When I write, I tend to have two tried-and-tested methods. Or three, if you count blogging. But it's how I deal with emotions; whether about my life or purely fandom feels or I just have a line of dialogue or a sense of a scene, a turning point of a relationship...

Mostly I just plain old write from life. AUs of my life. That suits me well, because my biggest challenge as a writer is producing dialogue in character. I KNOW when other people do it wrong, I am totally sensitive to it, but I can't manage to do better myself.

So I write what I know.  I get to be my protagonist, and depending on what I need - antagonist/ love interest/foil/ whatever, I just use you-know-who. Maybe I don't write him realistically always,  after all, I need him to fit all the bizarre and fucked up universes I create, but I always find it easy to write words for him and imagine them in his tone of voice for realism.

So that's the first method. The other set of characters I use, who have dialogue that flows for me is Ellie/ Homer from TWTWB. But the more I consider it, the more I find it's because they are the same damn personality/ characters as you-know-who and I. The dynamic is so similar. And I'm not sure which way the influence goes. Do I write Ellie based on me or me based on her? Is the differences between fictional and real you-know-who the bits based on Homer Yannos? It's odd.

Homer and Ellie were one of my first ships.  He's just a badass, the only real match for Ellie.  And even if she never fully realised it or accepted it herself, she loved him a fuck ton. This passage is one I love, and I just got up to this point when I started this post so here, have it.

"Homer rose up out of the ruck.  It was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen.  He had blood all over his face and his hair was red with it.  But he towered above them. All he needed was a torch in his hand to be the Statue of Liberty. He threw two more guys off,  one in each direction: just threw them like they were stuffed toys. A man came at him and Homer head-butted him with a dull thunk, like a breaking watermelon. He headed for the door again, kicking people clear with every step.  I fought desperately to get rid of the guys holding me but I wasn't as strong as Homer,  and they gripped my wrists so hard their hands felt like steel bands. A bloke jumped on Homer's back and tried to ride him down to the ground. He managed to get his hands around Homer's throat to pull his head back. With his huge paws Homer started ripping the hands off his throat, but in doing that he tipped backwards, and two young blokes realised they had a good chance at last. They dove in simultaneously at his stomach and down he went again. This time he didn't come up.
I saw a couple of boots go in and some fists fly, but the next time I even had a glimpse of him was five minutes later when they started standing up and counting their own bruises. First I could see Homer's legs, and then one arm. Inside I was feeling hysterical but no way was I going to give them  the satisfaction of knowing that. I had no idea if he was alive or dead.
When I did see his face I realised at the same time that he had been neatly trussed up; his arms and legs tied behind him, like a sheep in the back of a ute. But I wasn't very interested in that. All I wanted was to see his eyes, for any sign of life.  But his eyes were closed and his head had rolled to one side.
I mightn't ever know a more terrible feeling than the one I had then. I felt a bomb had gone off inside me. It was like my heart had been ripped in half in the middle of my chest. I seriously thought I was having a heart attack.  I couldn't get my breath, and the pain only seemed to grow all the time. The only way I could get relief was to see Homer's eyes open. I was dimly aware of Gavin on the other side of Homer, being held by two men,  and across to my left Fi was also held by someone. But I had no real interest in them, just a terrible all-consuming desire to throw myself onto Homer's blood-covered body  and breathe life back into him."

If I wasn't on my phone (yes I just typed that all out on my phone), I would place the "That's love, bitch" gif here.

I so wish they ended up together but what I like is that Ellie's story never gets wrapped up in an epilogue like Katniss's in Hunger Games, or all the endgame ships in Harry Potter. The end of the Tomorrow series is her saying about Homer something like 'I think I like him a little too much, but we'll have to work out what the next stage of our relationship will be' and saying that she thought her and Lee (her on/off boyfriend/lover were over. But then at the end of the Ellie Chronicles, Ellie realised she was still in love with Lee, though Homer was now very much in love with her.

It's realistic that things change, and a happily ever after isn't guaranteed and I like to think that in different circumstances they could have been happy and very compatible together. Like Tony and Kate in NCIS.

Oh my god, I really was thinking about Ellie and Homer only just then, but I can't believe I compared them to Tony and Kate, yet another fictional couple that you-know-who and I had been compared to.

I guess it's a popular dynamic and unfortunately the dynamic I am attracted to in real life is also the one I like in fiction, therefore the crossover... too bad it's never an endgame though. At least I wasn't shot in the head by a sniper.

In other news relating to my actual life, and not just musing about relationships that I don't have, I spent my morning (as I have no computer now) cleaning the flat and my room. It took all morning but I watched Planet of the Apes while I did most of it so I enjoyed myself and now, I give thanks to God and also Jesus that it sparked Jen and Julia into making a cleaning roster. We all have one week that we are responsible for everything and my week consists of only today because it's Saturday of Week 6 and I did everything except the oven and the insides of cupboards. I like living in a clean flat though, it's just nicer all around.

Then Simon and I went out shoe shopping and he hates clothes shopping so he asked me to join. I got a new pair of boots that I think will be waterproof (please God) and we got tickets for a gig/show tonight which will be fun hopefully? I mean I'm not really a live music person but Lucy 2.0 means I do things that could be fun and make me look cultured.

Getting philosophical

I feel like I am a little kid who's fallen over and just burst into tears because of the shock and indignity of feeling hurt for the first time.

My heart just hurts.

I deal with sad things. Today I found out that about 6 grand I was expecting (and counting on, to be honest) is in fact not happening. And that sucks, but I know how to be pragmatic about it.

But I'm such a child about fairness. I think teenagers are particularly prone to these types of tantrums, because they are transitioning from childhood where fairness does (for the most part) exist. Then teenagers realise how shitty the world is and that's why depression and anxiety and anger are so prominent in that age bracket, because they realise that things are not fair and it's pretty hopeless but are too idealistic to just accept it.

They rage and burn and cry and eventually the world makes us all pragmatists and cynics and that's the cycle of fair.

I thought I'd outgrown it mostly. I thought now I was ok with the fact that some people just start life with more opportunities, or get lucky with friends or parents or talents or money and I had accepted what I had, and was grateful for it. I'd stopped being anxious that other people might be using their time more gracefully, that their lives were fully, that I was wasting the one thing, one thing, I'd be given-- life. I panicked, that it had to be the best. If I ever lost, I was wasting opportunity. Any thing that goes wrong takes away from my life, from my perfect score, my perfect opportunity.

I don't know if other people think about it like that. I want to do everything, have every opportunity. It's like, people might say, pfft 'life is short'? It's the longest thing there is.' but that is bullshit. Just because each person only gets one, doesn't mean it's enough time to do everything offered. I want to see every place, explore every town, meet every person, visit every church and castle, live a year in every country there is, have one true love-- but also experience every kind of relationship, sleep with many different types of people, have many different loves. I want to experience life as thin, I want to explore it as hot, I want to fall deep into a passionate love affair and I want to be Prime Minister and a pop star and I want to be a musician and paint in Venice and learn guitar and never ever do I want to feel fear or terror or hatred or grief and any time I feel one of those things or don't get to go along a branch in the tree diagram of life, I feel like I am missing out, that I am doing something wrong.

Jesus, how could I have missed it? It's entitlement. The curse of the 20 year olds. No one could be more self absorbed than us. It's always all about us, and our needs and wants, and being an upper middle class white girl with a much greater than average IQ and ego, I have enough privilege that my life expectations soar. I never decided I didn't want to be an astronaut because I didn't think I could do it, I just decided I didn't want to risk my life by blowing up. I still don't know what I can't do, if I put my mind to it. I could be Prime Minister. I'll have to work at it, and there are addendums to what I'd need to do, but I don't think I couldn't succeed.

That's what growing up in a family where we are told anything is possible and you never run into a roadblock bad enough to shake the belief. Like, even with feminist and discrimination against women and earning 77c, that pisses me off but I don't think it affects me. I'm in the top few percentiles, whatever I end up doing, I expect to end up on the top end of the bell curve.

Maybe I just hit my first roadblock.

I suppose I am protective of my friends lives the same way I am towards my own. If something terrible happens to them, I am crushed with the same sense of helplessness that their life in irrevocably damaged and that makes me bitter.

One day I hope to become wiser about these things, and gain a sense of peace about things not going 'right'. Like, taoism-- the idea is that there is no right way. Things happen and the world just adjusts to that, it's not wrong, it's just reality.

For now though, I am still reeling and angry and scared even, that now that it has happened to someone else, what is to stop it from happening to me? What's going to tear my life to shreds, now that I know there is nothing to stop it. Tragedy can't be stopped or anticipated.

Tomorrow I could be diagnosed with cancer. Tomorrow my Dad could have a heart attack and I leave my exchange for his funeral. Tomorrow I could be in a natural disaster and lose everything I own. Tomorrow a friend could be in a bank that gets robbed at gunpoint and shot dead. Tomorrow I could be in a terrorist attack and die. Tomorrow I could be raped and have to deal with flashbacks, nightmares and depression for the rest of my life. I could be murdered, the world could end, I could fall and break a bone. I could get brain damaged, my soul mate may die in a freak accident. War may break out and I spend the rest of my life in a war zone. I could slip in the shower, breaking my back and leaving me a quadriplegic.

It's scary and no way to live, anticipating those things. But I can't stop feeling that way, not yet. I just haven't found a way to feel safe in a world full of tragedy that I am not separated from.

I understand why people believe in God and an afterlife, that suffering be rewarded and justice dealt out, that tragedy always has meaning. To me, if there is an eternal afterlife, how does this life matter? But if it doesn't (and I believe that), then this life is all that matters.

Though for the sake of honesty, I am willing to be wrong because while there are consequences to denying a God if it exists, there isn't for being a believer and being wrong at least not beyond hypocrisy. So purely in a sense of pragmatism, I say a prayer now and then.

A gift from me to you

I just added a whole lot of music to my iTunes so obviously I have to share the best here. I've been feeling very upset the last few days after being told something which splintered my entire optimistic view of life and people. I mean, I complain about society and the horrors that feminism sets itself against but it was theoretical for the most part. Statistics were just statistics and it wasn't real to me. I thought it was but I was wrong.
After a lot of tears and serious conversations I've come through an intense reevaluation of my 'reality'. I'm no longer declaring that people are just shit and terrible and evil, I don't really believe that, because my default will always be to believe the best in people, however this event (which, calm down guys, did not happen to me), has represented a serious loss of innocence for my world view and I am dealing with it, amongst other things, through music.

You guys are fucking welcome.

Things are still sweet here.

It's so hard to blog when I'm content. Blogging is for moods of anxiety, anger, sadness and exhilaration, whereas I'm just riding a high of general excitement and pleasure for being overseas and the possibilities in every day and the anxieties, while present, are very low and not of the kind that blogging is fun for.

But I want to record things, I want to have something amazing to look back on that I wrote while I was here. Because I send so many postcards and letters home, in a way, it's like I'm blogging multiple times a week, only I don't get to keep the posts, which defies the point. I am loving recieving letters and postcards. Nothing makes my heart swell more than reading a postcard from a friend or family member and seeing 'miss you, lots of love, ___ xx'. Especially since one of my best friends can barely write but still managed a full page of text written over a week to send to me, getting her boyfriend, parents and brother to add messages as well. I still get warm and fuzzy thinking about it.

Some people like in person conversation, but to me, what people put into words, letters, texts, speeches, stories, that tells me just as much about a person and what they say about me, means heaps. Like, every 'love you' and 'miss you' gets stored up in my heart, and the best thing is I have a wall building up that's just going to be covered with postcards so I always can reread them and be sure. Like, my best friend Mia gave me a set of letters that she wrote the night I left for me to open at different points, like on the plane, when I miss her, when I'm uninspired, when I feel unattractive, when I miss Australia, when it's 3am and I need to finish an assignment, when she's not online and I need her, in case of panic attack... and every one (I've opened 3 so far) is just so sweet (if 'suck it up, what do you expect me to do from the other side of the world?' can be sweet), and I just cherish them. Mia is a gem.

I always get most insecure about her, like rationally I know she loves me and I'm her bffl and being over here doesn't change anything, but I miss her and if we don't talk, I'm like 'oh my god, she's forgotten me, she's ignoring me, she doesn't care about me'. It's crazy. Megan I just know we are cool, because she lets me express it. Like, Mia is 'no chick flick moments' but Megan would let me be like 'I love you so much I want to die, never ever leave me, you mean more to me than my family, I want to talk every day and I would hug you forever' and when I was done, would say 'I love you too.'

I had the laziest weekend here, we were GOING to do things but instead I finished my mega-marathon of 6 seasons of Castle in 2 weeks. Jen and I hosted an amazing dinner in our flat, and tonight I made crepes with banana and nutella and gave them to my flatmates and we have made two batches of chocolate crackles which we take upstairs with us when we go to the other friends' flat for parties/ predrinks. Last night we were going to go out to karaoke (just for the funsies) but ended up just going to the co op and buying 2L bottles of cider each and drinking those at home while playing Cards Verses Humanity (I won!!). We started to make it into a drinking game but for the most part, people just drank because they wanted to.

We've all been chatting to people on Tinder, Jen now practically has a boyfriend here because of it, and I need to step up my game but sometimes I just can't be fucked chatting to people and trying to flirt. Especially with girls, I get nervous and don't want to. But at the same time, I really need a date. Though we have a really great Valentines planned, we are going to have such a fun time :) We have our playlist planned, both Olivia and I are having friends over from home, we're going to go out, have awesome food and I am excited :)

I do so little uni work, I'm terrible but also I don't care, I'm in the UK.

One of the weird, nice things when you make a new close friend, is that you start picking up some of their quirks. I think it's especially magnified because I don't have much exposure to old friends, and since my environment is new and all my personality is in flux because of that, it's doubly effective.

One of the things I have noticed is Jen, she has this one expression when she's like 'nah, uh uh, nope,' and now I make the same expression, I'm such a mimic.

Everything here is good. I lucked out because with Jen here, I feel like I've always got a bff, which means I'm comfortable in pretty much any other situation I get put in. As long as I have one person to look to, I don't ever feel lonely. I realise now that without her, I'd probably be feeling a lot more isolated here, because while making friends that you can go out with or spend time in a group with is great, and for sure there is great possibility for development there, without someone who genuinely cares about you day to day, who would notice if things aren't right, you can feel very, very alone. I mean, life is by default isolating. Quote: "We are all so curiously alone, but it's important to keep making signals through the glass." I found that to be such strong imagery, and it's certainly an idea which has caused me anxiety over the years, that it's never really possible to achieve true intimacy or communication. I'm also doing a subject called Communication and Social Groups right now, so as always, I am relating my life to my Uni. It's amazing how terrible people are at sharing and processing information.

My classes are good though, 5 hours a week, holla. I spent last weekend in Bath with Chelsea and did the tourist thing, this weekend I am going to London to see T-Swizzle. Very exciting. Who knows what I am doing the weekend after :) It's nice that things are always happening, but I still have a lot of time to hang out by myself. In the last week and a half, I've watched 3 seasons of Castle. I still retain some of my old ways!

But I've taken up painting majorly. It's like all I do. I spent half of today doing this one in honour of tomorrows concert

Yesterday I was in a Game of Thrones mood so I did Dany. I've really been embracing my sapphic side, every single painting I've done has been of pretty girls. So boobs were a natural next progression.

I just get this massive thrill that I feel like I'm improving with every painting I attempt. I've now got a set of acrylics and watercolours and I've been experimenting with both and I'm just having a lot of fun, and I feel like I actually have talent. I'm doing something that would impress me if someone else did it. Very exhilarating. I like that I finally have a medium to express fandom now. Since I lost confience in my writing ability (and motivation for it), I feel like it's been hard for me to feel like I was contributing. Now, I have a way.

Especially if I stopped drawing girls only and start drawing Destiel. That may happen eventually, and I'm certainly pushing the envelope with each painting I do, but I don't feel ready yet to graduate to drawing guys, cos they don't have long hair which makes them easy to identify. I attempted to paint a photo of my best friends and I, purely faces, but after 10 hours, I got frustrated with a failed attempt at cheekbones and have given it up for now. I actually prefer the full body figures, with faces that are slightly modified from generic but not all out. Like, I think Dany and T-Swizzle look different in facial features but no way could you recognise each of them just by their face. The one of my best friends and I, you can tell just by looking which one I am, and they are, and I got a real sense of being able to see them in the lines I was painting, but it's been put on hold for now because its hard as fuck.