shandydann

Parental chaos

When I was a child my life felt rather chaotic. As one parent strived to give me stability the other could not. Chaos had happened in their life, and even as my non chaotic parent strived to give us all stability. Somehow, life was still chaotic. Even doing the weekly grocery shopping for a store that was a five minutes walk away was difficult.

This was partly because one of my parents was disabled. But it also was partly because of the chaotic nature of that parent. There was narcissism in that parent even before her life changing event. She'd inherited the chaos gremlin. Sometimes I suspect I have a little chaos gremlin in me too.

My mothers maternal side had an almost elemental side to them. They seemed to be earthy, exuding some form of raw sexiness that was utterly chaotic. People seemed to be unable to resist some of my family. On occasion there was torch bearing.

When I was at university I seemed to have it as well. Someone once said to me “I hear you're an animal.”

Which was strange coming from a girl I'd only just met. Aberdeen's a small town like that.

Family chaos

I possibly have relatives that I will never meet, but who in turn were abandoned in Argentina. My great uncle, hopped on the nearest boat when he got a local farmers daughter pregnant. This was during world war two, it was how he ended up in the Merchant Navy. Goodness knows how many women he bairnt. [1]

He'd chat in Spanish to his Uncle in Keith after the war. Hidden testimony and shared experiences. Decades later, he charmed his nurse in an old folks home and she moved him into hers. Integrated him into her family. We visited him and his second family when I was 11. Granny was puzzled but was grateful we were welcomed by the family.

Oddly my Granny never seemed that chaotic. Angry. But not chaotic. Having family responsibility forced on you does that I suppose. Her life was a life of looking after others. Managing that chaos. Saying that her red hair seemed to facinate men. She didn't have a license for herself. She remembered being confused when a medical student brought her into the student union and it was full of couples kissing. Awkward when she met him years later and he was her gynecologist. That earthy quality wasn't always tied to the gremlin.

Perhaps it's like Targaryians in A Song of Ice and Fire, flip a coin and you get the chaos gremlin.

My grannie's family seemed to be elemental chaos in human form. Her husband's side sober hard working fishermen. My Father's side hard-working folks who'd move for work. The rest of the family seemed stable, normal. Dependable.

I possibly have another relative that was good at football as a kid. Who my uncle knew about, but wasn't in the kids life. I loved my uncle, but I know there's probably a good reason he wasn't in that kids life. Sometimes I wonder how old that kid was, did that kid get the chaotic gene? Does that kid know about their family up north? Does that kid know about the football connection?

Dead beat dads, much like whoever it was that was the father of my great grandmother. Leaving women to carry the can. Her own mother, in turn had been abandoned by her baby-daddy as well. Two generations of girls, let down by their fathers. Or perhaps kept safe from their fathers, who brought chaos into their mothers lives. Then took no responsibility whatsoever.

Like I said chaos gremlins.

The Living Doll

As a child I resisted all attempts by my Mother and Grannie to shape me into my mother's successor. I mean I would try to please them for a while. But it wasn't me. Before her accident my mother won several prizes for her Highland Dancing, I hated Highland Dancing. I wanted to be in the tap class with my friends. But no, I had to do Highland Dancing. So after a while I stopped going. I refused and then the fact I had stopped, was then used to justify me having no hobbies.

I had no staying ability, other than my need to read a lot of books.

But the impression that my Mother wanted me to be her mark two stayed with me. So I resisted quietly. I read and when she used to scream at me that I was just like my father, I'd say nothing. Until suddenly I was big enough at thirteen to scream right back at her pointing out yes, she married him. So of course I was like my father. She had to change tack. Pretend to be softer, to cry crocodile tears.

The day I left she was calm. She knew it was coming and tried to influence my Dad to agree I couldn't live with him. But we'd planned this for months. I had to get away. It was a shock when my Grannie cried. The only thing I feel guilty about was leaving my little brother behind. But I needed to be clear of the chaos.

I left that year to live with my Father. But the chaos drew me back in, I'd left my brother there after all. My brother was weaponized against us, we'd go up to visit and he'd refuse to see me. So I stopped visiting, while knowing full well the chaos he'd have to live with there.

My father did the job of putting me back together. I was chaotic and angry. So we'd go on walks to town, to the library. My father always asked how school was and ensured I told him. He'd give me options and supported me. In those years before University I had stability, despite us being on child support. We were poor and living on state handouts. Yet I got to university, I wouldn't have if I hadn't been living with my father.

The Chaotic Catalyst

By the time I was fourteen, I had a theory of me. I'd had some odd times in my friendships over the years from the age of 10. Situations between friends would seem to escalate around me. I asked myself if I had caused it somehow.

I didn't think I had. I'd go through interactions days, weeks, months later. I'd try to figure how I caused it. Eventually I came to the conclusion that somehow I was a catalyst. I'd try my best not be. But chaos seemed to happen.

Cracks in friendships became chasms. If the cracks were there, inevitably my presence would catalyse all those held in arguments. I'd talk to my father later about it, usually on the day just trying to understand my friends. Neither of us could figure it out.

As I struggled with my sexuality, I was a little chaotic in my dating life. Doing my level best to not cause chaos in my friend group. Chaos was always there, partly because there were other chaotic folks in it. I was stalked for two years. Had I caused that somehow?

I hid my chaotic self in my class. I was naive perhaps, but I wasn't weak. The boys in my Computer Science class were great allies though. On nights out they ensured I was safe. They kept an eye on me.

But did I cause chaos? Was I an utter chaos gremlin? After all, my family had form.

I had family history to go on. While my Father and my Maternal Grandmother weren't chaos gremlins, my maternal uncle was. My grannies brother was. My narcissistic mother was. Just how far back did the chaos go?

Were we to blame or is it circumstantial?

My partner worries about bringing chaos into my life. But the truth is, chaos is a huge part of my family history. It's a part of a lot of folks family history. We grow up managing our own chaos and what chaos other folks bring. It's humanity. On occasion I've indulged the Gremlin in me.

Societal Chaos

How much of it was to do with how our society is setup? With the class system, with an idea of how people in the decaying empire were meant to act? There's no space for outsiders, no space for those who act outside the norm, and aren't rich.

In my maternal family, men appeared to get away with being chaotic. Whereas the women were judged and punished. Fallen women, being lucky enough to have some familial support. Even as everyone else considered them less than dirt.

Society doesn't cope with fallen women who don't beg on their knees. Society likes to claim that somehow it's a woman's fault for being sexually free. That the chaos is our fault, rather than where some of the responsibility should lie.

Why else do we have such a Victorian policy of the two child limit for child support in the UK? We love to judge women with lots of kids who aren't married. We judge women for fucking up. Rather than supporting them and uplifting them. Our governments have systematically stripped support away from us. We aren't the deserving poor after all, and voters cheered those policies on until it bit them in the arse.

You start picking who you think are the deserving poor, no one will be eventually. It's an abusive attitude. You choose to support the outwardly respectable family, trapping women and children in abusive environments. You choose to not support women who leave, or you give lip-service to the idea of solidarity to women. It's why in the UK abortion is decriminalised and officers can still harass women. It's why we have women dying in the US as life saving healthcare is denied to them.

There's nothing better than the scapegoat of a loose woman.

Anyway to break women, eh?

[1] Got a woman with a child. Local doric term related to bairn which means child.

Posts from the paper vault : On how a wood obsession happens.

CW: Wood

Originally written 07 02 2013

Living in a cottage where your main source of heat is an inefficient antique Jotul you get a bit obsessed with wood.

You go and find good try wood, that you then chop up. Then you stack it.

Start to get concerned at how much wood you are going through.

Start wondering about more efficient heaters. Start looking into heaters with more efficient heat distribution.

Start reading about Masonry heaters.

Then finally realise you are completely obsessed with Kachelofens.

Really obsessed, even more than you were obsessed with your favourite lust object.

It's at the point when you are scouring Amazon for a really big Fiskers splitting axe you realise that this may be an issue.

Who's fandom is it anyway?

A decade ago I joined a fandom community dedicated to a Norwegian Comedy act.

I feel this fact is necessary for me to state, as being in that fandom cemented certain thoughts for me in terms of community, how it grows what the dynamics are. How do outsiders looking in see it?

I should go back a little further. In 2004 I joined LiveJournal. I wasn't active in fandom and I lurked. I also pointed and laughed when fandom drama happened.

I often feel it's a habit for a lot of us post 90s Netizens to reduce disputes to drama. Fandom in LiveJournal was a very queer space. It could at times be a chaotic space filled with bitter opposition and at times some very manipulative behaviour. Some of it we didn't find out until years later (MSSCRIBE and Bad Penny).

Then 6Apart got sold and we moved on. We found other things to do.

Back in 2013 I needed a cheer up and a very strange Fox video popped up on the 3rd of September. I ended up interacting with a fandom.

I wrote meta, said my opinion loudly. Some people loved me for it, some hated me for it. I also didn't have a lot of patience for the Facebook side of the fandom as I'd been following The Hour Fandom on Tumblr. I preferred Tumblr and the folks on it.

Spin forward in time to Bergen in May 2014. Some of us were in person there. Why? To watch the Norwegian Comedy band of course.

Then a couple of friends who had worked together on a parody video had a massive blowup.

I'd already done some unofficial moderation stuff behind the scenes for months before this. DMs to check in on folks, when some folks disparaged the way that some fans expressed how much they fancied their faves. I pointed out that not every one has English for their first Language. Folks read what I wrote, realised what they'd done.

People apologised, and later I got an anonymous message thanking me for it. Because they did feel embarrassed at being called out by the native English Speaker.

So when the situation happened, I did my best to separate the two briefly and hoped it would calm down after the immediate issue. There was a lot of anger in the room, and I went in there nearly missing the cut of time for food, while I tried to get the angry person out of there. To help the other person feel safe.

I'll be honest, I did wonder if I'd get punched. But I kept my voice calm. Got the person to calm down. We left the building.

As I said, I hoped everything was sorted, and everything would calm down when we all got back home.

It did not. It erupted online.

I checked in with both parties. In the meantime I found out other stuff.

The folks in the fandom picked sides and there was a lot of bitterness. To the point I had a DM from someone asking me what had happened.

Who was in the right? Who was totally evil? They didn't know what to think.

I had no good answer. I hadn't been there for the build up to that fight. I hadn't been there in the particular folks personal lives. I'd witnessed the incident. I saw the aftermath.

But in the end I told the person, is that there are facts. How those facts are remembered and interpreted does not mean truth.

I could only give some facts, and I couldn't state what the truth was. As the truth was very different things to different people. People had to make up their own minds and they did. I also didn't think it would be fair or good to say what I did know.

The community was burning. People were hurt, and heck this was Tumblr. We had no mod tools.

After a while I left the fandom. It got bigger, it felt harsher. The community changed.

Plus I'd accidentally deleted my Tumblr blog. I didn't find I mourned it. I recreated it, but didn't spend much time on there anymore.

But it was interesting how my view of communities and how those dynamics happen changed. Because I'd made friends. Been subject to rumours about “the inner-circle”.

Even though there wasn't one. Just a group of friends who spoke everyday.

I'm not and never have I been a community moderator on an online platform. Other than the community management stuff I do for my small project. I'm used to safeguarding physical communities from my fencing days. But the human dynamics are the same.

I don't think community dynamics change in a professional community either. In the Fediverse in particular, community is very similar to fandom communities. But that's human nature.

We're all driven by connection and ambition. We're driven by the idea that there's this influential group that I'm not a part of. They are unduly influencing the community space. But it's often not that.

Although if it is, be careful. The person you think is the mastermind of the “drama”, may not be the person behind it.

All we have are facts and how we interpret these facts. Truth is subjective.

Trauma and birthdays.

TW: Abuse, ableism, stalking

It's my birthday today. Often this time of year isn't mentally a great time. Not because I'm getting older and this random marker we choose signals that.

But mainly because that was the week when I was very small, that I learned my first proper lesson in life.

It's not stable and there's no such thing as a happy ending. Sometimes your parent's can't protect you. Sometimes they harm you. Sometimes you are collateral damage in your parent's need to make everything about them.

I have a very complex relationship with disability and trauma. People tend to often look at disabled folks and their kids. There's a mixture of pity and “Oh my goodness how brave and strong you are.”

“How on earth can a disabled person have abused you?” I can almost hear you ask. “I bet you abused them” you think.

Or perhaps selfishly abandoned that parent? Well to be fair, that's what that side of the family think. The ones that kept trying to find me for years to bring me back in.

At the age of 18, my disabled relatives primary care giver died. Before I left, I'd had a mixture of fear and love in that household. It took a lot to leave that household, I remember being terrified I would get snatched from safety and be forced to live there again.

Even now decades later I occasionally have nightmares that I'm back living there. That my life stressful as it is now was just a dream.

That fear of that household kept me not visiting. I abandoned a sibling to it. But then that sibling didn't know till years later what was going on. I still feel guilt for that one. Because that sibling also suffered abuse. Years later, my abuser died and weeks before their family kept trying to contact me. I didn't go to the funeral, I didn't need to. I'd quit that family years ago. The toxic positivity, the guilt trips to try and ensure I took the problem of my disabled abuser away from them.

My sibling attended the funeral and ended up very angry, with no sense of closure. Speaking over the phone to my parent after, we both considered that idea of closure. It was never going to be possible. So many of us had been abused in there. Including the dead caregiver, who'd been used to put fear into us. At the time hearing that experience, I couldn't stop laughing. I felt for my sibling, but I'd been a shield. When I left that shield was gone. When we both were free, we took out our trauma on our loved one.

I'm mostly free. I remember crying at the time, but it wasn't mourning. It was angry. It was mourning for my safety. That had never existed. It was all the outpouring because I was finally free.

My sibling still doesn't carry my number on the phone. To protect me from that side of the family, who stalked my father to demand where I lived. Who phoned up an elderly aunt who had the same initial as me. Who then tried to pump that aunt for information. At the funeral they tried to work out if I was in Germany or Canada.

So I find it jarring, when I see a mixture of abuse couched in positive language. One minute crowing over a victory. The next minute telling you to seek help for your shitty mindset. Feeling the need to virtually punch others, so you feel better.

Perhaps for you it's brilliant, you made your point. You stood your ground. You vented your anger and now it's all roses. Meantime the rest of us stand in your wake, jarred, fearful. Traumatised.

It's still surprising to me 35 years later that I can still be triggered. But then childhood trauma doesn't leave. It's at that point when I see that behaviour being done to others. To make them fear you, because to you, they don't matter. I'm sad, angry and really traumatised by it.

It's as others have pointed out. There's such a thing a maliciously playing my the rules, exploiting them for your benefit. Performative goodness, while getting away with harming others.

Well done. You objectified them, by making them the enemy. slow clap

It jars me everytime, that I see that sort of thing. Everytime.

Sometimes I wonder just who the angels are and who are the demons.

I am the mother of demons. Doomed to watch a thousand of my progeny die a day. Just because I wouldn't stay with my husband.

We'd been created together by the god and goddess. Then my mother left and things got... worse. So I left my husband and I paid a steep price for it.

Meanwhile father made my brother a new wife. From his rib.

I stayed out of sight for eons, birthing countless demons. Watching them die instantly sometimes. The pain of watching your children die is immeasurable. Seeing your children die, especially when you know they should be immortal is beyond your imagination. I live this immortal life with that pain.

My poor darling ones. If I'd known, I don't know if I would have still paid it. I'm sorry.

Then the angels rebelled. They had had children with the mortals. Adam's brood of forever multiplying humanity. The Nephalim were destroyed, the fallen ones were angry. They sought me out in my home looking for shelter. I gave them Hell, curious to see what Eden was like now.

The first cities rose, the deluge came and went. I had children with mortal men, I produced heroes. Doomed to die, but somehow this was better.

My heroes were monstrous. Beautiful charismatic creatures. Far more beautiful and long lasting than my poor doomed Lillim.

Father noticed, looking as my children led his flock astray. Occasionally he'd send envoys. To offer me a new deal.

I ignored him. I missed mother.

I kept having mortal children, who because they were so charismatic, had immortality of a sort.

As the eons go on, they still do.

You know when you hear the fairy tales of heroes and beautiful princesses who's mother died mysteriously? It's always me. They are always my children. When you hear about a benevolent fairy? Or nature helping the poor princesses, or put upon girls? Always me.

All those wicked stepmothers are innocent. They aren't evil. They always try to stop my beautiful children wrecking havoc upon the world.

They fail, and their stories are corrupted.

Meanwhile my beautiful monsters rule the world. They spoil my father's creation.

Humans are doomed to die, I mourn these children as well.

My mother waits for me in a better place. Perhaps all of my children are with her.

I could leave at any point and join her. But my father is the Demiurge. I won't stop until the end of the world and I will trap my father in this existence.

I'm like my mother.

I learned patience.

#quickfic #writing

Thinking on the nature of being British, well that and vampires.

Back in 2005 on live journal I remember having a bit of a brainwave based on Alan Rickman talking about what the British could teach the world about sex.

He said “Take a large dose of repression, mix it with guilt and add smut to taste.“

So in July 2005 I wrote a post about this.

“It got me thinking about all those Harry or Draco or Severus stories where they are vampires, but something always seemed off, then I realised what it was.

You see when we write vampire stories we have them turning into sexual and sexy predators. This is partly because of the sexual imagery of Bram Stoker's enthralling novel Dracula. Well that and the total pansies that are Anne Rice's vampires, although I did like Interview with the Vampire. But I think everyone writes them as seductive creatures.

However what if we took the idea of a British vampire with all the problems of being a British gentleman in the past. Or even nowadays. How can he seduce his victims when he is repressed, with that bit of guilt about sex. Think about how British romantic comedies work, remember Charles in 4 weddings, think about Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones. “

Then someone else wrote a really good short story about this very awkward type of vampire. Another friend did so also. This led me to think that several people would have different ways to portray the idea of the difficulties an old fashioned British Vampire would have getting a bride and/or victims.

The idea was that not just vampires should be written about, but British monsters in general.

Any fandom or original writing, but they must be British and Repressed.

“See and he can be hot but keeps thwarting himself from getting vampire brides because it isn't proper to make a move on them, so his intended victims keep making matches with other guys. Then he can't do anything about it because he is honorable and shy.”

I'd created a small community for the stories to go on.

I then wrote a short story, it's on old livejournal and I wanted it somewhere else.

===============

The trials of dating

The trouble with being a vampire in the modern world was just how hard it was for a girl to find a man when your sire had just gone and got himself killed. Just how hard was it for a man to know that when the sun is up, to at least use a high factor sun protection cream of say SPF 1000. Or ideally wait until midnight? But Piers had sleepily stumbled out of his crypt at midday and was now a crispy fried sire.

Daisy was finding the dating world a bit hard at the moment. Her last date had gone a bit Pete Wong, was that the term? Her friend Dione kept saying it all of the time. The times and morals had changed. Women seemed to be more forward, wearing fewer clothes and in general exhibiting less class.

Dione had been a handy guide; she had found Daisy just after the vampire came across the remains of her fried paramour. The Werewolf had recognised that Daisy was a vampire and surprisingly had taken Daisy under her wing, well paw so to speak. Dione's boyfriend Mike was an ex werewolf hunter, somehow Dione had convinced him to put aside his silver weapons. The couple seemed to live in domestic bliss, apart from the odd times when Mike would forget Dione's Silver allergy when buying presents. Plus Dione's monthly problem could occasionally cause some fights.

Dione had declared it a girls night, after Mike decided to give her a silver necklace for their anniversary, again. Dione felt he was doing it on purpose at this point. She was going to stay at Daisy's lair for the next few days, so Mike could think about what he'd done. Dione had been snippy the previous evening when she stomped in and declared it was over. When she'd asked if she could stay with Daisy, she'd felt obligated to say yes.

It was becoming a pattern now, Mike and Dione would have a fight, they would make up. Dione would be insufferably smug and loved up. While Daisy really missed Piers. But this time Dione swore that this was it, she needed to be footloose and fancy free.

Daisy didn't think Dione would be alone for long. She wasn't picky in Daisy's opinion.

When she and Piers had courted, he'd visited in the evenings for months. It was surprising her family hadn't insisted on him visiting during the daytime. He'd been awkward and she did her duty, determined to be pleasant to this strange interesting man. But he proposed she said yes, and then he drained her. No church wedding for a creature of the night.

Somehow the modern way of courting seemed lacking to Daisy. Although the night hours suited her condition. Dione was fortunate that she only had the full moon to worry about.

So now they were here, in the smoky nightclub, filled with sweaty bodies. Daisy wouldn't have been happy to snack here, let alone take someone home.

Daisy looked around the nightclub, ghastly place, how could she use her feminine powers of seduction if her suitors couldn’t hear her voice? Dione had also taken Daisy's dress sense in hand, the first time she had emerged from her crypt for a night out, the werewolf had taken one look at Daisy's attire and dragged Daisy back inside. The werewolf quietly remarked on hard it must be to put your makeup and dress when you couldn't see your reflection and made over Daisy.

Daisy still wasn't sure about the new look, the baby blue twin set with the faun linen skirt still seemed wrong. But it was a nice change from heavy velvet. Dione headed back with two Bloody Marys, both for the Werewolf, Daisy wasn't all that thirsty. Yes, her last date still rankled, especially as Dione had pushed her to chat up the darkly attractive man. It had been going so well, they had similar opinions on art and had visited similar areas of Eastern Europe. It was only at the end of the evening when he'd walked her back that it had got a bit ...awkward.

Dione had it easy, at least she could go out in daylight, she was only indisposed with her time of the month once a month. Although she still kept complaining about the time when she synced her menses with the other women in the office and was bad tempered twice a month. Mike had been upset to say the least.

As Daisy scanned the room she noticed her last date in the club. Blast! She wasn't in the mood for the embarrassing awkwardness that meeting him again would cause. It was a shame, he really was sexy. She motioned that she was leaving to Dione. Dione looked puzzled, so Daisy had to indicate her last date. Daisy discreetly left at speed.

Dione caught up with her outside. “Honestly Daisy you could have stayed. Vedran wouldn’t have spotted you.”

“Dione that is the last time I ever take a suggestion for a date from you. I’m never going to find another man. I’m too different, too old, I’m from another century!”

“What about that blond? You seemed to like the look of him.”

Daisy’s eyes widened as she kept on walking, “The twenty year old? Nope not a chance!”

“Look I’m sorry Vedran tried to stake you, but how was I to know he was a vampire hunter. Don’t let a small set back like that put you off! I mean look at me and Mike, we managed to get over our prejudices!”

Daisy hated the way Dione was smug about her man. She stopped and glared at her friend. “Didn’t the fact he was a friend of Mike’s alert you to the fact he might not like vampires?”

===============================

I also had another story idea, from a Male Vampire's perspective and the last Vampire hunter. She's been too successful and the work has dried up.

But I'm stepping away from that idea for now. I already have enough WIP in intial draft. I need to finish the stories I am working on. By finishing I mean get them from my head and onto the page.

#OldWriting #Vampires #RepressionAsATrope #fanfiction

Petra has just ruined her prospects and those of her sisters, as the son of the Mayor of their town has just asked her rather publicaly to leave her alone. In her third season of being out.

Her elder brother is away on his Honeymoon with his wife, and her favourite brother Peter is no longer there either. She wants to learn and do engineering. To build things.

By the town, she was already considered odd. This recent incident has made things worse. She writes to her Uncle, as she is close to him.

Petra's uncle (on her mothers side) agrees to take her own, and persuade her mother that the best thing is for Petra to go with him, to hopefully improve her sister' prospects.

Petra packs her clothes, but also packs the clothes her brother Peter left behind.

She and her uncle decide to have her attend as Peter, who went through the Portal a few years before. The Scholomanse is about to have a new set of students and “Peter” can attend. Petra used to attend in the summer when she was a child. Her uncle used to let her sit in with Peter. She had gone to stay with her Uncle when her brother was starting to look at marriage prospects for him and her eldest sister.

Peter like Petra, were more focused on the pursuit of knowledge than the pursuit of marriage.

Their uncle looked after them both in the summer during the season, but also over some Winters. Peter signed up for the Scholomanse and volunteered to go through the Portal 2 years before.

The Scholomanse teaches Natural Science, as well as advanced engineering and mathmatics. But every 10 years a portal opens, one way. Petra had been asked by her mother to go back to start her seasons. Petra would have preferred to stay, but Peter made her go, to keep their mother happy. Petra's still not sure how she feels about that given the fact that Peter then walked through the Portal.

Cue several years of boredom on the Marriage Mart until the Mayors second son appears in town.

He's awkward, but fascinated by engineering and is giving free lectures in the hopes of raising interest and patronage. He needs to be there as his family want him married well. She hears about the lectures and keeps sneaking in.

He thinks she's missish and when he was giving a general lesson on well being from the East. He snapped as there's been a relentus pursuit of him by the unmarried women. He didn't want to come back, but his family were reassigned and now are ruling this town. Although she was asking him questions about his experiments and his work.

So when she no longer appears and his mother is hounding him about his prospects he suggested Petra. His family point out, she's left and good riddance. Odd girl.

He departs for University again.

5 years later, the young man who ruined Petra's prospects signs up for the Scholomanse.

#petra #writing

Notes for Petra from notebook 20230102 after a dream

A girl wearing glasses keeps getting in the way of a young man giving yoga classes.

He accuses her of following around, she is hurt. She decides to not be around him any more since he feels she is stalking him.

For the first few days he feels relief, but then he wonders where she is.

At first she is at the other local classes and he asks her why she stopped yoga. She just looks at him and walks away.

Then she leaves town and hasn't been in the engineering symposiums, he is disquieted. But then he goes back to his University.

A new student is now in some classes, a rather small man. Women aren't allowed at University in this time.

Then pair is assigned together on an engineering task. The boy is there for the bare minimum of time. Not choosing to spend any extra time, talking about his life or interests.

The boy is related to the professor, who also keeps an eye on them both. While the young man wishes to curry favour with the Professor, the Professor is very private of his time.

The University the young man has chosen to attend is the Scholomanse. But instead of the devil taking a Scholar, some one is chosen every decade to go through a portal to never return.

What is on the other side?

#petra

Dreamnotes and stalking

I had a dream once about a stalker and the internals of the dream were interesting. Like psychic powers and everything the mechanics and rules in this dream verse were amazing.

I developed rules for evading the other person. Down to like rose quartz as a psychic blocker.

Including as to why it started.

Although having been stalked in real life I'm not sure I'll ever put it to paper. Perhaps I'll write it and then just not publish one day.

But perhaps the reason for the dream was trying to rationalise why the stalking happened.

The dream was years ago. The stalking happened a decade before that. It was interesting ré reading my diaries from when the stalking happened. I was 17 at the time, I was frightened and very angry.

Even now over 2 decades later it gives me pause.

I don't think I could publish a story about possession in that way. But perhaps there's a way to rewrite the idea.

What gets me in the dream that I cinematically lit one particular scene, where my character is looking right at her stalker and he can't see her, or detect her with his telepathy because she's wearing a rose quartz necklace.

He's lit in blue light.

And she escapes because the nightclub is the cotton club in Aberdeen in the 90s. With entrances on Union Street and justice Mill lame

The thing is the start of the fleeing was in Edinburgh on the A71. On a bicycle.

But it's definitely one of the reasons why my alt account fights for Privacy.

I'm very privileged to be able to campaign for Privacy under my real name.

I'm also very privileged to live in a different country from my stalker now.

Still that terror and anger at the same time. Sometimes it feels remote. Then it comes, to the surface. Especially when I read my own words at 17. Doubting myself. Wondering if it could have gone a different way.

Truth is, no it would not have.

When I look back at my life, and think about the efforts relatives did to try to find me, it seems a bit unreal. Like from a novel or something.

Or remembering being stalked as a teenager by a man in his 20s. While dealing with other crap from other boys in school who were pissed off I didn't like their friend in that way. (although that boy didn't stalk me, which is a pretty low bar).

It seems like a crazy plot from a drama. But it happened.

Plus so many other folks will have had similar circumstances.

Which makes me a little sad, and very angry.

When I read my diaries from that time, I was sad, angry and very scared.

So progress I guess. 

Although one of the boys who was pissed off with me, did apologise 6 months later, which was nice.

Although by then I'd somehow deleted that out of my head, so at the time of the apology I was very puzzled as to why he felt the need to.

#writing #DreamNotes #WorldBuilding

Covid writings

One thing that I remember from 2020 was a feeling of my person being overwritten as #COVID rewrote my brain & body.

I remember feeling like my brain and body being scrambled and being very very scared that I'd never find myself again.

I'm back mostly and that's thanks to the vaccines helping to kick start my body again.

But I think the physical feeling I remember during that transformation is very much going to be a huge input into my Snow White Chrysalis WIP.

I definitely know there's another part in another WIP where that experience devastating as it was will probably help with writing it.

Especially trying to express the confusion the vicerality of it.

Although weirdly I didn't experience the loss of smell.

#GlassCoffin