Philosophically

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General rules of this journal:

I will not friend anyone back unless they comment on this (or some other) entry with a request.

All fic posts will remain public. All private posts are friendslocked for the time being.

All my fic can be found here.

If I don't get back to any comments or questions in timely fashion, please consider that I'm on GMT time, in addition to being a university student with a full schedule.

I'm all for meeting new friends, so please comment if you want to friend me.

Cheers

Šárka

( Let's cut this right away. No real spoilers within, but... )

Oh, god, I don't even know. Shiny fandom is shiny?

*facepalm*

There is ficcage over here.

Instruction Methodology
Fandom: New Trek
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sulu/Chekov
Kink list: Rimming, felching, lots of swearing.
Warning: Chekov is underage.

So, to distract myself from the Other Stuff I was working through this weekend, I wandered onto the Star Trek XI kink meme.

And... you know how I sometimes say my moral standing is lying down? And I keep trying to prop up my moral standing with the argument; "At least I haven't written X fic!"

Well, I seem to have written genderswitch het fic.

*facepalm*

And Genderswitch was one of those things I Was Never Going To Write!

Let your loss be your lesson.

Girl!Chekov / McCoy, NC-17.

Written for the following prompt: McCoy loves eating pussy. It is his goddamn happy place. He could spend hours down there without getting tired. And obviously, he's good at it. Women have to drag his head away, they're so exhausted.

Fic with this, please. Preferably McCoy/Uhura, though McCoy/girl!Chekov would work as well. Your choice as to whether he comes just from eating his partner out, or if he rises up and fucks them even further into oblivion than they were before.

Warnings: Well, it's Chekov/McCoy. The age difference is kind of hot disturbing. Yes.

Warning: Ongoing discussion of potentially triggery themes, especially for people who find the discussion itself triggery.

Well. Some sections of fandom are kind of not wearing any pants lately. Of course, I understand - it must be hard to put on pants when your head is that far up your ass.

So here's a step by step guide for removing your feet from your esophagus and your cranium from your sphincter, should you need to do so.

( Sárka's helpful and occasionally profanity laden guide to civility on the Internet. Or something like it. )

Warning: This post contains a discussion of mental health issues. May be triggery to some.

ETA: I see I've been linked over at metafandom. If any of you are coming from over there, two things: I wrote another post, here which is less emotional and more matter of fact. And probably contains 200% more swearwords.

Also, if this post engenders any discussion, I reserve the right to use what tools I have at my disposal to keep the discussion as safe and respectful as possible. I also reserve the right to do so at my discretion.

---

I've been reading the most recent Warnings Wank all over the internet for the past few hours and I'm a little shocked.

No, scratch that. I'm a lot shocked. As a matter of fact, I'm appalled.

Here's the thing: I'm lucky, in a sense. If I have sexual triggers, I have yet to come across them, and considering the sheer amount of NC-17 fanfic I read, I'm thinking I won't discover any in the future, unless I develop them from trauma. Which, for obvious reasons, I'm hoping won't happen.

But I do have triggers. They're just not sexual. As a matter of fact, I have a lot of utterly random, bizarre and often chaotic triggers which are hard for me to keep track of, let alone anybody else.

( So where do my triggers come from? )

( So here's what I want to know. )

( And no, I don't expect you to take responsibility for my emotional well-being. )

This is my life we're talking about. You CANNOT say that you are entitled to not issue warnings for your fic and then turn around and say that I am not entitled to feel upset about it.

If you are the sort of writer who places a higher premium on your 'artistic integrity' or your ability to surprise your audience, no matter what effects that surprise might have, then yeah, I guess I can respect your artistic integrity.

But I can't respect your integrity as a human being.

Sorry.

And don't you dare give me the 'slippery slope' argument, because it is impossible to argue first that you shouldn't have to issue any warnings and then go on to argue against what you shouldn't have to warn people about. You have a logical fallacy there, and I'm calling people out on it preemptively.

Thank you. I'll get off the soapbox, now.

---
( Associated links. )

Crossposted to spn_gen

Title: Immaculate Conception and other Improbable Situations.
Genre: Supernatural Fanon Gen - Dean, Sam, OFC, Castiel.
Pairing: None.
Rating: PG-13 for swearing.
Warnings: None, really. Unrepentantly schmoopy at the end.
Spoilers: Assumes knowledge of the end of Season 4.
Word count: 2700 words.
Disclaimer: Written for fun and as an excuse not to do homework. Don't sue me. Just fiction.
Summary: The knock on their motel room door came about four months after the apocalypse. Sammy was trying for the eighth time to get the kettle in the kitchenette they'd sprung for to work – long case and Sammy liked cooking, Dean liked having a fridge to store his beer – so it was Dean who opened the door to the heavily pregnant goth girl.

Author's notes: Thanks to salixbabylon, as ever, for the beta and for everything else. This was totally a brain hiccup, when it was written, but I have some further ideas in this direction.

( Immaculate conception and other improbable situations. )

So I was a little too cynical in my last predictions. I loved both the Portuguese and Maltese songs, but I didn't see them going on to finals, and not in a million years did I anticipate Belarussia not making it.

So I'm trying to be a little less cynical for this semifinal.

ETA: Now that I've watched the performances, I think the Dutch act is definitely going through on the cheese factor, and the Ukrainian act is going through as well. I just don't know which songs off my list they'll unseat, though I'm fairly certain Norway, Greece, Estonia, Cyprus and Lithuania are safe.

Songs I'm absolutely sure will go on.
NORWAY: Catchy song with a folkish beat, sung and played by a cute kid. One of the better songs this year.
GREECE: I want to know how Greece gets away with sending the same song each year. That doesn't change the fact that the main singer is hot and is undoubtedly going to wear some very tight clothes. Of course he'll get through.
ESTONIA: My other favourite song this year - haunting melody with a rythmic beat, and the performer sounds like she'll nail it.

Songs I'm betting on.
DENMARK: Horribly staid and boring song that sounds like it was stolen from the Ronon Keating songbook, but I think it'll probably go over well with some particular crowds. And the pan-Nordic circle jerk might give it a few pity points.
CYPRUS: Cute little girl with a sweet little song. She'll get some granny points, and points from the indie crowd. She can also actually sing.
HUNGARY: Unutterably boring dance pop song, but could get through, like Greece, if the singer is hot and the clothes are tight and the performance works out.
CROATIA: Likely song, folkish and at least well performed in the studio recording.
LITHUANIA: An effeminately handsome guy with a message song.
IRELAND: Seemingly Avril-Lavigne inspired pop song. Will appeal to teenage girls everywhere.
Albania: Utterly forgettable pop song, but could nevertheless go on.

Most likely upsets:
I had an unusually hard time picking the songs this time. There were a lot of songs that were equally horrible/forgettable/blah and I had a hard time trying to suss out what would appeal.
POLAND: For example, has a good song that sounds good in the studio recording. However, considering how the singer's voice quivers on certain notes, I'm worried that she'll sound horrible live. If she nails it, though, she's going through, no question - and if she does, she'll give the Icelandic entry a run for her money.
AZERBAIJAN: Just the same tosh everyone else is serving.
UKRAINE: See: Azerbaijan.
NETHERLANDS: This seems likely to be a glittery cheese-fest, but sometimes that works. (See: Love shine a light, with Katrina and the Waves.)

In the past few years, I've done this for myself, for my own amusement. I figured I'd see if I could have made a fortune at the betting banks :)

Countries that are near-guaranteed to move on to finals.
SWEDEN. Sweden has one of those boggling songs this year that actually worsens with repeat listening. That doesn't change the fact that the first time you hear it, it sounds awesome.
BELARUS: Rocked-up pop-ballad. Will get votes across the board from E-Europe.
BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA: In my honest opinion, one of the best entries this year. Folky-sounding indie pop with violins. Will get votes across the board from the Balkans, particularly as the band is well known.
TURKEY: It's Turkey. 'Nuff said.
MONTENEGRO: Upbeat, harmless pop. Sticks to your brain like superglue after first listening.

Countries that are very likely, in my opinion, to go on.
FINLAND: Catchy techno. Will draw votes from Germany, Benelux countries, the UK and Ireland, plus all of Scandinavia.
ROMANIA: Generic popsong about Balkan girls being party animals.
ICELAND: Can't tell if this is nationalism on my part, or it's because it's one of the very few ballads in this semifinal.
ARMENIA: Rhythmic folk-something. Is the kind of thing that looks good on stage. Definitely one of the more memorable songs this year.
MACEDONIA: Pop/rock that should work well for some.

Possible upsets:
BULGARIA: Replacing Macedonia or Romania, or less likely, Armenia.
MALTA: Replacing Iceland, or less likely, Romania or Armenia.

Now I'm curious to see how I'll do :)

It's been a little hard being an Icelander abroad recently, not just because of the financial problems (though they are annoying) but also because of the required self-image-adjustment when one introduces oneself in polite company.

Icelanders have always been proud - some would even say ostentatious - so suddenly facing the fact that people, upon realizing that you're from Iceland, react to you with a demeanor as if your grandmother had died... well. It takes some getting used to.

( Things which make me proud. )

So, I seem to have a bunch of new people on my friendslist, so I thought I'd write an intro-to-Šárka post :)

( Wherein Šárka is perpetually late, well behaved, suspicious of tall people, very annoyed with certain words in fanfiction, a librarian, a Czech-o-phile and has an accidental boyfriend. )

As for this journal, it has only one rule: I expect you to be respectful. I don't expect you to be nice. I certainly don't expect you to be polite. As mentioned earlier, I have a degree in philosophy; I am quite used to having my opinions and theories torn into tiny little pieces in front of a large audience and I have no issue with it. I would much rather have your unvarnished honesty, as long as you're willing to respect the fact that our opinions may differ. Nobody will ever be thrown out of this journal for being sincere, as long as they're willing to agree to disagree if that's necessary.

Welcome :) I'm looking forward to getting to know the new folks around here!

In conclusion:



Cheers!

( The one where Neville Longbottom is a botanist in Atlantis. )

( The one where Ianto Jones infiltrates the SGC with good coffee. )

( The AU where Jared and Jensen are Erasmus students in Europe. )

And then there's a kind of a meme. Basically, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give me two characters from anything at all and I'll tell you how/why they met and what they talked about when they did. Go ahead, ask for improbable things. I watch a LOT of TV and read a LOT of books.

( Salixbabylon first gave me Percy Weasley and Ianto Jones. )

( And then Salix gave me Ronon Dex and Elizabeth Swann. )

So go on! Challenge me! :D

Note: Edited to delete a few points, which, on reflection, probably need an entry of their own.

So jazzqueen wrote a post. And as her philosophical posts are wont to do, it got me thinking.

Are people seriously generally of the mindset that religion is okay, as long as people, you know, shut up about it? Honestly?

Personally, I'm religious. I am a deeply and fundamentally religious person and my faith makes up a huge part of who I am. I don't talk about it much, because I've never felt the need to share my beliefs with others – I've always felt that organized religion was like being marched in formation to look at a sunset: unlikely to change anything about your appreciation of things and rather detrimental to your sympathy for other people's points of view.

My faith has very little to do with the Bible. I've read great chunks of it (not all of it, but a lot) and some of it has merit and other things don't – to my worldview at least. I believe in Jesus. Well, for me it's not a belief, per se, as his existence is a historically proven fact. Do I believe he ascended up to heaven after rising from death? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm not willing to rule out the possibility.

No, my faith differs from the basic Christian worldview in several key areas. One of the cornerstones of my approach to the world is my faith in science – but I could not hold that faith unless I was willing to take a few things as given without questioning them too much. How do we know that the ground rules we have laid down to approximate the workings of the world will still be valid tomorrow? Honestly: we don't. We simply do not hold an understanding of the world yet that allows us to prove that the world will always work the way it works today. So we take things on faith; that the scientific principle can teach us real things about the world in which we live, that knowledge is an end in itself and that the more things we understand, the better we will be able to orient ourselves in the universe.

But science can't teach us everything. There is no way to fundamentally prove the difference between right and wrong, and science, while it has its own moral code, can't help us in making moral decisions.

This is where religion comes in. Be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Sikhism, Jainism, Sufism, Taoism, Gnosticism, Paganism, Atheism or philosophy, religion is simply a counterpart to science as a method to approach and understand the world. Some people give greater import to science, other people subjugate science to a value-based ideology.

There's nothing wrong with either approach. The fundamental problem is our inability to respect the choices other people make about which approach is more appropriate for them.

And it's certainly easier to subscribe to a belief system wholesale than to attempt to make up your own; I know this personally because there are a few issues where I keep running headfirst into a wall of my own beliefs and morals, and honestly, it would be a lot more simple to go with the flow – to be an atheist and maintain that science and rationality is the only way to go or to be a religious person and abhor the choices that science sometimes forces us to make. I can't blame people for that.

But every single one of us must sometimes come up against something that doesn't feel right; an area our basic codes of operation don't extend to, a place where we have to make a decision based on what we believe is right. Some things we just know.

And anything that helps us to figure out the difference between right and wrong can't be inherently bad, just the same way it can't always be inherently right. Eschewing other people's codes of morality as stupid or wrong, or okay as long as they don't talk about them in public, or to you, or make them an aspect of the public sphere... it goes against the very grain of what most people otherwise profess to believe in: choice, rationality and freedom.

I, Šárka Pince, hereby swear that I've made a pact with salixbabylon not to sign up for SPN/J2 Big Bang 2009.

That is, if salixbabylon keeps her oath. If SHE succumbs to temptation, so do I. (I know she cares more about MY sanity than her own, and I definitely care more about her sanity than mine, so this is an effective double bind, no?)

In addition, I thought I'd just warn anyone who tries to get me to change my mind, that if I end up signing up for Big Bang 2009, I will never finish any of the stuff I'm currently working on - this includes the J3 porn fic, the Jack/Ianto plotty fic and the Dean Winchester/John Sheppard crossover.

Upon penalty of no fanfic for a week, nor pictures, nor video, nor tv...

So salixbabylon and I were talking about how everybody on our f-lists is pretty down lately. Some people have some genuinely messed up things going on, and everybody needs to vent or grieve, of course. I'm not saying "stop it" or anything like that. Do what you need to do.

But - PLEASE - if you're not mired in depression (or if you are, but can get out of it for a few minutes), come play with us.

If you're a writer, write a short little humorous or cracky drabble/ficlet.

If you're an artist, make a LOLcat-style funny graphic.

If you're neither, do something else! Comment and leave some love in people's LJs. Share youtube vids that made you giggle, LOLcatz that made you actually laugh out loud.

Start a postcard drive and send the silliest postcards you can find to everyone on your f-list.

This is my first project - mostly because I need to go to sleep in an honest attempt at beating my natural biorythms right now, so I don't have time to fic or do stuff online. So. Want a funny postcard? Want a postcard from Germany? My comments are screened; leave me your address.

Let's make this an LJ-wide thing.

Contribute new ideas!

Post in your own LJs!

Spread the word. CHEER UP YOUR FRIENDS LIST!!!!!!!!!

I know it's hard right now, but the doom and gloom ain't going to help. So. Who's with me?

In May of 2006, me and four of my colleagues did a 30 page research project. Its title and research question were the same; "Is Iceland heading towards a currency crisis?"

Our research methods were simplistic and our findings accordingly vague. Our conclusions were cautious, and mostly built around our tentative methods. However, we all did a lot of reading and research for the project, and our unofficial conclusion, the one we couldn't write about because we had no evidence to support it, was that it wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. We did get this across when we presented the project, and the teachers thought we were being overly grim.

I just dug up this project and read it again. The methodology is still simplistic but on occasion the damn thing sounds almost prescient.

Praemonitus praemunitus.

There seems to be a lot of surprise at home, a lot of "How could this happen?"

I've been waiting for this for two years now. I was starting to think I'd been wrong.

Here's a fact, for those who have no background in economics; spending money you don't have is unwise. It is also the crux of the problem.

O tempora o mores!

Sometimes, when I explain how my parents built their first house, people tell me that their method of financing it was mad. What they did was build as much as they could, with the money that they had. Then they used what they had as a security, to take out a loan. Which meant they had more money, so they could improve the house, which heightened its financial value. Which meant that the value of the house could support a security for a higher loan. Which meant they could borrow more money to improve the house again...

This is, more or less, how the Icelandic banks could afford to expand in all directions. This is how we bought Magasin du Nord, Hamleys, and half of the London High Street.

Except here's the kicker; those Icelandic companies and banks were expected to be Icelandic companies and banks.

Pacta sunt servanda.

It means that just by virtue of having their headquarters in Iceland, it those financial institutions used the brand name Iceland as backing. It's like expecting your parents to support you when you buy your first apartment: of course they will, the question is, are they living in a villa in the richest part of town, or in an apartment in a high-rise in the slums?

And make no mistake; there's only three hundred thousand of us; our parents are the ones in the apartments in the high-rise in the slums.

The banks somehow managed to become eight times the size of the Icelandic economy. How the hell is the Icelandic economy expected to back that? And what's more important; why on earth didn't anybody ask the right questions? Such as, "is this wise?"

Because it wasn't. Oh, it wasn't. And not only did the banks create a bloated financial economy eight times the size of the economy of the country, oh no. They amassed debt that somehow became 700% of the Icelandic Gross Domestic Product.

This was beginning to happen in 2006.

Pecunia non olet.

So what really did happen? Well, basically, the Icelandic banks, having bought stuff with borrowed money they essentially did not own, ran into a bit of a pickle when it came time to pay some money back.

See, a loan isn't the same thing as a loan. Long term loans aren't much to be worried about. You can almost always get another one. Short term loans, however, are more or less equivalent to owing the mob money. It's not easy to get a long term loan to pay a short term loan (you were stupid enough to borrow money from the mob? I'm not coming near you with a five feet pole!) and once your deadline to pay off a short term loan is up, well, the thumbscrews go on.

I'm not saying things haven't been done wrong in the past two weeks. Some drastic, epic mistakes have been made.

I'm just saying, the writing was on the wall. And we ignored it. We did. Don't tell me we didn't, I've been paying attention. We did.

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.

But it wasn't enough for the Icelandic banks just to use our money to finance their loan-asset-loan-asset-loan-asset purchase game. Oh no. They realized there was a great big world out there, and plenty of people wanted to make their money work for them. So they started banks wherever they could get a foot in the door, offering rates that honestly? Should have been questioned, but when somebody says something is 100% safe, well, it's finance. Us neophytes tend to trust the voices of experience.

And then suddenly the mob turns up on the doorstep, thumbscrews in hand, and the banks come running back to mommy with their tail between their legs, asking for a little pocket money. Except oops, the banks are 10 times bigger than the Icelandic economy, what the hell are we supposed to do?

And now we're faced with a situation where our errant banks haven't just been squandering our money, but other people's money too. And I don't know about you, but in my honest opinion, that is just not on. Because spending other people's money is really not all that far away from stealing, and the banks have been doing it in my name.

Of course it's damn fucking frustrating that the UK is asking for its money back, but guess what? I'd rather spend the rest of my life eating dried fish and working in a factory, paying off that debt, rather than let some high-falutin idiots with delusions of grandeur besmirch my name stealing from people like me in a country not my own. Seriously.

There's not a lot of money to go around at the moment. The UK has promised to help out savers who left their money in our care, even if they have plenty of problems of their own. I happen to think that's damn decent of them.

I'm not saying we only have ourselves to blame. I'm saying that the difference between Mrs. Jones in the UK who put her entire life savings into an account with Icesave and now can't access it, and Guðrún next door over who lost all her savings in the infamous Fund 9 are slim to none, and just because there's more of them than there are of us, we shouldn't be making the distinction. We should care just as much about Mrs. Jones as we do about Guðrún. And I know it's harder, but it's the right thing to do.

And okay, maybe I AM saying we have ourselves to blame, a little. We weren't paying attention. This is actually endemic of Icelandic society: We don't care much, as long as we're fed and watered. If we'd have cared, questions would have been asked long before now. If we'd have cared, we would probably have more qualified people dealing with this crisis.

Yes, I mean that. This didn't just magically happen because of the global credit crunch. The thing about borrowing from the mob is that they're going to turn up with the thumbscrews eventually. Maybe it wouldn't have happened today if the global economic realities were easier, but then it would just have happened a year from now. It was going to happen.

Let me repeat that one more time; this was inevitable.

Okay. I feel better, getting that off my chest.

Now for god's sake, someone please stage a coup d'état over there.

I know, I know, three posts in two days, the world must be ending, right? Well, of course, considering that this is a Supernatural-post...

( Supernatural 4.01 )

Happy birthday sarahblack!

And since you gave me a prompt, back when I was asking, have a ficlet:

Title: Divertimento
Fandom, pairing, etc. Dr. Who, Doctor/Rose
Rating: R for steamy kisses.

( Ficlet this way :) )

God, I should not be doing this now but I need to unwind my brain down to a point where I can actually use it.

(The problem with writing this journal the way I've done for the past few months/years is that I always feel like I'm whining, and I never properly write about the good things or the interesting things that go on in my life. I use this journal almost like a steam vent - I only post when the pressure is otherwise overwhelming and I have no other outlet for the frustration. The problem with that is that you end up with a very skewed picture of my life, and I end up with a very skewed record of it. Which is frustrating and means that I get reluctant to post even those steam-venting posts that are so important to me, which means that when I DO post, they're out of context. This? Is completely out of context with anything, and hopefully later I'll have time to explain where it comes from.)

Imagine breaking a bone. Something important - a hip or a pelvis or even your spine. Something that takes months to heal.

And it hurts. It hurts a lot. Every day. And because it's something important, it means that everything becomes harder. You can't put any weight on the injury, which means there's a lot of things you simply can't do, and you have to work around it for other things. You end up sitting differently and walking differently and even lying differently because you're trying to keep the weight off your broken bone, but that means you're using your body in a completely different way than you're used to, and it fucks up your back and your neck and things that have relatively little bearing on your actual injury start hurting too, because you're favouring your uninjured side.

And maybe you have a cast and you end up wearing different clothes around the cast, and maybe you didn't have all that extensive a wardrobe to begin with, so you need to do laundry more often, too, and you have problems with even basic things like personal hygiene and going to the bathroom, so you need assistance and that's kind of humiliating.

And since there are things you just can't do and other things that become harder, it changes your perspective and it changes your priorities and you end up letting certain things slide because they're not that important and after all, it's harder to do them now, so why the stress? You're injured, you cut yourself some slack.

And in a few months, you have an injury that's mostly healed, but you've been favouring your unharmed side for a while now, and you need months of physical therapy, too, to be able to do all the things that you used to do. And the physical therapy is hard work, and it hurts, too, and it's frustrating when something that is intrinsically yours won't answer your commands anymore the way it used to. And maybe you think, you know, what's the point of getting back to peak physical health, you've been managing and besides, what's the rush, things will happen in their own time. And maybe you were never a model of health to begin with, so you should just get up to your own standard, right?

And then of course, that bone you broke, it changes things - if you broke your hip, in a few years you may need a joint replacement, anyway, and you know that and that makes things more difficult, because if it's never going to work the way it used to, what's the point? And perhaps now you have a slight limp, and staircases are harder, and it doesn't change your body, it changes the way you view yourself and the ideas you have of who you are and what you can do. And some of those are maybe true - you couldn't run a marathon anymore, but maybe you never could in the first place so that's not so enormous a loss - but others are maybe unfounded - staircases are harder for you now, so you can't climb the 297 steps up to the tower of St. Stephen's cathedral in Vienna, which you would have back before you injured yourself - but you forget to realize that it would have been hard for you back then, too, and you still would have done it without a second thought, so why the difference?

Then try to imagine being acutely ashamed of your injury. You don't go to the hospital because that? That was just a scratch! And of course it hurts, but that's just natural, isn't it? It's supposed to hurt, it'll be okay in a bit. And you hobble up staircases by holding on to the handrail real tight, and you try to pretend there's nothing wrong with you, try to stand up straight and ignore the fact that every time you put weight on your injury, you're in agony. You refuse any and all help because there is nothing wrong with you damnit and you're furious at your stupid body for not just getting over it.

And maybe a couple of years later you realize that that was a really stupid decision you made there, and you go to a doctor and they need to re-break you to put you back together again properly, so you have to go through the whole hog all over again.

And even when you've done all or most of the work, and you're mostly healed and you can mostly stand up straight and things are sort of back to normal, as much as they can be, sometimes after a long day you get twinges or you turn yourself sort of wrong and everything is that little bit more fragile, but it's supposed to be healed, damnit, so why does it still hurt? And you've hurt so much and done so much work and it's been so much effort and you're not willing to admit that despite all that, your limitations are now different and you have to be realistic and fair to yourself and your perceptions end up skewed all to hell because you keep telling yourself that you're supposed to be able to do this and that, because after all you're healed now, but when you try it's hard and you're not willing to admit that maybe it's supposed to be hard in the first place and even if it's a little bit harder now than it used to be, that doesn't mean it's impossible, and that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.

And you keep cutting yourself more and more slack, and you keep hating yourself for it because yes you were injured way back but you're supposed to be better and you're not supposed to need any help or assistance, and things are not supposed to still be hard, and you completely forget that because you were injured, maybe you just haven't done something in a while and it takes a bit of effort to get used to it again, and that since you were injured, you've mostly stuck to the things that were easy, so hard has become a bit of a foreign concept besides, and what you really, really need is an attitude adjustment, because just because something is hard it doesn't mean you can't, just like back before you hurt yourself.

And that's depression, except in your head. So nobody can see it from the outside, and you end up having to continually explain and justify yourself to the outside world. And sometimes, when you do that, you simply run out of explanations, because after all, the reason is that you've been sick and you're still healing, but you're not always willing to admit that, not to yourself, even.

To sum up:

Dear self,

MA studies are not supposed to be easy. You dunce. The fact that it is hard is okay. That is the way it is supposed to be.

With love,
Me.

Okay folks.

There has just been a friends cut. If you are reading this in the first place, chances are that you have nothing to worry about.

My deletion criteria was basically to delete journals that haven't made a post in over a year, plus people I must confess I simply had no idea who were. Some of those were probably reading journals - if anybody was seriously enjoying my sporadic locked posts about Real Life issues, now is the time to speak up - I'll friend again, I promise.

If anybody was just reading the fic, I still maintain an open-fic-posting-policy, which means that you haven't lost anything by not being on my friendslist.

Also, I'm declaring this de-friending amnesty week.

I've kept this journal for around six years now, and some of the folks on my friendslist have been there from the beginning. I've always been a sporadic commenter, and lately I've also been a sporadic poster.

In addition, when I started this journal, I was a OBHWF shipper, mostly-PG13 writer, one-fandom-fangirl, frequent-meme-poster, canon thumper and easily squicked.

And while there's still a soft spot in my heart for HP and OBHWF, I've moved on - to being a slasher, a writer of all ratings, a multifandom-fangirl with a deep and abiding love for crossovers and rare pairs, and a decided predilection for kink.

In short: I've moved on.

And if any of those on my friendslist feel that we have nothing in common anymore, and maybe we should just admit to it, now's the time to defriend - no hard feelings, I promise!

Of course, after six years (SIX YEARS, JESUS) I'm guessing that most of you are sticking around for a reason, that reason probably being that after six years one tends to know a person pretty well. So if you're staying, I promise to try to post more - this is all a part of my great master plan to start writing more :)