-the local bard-

Updates, and I'm 95% sure they're connected to Loki

crossoverqueen — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 07:21:28 GMT

What's up, it's been a long year and very few notable things happened until this weekend, when I bought a Loki statue at a magic festival and regretted it the very next day.

That fucker is currently wrapped up in a Mjollnir joint/burrito thing until 1) my mom is back from the Philippines, and 2) I've had some decent work-days, so next Monday at the latest. So that calmed things down, and the... rest of Loki, I guess... is calming down, since I assured him that I'm not keeping it there permanently and I'll still feed him while the statue's in there, I just need to keep him from fucking around with shit.

The current story is on my Tumblr blog here : https://www.tumblr.com/norcalbruja/763752328898756608/hewasaseidrbxy-why-is-it-not-surprising-that-his?source=share

Updates! And good ones!

crossoverqueen — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 18:33:11 GMT

Copied from my Tumblr because I am constantly forgetting about this poor website. I didn't want to just link you to my tumblr and forget about this for the next six months again, lol.

Followers may know my constant issues with trying to get folks to read my prose writing, but I am also a struggling SCRIPT WRITER!

So recently, I sent a theater script prologue and my concept art to one of my theater friends.

1) He loves it, especially the concept art! My constant problem of getting distracted with character sketches, costume design, and “IF THE OFFICIAL POSTER LOOKS LIKE THIS, IT WOULD BE SICK!” has worked out in my favor!

2) There are a LOT of characters if we want to do live theater. He counted a bit over forty names in the prologue alone, lol. I may need to turn this into an episodic/TV format instead, especially since I love pulling out the trope of “seemingly minor character IS NOT MINOR AFTER ALL, BITCHES!!!” and I was planning on rolling in a side-character from the prologue.

3) While I am rushing to finally finish a script that barely got touched in two years, there is now a second gay couple (a Mexican/Mayan weather mage and the Filipino North Wind). I want to balance this out with gay women of color, but since this is a superhero/gangster deconstruction piece, it’s VERY male-heavy. I may just have to make companion-pieces or, if this actually takes off, let the fanfic authors handle it.

4) He loved the mythology because this is heavily on the magical end of superhero stories. I was hoping he would, because we’re both Filipino and I’m pulling in Tagalog mythology, but I’m just so happy that being a mythology/folklore nerd has finally paid off.

Extremely late updates! Mostly fine, just looking for jobs.

crossoverqueen — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 05:45:31 GMT

Apparently I've been gone long enough for Livejournal to worry about my contact info being out of date, so uh... nothing major has happened yet, don't worry.

Just back on the job-search since August/September when my old job fired me, but I've had two interviews and the other one is coming up next week. Really hope I can start the new year with a new income source for my bank account.

Also I have started transferring two of my novel drafts to Wattpad, so please check out either Moonflowers or The Crocodile God in their shiny new home! I haven't deleted their drafts on Inkitt or Inkshares, but I left notes on their summaries that point new readers to Wattpad's links.

Updates:

crossoverqueen — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 23:08:00 GMT

All right, non-spiritual updates are pretty basic: I’m about to start a papermaking project, but being a lazy art student who knows too much about paper, I’m making things more fancy than they have to. I’m gonna make sure it’s acid-free and properly sized to avoid ink/paint bleeding.

My hurdy gurdy project is also delayed, since no less than three pieces broke and now I have to wait a week for the replacement parts (most likely longer, thanks to the pandemic backlog).

Spiritual updates will be posted on the_bears_wife.

Overdue project progress!

crossoverqueen — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 19:15:50 GMT

Before I document more of my spirit-world drama, I had a hurdy-gurdy project from way back when the pandemic started, so here’s my progress from earlier this week.

Got unpleasantly reminded that I also need to BUILD THE HAMMER TO CONTINUE PROGRESS, lol.

—

-

And here’s my progress after two hours!

Not pictured: me frantically sanding down corners for about twenty minutes with some larger pieces of sandpaper that I have in the tool drawer, and constantly begging the pieces to JUST FIT ALREADY, because the tiny square of sandpaper they give you to smooth out edges is NOT enough if something is just a hair’s width too wide.

Expected one kind of bad news, got a DIFFERENT type of bad news! (Part 2)

crossoverqueen — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 06:56:57 GMT

This is copied from Tumblr as well, but it's fresh and hot off the press from today, October 6!

---
All right, so my attempted break from the spirit-world is going about as well as I thought because like, the spirits just refuse to stop talking.

–
The reading I got says that the anito have deserted me (which is why I’m having spiritual “ulcers” from stress), and yet this whole situation started with someone calling himself Haik, the Tagalog sea-god. He’s mostly been telling me sea-stories and getting extremely close to me, but I was told in the reading that the anito do NOT interact with people in such human manners? So who would he be, and why do he and other spirits hang out so much with me and assume the anito’s names? They are certainly Tagalog, since they speak it way better than me :( .

Other tricksters have a weird relationship with whoever is calling himself Haik. They keep laughing at him when they see him, and warning him that I might be “crazy” and a barely-trained spirit-worker, but I am also smart and that gives me a lot of “trickster-like” qualities myself.

Like, the tricksters constantly tell him that he and I are too much alike, and they’re waiting to see what happens with us.

I do not like being an introverted “cousin to tricksters” or whatever I am :/. This would be so much easier if I could just get a warning from the spirits ABOUT tricksters.

Behind the cut for length, spiritual weirdness, and finicky consent musings.

The anito are supposed to be detached from humans, and so writing heavily spiritual stuff like The Crocodile God where Haik marries a mortal woman and generally cares about people’s wellbeing is actually not a good thing, because it’s treating the anito as too human.

Which is a problem for me, because as my dear readers probably know from my constant bitching about lack of support, A LOT OF MY RECENT WRITING IS FUCKING SPIRITUAL. AND A LOT OF IT DEALS WITH THE ANITO, TOO.

As for “who the fuck is calling himself Haik, hanging out with me, and telling me tall tales?“ that’s even more confusing than when I started.

As mentioned above, literally none of the other tricksters seem to view him as a THREAT to me. They’re just waiting for either him to finally come clean or for me to finally find out who he is, so… I don’t know why he’s just hanging out and having misadventures.

Spirit musings are behind the “Read More” cut for some heavy relationship issues. Also, the spirits are constantly calling me and the Filipino Water Spirit both “idiots” and “stupid” for like… this whole mess. I am also called “crazy.”

So, mixed messages I keep getting about The Filipino Water Spirit:

-The tricksters just keep laughing at him and saying he fucked up BIG TIME. They never really treated him as a threat to me, they just constantly shook their heads at him and went “bro, you know she’s crazy and half-trained, but that makes her reallllllllly close to a trickster herself. Eventually she’ll find out who you really are.”

-They have also confirmed that he’s telling me SOME of the truth (in that he’s a Filipino water/sea-spirit who just likes hanging out with me). The problem is that I’ll have to beat the REST OF THE TRUTH out of him somehow, because it’s not in a trickster’s nature to just give people straight answers. Rest assured that I am constantly asking him “who are you?” and “what’s your real name?”, and it’s obviously not working.

Uh. I like to think of myself as discerning when it comes to “bad job ads” and “double-speak,” but yeah, my one weak spot is relationships because… I’m not good at those in the mortal world. Family relationships, friendships, jobs? Why would I be any better with the spirits?

-My grandmother’s spirit is usually pretty hands-off, and her “teaching” me about spirit-work is usually to tell me “IF YOU WANT THE SPIRITS TO LEAVE FOR A WEEK, JUST YELL AT THEM! YOU’RE TOO NICE!” (Hence why my “break from the spirit world” is not going that well.) But like… she ALSO does not view Filipino Water Spirit as a “threat” so much as “that guy my granddaughter’s dating, who I don’t like.” She called him an idiot for letting his not-quite-truths get so far away from him, and she wonders if he’s one of the bantay-tubig (merfolk), seeing as that’s the main suspect for impersonating a sea-god.

To be fair, my grandmother also calls me an idiot for just trusting nice, handsome men right off the bat, but he is definitely the BIGGER idiot since this whole fucking time, he knew who he was, and I did not.

-The Morrigan has flat-out told me she let him do this because 1) I really needed a close relationship like he was offering five years ago, and she was worried that I might have died(!!!), and 2) the only thing he’s NOT lying about is that he just… likes me.

I am like, the only person pointing out how the whole relationship was built on him not telling me his real identity, and certainly never CORRECTING ME on thinking that he was Haik, but the Morrigan constantly tells me that you have to walk a fine line between “lying in a relationship is bad” and “tricksters are NOT inherently bad.”

Like, she went on a whole speech that went something like this:

“He didn’t tell you his name, but he tells you stories and protects you from threats, and he has not once made you do anything you didn’t want. He had plenty of time to yank the rug out from you, but he did not. So what is ‘lying’? What is ‘rape’ or ‘consent’ or ‘fraud’ if the relationship by itself is a good one? You are too close to death on your own—you spend so much time with the spirits because this world is unkind to you, and so you stay with the spirits more than living people, and then shit happens and you spend MORE TIME with the spirits. At some point, a lot of people like you either want to die or stay up here completely.”

“And then he just came up and started… being nice and telling you stories. I don’t pretend to know Tagalog spirits, but he’s not lying about EVERYTHING. Sometimes you have to weigh people out and pick certain things they do that are good, and you hope the things that aren’t good end up okay.”

And uh. That just reminds me of what the Fianna told me about ten years ago, where my life will not be a straightforward “point A to Point B” situation. I’ll be spending a WHILE going from “point A to point D to point 32 and FINALLY reaching Point B.”

The fuckers were not lying, were they?

Part 1 is here, and any later updates would probably be on my spirit blog, the_bears_wife .

Expected one type of bad news, got a DIFFERENT kind of bad news! (Part 1)

crossoverqueen — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 06:49:35 GMT

This is copied from my Tumblr on October 4th.

--
What’s up, I am currently exhausted/worried about my whole fucking life right now. I got a reading from someone in my Filipino group to find out why my writing struggles have been ESPECIALLY crappy, even considering I knew writing would be shit to deal with. I was also worried about those spiritual “stress ulcers” that happened in my last spiritual post, because it’s not a good thing to start bleeding from the mouth while despairing, whether you’re in the Otherworld OR the mortal/flesh world!

AND GUESS WHAT ELSE I FOUND OUT???

The reader told me I am unconsciously depending on the anito to help me get a stable life/career and not only do they not enjoy my desperation, they… DON’T seem to like my urban-fantasy writing, either, because I’ve been unconsciously turning them into “caricatures” and treating them too closely?

Which is mightily unexpected, because… this whole fucking situation started with someone calling himself Haik (who’s supposed to be the Tagalog sea-god) just coming up and telling me stories and hanging out with me.

Like, who the fuck am I talking to, then???

The reader has admitted that she’s not experienced at deity-work, but even before the reading? I’ve been getting nudges from LOTS of spirits that my constant anger/despair is not sustainable or healthy, and I’m just going “yes, I know, but WHAT DO I DO ABOUT IT?”

So before she headed offline, she recommended that I talk to an albularyo / folk-healer in our Filipino group, and, he is very worried at 1) my reading results, 2) my spirit-ulcers, AND 3) when I told him that I’ve had a few encounters with the tiyanak (demon-children who prey on mortals). So, he’s ALSO doing a quick emergency reading. Like right now.

As for me and the spirits, I am trying to actually take a break like advised, but I will avoid listening to “whoever is calling themselves the anito” right now.

Behind the cut for length!

For the non-Tagalog spirits:

-Dionysus is yet again assuring me that I am not crazy. But his Artist Mode is on, and he’s like, not happy AT ALL that someone said my art is “offending the gods.” Like… what am I supposed to do about it?

-The Dagda is on standby in case he needs to force me to take that “spirit-world break” for a few days. The last time that happened was when my brother died, and I was wandering around the spirit-world in a daze, and the Dagda had to physically shove me out of it.

-Odin is giving me some mixed messages. He tends to agree with what “the person calling himself Haik” is saying. “Look, LISTEN to the reader, but do not TRUST HER too much, especially since she admitted she’s not used to deity work.” At the bare minimum, I need a second opinion. And I’m like “Okay, I get what you’re saying, but getting a reading from someone DOES involve ‘trusting’ their advice at least a little bit.” And he’s like “yes, everyone gets a little bit of trust. You do need a break. And you ARE worn out.”

-Loki is ALSO giving me mixed messages, because he keeps going “I TOLD YOU. I TOLD YOU. YOU HAVE TO STOP TRUSTING SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE, JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE NICE TO YOU. NOW LOOK AT THIS SHIT YOU’RE IN!!!” But then… he STILL doesn’t like all of the news I got about my writing, and hearing that the (real?) anito have deserted me. Like, he’s constantly going “Well, whoop-de-do, your fictional writing offends your people’s gods, because they don’t LIKE how desperate you are? Guess the other Filipinos who write fiction are on thin ice if they start suffering like you are.”

So… great. (end sarcasm) I don’t know who the fuck half my spirit-world acquaintances are right now, creative writing is apparently NOT A GOOD IDEA right now, I need to placate the anito for being so desperate and then figure out who all these NOT-Anito spirits wandering around with me are, and in general, I need a break from the spirit-world.

Part 2 is here, and later updates would be on my spirit-blog, the_bears_wife .

Don't worry, nothing really happened in two months

crossoverqueen — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 05:07:28 GMT

The only notable thing is that I started therapy with my sister and I took some weekly horse-riding lessons, but I quit those after they started telling me to "kick the horse to go if they're not responding" or "yank the reins if they don't want to stop/turn." I'm just gonna find a better place to learn Western riding if I can.

--
But hey folks, I got spirit updates!

So I'm gonna start doing some basic spells of "write my goals down on paper, burn them, and put the ashes in my houseplants" every week or so, to see if that helps get me out of my rut.

Spirit-wise, I've been contacted by the Green Man and he looks/acts like Henry Cavill's Geralt of Rivia, of all people. Very sexy until he starts throwing up vines, or turning into a tree-man-thing.

Weirdly enough for an Ent-like nature-spirit, the Green Man Does Not Like how Haik and the other spirits "treat me like a wild creature" and let me roam around having meltdowns and only half-knowing what I'm doing with spirit-work, because he seems to have thought they'd be a LITTLE more stringent on... advancing my spirit-work abilities, or even just helping me out more in the regular world.

He is very emphatic that he is neither "wild" or "human," but a mix of both.

The other spirits have a complicated relationship with him. He does have some good points like how their well-intended "keep everything nice and slow" is a little TOO slow for me, but he also has accidental "no mixing the elements/races" undertones. He's just so INSISTENT that Haik (a sea/water-god) and I (the most land-lubber person ever) don't make a good match because we barely understand each other, and I should find a land-spirit to work with instead. Uh... that's not always how relationships work.

2021 — Quarantine updates!

crossoverqueen — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 06:27:52 GMT

Not too much to talk about--I'm just listening to My Chemical Romance, playing various games, and trying to keep a workout schedule. Thinking about entering another open mic on their zoom meeting, but I'd have to sort through my poems for that.

I also learned to scream-sing properly so I can sing MCR songs without blowing my voice, but I have like three other projects to finish before covering a song. Lmao

Updates

crossoverqueen — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 06:33:35 GMT

Uhhh. Wow. My last update was in January. So that art-store job I got?

I don't have it anymore, thanks to the pandemic/quarantine. They let me and the other part-time workers go after about two weeks. Cowards.

Being introverted, it's taken me about half a year to finally get stir-crazy, so I'm getting back into exercising.

Unemployment is easily giving me twice as much money as my actual job, though setting it up was a bitch. And I also had to cancel my health insurance for draining half my minimum-wage paycheck. (They lied when they said it was the cheapest, so now I'm hunting around for a better one.)

Still trying to finish my various half-finished works. One novel draft is down, two major projects to go, about five million other projects I need to start picking out of a hat or something.

I also got asked to let some students read my poetry for a school! So that's great, I just need to tweak the poem and send it to the teacher by next week.

However, not very motivated to finish my OTHER works when a) people STILL aren't bothering to read them or at least boost my work on social-media to show support, or b) one of them is a play and I obviously won't be able to meet people in large groups for a while yet.

I just want to make a living off my writing. Why the fuck is it so hard for 90% of my circles to support me?

I mean, I know why. Because I spend weeks with no support or acknowledgement or really any progress, finally vent about the lack of support, and then SOMEONE always comes in and gives me some fucking advice that I already tried, or advice to maybe not be so mad and bitter about the lack of support, or advice about some shit and advice about other shit and FUCKING MORE AND MORE AND MORE ADVICE, INSTEAD OF JUST CLICKING THE DAMN SHARE BUTTON OR CHECKING OUT MY WORK FOR FIVE MINUTES, LIKE I KEEP BEGGING PEOPLE TO DO, and it's just rinse and repeat.

People don't like hearing that they haven't been supporting me, and yet they don't think to ACTUALLY SUPPORT ME for thirty seconds to make me be less mad. It's a really bad cycle with a lot of artists, unfortunately.

Updates for 2020!

crossoverqueen — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 03:49:18 GMT

Dang, I keep forgetting about this blog after everyone ditched LJ. Here are some updates for anyone who's still on here!

So good news: I work at an art-supply store now (basically retail, but EVERYONE KNOWS that this is just a day-job).

I also started a ko-fi page (link is here) and my first goal is to update my Dropbox plan. My introduction post talks about "The Crocodile God," one of those projects I kept complaining about not finishing. The draft is almost finished and I almost have enough audience feedback to get it seen by an editor and cleaned up, but I'm strongly considering moving to a different platform since both my current self-publishing platforms are considered "incompetent" at best and "scams" at worst. But there have been SOME success stories, so I'll just keep an eye on things for now.

If you want to leave feedback on "The Crocodile God" and get me one step closer to editing, donate $3 or the local equivalent to my financial goals, or both, feel free to do so!

BIG changes, bruh

crossoverqueen — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 03:50:27 GMT

So I've been taking a practical magic class starting last week, asking the Universe to help me FINISH ALL MY GODDAMN NEAR-FINISHED PROJECTS ALREADY, and making a lot of discoveries about myself in the Otherworld.

This is largely copied from my Facebook post in the group:

Today I got fired from my job at my three-month review. There's been a variety of reasons on both ends that I'm honestly not surprised--we have three to four cooks in the kitchen when this is a small cafe, but we don't need that many cooks the WHOLE DAY and everyone's constantly hunting for stuff to do. I'm guessing I'm a sacrifice because I do a decent job, but I forget the eight million details of working in a kitchen.

See, this is because in my interview, I said I like to BAKE and that was supposedly a big plus, but they mentioned they needed prep cooks more than bakers and I have rarely if ever done any baking as consequence.

Btw, the baking shifts went to ANOTHER NEW PERSON, so I'm like "waiiiiiiiit you said you didn't need any bakers???"

Cooking itself isn't rocket science (especially not with easy meals in a cafe), but work-wise, if you hire a baker who's used to very steady and time-consuming tasks for the complete opposite job of "run around and do five people's orders at once" prep-cook world, nobody's gonna win.

I mean, the job was nowhere near the WORST I've had (that would be my prior one), and it was a good work environment, but I remember this one time the manager said to me, "Huh, sometimes your judgement needs a little work" and now I'm thinking "Y'ALL HIRED A BAKER AS A PREP COOK, YOU BETTER NOT BE SURPRISED I'M NOT STELLAR AT IT."

I can't help wondering if this is connected to the first non-mundane dream I've had in a while: Details are fuzzy, but I remember LOCUSTS ARE EATING THE CROPS, HOLY SHIT. But then we caught a bunch of them in baskets to cook and eat them. I was pretty balky until my friends went "COME ON, JUST ONE BITE." The taste was mostly [insert-dream-taste] decent, but I realllllly liked the crunch. I've been hearing the cooked-locust crunch all day and it's like "FUCK, I NEED SOME CHIPS."

Then in my morning meditation, me and a deity went to a sea-cave and ran into the very unexpected Grasshopper. She got stuck after high-tide since the cave was too wet for her to comfortably fly out, so she needed someone to carry her up to the entrance, and she went "YAY, THANK YOUUUUU" after I got her out. Right now she just flies around sharing my food, but definitely not in the "LOCUST MAD!!! LOCUST SMASH!!! AND THEN LOCUST EAT!!!" way (she is staying very small and green), so I'm guessing she's got good news.

I just feel this weird urge to laugh my ass off and I don't quite know why.

Good Updates

crossoverqueen — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 22:01:29 GMT

So I made a poem for another Filipino friend's wedding in the first week of August. It's this fantastical, precolonial Tagalog poem about Haik the sea-god marrying a mortal woman using actual precolonial wedding traditions. I initially told her I wanted $20 per page so the two-page final poem would have been $40, but she decided to give me $60 instead. <3

And about two weeks afterward as we tried to deal with our dumbass inter-bank transfer that got rejected for LOL NO REASON, she just transferred my $60 payment through Facebook in two minutes.

I AM NOW A SUCCESSFUL ARTIST, WHOO.

Now to finish my gigantic Asian-American superhero play that's been taking forever because I had a goddamn job to deal with over the year, lol.

Mixed news

crossoverqueen — Fri, 11 May 2018 04:11:39 GMT

The eye-doctor found some minor tearing in my left eye's retina again.

Good news: Nothing too major going on.

Bad news: I have a minor blind spot in my left eye, which I didn't notice for years because a) I still have TWO eyes, and b) I can turn my head.

50/50 news: Minor surgery is recommended while my blind spot is still minor. Not a pressing issue (I have time to sort out my insurance and get the heebie-jeebies out from "DON'T PUT FOREIGN OBJECTS NEAR MY EYES"), but if something DOES happen in my forties or fifties because we just left my eyes alone for ten years, any complications then would be a LOT harder to fix than it would be to just prevent them right now. The doc literally warned me that this happens with a lot of people and just because it's not an EMERGENCY doesn't mean it's necessarily GOOD, either.

Sigh. Wondering if one of the one-eyed gods are telling me something. Mayari or Odin, please pipe up and tell me what's happening.

Welp, mercury retrograde isn't playing games

crossoverqueen — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 22:51:35 GMT

Yesterday was the most epic miscommunication of all miscommunications, as my Tumblr post denotes. Thanks to Facebook Messenger being a piece of shit, I accidentally messaged Dave Kuresa of Te Vaka instead of the publishing company I meant to pitch my novella "The Crocodile God" to.

http://jlegaspi178.tumblr.com/post/172120236974/the-mercury-retrograde-is-strong-with-this-one

Edit: My interactions with the ACTUAL publisher aren't exactly relieving. See my updates on it from ten minutes ago in THIS link.

http://jlegaspi178.tumblr.com/post/172156571719/update-to-the-retrograde

Severely overdue updates

crossoverqueen — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 05:22:23 GMT

Oh snap, I haven't updated in months.

This was due to the bakery job causing me a fuckton of back-pain from unloading giant freezer pallets several times a week, and then getting transferred to the front end as a stocker/bagger when I kept having to take off work due to said back-pain. So much better, but apparently their practices have also been really shady since my sister went, "Where were the other bakery people? Were they just watching you unload the giant freezer pallets and not doing anything?" And when I went, "Oh, they usually weren't there since we're understaffed. I've been working alone 90% of the time."

She then went "yeah, no--that's illegal. You need two people to work on receiving loads, and you won't have time to do any other jobs that day. My job isn't even union and we make sure two people are working on loads."

PLOT TWIST, I'M NOT THE FIRST PERSON THIS HAPPENED TO. I mentioned to one of the cashiers that I used to work in the bakery, and he basically sighed and went "yep, I don't know why the store managers just let them keep running through people in a month or two."

So yeah, I like my new department and coworkers, but my enthusiasm at working day-jobs is... nonexistent, now. I don't hate it, but I just don't CARE about it anymore.

---
The Tagalog gods are definitely making their presences known because you know how Haik the Tagalog sea-god has about one sentence about him online? I wanted SOME kind of story about him, and so I started writing "The Crocodile God" to fill the spiritual/cultural hole in my chest.

Then I started posting it on Facebook as well as HitRECord, hoping that people would read it and go "HOLY SHIT PRE-COLONIAL FILIPINO MYTHOLOGY IS AWESOME AND BADASS AND SO CLOSELY LINKED TO POLYNESIA," and I could finally start earning money by doing something I loved.

See, precolonial Filipinos have a HEAVY tattooing and seafaring tradition, which is damn close to Polynesian culture, but nobody really knows about it because five hundred years ago, the Spanish came, slaughtered the natives en masse for being pagan, and handily converted the rest of them since they went "sure bro, we totally believe in your capital-G god, please don't kill us." Even the Filipinos who know about it don't actually consider it important, thanks to colonization.

Right now there's only about five people reading "The Crocodile God," but I also entered it in the Book Pipeline writing contest. Grand prize is ten thousand dollars plus a shot at publication and converting it to a movie/TV series, while semi-finalists "only" get a shot at publication. I reallyreallyreally want that 10k grand prize and movie deal, not only because MONEY, but because it will finally prove to other people that I'm not crazy or stupid for wanting to a career in art.

---
Haik has also been extremely invested in me, thanks to how I'm writing him a shiny new story. In fact, when I mentioned in a meditation that I was worried about getting precolonial Tagalog culture wrong, he just laughed and went "This isn't a research paper. This is an urban-fantasy about a Fil-American woman meeting her people's sea-god, finding out she used to be his wife, and also finding out that he's an undocumented immigrant."

Rather notably, his appearance has done a 180 turnaround--before I wrote "The Crocodile God," he looked like a more heavily-tattooed Jason Momoa. After I started writing it, he switched to the appearance I gave him in the books: Dark-skinned with crocodile tattoos and an Australian accent. (Read the lj-cut portion for spiritual stuff.)

So in late September, I went to a friend's picnic at the beach, and I found a piece of sea-glass that looked like a shark tooth. It is now one of my favorite necklaces. In mid-November, Odin kindly reminded me that I still have a mysterious joy-rune "seed" that has been lying in my spirit-space and refusing to do anything. One of my online friends mentioned that I might need to "transfer" the seed to a physical object by charging it up with the spirit-seed's energy.

Two days later, I found a damn SEA-TURTLE pendant lost in the grocery store's parking lot. I'm coming down with a cough right now, but I've been carrying the Smoll Voyager around for weeks and I feel like I should paint the joy-rune "wen" on it, as a nice combination of Norse seafaring and Pacific wayfinding. Seriously, Ocean, the only way you could make this more like Moana is if I find a damn conch shell in North California.

(Btw I also have a habit of speaking to the Ocean lately. Partly because I was already animistic, and I KNOW MOANA IS TAKING OVER MY LIFE SHUT UP.)

This part is copy/pasted from TV Tropes:

Yesterday [December 14] I went to the beach and swished my glass shark tooth and Smoll Voyager Turtle in the seawater. I then found six dropped/forgotten pennies while sweeping at work. Hopefully it means "someone will finally pay me for one of my stories and once it starts making waves in the Asian-American writing world, I can quit my day-job."

Addition: I also found out that Haik is so involved with me and insistent on helping out with my emotional well-being because in his words, I "gave him a face." See, me taking the initiative in thinking up a god's appearance is quite different from the reverse, where various gods take the appearance of another creator's characters with the proper look/personality to help me associate with them better.

When I started writing The Crocodile God and gave Haik a very specific appearance of a crocodile-themed sleeve on one arm, dark skin, an Australian accent, and lots of muscles, I was partly basing that off an Australian-Samoan dancer called Dave Kuresa, who I first saw in Te Vaka's music videos. (Dave clearly isn't Filipino and therefore doesn't have Filipino batok, plus he's actually pretty light-skinned, but "giant tattooed Polynesian" is still perfect for "precolonial Filipino sea-god.")

According to him and Macha, when someone "gives a face" to a spirit, it's a very personal connection and that's why 1) Haik switched so fast from "looks like Jason Momoa" to the appearance I wrote for him, and 2) he's so invested in my happiness that even the other gods/ancestors are telling him to cool down a little, because he's being REALLY INTENSE.

Tealdeer: Pretty sure I accidentally gave Haik a really easy springboard for manifestation, but I haven't met any hot Aussie-Polynesian men with a suspiciously detailed knowledge of Filipino culture yet, so updates on this are pending.

—
Other addition: Last month I bought "The Forgotten Children of Maui" by Lane Wilcken, which is a whole book about the Polynesian Maui-mythos hidden in plain sight in the Philippines. Various Maui-Expy deities/heroes/gods are "Bathala," "Aponitolau," "Dumalawi," "Awig," and "Lumawig." I already knew Bathala had some of Maui's feats, but seeing as I get along nicely with him, he pretty clearly lacks the "trickster" aspect of Maui.

Lumawig the Ilokano Maui came up to me last week, to much death-glaresfrom... everyone. Bathala wrangled him away and told him to talk to me later, since I don't have a good history with tricksters and Tagalogs don't get along well with Ilokanos, but before Lumawig was thrown out of my head-space in a fine imitation of Loki, he managed to blurt out that "Hey girl I know Tagalogs and Ilokanos don't get along very well but y'all were right next door and Tagalog-Maui is dead anyway!"

Bathala promptly explained that this is a REALLY bad word-choice, but he's also technically right. Still, "death" for a god is more like "only mostly dead" or "the way a plant SEEMS to die, but the roots are still hidden underground" than a full-on "cessation of existence."

One of the Pinoy gods will explain things more clearly when I stop going "MOTHERFUCKER, WHY IS LUMAWIG SUCH A DICK."

Officially not unemployed

crossoverqueen — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 22:49:17 GMT

Technically I started working at the grocery last week, but I was working part-time and tomorrow, I get to start working full-time.

Working at a grocery store's bakery is awesome. I haven't even started baking yet, I just package all the stuff that the others bake and I get to breathe in the fresh-bread smell.

I have literally started making a list of all the things I want to buy while I save up money to move out.

Mostly it's books, helping Mom pay my part of the credit/phone/car bills, and yarn for crochet. Lol, basic things.

Plot twist

crossoverqueen — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 22:42:15 GMT

I didn't lose contact with my Tarot forum buddy at all. They've just been under ANOTHER screen-name for a while. Oh, Internet, you're so weird.

The spirits kept telling me not to worry about restoring contact with the Tarot friend and are trying not to laugh at me about this, since I'm still losing a giant community of Tarot-minded people, but some are more successful than others.

I also met Haik, the Tagalog god of the sea.

There is nothing else I can find on the Internet besides that (literally, "Haik is a Tagalog sea-god" is the only information I can find across lots of websites), so time for personal gnosis. Although like Bathala, he has a liking for the new essential oil I got that smells like the sea.

Obviously, Haik has a lot of sea-energy; physical contact with him makes me hear the sound of ocean waves, or smell saltwater. He's also very locative for me because he's tied to the SOUTH PACIFIC, or maybe the tropics (sea-energy + unusually high body temperature), not "the sea in general."

Impending forum shutdown, ugh

crossoverqueen — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 23:47:18 GMT

My Tarot forum is about to shut down on July 14th, which sucks because I was JUST THINKING about getting back into Tarot.

It's even worse because I lost contact with one of the few Cauldron members who DIDN'T automatically think I was crazy, and I didn't get any contact info from them because I got complacent and went "hey, I'll just go back to the tarot forums and PM them or something."

NO DUMBASS, YOU CAN'T DO THAT ANYMORE. Somewhere in the five or so years that I lapsed on Tarot reading, they disabled the PM option and I don't think they have an email address.

Damage-control procedure:
1) I posted my main blog links (this one, plus my Tumblr blog) in my signature.

2) I posted my two main blogs in my bio, and I also mentioned that I joined a certain Facebook community.

3) Made a farewell-to-the-forum post so it would show up in "view posts/threads by this member" and ALSO posted my blog links there, just in case they couldn't use my signature links or my bio links.

4) I double-checked that the links work, both copy/pasted into the search bar and clicked as links.

Happy post-Fourth of July.

crossoverqueen — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 23:14:39 GMT

I'm waiting on three job applications and trying to finish my damn stories. One job is a vet clinic receptionist, one is for a music school (also receptionist), and the other is a grocery store.

I haven't been working out much, since having two weddings in two weeks has been LETHAL for my energy, but I'll get around to it soon.

On the plus side, that Filipino dragon I've been talking to in the Otherworld is actually Bathala, the creator-god of the Tagalog tribe. I actually found out a while ago, but again: Two weddings in the middle of June.

Asian spirits don't fucking play around.

Job hunting and script update

crossoverqueen — Wed, 17 May 2017 23:06:00 GMT

Got a bit stalled for Takotsubo's writing because I was working on my last big project for Pacific Islander class, but at least I'm waiting on three new job postings.

As for Otherworld happenings, I met a Filipino dragon/bakunawa and several Asian spirits over the past few months. One of them looks like Shang from Disney's Mulan.

Shang is normally the most adorable stereotype of an "uptight stickler for rules" Asian guy and pretty laidback when he's not being a backseat driver or nitpicking about everything.

But a week ago he was checking up on me, suddenly took a long look and saw whatever spirits do in their telepathy/seer abilities, and started fucking yelling at the gods (especially the Irish ones) for letting me stay so miserable. Which means not having a job, which forces me to still live with my extremely Catholic mother, which means I can't do all of my boringly pagan offerings or set up an altar, which means I'm just generally unhappy that I have to hide all my pagan stuff in a box at the bottom of my dresser and not talk to anyone about the spirits in case they think I'm crazy (again).

---
So Macha got annoyed and told him "Shang, we love her! You make it sound like we're ignoring her because we hate her, but we need her to stay safe."

Shang retorted "WHITE GIRL, PLEASE! THERE IS A TIME AND PLACE FOR KEEPING HER SAFE, AND IT'S NOT WHEN THAT'S MAKING HER MISERABLE! IT'S NOT TEENAGER-MISERABLE BECAUSE OF HORMONES! SHE'S A FUCKING ADULT AND SHE'S BEEN ASKING YOU ALL FOR HELP, BUT YOU KEEP CHICKENING OUT BECAUSE OF HER SHIT LIFE-PATTERNS AND THINKING SHE'S GONNA DIE BEFORE SHE'S THIRTY AGAIN. SHE'S IN THE FUCKING SUBURBS NOW! WHAT'S SHE IN DANGER OF WHEN SHE MOVES OUT, BEING STUCK IN TRAFFIC???"

Then the Dragon stepped in and went "Of course you guys love her. That's the fucking PROBLEM."

I should be clear that the various gods aren't actively KEEPING me from finding a job, but they're not helping me out either.

When I asked for "more Asian spirits to come around" a few months ago, I DID NOT EXPECT them to start talking back to the gods like this.

---
And then last night, Shang just walked up and told me "Fixed it."

Meaning two situations: A) My sister's moving from her current place and it's been WAY more complicated than it should be, but suddenly things got easier today (not less suck-tastic, but "more straightforward to deal with"), and b) I have been finding job postings that are INCREASINGLY CONVENIENT. Like, there have been no less than five jobs in town that I'm qualified for AND able to go to. One of them is ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BLOCK. It's only half the week, but 1) it's at night and I love the idea of night shifts, and 2) I wouldn't even need to fucking drive there if I got it, so that's saving a lot of gas.

Still wondering if this is COMPLETELY his work or blended with my frantic burst of Tumblr "money-post/job-searching" reblogs, but wow, bro. Asian spirits don't fucking play around.

Hey all! So far I've just been job-hunting.

crossoverqueen — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 04:05:26 GMT

I applied to three places last week, and I've got an interview for one of them tomorrow at 1:30PM.

They said I "might" need to travel, which I hope isn't actually going to be true since 1) I can't take off on short notice thanks to Mom, 2) I can't drive on the freeway, and 3) job-travel is just gonna be conferences and work meetings, and that's boring as fuck.

I also applied to an arcade and I realllllly want to get the job there. I'd be okay with this place because money is money, but when given the choice between "arcade" and "money lender" given equal pay and benefits, I would pick the goddamn arcade.

I wrote a short-story on HitRECord for its running weekly prompts, called Monsoons. The project-leader compared it to Neil Gaiman AND it was featured as a highlight in the next writing prompt. Plus, my exercise for my best friend's wedding is paying off--I've lost about an inch in my jeans, and my muscles are firming up.

No actual muscle definition yet. Unless I flex insanely hard.

Last update: I'm in a writing group with friends and my sister, which specifically keeps morale up for writing and exercise. I already feel a lot better about random junk-food cravings or having to modify my writing goals. (The short story wasn't part of this. I'm officially working to finish three of my main projects: My urban-fantasy Moonflowers, my Glee fanfiction Hunting the Unicorn, and my superhero play Takotsubo.)

Things are going suspiciously well, and it's probably because Dionysus has been on a BIG "you are extremely unhappy and I'm going to help you with that, because a) you're my wife, and b) god of happiness" groove.

More elaboration in the_bears_wife.

Good news

crossoverqueen — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 06:41:33 GMT

You know how I thought I failed my second math class because I tanked all the tests, and I'd have to take it again? Well, thank the gods for homework and class participation, because the professor finished grading and it turns out I PASSED. BITCH, I'M FREE OF MATH.

So all I have to do is apply for my certificate in February, and I basically have a shitload of free time that I thought I'd have to set aside for math.

Since it's been raining on and off since last week and I've been stuck in the house most of that time, I decided to crochet my first big project after I learned a few of the stitches in my new Celtic knotwork crochet books. I dedicated it to Brighid so I wouldn't procrastinate too much, and she absolutely adores the wool yarn I'm using because it's soft and springy. Unexpectedly, Dionysus has taken an interest in it because one of the colors is a really maroon purple-red. (Probably because that's the color of wine? Lol.)

Also, while he was telling me some vulnerable stuff, he slipped up for a couple sentences and accidentally let me hear his god-voice. It's RIDICULOUSLY deep. (It's not an homage to James Earl Jones' Darth Vader voice, it's just five octaves lower than you'd think a dude who looks like Hayden Christensen sounds.) I say "accidentally" since the Greek pantheon has that "godliness is fatal to mortals" problem, so his god-voice was really hurt-y and I flinched and plugged my ears. He apologized immediately and went back to the Hayden Christensen voice.

He's also been telling me stories thanks to being inside 90% of the time due to rain. Weirdly enough, they're not drunk-hilarity stories like I expected. He told me a story about Semele at about 1AM last night, but we only got a few minutes in before we remembered it was 1AM and I really should get to sleep.

"I never grew up with my mother. But living in the shadow of her death--it affected me in a way that my cousins and siblings weren't. In a way, I was closer to her through other people's stories than I would have been if she'd lived to be another of his flings. The lack of her was a big thing, too. My foster-mothers were great and Hera warmed up after the insanity thing, but it was one thing to be hidden away or disguised like most of Dad's sperm-donations. My mom actually died.

"Gods know how fragile most mortals are--they have to be. It's the demigods who forget sometimes. They usually run around doing superhero shit, but me, I'm the party god who almost died. I grew up being a reminder to everyone who looked at me, 'I would have died without my father, because I was mortal. And you are mortal, too. Something, somewhere, can kill you.'"

Much of my updates for the past couple months are what you've probably heard before

crossoverqueen — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 06:44:30 GMT

Drumpf has been elected President by the Electoral College, which is really really really REALLY not cool. Like... what is happening, Universe? There better be an INSANELY GOOD PLOT TWIST in the last couple weeks of 2016.

Cap and the Avengers are not cool with this.

I didn't get the job, but that's okay.

I also tanked my math class in the fall, but I swear to the gods that I will pass it and finally fucking graduate. WHY IS MATH THE ONLY REQUIREMENT LEFT FOR MY ASSOCIATE DEGREE, AND WHY HAVE I BEEN STUCK ON IT FOR TWO FUCKING YEARS??? Like, I need an honorary C-grade or something for how many times I've taken it.

Three bright spots away from school and the shitstorm of political freak-outs is Disney's Moana. That movie is my happy place as a Filipino-American trying to find non-colonized parts of her heritage. It got me to buy Filipino Tattoos Ancient to Modern by Lane Wilcken, and OH LORD, PRE-COLONIAL TATTOOS ARE GORGEOUS.

The second bright spot is theater, as usual. My friend wants to introduce me to a local Asian-American company through my play Takotsubo. She said that the person in charge is away for the holidays, so concrete talks/emails are probably gonna be around January or February.

The third bright spot is that crocheting is so much fun, and I've gotten some Celtic crochet books that let you do knotwork and Aran Island-inspired designs. They should be coming either at the end of December or early January.

Oh boy, updates!

crossoverqueen — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 04:12:04 GMT

So the last couple of months were a mixed bag.

-I passed my summer math class with a fucking B, which is amazing. But now I'm 90% sure that I tanked my FALL math class. There was a perfect storm of tech problems slowing me down on finishing homework, which naturally meant I failed all the tests because I was constantly several weeks behind on the homework that the tests were covering. I'm retaking math next semester, but I'm not really surprised.

-Spirit-world seems fairly calm, and writing is going well.

-I have a job interview for a shoe store next week.

-Last night I saw an awesome Filipino play based on Shakespeare's Tempest, called BAGYO. Appropriately enough, yesterday was the first real rain we've seen in YEARS.

Here's my review copied from Facebook.

I saw Rob Dario's play BAGYO last night at the Live Oak Theatre in Berkeley, and it was a pretty heavy trip for me. Last night was the start of the first real rain in the past few years of drought, which is pretty damn appropriate for a play titled "Storm" in Tagalog. From the plot descriptions, BAGYO is straightforward: A Filipino filter of Shakespeare's play "The Tempest," centered on Miranda as she realizes that her entire life is a lie.

But after watching the show as a Filipino-American woman, there are clear parallels to the Filipino-American experience--and not just in the theme of colonialism. The brief almost-romance between Miranda and Danny, a white GI, was similarly almost-painful for me.

Not because of the acting, which was great--but because I’ve seen this cliche so many times before. White American soldier goes to fight in some tropical paradise; beautiful brown girl falls in love with him; they have sex; and then he leaves. The relationship is mirrored in Miranda’s own parents, with the added sting of how Miranda’s father took only Miranda with him to their strange island, telling her that he’d bring her mother back eventually. But like everything else he told her, that’s a lie.

I just kept praying for Danny to leave Miranda alone, because I know how this ends and I can’t watch another basic-ass white GI hook up with an Asian girl and leave.

Now, in real life, I don’t hate white soldiers, or white men in general. Neither do I hate white dudes in relationships with Asian women, unless the white guys are explicitly showing signs of yellow fever (and then we have a problem). But in writing? I’m sick of the White Savior (Often American) romancing the Exotic Asian Beauty, because the Asian woman never has a personality besides the “gentle” and “submissive” stereotype that white people love foisting on us. Unless it’s written by an Asian, and those are few and far between.

So when Danny left before the romance could take off, I was tempted to give the show five stars right there. YES, NO WHITE BABY-DADDY! AND NO HALF-ASIAN KID WITH CONVENIENTLY BLONDE HAIR AND BLUE EYES!

A side-effect of the White Savior story is how Asian men are often reduced to impotent comedy or noble savages, which I was thrilled not to see in the two men playing Lintik (Ed Berkeley) and Iwaksi (Wes Gabrillo). Lintik is a spirit, and his name means “Lightning”--with all the strangeness and power that the word holds. I don’t know if this was intentional, but in spite of the quasi-tribal costumes that the cast was wearing and how many of BAGYO’S posters evoke indigenous tribal tattoos, Lintik was the only one with tattoos in the actual show. With that contrast, I can’t help thinking that Lintik is the near-forgotten Indio to Miranda and Iwaksi’s fractured Americano.

Iwaksi seems caught between being Miranda’s foster-brother and being another spirit like Lintik. His name means “abandoned” in how he seemed to have been lost as a child, and later on left Miranda and her father some time before the story. Like Miranda, Iwaksi is lost and searching for the truth--but a little farther down the road than she is.

The Tagalog spoken in the show is decent, but kind of stiff--and to be honest, I like it that way. So many Fil-Americans can't speak Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, or any of our native languages. Many are actively discouraged from learning because our parents want us to assimilate for survival. We're in America, and we see what happens when people don't speak English here.

Whenever I meet older Filipinos, I dread if they ask me about Tagalog because I know how this script goes: “Can you speak Tagalog?” “No.” “Ay, Americano.” Their tone is an affectionate mix of pity and humor. And then I’m stuck like Miranda on my English-only island, speaking across the water to other Filipinos.

Near the end of the story, Miranda begs her father to "tell me one true story," but I knew she wouldn’t find it from him. After all, he’s white. However much he loves her, he isn’t equipped to deal with the nebulous border between cultures. Especially with a culture as fragmented as that of the Philippines.

And where is the truth about the Philippines, anyway? So many of the Filipino diaspora are looking for it, too--often to the chagrin of native-born Filipinos, who view our indigenous roots as backwards and primitive. They raise us in the West because they want us to be successful, but face unexpected consequences: We become dissatisfied with history’s lies and start looking for the truth about our identities, our culture, and our real history. And we’re not held back by Asian notions of minding your own business and saving face.

Some reviews say that the setting doesn’t feel like the Philippines, and I agree.

Because for me, it feels like America. Whether that’s a compliment or not--I don’t know yet, because I’m in the middle of my own search for the truth.

The end of BAGYO feels like the beginning of Miranda’s story: A Western diaspora girl, realizing that everything she was taught is a lie. And she starts piecing things together in lullabies, folktales, and not-quite-fluent Tagalog.