanya learns Klaus is gay from a magazine, she’s angry for more than just one reason. (queer Vanya & Klaus Hargreeves)
White Collar
Eyes on the Target (The Solid Ground Remix) - Peter asked Diana to keep an eye on Neal for him while he’s stuck in jail. It could be going better. (lesbian Diana Barrigan, Neal Caffrey)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Barriss Offee & Ahsoka Tano, Barriss Offee & Luminara Unduli
Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker, Barriss Offee, Luminara Unduli
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fusion, Canon Disabled Character
Summary:
Ahsoka is the Chosen One, the Slayer. The one girl in all the world with the power to fight the forces of darkness, or at least she was until she died. She got better, but now there's a new Slayer in town and things with her Watcher are strained at best. Add in a bunch of zombie mind control bugs and Ahsoka's week could be going better.
people telling you they reread your fic is the biggest compliment you could ever receive. there are thousands of stories out there begging to be found, to be explored, but your story meant so much to someone that they came back to it eagerly, they went over every word again. to love is to return and loving a fic is rereading it. thank you to all readers and rereaders <3333
The specific pain of having the perfect sentence arrive in your head at the exact moment you cannot write it down. driving. shower. falling asleep. never at the desk. never when the document is open. i have lost more good sentences to the gap between the bed and the phone than i have ever actually written.
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
There are some characters where giving them therapy and cleaning them up is the fanfiction equivalent of buying antique furniture and painting it white
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