Month: December 2020

Ponderings

Windows

FanTC

I do so love staring out of windows. Cozied up safe from the elements whether cold and snow or sun and wind. I like to catch little moments of something or another.

You see the wind tussling long grass or kicking up leaves. Some days it’s a flurry of white flakes. If you happen upon a robin scouring for worms or dark crows pecking at beetles, it’s better. Your eye happily follows the movement.

A bit of thought trails in. Your eye reflects inward. Either the past or the future has captured your attention and you’re quite lost to the present. You might even be blind to the walker with their dog thoroughly enjoying the weather.

Your mind returns to the present. The wind is still blowing. The birds have moved on. Shadows play across the lawn instead. It’s moments like these I love staring out of windows.

Which makes it doubly sad our current residence has no decent window views for gazing.

This has been,

Fanny T. Crispin

Raw

Health & Wellness

FanTC

Raise your hand if quarantine got you right in the love handles – and beyond!

🙋

I’ve grown up with good genetics, skinny all my life, blah, blah, blah. But I knew in the back of my mind when this miracle metabolism slows down I’ll be in big trouble. I’m lazy. I’d rather bend my brain to an intense problem solving task than bench anything physical. If brain activity burned calories, I’d be set for life! My career is endless problems to resolve and some days my poor gray matter feels like mush.

True story.

But as you probably guessed, it’s a desk job. Now cue the pandemic. Quarantine. Home bound. No more football field parking lots to trudge, no more 4 flights of grueling stairs. It takes me 5 seconds to walk to the coffee pot. At the office, I literally had to cross from one corner of the building to the far corner of a rectangular floor layout.

So here we are. Without cardio and movement, metabolism turns to lethargy. And maybe we’re snacking a bit more too, right? The vending machine is your pantry stocked full for the impending apocalypse.

Around August or September, I started to feel bad about my body image. I realize eventually everything will sag and rot, but during the “young” years of my life, there’s still something I can do about it. I can still change and my cells will respond.

And here I am running 20 minutes a day on my lunch break at the treadmill. I don’t like it. I don’t enjoy it. I’m literally blogging while running because this bores me to tears. But I’m still here 20 minutes a day 5 days a week gradually burning calories as slowly as the love handles crept on.

You know what, I feel better. My waist is shaping down again. My weight doesn’t seem to fluctuate much, but I can see the difference. I’m not pushing or prodding or going crazy with the weights. I’m just showing up for a little cardio, a little movement, and a little change in my eating habits.

How’s your quarantine journey going?

This has been,

Fanny T. Crispin

Le Shorts, Poetry

Winter

FanTC

Don’t you wake by bird’s light song?

But all is dead in winter’s frost.

Can life begin at journey’s end

Or is snow the mark that all is lost?

~ Twofer! ~

The passage of time

A mysterious thing

When you hear the bells chime

Then you must leave the ring.

BE WARNED

FanTC

Copyright FanTCBooks

Books and Affiliated

We’re Here! Ep 2

FanTC

Villains
In another installment of We’re Here! Ep 2: Key elements to writing a really good villain.

I present to you Medusa – that vile, nasty woman we all loved to hate. She was ugly. She turned men to stone. She was bitter, angry, and mean. We were relieved when Perseus outwitted and destroyed her. You might even say we stopped viewing her as a woman at all, but a monster like the ones we hide from around Halloween time.

This article from the UK I stumbled upon presented something I never knew about the story of Medusa. It gave, for the first time, her backstory. You can read it here. I would like to unpack some of the article in a short blog for you busy readers, if I may, and present my humble thoughts.

Medusa is a great villain. But she’s not great for the chaos and fear she wreaks upon her world. She’s a great villain for her pain.

We all sense great villains are born of great pain. We can tell when someone is evil for the sake of being evil (which is kind of boring) or when someone is evil because they were pushed, chased, and beaten down the wrong path. They are evil, but they don’t like it. They’re simply too broken and too disillusioned to humanity that there’s no turning back.

Medusa was a beautiful woman. So beautiful, in fact, she captured the eye of the sea god himself – Poseidon. But the feeling wasn’t mutual. She did not love Poseidon. Truth be told, she could have been married to someone else for all we know of her story. But Poseidon being the selfish man he is, chases her. He pursues her, it is said, across Athens which is governed by the goddess of war Athena. Medusa is fleeing for her life. Poseidon leaves destruction in his wake in his pursuit of her.

And really, let’s ask ourselves why? There are literally millions of beautiful women, dude. Find one who’s a better match for you.

Athena, understandably, resents her country getting destroyed all for the sake of her uncle’s lust of some pretty human, so she stops him, scolds him, and sends him back to the sea lest he risk all out war with his niece.

Oh wait. That doesn’t happen. What really happened, was Athen turned a blind eye to her uncle’s scandalous affair, and punishes the victim of this narrative. Medusa. She curses Medusa to never “seduce” another man. But that’s not enough. Athena turns her into a monster.

And Perseus is gloriously applauded for killing her.

This is a great villain story. A good thing turned rotten by injustice. And we believe every bit of Medusa’s anger, bitterness, and hatred of men. Within her story, the readers can commiserate her point of view, if not condoning her actions. Yes, she’s cursed, but no, she shouldn’t have been running around trying to turn men to stone. Those men, in the beginning, were as innocent as she once was. But, alas, without her villainy, we don’t have our hero, and without a hero, where’s the story?

Remember, sometimes the best villain is a believable villain. And sometimes giving your readers a glimpse of the whole story paints a compelling picture.

This has been,

Fanny T. Crispin