#swingandswirl

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

This album also has me thinking about UK vs US cultural differences, and the way ambition isn't really celebrated in the UK like it is in the US, and what a headtrip it must have been to go from 'wanting to win is gauche' to the 'GET THAT RING, BABY!' culture of the NFL. Validating, but a headtrip.

I am not British and have never lived in the UK (though have visited and love it!), though I supposed that applies to the US as well lol, so I don't know that I can speak to the cultural differences with any kind of authority.

But yes, even taking wider cultural differences out of it, even just taking the change in personal social circles must have been wild. Even taking friends/family out of it, so many parts of the industry, especially for women, is built off the image of it not being cool to show how ambitious and hungry you are. Many artists demure and say "I don't care about the charts/sales/awards, I just like to make my art" while AGGRESSIVELY pursuing those very things behind the scenes. Taylor's always been a bit of an outlier in how honest she is about her ambition and that's been part of why people find her so confounding/polarizing.

(It's the same about the masters thing btw-- her saying she could have pursued them quietly as her own private mission, but she was loud about it in public from the jump because she wanted to educate people and change the industry for all artists.)

The thing is, like I said, all these artists are ambitious in their own way. They want the bag, they want the notoriety, they want the prestige, they want the awards, etc. (Including the people she's been with.) People just don't want to admit it. And it seems like Taylor never hid how hard she works or how ambitious she was, but with context clues and now the between-the-lines tea, she publicly held back from parts of it in service of... whatever. And yeah, like you implied, it's not unlikely she was getting messages of "being forthright about this is distasteful" when it was really insecurity.

So absolutely, going from that mindset for years to being dropped into a circle where not only your partner is like "of course you should chase your dreams" but his entire family and social circle celebrate you doing so as well must have made her head spin at the start. Going from dimming your shine to having your brother-in-law saying on his podcast "sorry to everyone else nominated for this award but I hope Taylor beats you all" (or however he said it lol) and every time you accomplish some milestone, the entire friend group celebrating you online (never mind in person too I'm sure) and your extended family showing up for you physically and no doubt emotionally as well... It's very, very heartwarming and a complete 180 I'd imagine in many ways.

[suzukiblu]

I adore your Kara-and-baby-Kal-crash-land-at-the-Kents AU! Your Kara voice is perfect and oh man, I can just SEE Jon and Martha itching to take her in.

Thank you! ❤️ I have written very little of Kara so I'm glad she's vibing for you so far, haha.

And lbr Jon and Martha are obvi already making up bullshit stories to feed all of Smallville about their new teen mom foster child from overseas. She's from . . . Norway?? Probably???? Kryptonian sounds Norwegian, right?

Suuuuure it does.

[birlcholtz]

Biiirl I adore your rarepair fics they're so much fun! Mandy+March and Snowtots AAAAAH. If you're still taking prompts, can I ask for your thoughts on Jack/Tater? You KNOW Potatomann is an in-universe RPS JUGGERNAUT.

(tater probably thinks potatomann shippers are absolutely hilarious. he delights in them. jack is confused but if tater's happy jack is happy)

listen tater can only invite himself over to jack's so many times before jack starts inviting him over and they eventually realize tater basically lives with jack and decide to become roommates (oh my god they were roommates)

tater moves in with jack. potatomann shippers go berserk.

they fall in love via absolutely brutal chirping and tater being determined to get this beautiful man a bit more out of his shell (which involves a lot of spontaneous falcs tv interviews about things such as jack's favorite flavor of jellybean - strawberry - and his senior thesis *insert 20 minutes of jack explaining his thesis and tater listening attentively and occasionally asking clarifying questions. they have to cut 90% of it from the actual video but for some reason some fans ask jack to livestream explaining his thesis because they're Nerds and tater is like see i make u popular*)

(an unrelated conversation)

tater: baby rookie. so small. so young

jack: i'm older than you????????

tater: so short

jack: i'm???? over six feet tall????? you're a giant????????

they scoff together at people who think rhode island is cold

they absolutely play wrestle all the time and tater has a size advantage but jack is Determined (does it still count as intricate rituals if they're dating)

tater introduces jack to various video games. he's pretty bad at most of them but he's fine with that it gives tater an excuse to keep 'teaching'

they play settlers of catan. they're both ruthless. it's the most cutthroat game ever and they both genuinely have a great time somehow

jack likes oatmeal and tater thinks this is an abomination

when potatomann is confirmed the entire internet loses its goddamn mind, tater thinks this is hilarious and adds fuel to the fire CONSTANTLY he tweets a bunch of photos of him and jack just being domestic right after they go public and potatomann shippers genuinely explode

[shanastoryteller]

Happy holidays! You write the most wonderful stories :D For the fic prompt... any thoughts on a genderbent Harry Potter?

oh, oh do i

you see, the thing is, everything would have been different if harry was a girl. do you know how i know?

lily potter.

harry didn’t do anything. he was a baby, they call him the boy who lived, because that’s all he did - he just didn’t die. and that’s not on him, that’s not because he was some extremely powerful one year old. no. it’s because of lily potter, because of her love, or something, because i very much doubt she was the first woman who loved her child enough to die for them. but whatever it is she did, that’s what killed the dark lord.

harry didn’t defeat voldemort. lily did.

and no one cared.

so when little harriet survives the killing curse, no one cares. because it wasn’t her, it wasn’t anything she did.

it was james potter!

james potter, who died, but saved his daughter and defeated the dark lord! and it doesn’t make any sense, but neither does lauding a baby as the defeater of darkness, so when has the wizarding world ever needed to make sense? harry survives, is marked as an equal, by voldemort, and no one cares.

but do you know what that means?

harry doesn’t go to live with dursleys, because why would voldemort ever be after her - she didn’t do anything, she was just there, it was all james potter. and maybe dumbledore knows better, and tries to put his foot down, but - no one cares. she’s james potter’s daughter, the daughter of the man who killed voldemort, she’s not going to be sent to live with some muggles!

and the next safest place is hogwarts, but none of the professors can raise a child, they’re all either too old or busy or snape, so who raises little harriet potter?

why, rubeus hagrid of course!

and people aren’t happy about this either, but it’s better than the muggles, and it seems right, to them, that the daughter of james potter grows up in hogwarts.

so hagrid builds an addition to his little cabin, a nursery that will one day be a bedroom, and harriet potter grows up. she knows the forbidden forest like the back of her hand, knows all those creatures in the forest as her best friends. firenzes somehow ends up babysitting her, multiple times, and he never knows how it happens. she rides unicorns and thestrals and hippogriffs, and is good friends with aragog, and all sorts of other creatures.

she grows up in the forbidden forest, really, and it knows her, it loves her

the kids adore her, and she has hundred and hundreds of older siblings. she’s james potter’s daughter, and a cute kid, and “i was playing with harriet!” is an excuse that works with almost all the professors for a large array of misdeeds. by the time she’s eight, she’s helping kids study for their owl and newts in care of magical creatures.

oh, and herbology, of course, because a forest is not just animals, it’s plants too. and she loves her forest, so she’s constantly getting underfoot with professor sprout. and all the other professors care for her too, and by the time she’s eleven they’re all internally fretting about what she’s going to do in class, because they’ve already taught her most of it.

she meets draco malfoy, and they should hate each other, they should. but draco understands what it’s like to grow up in your father’s shadow, to always be the child of someone instead of just your own person, and harriet can’t help but be friends with him, they become friends seemingly against both their wills.

and harriet’s in gryffindor, of course, with that reckless courage she can hardly go anywhere else. and she knows the weasleys of course, they’ve all been her friends, and she’s delighted now that she gets a weasley of her own. which is what she tells ron on the first day of classes, who was warned about her by all his brothers, and has in fact met her before on multiple occasions, so he just rolls with it.

and harriet adopts hermione and brings into the group, because just like her father, just like hagrid, she can’t stand someone being alone and upset without trying to help, that’s not who she is, it’s not how she was raised.

so she has her friends and her experiences, and she’s james potter’s daughter, which is fine, she likes her life, and her friends.

but nothing good can stay. voldemort returns, and he doesn’t even target her, why does he care for her, it was her father who did this (he was there and still he goes along with the narrative, it couldn’t have been lily, couldn’t have been harriet, no, it had to be james) but somehow harriet and her friends keep on foiling his plans, keep on getting in his way, and for the first time -

she’s not james potter’s daughter, not rubeus hagrid’s daughter -

she’s harriet potter, and she’s in voldemort’s way, and she’s not planning to move for him. she wasn’t raised to bend, and if that breaks her - so be it.

[alphacrone]

OMG your Blue-Eyed Jack fic is so cute, I want to hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Any chance we get to see Jack's POV? I can see the chirping from Tater about his crush on Bitty already...

thank you! it’d be fun to write jack’s perspective, so maybe we’ll see that in the future ;) 

[garden-of-succulents]

gdi Lis now I have a bi!George bunny in my head and it's all your and Talhi's FAULT.

EXCELLENT

[abominableobriens]

I never thought of BPD!Nursey before I saw your post, but now I'm intrigued! For a prompt... how about his family being supportive, or at least trying? My experience with diaspora South Asians (I headcanon Derek as part Indian, specifically Tamil) has been less than positive and I want better for him. TIA!

yay let’s talk about his family ((Nursey’s various family hc’s are another major point of world building for me)) 

ok I seriously don’t know where that post is right now but here’s where Nursey’s storyline coincides for this universe. His parents are uber sucessful (top of their fields, constantly going to conferences and speaking at events and are widely renowned for what they do). His older sister is like five or six years older than him and was raised for most of her childhood by one nanny. Then that nanny retired and Derek got a lot of inconsistent care. That instability left it’s mark on him. It wasn’t until he got older that he was able to do more things with his parents and they were more interested in who he was as a person. So he has this fear of not being interesting enough for people. The first people he ever had to mediate himself around was his family. 

Which isn’t to say they didn’t love him. But they always took his attention seeking as him being dramatic or eccentric. And he didn’t know really that what he was feeling (or rather, his inability to regulate his emotions) wasn’t normal? Then you move to him in his middle/high school years where at first he received a lot of shit from people and learned to lowkey hate himself for crying in public or for not being able to shut up sometimes. And he moved into this phase in high school where he tried so hard not to feel that he was basically devaluing everyone. 

this is getting long and the rest is sort of a jumbled mess tbh:

So going back to his family. I think he had to take the first step and find out “what I’m feeling isn’t normal”. I think a lot of help came from his sister. She tried to have a relationship with him now that she was older and their interactions weren’t dependent on their parents or extracurricular anymore. But he already had this impression that she hates him or is generally apathetic toward him. Which leads to a few conflicts early on. But then you see him splitting on her because why is she insisting on meddling when she hates him anyway. And she’s sort of like “do you really think that?” Which leads to this rant/long ass conversation where she’s like “ok this isn’t right, you’re hurting and you need help.” So big sis to the rescue, advocating for him to their parents. And their parents don’t really get it at first, but she pushes for a few weeks and it works. He gets a therapist close to campus. 

It gets easier for him to unpackage his emotions and communicate his needs and wants. Especially to his parents since for as much as he felt their absence growing up, he was instilled this idea that they’ve done so much for him that he can never repay (which is such easy canon fodder for going from “my parents are so amazing I’m a failure as a son to them” to “fuck them, they expect so much out of me” in five seconds flat). So it’s not easy being a teenager where you’re naturally supposed to push back a bit from your parents and learn that they’re human and capable of making mistakes. But it’s also good that he’s reconciling these conflicting ideas he has about them before he goes off to college and has less incentive to interact with them. And I think the more he talks about his problems, the more he and his sister both push for family skype calls and dinners every once in a while, the more his parents get to know the real him. 

Ok so now for more of the big stuff with his parents:

When your kid is a first or second generation American, you’re still really buying into the American dream. You really want them to make it big and you need them to make practical decisions. (this is gonna get confusing if I don’t make more specifics for his parents so is it reasonable to say his dad is Black and his mom is Tamil?) You already have Derek as this kid who’s more interested in the arts than STEM (and I could see his dad’s family being receptive to that while his mom’s family is like ? are you sure?). And then you add on that he now has this diagnosis that proves there’s something “wrong” with him. 

((it’s interesting seeing the ways parents negotiate realizing that they’ve passed on these genetics to their children. It’s like a grieving process. They deny the possibility, and then they start to accept the reality but not without blaming themselves/making it about them first. I think Nursey was lucky his parents travel so much because they could act super supportive and be less-than-supportive with each other in private and Derek never had to know.)) 

So from my experiences of dealing with family who don’t get mental illness there’s two ambivalent schools of thought: 

first of all that psychology differs by which country you’re in (so seasonal affective disorder is something we don’t really talk about in the states but I have a friend of a friend from Bangladesh who was telling me they don’t have much in the way of PTSD treatment) 

the second (if I had a nickel for every time I heard this from family or family friends) is it’s all fine and good that other children are struggling and I’m glad they’re getting help but MY (insert relation here) doesn’t have that and/or it’s not that bad (*whispers* not like other kids)

Fuck, now I need to give Nursey grandmothers who don’t totally get it but all but insist that he come see them on weekends so they can give him the love and attention he deserves. 

Back to his parents– so the cool thing is that a major way people with BPD get treated is with this method called Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and it’s actually based a lot on Buddhist mindfulness meditation. And I stand firm on the whole “Nursey’s a book worm for a reason” thing. So imagine him tentatively telling his parents about this at some point when he’s like a junior or senior. Imagine his mom doing all this research and figuring out how they can both help him out while also figuring out ways to explain/advocate to the rest of her side of the family. 

Going back to Derek’s dad. I think that grief of “I wanted to give my kid the best shot possible but I failed him before he was even born” really hit him hard. There’s a lot of pressure to be there, to be a family man who provides well and is there for his kids. So I could see him trying to retrace his steps to figure out where he went wrong (where he could’ve been less than supportive and maybe even harmful). I could see him slowing down a bit career wise so he can make more time for Derek (and his sister but she’s an adult now so it’s a little different schedule wise and emotionally). I think there’s a part of him that doesn’t regret sending Derek to Andover because there’s a large community of elite students of color. It’s really hard being poc and not having a community that gets you, and I think he’s grateful that Derek can get that before he goes off to college and could potentially get lost in the shuffle. But at the same time, I think there were a lot of family discussions post diagnosis about whether Derek should come home (transfer schools, or maybe take a year off, just give him space to get help where his family can support him full time). 

I think that last part is up for interpretation/whether or not he took time off. I’ll refer you to this post and say it could definitely line up with Nursey having BPD (when you have BPD, you tend to hold most people at arm’s length). 

Imagine his parents coming to almost all of his home games the last few years of high school, though. Imagine his parents sending links/books/movies/clothing from where ever they are that remind them of him. Not because he can’t buy his own shit or they’re bribing their guilt away, but because he’s communicated that if he doesn’t hear from people for a while he assumes they hate him. So they have all these little reminders that they care about him. And what if the four of them figure out different tactics of things to do when he’s splitting and he really needs comfort (so he doesn’t feel like he’s pilling too much shit onto his favorite person of the moment and so they can set up boundaries/time frames where he will not be turned away and he knows they aren’t rejecting him). 

Going back to his dad’s side of the family. There’s so much about people with BPD being misunderstood artists or being eccentric but so full of love. I think he has a reputation of being this soft artist and his dad’s side tries to foster that a lot and protect him when they can. So even if BPD isn’t that well known and they don’t totally understand the symptoms (so you have depression? wait is it like anxiety? what’s a personality disorder?) they want to do what they can for him. And sure, I think sometimes (either side of his family) will take him splitting as him just being dramatic. But he’s got his core family to help ground him and take away some of the pressure of acting ok all the time. 

hope this was some of that good family feels you were looking for!

[madlori]

so I feel like you should know that you are partially responsible for my newfound hockey fandom and mostly responsible for the fact that I am a Pens girl through and through. Also I'm not sure how I even GOT into ice hockey considering that a) I'm from the tropics and b) in my country we play field hockey like normal people BUT at least it's a fun fandom to be in :D (also, how goes the Check Please fic?)

WELCOME. LEAVE YOUR SOUL AND ALL YOUR MONEY AT THE DOOR.

(which should be written at the doorway to hockey fandom)

I’m not really writing fic right now, at all. I’m focusing on some other stuff.