#***i had already packed my books and only left one fiction book unpacked to read while i'm going thru this and this one is verrrry differen

[notjanine]

the post-grad unemployment blues have not been helping my annual summer depression, so my brain has been... not great. my lease is up in just a few days, but i can't move into a new apartment until i know where i'll be working. i'm having to put all my shit in storage until i can find something. it's been rough.* but i spent a few days at Books' this week and even though everything sucks, they did a lovely job cheering me up. when i got to theirs, they surprised me with a silly and refreshing beverage i'd previously mentioned in passing that i wanted to try** and this book that they picked up from work.*** then they took me to their campus so we could play board games on the massive group study tables.**** we got dinner at my favorite ethiopian place in the city. we cozied up in bed and double featured they cloned tyrone and the lighthouse (which they hadn't seen before). i finally got to an alamo drafthouse weird wednesday! we saw let the corpses tan,***** after a delightfully nasty late night diner breakfast. we played mario kart and i lost, terribly, but still had fun.

i also had an interview yesterday, for a job that sounds like a great fit for me.****** all of my interviews so far have been strange, for one reason or another, but this one may have been the strangest- because halfway through, the interviewer started pitching me a different position that sounds AMAZING.******* i'd be happy with either. i really hope this works out. i should be having a second interview next week.

i'm back at my apartment now and i have to be out by monday afternoon. i'm glad to be leaving this place, even though things are still so up in the air. and even though i haven't been my best lately, i'm glad to know that i am still loved.

[girlbabyvelez]

Royals // Chapter Seven

Summary: Joel finally gets the letter about the wedding date and is on his way to see you while the King of Ecuador finds out the truth about you and your traitorous actions.

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: mentions of cheating, treason and murder

July 1

Joel, 

I’m writing with big news from Ecuador and some changes in our alliance. King Manuel has set the date for Chris and I’s wedding during the announcement of our engagement. It’s set to be on July 18 which is sooner than expected but it cannot be changed. Every ambassador and royal from South American countries have already heard and we need them ready to support Joel on the throne. But I cannot be married without you guys here, please hurry. 

I love you all. Mi familia es mi fuerza y los necesito aquí.

Princessa Y/N

Joel’s eyes scanned over the letter one more time, he was in disbelief at the notice. Joel should have expected that King Manuel would pull something like this, Ecuador was desperate as the situations between Colombia and Ecuador got worse, they couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Now he needed to pack and leave as soon as possible, he wouldn’t let his sister go through this alone since she was doing this for him. 

He quickly stood up from his chair, folding the letter back up neatly before exiting his room and heading to the throne room where he knew his mother would be, planning and talking with the nobles to sway them to crown him king. The corridors seemed long and winding but eventually he made it to his mother. 

“Mother.” He called her attention, every noble turning to respectfully bow at him. He smiles at them before his mother joins his side. He led her away from all of the nobles and deeper into the corridors, once he knew it was safe he turned to his mother and handed her the letter.

“The wedding is a little over two weeks away. We need to leave now.” Joel whispers to his mother as she quickly scans your letter. She shakes her head in disappointment before looking back at her son. 

“I cannot believe them. But you’re right. We don’t have enough time. Go pack your things mijo.” Your mother demands as she hands the letter back to him. He nods at her words but she continues her demands. “You are going to go with Israel. The nobles are still wary so I can’t leave but once they are married you will need to return for your coronation.” 

“She’s going to be upset that you aren’t there.” Joel whispers. He knew that it was a tough situation for her to be put in and if it wasn’t for the future of Mexico then your mother would be by your side. “I’ll be by her side the entire time.” 

“Gracias mijo. Give her my veil and love.” Your mother whispers as she turns to push him to pack but before he leaves she speaks again. “Make sure that she’s happy and protected Joel.”

~

The room was dark, private, and quiet as it always was when they met. They were away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears that came with the castle and court members. This was the most lonely inn at the closest village which was beneficial for them. This was how they had been meeting for months, discussing their plan.

He knew by the placement of the moon that it was well past midnight and she would be joining him soon. The two of them had become as thick as thieves, planning the ultimate plan of sabotage. They each had their own reasons of course, she did it because she loved Chris and he did it for his country. 

“Salazar?” She whispered as she stepped into the room at the inn. He stood up from his place on the edge of the bed and stood up to greet the girl. He closes the door behind her and locks it, ensuring maximum privacy from the rest of the world. This still needed to be kept under wraps.

“Evalia. Have you heard anything?” He questioned as he led her to sit down on the bed beside him. She nods at his words and a smile crosses her face at the thought of the good news.

“The king is getting suspicious of you and Y/N. Just a few more sightings and he will know.” She tells him. She was close to getting you out of the picture, the plan had been working successfully.

“Okay. That’s good. And how are you doing with Chris?” 

“He’s still avoiding me. But once Y/N is known as a traitor I will be there for him.”

“You need to work faster Evalia. Once the alliance is broken, Colombia will move in. And we need to be sure that Chris will never be a threat again.”

~ 

July 3

The wedding was 15 days away. 15 days of your freedom left and each day seemed to be getting harder for you. Chris refused to leave your side whenever you were in public, it was his way to keep his eye on you and keep his parents happy. But what he didn’t know was that Salazar kept meeting you in secret, trying to get you to make the alliance with him. Your mind and soul were torn, you didn’t want to betray Christopher and the alliance you had for the majority of your life, but you also didn’t want to be trapped with Chris in a miserable marriage for the rest of your life. You had already experienced happiness with him and the pain he caused you took away all of your hope and happiness. So today you found yourself distracting yourself from your thoughts. You lounged in the library, holding tightly onto the book in your hand as you allowed yourself to be taken to another world.

“How are you doing?” You heard him ask which effectively pulled you from the happy fictional world to the terrible reality you were living. You sighed and flick your eyes from the pages over to Christopher, who was leaning against one of the bookcases with his arms crossed as he just stared at you.

“And what do you care Prince?” You retort before focusing on your book again.

“Come on, humor your fiance.” He walks over to the table you were lounging at and sitting before you. You roll your eyes at him but continue to keep your eyes focused on the book instead of Christopher. There was still plenty of thoughts and emotions to unpack with him and you weren’t ready. 

“I’m fine.” You lied but you couldn’t fool him, he learned how to read you over the past few months. But he knew that you weren’t going to be willing to open up to him anytime soon.

“What are you reading?” He asks, easily changing the subject. You just wanted him to leave you alone, you didn’t want to have a conversation with him. 

“Just a story about two lovers.” You answer quietly. He watches you for a moment, your eyes scanned the book in front of you and you looked tired and sad. He knew that it was his fault, the night with Evalia should have never happened yet it did. He just wanted to turn back time and make things normal, he wanted to relive the happy moment when you confessed your love for each other. 

“Can we talk?” He questions as his emotions run high at the memory. 

“About what? You made yourself pretty clear last week.” You snap. 

“At least hear my side of the story.” But you shake your head at his words. You knew that the only thing that would come out of his mouth were going to be excuses. You were worth more than that, you deserve the truth. 

“No. You don’t get to cheat on me then proceed to make excuses.”

“I’m not making excuses. Come on like you didn’t betray me when you went to Salazar.” He retorts. This causes you to slam the book down on the table and look at him with anger in your eyes once again. You couldn’t believe that he was throwing that in your face again when you would have never turned to Salazar if Chris hadn’t cheated on you like that.

“First off, I didn’t sleep with Salazar-” 

“No you just became a traitor.” He barks at you. You sigh and rub your hand across your face. You were frustrated and tired of this constant back and forth with Chris. You felt yourself slouch in the chair and look at Chris. He looked at you and he was instantly filled with guilt for snapping at you. You looked even more tired than before if it was possible.

“Chris why are you here? I just want some peace and quiet.” You whisper softly. 

“Because we need to figure this out. We will be tied together for the rest of our lives. We have 15 days to get it together Y/N.” He says truthfully.

“To get what together Chris? We can’t even have a simple conversation without being at each other’s throats.” 

“So let’s figure it out.” 

“I can’t. Not right now.” You say. He sighs at your words and you quickly get up without putting the book away.  “I need to go get ready for tonight.” And with that you left him sitting at the table alone, the book was now in his hand as he watched you walk away. 

~

The guard stood quietly, hidden in the shadows as he kept a close eye on you. He had seen you speaking to Salazar earlier and now he was watching as Salazar grabbed onto your arm and pulled you into another corridor. He knew what this meant and his duty was fulfilled. He turned on his heel as he walked into the King’s office, quickly bowing before stepping up to King Manuel.

“My lord. You were right. Princess Y/N is conspiring with the enemy.” The guard spoke once the King waved his hand, signaling he could speak. The King looked from the letters on his desk to the guard, fury crossing every feature of his face. 

“Bring my wife and son. We need to discuss the future of our alliance with Mexico.” He orders once he was able to fully process what this meant for the future of his country and the future of his son. 

“Yes sir.” And the guard quickly left, looking for the prince and the queen as quickly as possible. 

Soon Queen Yenny and Christopher had found themselves in the King’s private office. He sat tall and serious as he looked at his queen and son. And he held Ecuador’s copy of the alliance with you and Chris in his hands, holding it dangerously close to the fire of one of his candles. Chris watched in confusion at his father’s actions, wanting to step forward to ensure the contract was safe but his father spoke before Chris could say anything.

“The alliance is over. Y/N has been seen with Salazar on multiple occasions.” The King informs. “This is treason and a crime against our family. And she will pay for it.” Chris could feel his heart stop at his father’s word. Even though he should feel angry at you for continuing to see Salazar, he was scared and worried for you. His father would go to great lengths to punish you for it and he knew that his father would take your life for it. He still loved you, even if everything was hard and tense between you, he had grown to love you and that love never leaves easily. But now he needed to save your life.

-

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Note: if you still are reading this, ily and the next chapter will have more action hehe and it will be longer. Also an Hasta chapter is coming soon too hehe

[revisionaryhistory]

Three Days ~ 78

~*~Sebastian~*~

The sun shone brightly when we woke up. I made Emma coffee first and we sat at the bar with fruit and yogurt. I wasn’t particularly hungry. Nauseated, if I’m honest. Emma was going home today. Yes, it was only for a couple of days, but that wasn’t what the problem was. I was afraid of how I would feel when she left. We’ve been together almost a week. We said I love you. Went to a concert with her friends, planned a vacation with mine, and celebrated a month together. Everything is wonderful. I don’t know how it will be when she leaves. Will I be melodramatically sad, anxious, and insecure that while she’s away she’ll figure out she prefers to be without me, or when she leaves will I be glad to have my space back? Realistically, the panic is more likely to come when she leaves France and we’re apart for six weeks. Today’s just a preview.

Around noon Emma was ready to leave. She’d gone through the bags of new stuff and left what she wanted to take to France. No sense packing it home only to bring it back. Especially when she was dealing with her suitcase on the train. Early afternoon was the best time to get her back. I walked her downstairs to her Uber and stopped by the security office to find out where the parking garage was. The security guard walked outside with us and pointed to a keypad on a pole next to the building. I walked into the building hundreds of times and never really noticed the large panes of windows that matched my building was a garage door. The same code that worked on the outside door worked on the garage and my spot was the same as my apartment number. That’s easy.

The Uber driver took Emma’s suitcase and lifted it into the trunk while we said goodbye. “I love you and I’ll see you Thursday.”

Emma kissed me and patted my chest, “I’ll let you know when I’m home.”

“Thank you.” I’m always going to worry about her getting home safe. Can’t wait until there’s snow and she’s driving to work or worse, here. I kissed her again, told her I loved her and tucked her in the car. Stood on the sidewalk until she turned the corner too. Avoided going back upstairs by running across the street and getting a bottle of something. Didn’t really matter what. I wasn’t thirsty. Took a walk around the block to drink my bottle of whatever. Finally, throwing the bottle away in the garbage can at the end of the block, I headed back upstairs.

I walked in my door and stood there with my hands on my hips, waiting for something to happen. Everything looked the same. Felt the same. Not sure what I expected. The apartment wasn’t going to suddenly have a portal to hell open up in between the dining table and couch. If it happened, it would be in the guest bathroom. Maybe my closet. I checked both to be sure. Nope, no portals. What I did find in the master bath was a mauve lipstick kiss print on the mirror. It was at my eye level but on the edge close to the wall. I smiled, thinking how she would have had to crawl onto the counter to put it there. I imagined she’d get the same thrill when she found the notes I’d hidden at her place and school.

A little over two hours later my phone rang. The prettiest girl in the world was calling me, “Hello, beautiful.”

She grinned, “Hey, handsome.  I’m home.”

Emma turned her phone around to show me her family room. “I can see that. How was the trip?”

“Uneventful.”

“Perfect.”

“What have you been up to since I last saw you?” The lilt of curiosity in her voice was funny.

“I’ve been busy. Checking email and seeing everything has changed.”

“You’re very flexible.”

“Not nearly as flexible as you, my love.” We shared a dirty smile. “Now, we’re shooting in Paris instead of London. Which is convenient and doesn’t require a flight. And tonight I’m having dinner with a former spy.”

Her eyes lit up, “That sounds fun.”

“It does.”  I agreed. “I’ve been trying to schedule something with him for a while. Finally worked out. It will be good to get in person and ask questions about all the shit I’ve been reading and watching.”

“I’m excited for you. You can get the psychological emotional part down. I imagine in person makes it easier to internalize.”

Not that I doubted, but she’d been paying attention when I’d talked. Her interest in the how and why of the craft side was as enjoyable for me as it was her. I wanted to show her more. I wanted to know about how she taught too, how she knew what to do and how she designed lessons. Which reminded me, “Add me to your online classroom so I can watch you teach.” There’s the added bonus of pretty much having her “on demand” if I wanted to see and hear her. I had the video from the party with her, Eli, and Boone too. That would make a long night alone a little more . . . stimulating.

We didn’t talk long. I was having an early dinner to allow plenty of time to talk and I needed to shower and get ready. Emma needed to unpack and start gathering things to repack. There’s also the part about she’d just left.

Dinner lasted much later than I’d anticipated. It was awesome. Dan told me stories and let me pick his brain. I told him about my part in the movie and he was able to give me some specifics. Not that I’d play the part exactly as he’d said, but I knew what to avoid, what wasn’t realistic. I liked that because a complete mismatch with reality could put me into my head and that’s the last place I wanted to be.

The next morning I hit the gym and had a good workout. Mirrors everywhere told me I needed more than a little personal grooming before leaving. A haircut was already scheduled and I called the salon to add on what I thought I needed. I had lunch with my manager to go over the next few weeks. I don’t have a full time PR person, but I do have a firm with which I contract. Emily had been in contact with them. About my girlfriend. Amazing how fast my mood went from good to not.

“Seb, don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The annoyed one where you’re holding in a tirade.”

“I’m glad you recognize the precarious ground you’re standing on.” I drank the last of my wine and crossed my arms across my chest. “I’m going to sit here and be very quiet for a limited amount of time. Talk fast.” I don’t have many tirades. A big part of that is due to the relationship I have with Emily. She’s been with me forever. She knows when to push, when to back off, and when to let me have a tirade. Girlfriends are and always have been a tricky area. Usually, Emily wants me to be more open about a girlfriend. Much like what previous girlfriends wanted. That never turned out well for either of them. Emma was altogether in another class. I wasn’t sullen because I didn’t want to hear about what I should be doing. I was feeling protective and didn’t want business in my personal life. Same issue, different reasons.

“Everything is good. Emma is good. She doesn’t have much of a social media presence and hers is private. Family and friends sometimes tag her, but there’s nothing problematic out there. Once her name is out there she won’t be hard to find because you and several of your friends follow her. It’s a quick find that she’s a teacher, where she works, plays volleyball, has a twin, and has musician friends. She’s known by Pearl Jam fans. They’re protective of all the females in the band’s orbit. Best guess is anything negative is wiped quickly. We called Pearl Jam’s PR people and they’ve worked with her, so we don’t need to. Until something comes up and then we’ll probably have to work with you too. Unless you go silent again.”

I must have twitched.

Emily held her hands out like she was calming a wild animal. “Everyone’s a little concerned because you let Will post something. Oh, and any pictures of her in a bikini are always in a group.” She smiled comically and sat back.

“The ones she sends me are solos.”

“Good to know.”

I sat a second, my blood pressure dropping. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

I nodded and shrugged, “I told Will to post the picture. Don’t know exactly why. I’m happy. I’m in love. I’ve grown. Past is past and I’m moving to the future. All of them.”

“So, the comments and everything. You’re okay?”

“No, Emily, I’m wonderful.”

I waited until I got home to call Emma. She hit voice call. I pouted even though she couldn’t see. “I am at Target replenishing my travel supplies.”

“Sounds fun! Are you in for shampoo and leaving with three hundred dollars worth of who knows what?” Isn’t that the way it usually works at Target?

“I have a list. I’m staying away from parts of the store I don’t need to be in.”

“Smart. What time do you have to be at the court?”

“We’re going to meet for dinner about five. Game at seven.”

“Give Sam your phone so I can pack and watch.”

“I bet if you ask nicely she’ll alert you when something big is going on.”

“I’m a decent multitasker.”

“How was dinner with a spy?”

"Dinner with a spy was" I shook my head and looked up, "fascinating. Books, even non-fiction, and video are good, but watching his expression and mannerisms was so cool. Especially when he had neither." I went on talking while she shopped. She laughed and gasped at the same parts I had. I was excited to see how I could incorporate this new knowledge. We hung up when she was checking out.

~*~*~*~

"Sorry about the loss." I cringed to soften the blow. I knew she didn't like to lose. Who does?

Emma growled, "Frustrating. I want a chocolate brownie or something."

"I think the bakeries are closed." It was a little after ten. "I'll get you one tomorrow."

"You're the sweetest."

"When will you be here?"

"Well before lunchtime. I got everything packed before the game. I'll shower tonight. Get up and be on my way. Do you have plans?"

"Yes. Vanity kicked in. I have a facial and haircut, before therapy. Want a facial?"

"No seaweed."

"Damm, that's what I booked for you."

~*~*~

I spent the morning packing. I’m not a heavy packer. I’ll wear the same thing over and over. I’m working so costuming will be taking care of most of my clothes. I’m invited to the fashion show. Being dressed is part of the package. Emma and I had made a list of places we wanted to see and things we wanted to do while in Paris. I composed an email and sent it on to the hotel’s concierge. I heard back almost immediately. They would create an itinerary and we could adjust it once we arrived. Perfect.

Emma would be back about noon. Our spa treatments and my haircut were set for three and my therapy appointment was around five. I cleaned up around the place. Nothing drastic. I had a cleaning service come in after I go away. I just make sure everything’s put away.  I had my suitcase closed and in the dining area when my text notification went off.

Emma ~ Are you home?

Sebastian ~ Yes.

Emma ~ Alone?

Sebastian ~ Yes.

 I am sensing something is about to happen.

Emma ~ When I get there would you like to play a game?

Sebastian ~ Yes.

 I neither know nor care what she’s talking about. It would be nice to know what I’m going to be playing, though.

Sebastian ~ Could I get more details?

Emma ~ Porn

Sebastian ~ You want to watch porn?

Emma ~ Pretend we're in one. Over the top, things that only work in porn, excessive moaning, name calling, filthy talk porn.

 Fuck. I’ve watched enough porn to know how this was going to go.

Sebastian ~ Yes, I would like to play.

Emma ~ I never doubted you.

Sebastian ~ Are you texting and driving?

Emma ~ Traffic and voice to text. Delivery girl, booty call, escort? Me. This time.

Sebastian ~ I don't know yet.

Emma ~ Text when you do.

Sebastian ~ I love you.

Emma ~ I love you.

 Woman has been away for forty-eight hours and shows back up with this shit. I wasn't a sex-starved horn dog five minutes ago. I wonder what she's wearing? Delivery girl, booty call, escort. I like her choices. I have to seduce the delivery girl. Or be seduced. Booty call would be a repeat. Familiarity without expectations. There are zero expectations with an escort. Well, there are expectations, but only mine. I feel like it's a question of how selfish I want to be and what questions I want to answer after. Booty call it is!

I texted her my choice and that the door would be unlocked. I sat in the chair to wait. Patiently.

[kootenaygoon]

So,

He looked tanned. 

Spencer took a luxurious drag on his Belmont, the ember exploding like a mini-supernova in his aviator sunglasses, and exhaled swirling spirits into the early morning mist of Diefenbaker Park. It was two days after Christmas and I’d left my pregnant wife and baby daughter at home to visit his memorial bench, the day after my sister died, and together we sat looking down at the central pond in the distance. I liked that he’d finally grown out his beard again, so that it had a scraggly surfer quality. The afterlife was agreeing with him.

I sighed. “The crazy thing is I’ve been grieving this shit for years, you know? Like I knew this could happen any time, any moment. And then the universe custom-designs this perfect French Exit for her. It was like it was staged,” I said, unpacking the one-gram pre-roll I’d picked up from Vancouver.

“Like think about this: Kristina went into labour on Kathryn’s birthday this year, then one day later Celista is born. Now she dies exactly nine months later, to the day. There’s some weird math there I can’t figure out.”

Spence smiled. “You’re always looking for the patterns.”

There was sweat collecting in my hairline. I’d gotten four hours of sleep, maybe, and I’d smoked half a pack of cigarettes. My family was circling the wagons hard, my other sister flying back from Belgium, and I was being inundated with social media engagements. I knew what was on everybody’s mind: this was exactly the sort of event that could send me back into my hyper-manic tail spin, put me back in the psych ward for the third time.

The thing was, Kathryn was more than a sister. She was me. With our matching dolphin tattoos, our matching blue cars, our blonde hair and our outrageous emotions. She was the female version of me, the sister whose soul was most entangled with mine. For years I’d assumed that one day I would end up derelict in her basement, while she played at domesticity with her healthy suburban brood upstairs. 

She had my back when nobody else did.

“I know she’s still here, man. But I can’t talk to her yet. So I wanted to come to you, you know? See if she’s made it to the other side,” I said. I was crying now, taking puffs off the spliff and blinking heartbroken at the baby blue sky through the clouds. 

Spence took off his aviators. I hadn’t realized he was crying, but now I could see his eyes were red-rimmed. For a moment I wanted to lunge for him, to touch his face with my hands. Then I remembered that he wasn’t there, that he’d been dead for years. Our last meal at Royal Jubilee flashed before my eyes, the way he looked with Canuck-coloured toe nails in his boss robe. Goddamn, I loved him. 

“You know I loved your sister,” he said. “She was family to me.”

I nodded, took another drag. The last time I saw Kathryn, in the basement of our house, she was wrapped up like a Pharaoh in her bedsheets. I touched her little cheek, with Celista riding on my hip, and told her that she wasn’t alone. That she would never be alone, that we were right there with her and death wouldn’t scare us away. With my siblings lined up behind me, I kissed her forehead and ran my hands through her duck fluff hair.

“You were perfect to me.”

Spencer shifted uncomfortably. He hated when I got too demonstrative or weepy, mostly because his emotions made him uncomfortable. Years earlier, when we’d lived together in Victoria, he had a short-lived fling with my sister. I envisioned them being together, making him real family, but the circumstances weren’t right. Shortly later she was married to someone else.

Spence sighed. “I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

“What?”

He took another drag off his Belmont, then ground it into the grass. Slowly he began to explain to me how the afterlife works, how your soul stays connected to what’s going on in the contemporary timeline for a while, but eventually you transcend that. You stop haunting your friends, you stop wondering what’s going on in real time, because you’ve ascended to another plain of being. One with beaches.

“For a while there I was checking in on Taylor all the time, you know, and Shannon. It’s so much easier to be a Facebook creep once you’re dead. I know so much shit I can’t tell you yet,” he said.

“I know everything that happened to you before you met me, and I know everything that’s going to happen to you. I’ve read the whole story now, but we’re not supposed to give spoiler warnings to people who are still alive. That’s not how life works.”

I coughed a few times, and nodded guiltily at an elderly couple walking by with their dog. I hoped they hadn’t seen me talking to myself. I took a deep breath through my nostrils and tried to imagine how Spence’s consciousness was reaching me, whether this imaginary figure before me was a legit spectral presence or just another fucking delusion, like the time I thought J.K. Rowling was my Mom and G.R.R.M was my Dad.

Spencer bit his lip. “We’re not really allowed to intervene, is the thing. So I know when bad things are going to happen, but I can’t do anything to stop them. I’m at peace with it, but those are the rules.”

My heart was beating a little faster. “You knew. You knew this was going to happen and you didn’t tell me.”

A tear dribbled into his beard, and he pulled out another Belmont. “I’m sorry, man. I really am. I would’ve done something if I could’ve. I swear.”

Now I was really crying in public. “I was like twenty feet away, man. When she drew her last breath. It was like I knew I had to be closer to her, like she pulled me back into her orbit. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what I could’ve done. I could’ve done so many things,” I said.

“What-ifs are useless, man. You did what you could. You all did. She picked a fight with a demon and it killed her. That’s all there is to it.”

I was starting to get annoyed with Spence, like the time we went on vacation together and I spazzed out at A&W because he complained about the colour of the pickles on his burger. I was going to the trouble of conjuring up his apparition, I figured at least that he’d say something comforting. But that was the thing with Spence, he always told the unvarnished truth. Even when it was uncomfortable.

“So what’s this thing you were going to tell me?”

Spence took a few trembly drags, his fingers shaking. He took a long moment after exhaling. “When I found out what was going to happen to Kathryn, I told you I couldn’t change anything. I had to watch it happen, just like you. But while you were sleeping, I went into Kathryn’s room.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “She was laying on her face, half under the covers, wearing those designer white jeans. She looked so precious, Will. Like Marilyn Monroe.”

I gasped. “Or Princess Di.”

“Exactly.”

I’d never seen Spence this emotional. His eyes were like the Grinch’s as he took another puff. He looked off towards the sand cliffs, and the waterfall where we used to come to drink back in high school. He was pausing because he was trying to work up the courage to say what came next.

“So I crawled into bed with her, Will. I put my arms around her, with her face to my neck, and I cradled her like she was a newborn. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I whispered to her that I’d be waiting on the other side. With her Gran Dad. I told her she didn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

My joint was finished now. I pulled out a cigarette, and Spencer offered me a light. Was this a pleasing fiction, or was I grasping at some legit truth from beyond the veil? These were exactly the sort of strange thoughts that would get me in trouble, but I needed to have them. I needed to let them out. And I needed to believe Spencer was telling me the truth.

He smiled. “But I didn’t even get to the best part. This is some real Rick and Morty shit.”

I snorted. “What?”

“Again, the metaphor isn’t perfect, but time doesn’t exist once you’re dead. Everything is happening all at once, like the Tralfamadorians in that one Vonnegut book.”

“The Sirens of Titan, right.”

“So the thing is, I’m talking to you right here but you’re also hanging with me in the afterlife already. We’re all together here. And when I went into that room, I wasn’t the only one there. Your whole family was there, and not just the nine of you but all of your aunts and uncles and all these other people I didn’t know,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. “They were all there?”

“Packed in, shoulder to shoulder. All her boyfriends had to wait out in the living room. Then there was her swimming friends, her Sauder girls, her B.C. Ferries crowd. There was so many people they couldn’t even fit in the basement suite, so a bunch of them were out smoking in the driveway. And you know who else was there? Celista.”

I wanted to believe him so bad. “Would you believe that, if you were me?”

Spence shrugged. “Probably not. All I know is what I saw. And everyone wanted to be there, to let Kathryn know she wasn’t alone. That includes you. The future you was there, like a Force Ghost from Star Wars. And you were so proud of her for how hard she fought. She was a Jedi.”

“I’ve never heard you get this maudlin before. I mean, you didn’t even believe in God. This shit sounds pretty bonkers.”

He laughed. At first it was just a surprised blurt, but then it escalated into body-shaking belly laughter. He wiped his eyes.

“What’s the joke?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”

Spence’s eyes gleamed with mischief. 

“We are God.”

The Kootenay Goon

[marshmallow-phd]

Fighting Instinct

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Supernatural, Wolf Au

Pairing: Jongdae x Reader

Summary: He went out of his way to ignore you. You saw his kindness towards everyone else, but he showed you only irritation. And you couldn’t blame him, considering your first meeting. However, little do you know that he’s hiding a dark world, one that you’re pulled into against your will….

Warning: none

A/N: This part is much longer than the others just because I couldn’t really find a good place to break it up. Enjoy!

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15 I Final

**

Jongdae was already waiting for you in the front lawn, leaning against a very nice compact car. The door to the detached garage was open and you tried not to think about how he could already have had the car outside. Still not saying a word to you, he got into the driver’s seat and put the car in drive. 

It was a quiet drive during the nearly one hour trip just to get to the outskirts of the city. You squished yourself up against the window, trying to put as much space between the two of you as possible in the confined area.

It wasn’t easy. Every minute or so your eyes flickered to Jongdae’s hand that was clutching the gear shift with a strong grip, even though the car was an automatic. Your fingers were begging you to just let them reach out and force themselves between his skin and the leather shift, intertwining with his own strong phalanges. Squeezing your eyes shut, you just concentrated on the cold glass pressed against your forehead.

The car came to a stop and you opened your eyes. Jongdae had parked just outside your apartment. At first you were confused to how he knew where you lived, but then it became obvious. They weren’t outside that convenience store by accident that night. With a sigh, you unbuckle your seatbelt and got out of the car. Jongdae did the same, following you up the stairs to the building and then up the elevator to your door.

Though you rarely had visitors, you were secretly grateful that you had a tendency to stress clean. No embarrassing laundry left out or dishes in the sink with three day old grease caked on.

Jongdae shut the door behind him. You flicked on the lights which in turn started up the ceiling fan. As the air circulated around the room, Jongdae took a deep breath and an angry roar ripped out of his chest making you jump, your back slamming into the wall of the hallway. A continuous growl vibrated from his chest as he stalked past you, entering your bedroom and bathroom without your permission.

“Do you mind explaining to me what the hell that was all about?” you asked once he rejoined you in the hallway.

“Your place smells like her,” he hissed.

“Her?” you blinked. Oh, right. “Eun Na? Of course my apartment smells like her. She practically lived here most days.” Thinking about it hurt now. Back then, you just thought she enjoyed your company, your wine and movies nights, and girl time. Now you understood she was just keeping an eye on you. How did she really feel about you? Did she find you annoying? Obnoxious? Probably. She probably couldn’t wait to be rid of you.

He growled again. “Let’s get your stuff and leave.”

Rolling your eyes, you shuffled to your bedroom, pulling a suitcase out of the closet and throwing it on the bed. The werewolf stood in the in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and leaning against the frame. It was hard to ignore him as you started taking sweaters off their hangers and folding them to take with you. The weather was getting colder so you tried to focus on that aspect and packed accordingly instead of wondering what it would be like to run up to him and throw your arms around his waist.

This was driving you insane. Wanting to hate him, but being unable to due to your feelings that you just couldn’t shove away. The only thing that kept you from going completely crazy was finally having an answer, finally understanding that this pull towards him was simply because you were his mate - his unwanted mate.

Your hands froze just as you put a book on top of the pile of jeans in the suitcase. Thinking back to the novels you read in high school when the supernatural ruled the market, you’d never come across the situation where the two fated characters didn’t want to be together. Or even where one of them wanted out. Granted, that was fiction, but it was all you had to go on.

Why couldn’t he have just accepted the fact that the two of you were mates? Were you really that bad? Would he have been more accepting if you hadn’t thrown up on him in your first meeting? Were you just that unattractive? Okay, you weren’t a supermodel, but you didn’t think  you were grotesque in anyway.

Despite how he’s treated you, you were willing to go along with this. You knew you wouldn’t just get over him. He never acted malicious towards you, never bullied you. He simply ignored you, sent a not-so-nice look every now and again. Nothing too terrible to make you run away. Although part of you wished he had, just so you could have an excuse.  

You hadn’t realized that you hadn’t moved for a substantial amount of time until Jongdae pushed off the doorframe and stood beside you.

“Is everything okay?” he asked. His voice was soft for the first time since you woke up, like he was genuinely concerned. It sped up your heartbeat, along with his close proximity. You didn’t want to think about whether or not he could hear it. That just messed your head up even more.

Nodding but not looking at him, you went back to packing, going through a list in your head to take your thoughts elsewhere. You ignored him as you walked to your bathroom, throwing necessary toiletries into a travel bag. Once you’d stuffed your suitcase with everything you thought you’d need, you zipped it up. Before you could grab the handle and drag it off your bed, however, Jongdae reached out and took it from you, his hand making just the briefest of contact with your skin.

The heat generated from that millisecond touch sent a shock wave through your body. Jongdae must have felt it too as he clenched his jaw and stalked out of the room, dragging your suitcase behind him. You ran after him, worried that he might actually leave you behind without thinking about it.

It was silence once again on the drive home. The tension was thick in the car, suffocating you. Jongdae never released his muscles and refused to look at you, going as far as to not check the right lane before crossing over the dotted line.

Parking in the gravel driveway off to the side of the house, he jumped out and went straight to the trunk to get your suitcase. You wanted nothing more than to just run inside and find solace with one of the other wolf boys, whether it be Junmyeon or Kyungsoo, but you didn’t want to be rude or cowardly. He wasn’t your servant.

So, instead, you trudged behind him, not asking anything as he headed towards the now empty kitchen and went up the narrow staircase that you hadn’t detected before. He stopped near the end of the hallway of the second floor and pointed towards a door.

“You’ll stay here,” he informed you, still not looking at you. “My room is right over there,” he pointed to the door directly across from you, “if you need anything.”

You nodded your understanding, scratching behind your ear. Watching him turn on his heels and leave was painful. With a sigh, you opened the door and dragged your suitcase inside, closing yourself off from the rest of the house just for a little bit.

The room was pretty bare, just a full sized bed off to the right, along with a dresser and desk on the opposite end. There was no bathroom, meaning you would have to share with the boys. Jongdae never told you where said bathroom was and you didn’t want to start randomly opening doors. You made a mental note to ask someone since you really wanted to take a shower. Your hair still smelled like smoke which was starting to make your stomach sick.

Unpacking made your temporary displacement feel more permanent, but you hoped it would also make the room feel more like home. No longer able to take the smell of last night’s event clinging to you, you grabbed your travel bag and left the room.

Jongdae hadn’t gone to his room when he left so you bypassed it in favor of finding someone downstairs. Loud chattering and yells bounced off the walls and you followed it to the living room.

The TV was on, but hardly anyone was paying attention to it. Wolf boys were spread out everywhere, some lounging on the couch while others were sprawled out on the floor. Junmyeon was sitting in a chair a little off to the side, just watching the shenanigans with a smile. Jongdae was not among the crowd, but there was another girl there sitting in the lap of one of the boys who was on the floor.

All at once the chattering stopped when you entered, making you clutch the bag to your chest as some sort of protection.

“Did you get everything you needed from your house?” Junmyeon asked.

You nodded. “Yeah, I did. But, um,” you chewed on the inside of your cheek. “I don’t know where the bathroom is and I still kind of smell like a sweaty bonfire, so I was wondering….”

“You can use my bathroom.” Junmyeon volunteered, standing up from his seat. “It’s more private.”

You could feel the warmth radiating from your cheeks. “Thank you.”

He nodded, motioning for you to follow him back up the stairs. The master bedroom was at the end of the hallway near your assigned space. He opened his door and led you inside.

His room was twice the size of your own along with a walk-in closet. The bathroom was grand but still homey in a country kind of feel. The shower was separate from the large tub, just adding to its luxury. Brown fluffy towels hung from the railing next to sliding glass door.

“Hides the dirt,” Junmyeon teased as tugged on one of the towels.

You laughed along with him and a proud smile stretched across his face.

“Take your time. Whenever you’re ready, come back downstairs. Hae In wants to meet you.”

Hae In? That must have been the girl.

You nodded and he left you alone. Locking the door, you stripped out of your old clothes, letting the water warm up as it sprayed from the nozzle. Immediately, you felt refreshed, letting the water soak your hair and wash the bad night away. It was still permanently etched into your brain, but at least the physical evidence was going down the drain.

Not wanting to make everyone downstairs wait too long for you, you kept your shower short, simply washing your hair and scrubbing your skin. The bathroom was full of steam and the mirror was completely fogged up when you stepped out of the shower. Using the towel Junmyeon had pointed out, you dried yourself off and brushed your hair, getting any tangles out. Then the horror hit you.

While you’d remembered everything you needed to wash up, you forgot about a fresh set of clothes to change into. Groaning, you geared yourself up, making sure the towel was securely wrapped around you before you gathered up your things and crept out of the bathroom. Peaking your head out of Junmyeon’s bedroom, you scanned the hallway. After deciding the coast was clear, you tiptoed to your own room. Unfortunately, you made it about two steps and had turned to shut the door when Jongdae emerged out of his room.

You froze, unable to believe that you’d been spotted by the person you would have posted last on your list to see you this way. It felt like a western movie standoff with neither of you moving.

Or maybe more like a deer spotting a hunter was a more accurate description. You certainly felt like a defenseless fawn, unable to make any sudden movements. The look on Jongdae’s face was frightening. His nostrils flared, taking a deep breath while his eyebrows were pulled together so tight a deep harsh line was etched in between them. Just barely you were able to see his arms shaking with his hands balled up into fists. Then, he turned around and went back into his room, slamming the door shut with a loud bang.

The noise broke you out of your trance. You sprinted to your room, heart racing in your chest. What could you have possibly done to make him so angry? Was showering so wrong?

Going back to the square breathing, you were able to calm yourself again to be able to get dressed. You’d noticed the house was a bit chilly, so you went ahead and slipped on an oversized sweater and a pair of jeans. Ruffling your hair one more time, you talked yourself into going back downstairs. Then a knock came from your door.

Jongdae stood in the hall, a small pile of folded gray towels in his hands.

“Here.” He held them out for you to take. You did, careful to avoid any skin-to-skin contact. “Use these instead. Please.”

That last word took you by surprise. All you could do was nod.

“Are you going downstairs?” he asked. Again, you just nodded. He motioned with his head to the stairs. “Let’s go. Or else a search party will come for you.”

Placing the towels on the bed to put away later, you followed Jongdae down the stairs, your eyes trained on his right hand. You just wanted to reach out and grab it, let it be your anchor before entering the crowded living room. His fingers were just a few inches from yours, easily within grabbing distance.

You hated this feeling. This constant nagging to touch him, to hold him close. How did the others handle this aching pain? Did Jongdae feel this too? If he did, you admired his self-control, no matter how angry you were with his rejection. That certainly still hurt. Deep down, you were a bit of a romantic and had always believed in the idea of soulmates. You were never prepared for the notion that your other half could actually dislike the idea of being with you.

Once again you were hit with the high volume of multiple voices speaking to and over each other. Three more girls had joined the group since you left earlier. Too many people crammed into the social area was making you uneasy. Instinctually, you hid behind Jongdae.

With a shake of his head, he side-stepped, leaving you exposed. Everyone was friendly, letting the talking die down naturally this time, instead of cutting it off like ripping out a headphone jack.

“Feel better, (y/n)?” Junmyeon asked.

You nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

Jongdae scowled, but made no comment. You still weren’t sure as to why he was so upset about you using Junmyeon’s bathroom. It’s not like you used his body wash and now smelled like him.

You nearly smacked yourself in face. No, you didn’t use his soap, but you did use his towel which, to a being with heightened senses, probably reeked of the alpha. Why would he care if you smelled a bit like Junmyeon? Why should he care at all?

The thought made your eyebrows pulled together and your mouth form a frown.

Chanyeol patted the empty space next to him after gaining your attention. “(y/n). You can sit over here.”

You took one step towards him before Jongdae stopped you with a hand around your wrist. Too surprised to say anything, you just let him pull you across the room. Jongdae took the seat beside Chanyeol instead leaving only the end open for you. Though he didn’t force you down next to him, he did keep a grip on you until you sat down, your knee resting against his. Even through the two layers of jeans, you could feel a heat where your bodies met. He released your wrist and leaned back, resting on his palms, one placed strategically behind your own back.

The dots were connecting in your brain at a slow pace, but you worked out that Jongdae’s behavior was possessive. All it did was confuse you more.

“So, (y/n).”Junmyeon pulled you out of your thoughts. “I think it’s best to introduce you to everyone. Although, you already know a few: Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, Sehun.” He pointed to one of the wolves that sat on the couch who was giving you a gummy-filled smile. “That’s Minseok. He’s actually our oldest pack member.”

You were finding that piece of information hard to believe, but shook it off, giving him a small wave instead.

“Next to him is his mate, Ji Yeon.”

Envy hit you like a freight train. A beautiful, black haired girl with lithe limbs gave you a warm smile. But her looks weren’t what was making you jealous. It was how comfortable she looked leaning her head against Minseok’s shoulder while he held her hand. The content and love between them was obvious. They were a couple that took the whole mate thing and didn’t just run with it, but embraced it with open arms. They were happy. It was a happiness that everyone strived for, fated or not.

Junmyeon went on with the introductions and you tried to keep up. Baekhyun, a puppy-like individual, was sitting on the floor. Hae In turned out to be his mate, who was sitting comfortably in his lap. Nosy boy was actually named Jongin and was much less cold towards you now. Although you weren’t sure if it was because he was no longer trying to convince you to get new friends or because of the curly-haired Kimberly who sat beside him. The last person for you to be introduced to was Yixing. He shyly gave you a dimpled smile as he was introduced. Ming, an equally shy girl, was his mate and they complimented each other perfectly.

“So, now that we have that out of the way,” Sehun butted in, “can we finally discuss this witch business?”

“I’m not sure there’s too much to discuss,” Junmyeon shrugged.

“What do you mean?” Chanyeol whined, straightening up. “They tried to kill (y/n) so they could then kill us. We don’t even know why they suddenly hate us again.”

“My money’s on Eun Na,” Baekhyun quipped. “She’s definitely their leader. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had some twisted reason for getting all of them on board with this.”

At the mention of your former best friend, you shrank back. Your mind was still fighting with itself, trying to figure out how the girl you used to laugh in face masks with was the same person who tied you to a stake to be burned. Unsure if it was involuntary or not, you still felt a little better when you saw Jongdae lean in a little closer to you in response to your discomfort of the change of conversation.

“(y/n).”

Your head snapped up at the mention of your name. Yixing was the one who’d spoken.

“Can you think of anything that Eun Na might have said in regards to not liking us?”

You shook your head. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t think of any time where she mentioned something along the lines of the supernatural or not liking certain people.”

Well, besides an ex-boyfriend.

“Too bad,” Baekhyun pouted, earning an elbow to the stomach from Hae In. “Ow.”

“It is unfortunate,” Junmyeon agreed. “For now, we lay low. (y/n) is staying with us for protection. She’ll only leave the house if at least one of us is with her. We’ll take shifts guarding the house while the rest of try to go about as normal, see if we can catch anything regarding the witches.” He turned his head to glance out the window. “Sun’s going down. Time for our run. Sehun and Kyungsoo will keep to the perimeter this time. Let’s go.”

Sehun didn’t look very enthused at not being able to run with the rest of the pack, but Kyungsoo gave you a reassuring smile. The atmosphere became a little uncomfortable when the mates were saying their goodbyes. Some kept it chaste with a kiss on the cheek or a quick one on the lips. Baekhyun tried to take things a little further, but Chanyeol slapped him upside the head. Jongdae, on the other hand, gave you no sort of goodbye as he jumped up and headed towards the kitchen. Minseok gave you a sympathetic look before he followed suit.

Then, it was just the girls. The awkward of that came with meeting new people always made you uncomfortable and the current circumstances made this time no easier. Kimberly was the first one to make a move, standing up and walking over before sitting back down next to you in Jongdae’s spot.

“You okay?” she inquired.

You nodded unconvincingly. Wrapping your arms around your knees, you stared down at the carpet.

Someone huffed. A pair of legs entered your vision before a sideways face appeared.

“Why don’t we get you some food?” Hae In suggested.

You weren’t really given a choice as she grabbed you hand and pulled you to your feet and the girls herded you into the kitchen.

Ming frowned. “I don’t really feel like cleaning up a big mess.”

Ji Yeon laughed as she opened the freezer. “Good thing we’re currently in a bachelor pad then, huh?” She pulled out a frozen pizza, earning a high-five from Kimberly before she turned the oven on to preheat.

Everyone settled in the breakfast booth, still eyeing you cautiously.

“So,” Hae In sighed. “He hasn’t been too much of a jerk to you, has he?”

You shrugged. Your first reaction was to not say anything since you didn’t really know these girls and – while he hasn’t exactly been a gentleman – you didn’t want to bad mouth Jongdae. At the same time, they’ve gone through a somewhat similar situation, if receiving a better outcome in a shorter amount of time.

“He’s just…,” you took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“He’s an asshole, that’s what he is,” Hae In huffed. You were thankful that she was brave enough to voice your own thoughts.

“Hae In,” Ming chastised before looking at Ji Yeon for help.

However, she had a similar view. “She’s kind of right. Minseok’s been keeping me updated and even he’s never seen Jongdae treat somebody this way.” Ji Yeon turned to you. “They’re the closest with each other. But lately he’s hardly opened up to Minseok. That’s not like him at all.”

“I don’t get why he’s fighting this,” Kimberly added. She reached across the table, placing one of her hands over yours. “You are gorgeous. He should count himself lucky.”

You gave her a half-hearted smile. “Thanks.”

“Sooner or later, the pull will be too much and he’ll give in.”

That wiped the smile clean off your face. “I don’t want him to just give in because he’s being force to by some natural instinct.” Sighing, you crossed your arms on the table in front of you, laying your head down for comfort. You sniffed, horrified that tears were actually starting to form.

A hand gently rubbed circles on your back. Ji Yeon leaned over to look at you while Kimberly jumped up to put the pizza in the oven after it’d let off a high pitched beep.

“You like him already, don’t you?” Ji Yeon guessed.

You nodded, not bothering to lie. “He was nice to me at the party. When I saw him again in class this semester, I was embarrassed and he seemed to hate me. But I couldn’t help watching him. He was just so… nice to everyone. Helpful. And he was always smiling. I just wanted him to smile like that at me. I wanted to make him laugh. Happy. But I guess the only way to make him happy would be if I disappeared.”

“Don’t you dare say that, (y/n),” Ji Yeon snapped, making you jump back up.

“I am so going to kick his ass,” Kimberly grumbled. “He has absolutely no idea what he has in front of him.”

“Trust me, (y/n),” Ming spoke up. “You going away would only drive him insane. Being apart from their mate can cause them pain. He’ll realize what he needs in time. Especially with you in constant danger. It could be very romantic.”

A small laugh escaped. Oh, yes, you could picture Jongdae being your knight-in-shining-armor. Or your wolf in glossy fur.

Out of nowhere, an earsplitting howl pierced through the air making all of you jump.

“Jongin,” Kimberly whimpered.

You looked at her, feeling her concern, but still confused. “How do you know?”

“Mate thing,” Hae In explained. “Soon, you’ll be able to recognize Jongdae’s.”

“Was it a bad howl?” you asked cautiously.

“It definitely wasn’t good,” Ji Yeon answered. “That wasn’t the usual, happy-to-be-running howl. Not to mention, Jongin is typically the more laid back kind. He doesn’t like to raise an alarm unless the threat is real.”

With a sound like thunder rumbling through the house, the back door flew open, revealing four panicking and very naked boys trying to fit through the doorway at the same time.

“What is going on?” Ji Yeon demanded. Her authoritative voice made you flinch and you wondered how she wasn’t Junmyeon’s mate instead as she gave off an alpha-type aura.

“Jongin smelled the witches,” Minseok explained. “We had to make sure you were okay.”

Ji Yeon glanced down at you as you had hidden your face in your hands, the only safe haven from the nude bodies now standing in the kitchen. Your face was running hot and you didn’t need a mirror to know you were blushing violently.

“As you can see we’re perfectly fine,” Ji Yeon informed them, obviously holding back a laugh at your innocent state. “Now, either go put clothes on or go back out running, you’re giving the poor thing a heart attack.”

“Oh, sorry, (y/n),” you heard Yixing say.

“Let’s go back,” Jongin suggested. “We’ll keep close to the house, let Sehun run wild instead.”

At the sound of their retreating steps, you peaked out from behind your fingers. Standing there just outside the door was Jongdae, who you hadn’t noticed earlier. He made brief eye contact with you before shaking his head and running after the others.

Hae In snorted. “This is going to be very interesting.”

[antiracistkaren]

When I read a lot, I write a lot. Something about digesting beautifully written fiction makes me long to do my own writing, but I don't have any plots in my head. Just lines of poetry that randomly float through my head.

This morning I woke up exhausted, as though I had run a race yesterday. In some ways, I did. I took my meds and attacked the closets in this house, carrying everything to the living room. First refolding towels so they all matched in size, and then mostly allowing the sheets to pile as they would, smoothing out the part that would be seen in the closets.

And then it was time to unpack and re-pack medicine. These over here for adult pain/colds. Those over there for the kids allergies and cold medicine. This one over here? That's for beauty supplies, and two little troughs for fingernail polish that is separating they've not been used for so long. Two different colors of green that I've not successfully applied yet.

Picking up after everyone, dropping sheets on beds that needed to be changed (knowing, ugh, without a doubt that it will lead to another mountain of laundry to scale today), hastily throwing toys into bins and boxes to get them off the floor, telling myself on another day I'll re-organize everything. The small voice in my head askes what's the point? The point is me.

Last week I was watching RuPaul's Drag Race with a friend, and… they talked about really loving yourself. Suddenly, it was like I had zoomed backwards out of my body. Of course, I thought, of course. I've heard it said so many times before, but if I don't actually really love myself, I'll never be free of the anxiety over being myself. If I don't love myself, I can't be curious about myself.

In many ways, I DO love myself already. I love that I'm funny (at least, I think I'm funny). I love how I can hold the attention of a room and tell a good story. I love speaking about topics I'm passionate about. I love how quickly I can read good fiction books. But there are also things I do NOT love about myself, and it's mostly rooted in body shame. I don't love my stretchy, saggy stomach. I don't love my boobs--now my left hangs down an inch lower than my right, giving me a cock-eyed look when my nipples are hard in my sweatshirts. I don't love the way I can sink down into nothingness and allow my body to become weak. I don't love my lack of discipline.

I'm not sure what to do about those parts I decidedly DO NOT love. I need to embrace this body, as it's the only one I have… but I'm not sure how to battle that voice that was put there early (and reinforced every single day) that says that I'm only valuable if men find me attractive--if people find me attractive. It's always been such a weird spot for me.

I know that I can be conventionally pretty. I also know that I can look very frumpy and misshapen, a hidden body buried beneath sweaters and sweatpants. I know that my hair is most attractive when it's long, brushed, and shiny. Sometimes I long for beauty in myself, but most times I just want to be comfortable and hidden. No one needs to know what kind of body I have under here. When I was younger, it was never advantageous to show my body--instead, it created this horribly anxious sensation in me. People can see me, I would think. I could feel the way men looked at me, hungry for my body, but unconcerned with my brain.

I hated it--still hate it. It felt like something I was forced to do in order to make people bend to my will. I'm beautiful and you cannot stand up to me. Gaze upon me and tremble. Always I could put up a good show that I really was beautiful, but my desire for huge, swallowing clothes would be remarked upon endlessly ("you look homeless." "Why do you dress like that? You're so pretty otherwise."). I hated it every time. Every time I felt like I was less. Every time it chipped away at a deep inner part of me that seeks solace and safety.

Being dressed like a woman makes me a target. I've been a target of sexual feelings forever. The last 7, 8 years, being in a relationship has been mostly a respite from that. In my house, I'm safe. I have daughters. They don't even see my body as anything more than a comforting smushy place for solace. But my husband. My Husband is still here, and he is still hungry, and I know with certainty that he does not find me beautiful anymore. Not in the way that he used to.

He finds me comfortable. Unexciting. Predictable. Like a living weighted blanket. He hates himself too, and that hatred radiates from him. It's like watching someone cut themselves and being powerless to stop them. No words that I can utter will change the programming placed in his psyche by his parents. And nothing that he says to be will make me believe that he finds my sweatpant clad, low swinging breasted, soft tummied self will be attractive to him. No. More and more I look like a mother… and how can one find their own mother sexy? Well… oedipus I guess did.

My anxiety this morning feels like a hot poker in my chest. I'm not sure why it's there. It's a solid thing, stretching out to my underarms, my throat… swallowing is harder. The easiest way to escape is into a book. In a book I can see all the colors and pictures, I can hear the sounds. I can get lost in a world that isn't real, that is tightly controlled by the author. I trust the author completely to take me away and deliver me safely on the other side. I learn things. I absorb language, I marvel at its beauty. In a book, I don't have notifications lighting up my brain. The dopamine is real with every turn of a page. I'm hungry for it, ravenous. I eat books whole and look for another one. Escape escape escape.

My ritalin makes my anxiety worse. Much worse. I'm teetering on the edge of panic attacks in the morning, but I also feel so driven. I'm doing it to myself, taking these meds like I am. I shoot myself into the sun in the morning, tackling my to do list with almost insane focus, and then I crash into a book and don't want to come out. I think about my body wasting away while I sit and read. I think about my relationships atrophying without my care. I feel my husband's sadness pool around my feet, sucking me down into the floor and making me want to just sob against the futility of fighting it.

I sometimes wish I didn't have a body… that I could just read and think and exist without needing the upkeep the home that my brain lives in. … Fantasy.

My oldest is talking about my death a lot, and it is freaking me out. Every time she tells me that I'm going to die, I feel like she's bringing my death closer and closer in time. I know that this is because when my mom spoke the words, "I wish she would die and get it over with already," she doomed my sister to die. And then she did die. When you wish someone dead… sometimes they really do die. I think I'm still extremely angry with mom about saying that… about giving up on my sister… about not taking responsibility for the trauma that she had endured in her childhood.

When we are adults, we are so focused on our feelings and happiness. We don't think about the long term effects of our choices on our kids. At least… my parents didn't. They just casually birthed us and left us to figure it out on our own in very large ways. Mom didn't even realize that she was teaching me how to be, and that her dysfunctional way to be would become my way to be. That the rules that she taught me would live forever inside of my brain, as rigid as walls, as real as a dam holding back a river.

I think about what I'm doing all the time. How am I teaching my kids? What am I teaching my kids? That's why I send them to daycare. I don't want to be responsible for all of the lessons. I don't want to pass along these rules that have been handed down forever on to my kids. But I also feel a bit powerless to stop it. We are all marching along in time, doing things just because that's the way it has always been done, and not thinking about the larger picture.

But if I think about it too much, the futility of getting up every morning, going to work to make money and then spending all of that money as fast as we can… it would make me want to die. What I have to think of instead is… loving myself. I hate capitalism, but I can love myself and my kids. I can take care of this kid inside of me who hates her body and wishes it wasn't such an object of obsession for other people.

No one taught me how to love myself, is the problem. I'm having to learn how to do it all by myself. That's really hard to do. People really frown on folks who actually love and adore themselves. We call those people narcissists… right? But I have to start being intentional.

I am a lovable person. I have a lovely body that takes care of me--it has alarm bells and systems built in to talk to me. Ignoring my body is ignoring myself. Hello, body. I'm sorry that I don't appreciate you. I'm sorry that I make you starve and grow and shrink. I'm sorry that I eat things that don't make you feel good. I'm sorry I haven't adored you as much as I should. I'm angry at myself for not loving myself better--isn't that strange?

I guess I have to work on forgiving myself for not loving myself first. I was never taught how, but I can still learn. There is still time. I am not dead yet… and I refuse to die before I'm really gone. So I'll start here. Talking to myself. Hey, you. I love you. I really do--very deeply. I love your brain, dude. I love your style. I love your curiosity. I love your fortitude. I love that I'm autistic and special. I love that I'm unusual. I love my heart and sense of justice. I love my courage. I adore my ability to type fast enough to keep up with my brain… well… almost. I love the community I have built around me. I have done a really good job taking care of me.

So… although no one protected me as a kid, I have learned how to protect myself. I know how to protect myself and take care of myself. I don't have to wait on someone else to do it for me--that's the beauty of me. I know myself so well because I'm not afraid of me. I'm not someone to be afraid of--I am safe for me.

To that little kid inside of me--I am so sorry that no one protected you. I am sorry that you didn't have a mom that understood you, or knew how to teach you how to love yourself. I'm sorry that the men in your life weren't safe, not even your own brother, not even your own father, not even your own step-father. Not even your own husband.

But you know who has always been there for you? Me. I will never give up on you. Never. I will keep trying to learn how to love you, how to make you feel loved. I will be your faithful friend until the end. You don't have to be afraid of me. It is safe to be yourself. We just have to figure out what that means together.

[serensama]

To Realise

A mini celebration for 2000 followers! Thanks Everyone!!!! A Soulmate AU where they only realise they are Soulmates when they say/read/hear each other’s names out loud followed by an immediate overflowing of emotion sparking inside of them. Instant realisation.

Yoosung:

-       He was already running late. This was not the first impression he wanted to give to everyone! He was in University! He was intelligent! He knew how to set a simple alarm!

-       … in theory yes, in practise… not so much… hence the lateness…

-       It also didn’t help that he couldn’t remember which lecture theatre he was meant to be in- which meant he had to stop and scan for his name at each door on the floor… four down three to go…

-       Kim Yoosung… Kim Yoosung… Kim… nope not that room!

-       When he got to the final room (because of course it had to be the final room) he managed to find his name… but his eyes were mysteriously drawn to another name, his mouth wrapping itself around the syllables before he knew what he was doing…

-       “M… MC?”

-       His heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest, his knees went wobbly and his head felt light and fuzzy, yet so damn clear at the same time. Yoosung stilled himself, bracing his arms against the doorframe to insure he wouldn’t fall flat on his face.

-       What was happening to him?

-       He had never felt this way before- was he coming down with something? He touched the back of his hand against his forehead and sure enough he was warm and sweaty.

-       Though, granted, it could have been because he had been running for the last fifteen minutes and trying not to burst out crying because he was going to be late- not because he was sick and dying.

-       His stomach fluttered and his mouth ran dry… no, he must be getting sick. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten that pizza that was left over… from three days ago. He really needed to start cooking more.

-       Yoosung clamped his eyes shut and forced himself to breathe deeply, he could get through this. It was only one hour. He could do this.

-       Opening the door, the newly blonde haired student waltzed into the theatre only to have the entire room turn to face him.

-       Great. He must have been later than he thought he was.

-       Only to have them all shrug and continue on with their conversations.

-       Yoosung turned to his left to where their professor was meant to be standing, only to see it empty- the teacher was late? He wasn’t the last one to class? Finally! He managed to catch a break!

-       Running a hand through his sweat soaked hair and laughing as he wiped his palm on his jeans, Yoosung shook his head at how stupid he was to worry so much… besides, chiding himself made it easier to forget the uneasy feeling coursing through his veins.

-       It wasn’t a bad sensation, just… different. Good. Like little bubbles of pure emotion streaming through his blood. Why he felt happy and excited and nervous all at the same time…  he didn’t know. Weirdest case of food poisoning he ever had that was for sure-

-       He began to scan the rows of seats for the easiest spot to slip into and found one close to the middle just on the aisle without anyone sitting in between him and the girl on the other side, the really pretty girl laughing with her friends…

-       Yoosung pressed his blunt nails into the flesh of his palm to wake himself up from his unintentional staring. He took in a bolstering breath and psyched himself up just so he could sit down, it’s not like the cute girl had noticed him or his existence or anything. It would be fine.

-       Edging into the chair and adjusting the fold up side table he began to unpack his books and pens, only for his latest guide for LOLOL to slip out from between his textbooks.

-       The girl next to him caught sight of the bright colours from the side of her eye and turned around, her eyes focused on the cover of the magazine before they shot up to look him in the eye.

-       She was stunning. And she looked disgusted with him.

-       “Tsk, another one of those computer geeks who do nothing but sit in their dark little apartments and fall in love with fictional characters,” she sneered as her friends cackled behind her… clearly none of them had grown up any since graduating from high school. Yoosung sighed and was about to shyly excuse himself when-

-       “Yeah, that’s right! We sit in our apartments and fall in love with fictional characters who still have far more depth and strength of character in one pixel than you could ever have in your entire being… Girl- did you regress into your 7th grade form over the holidays after graduating- it’s cool if you did, I’d like to study you for my psychology lab- I’ll entitle it, ‘Dumb bitch, scared and out of her league, forgets how to act like a decent human being.’ Know what? Just leave- you’re not appreciated here- we wouldn’t want to infect you with our geekiness.”

-       Yoosung turned around to see a girl with big earphones and an even bigger hoodie sitting forward giving the first (not so cute anymore) girl the most menacing glare he had ever seen, bar the ones his mother wielded.

-       The group of girls huffed and tried to retort under their breaths before packing up and moving rows.

-       Headphones girl clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she made up her mind; she slung her cross-body bag over her shoulder as she clambered over the seats to sit next to Yoosung. The girl slightly winded from her almost-argument and her repositioning, offered the blonde boy a crooked grin- one he returned without hesitation.

-       “So… LOLOL boy- you gonna let me look at that guide? I was meaning to pick one up today after class but since you have one right here…” she eluded as she quirked one eyebrow up to test if he caught her drift. He did. He handed her the guide.

-       “H-hey… thanks for before… I didn’t know what I should say, if I should say anything at all-” “No sweat LOLOL boy-” “Hahah are you going to call me that forever?” he asked, laughing as he rubbed the back of his neck.

-       The girl eyed him critically from behind the pages of the guide.

“Pretty much, yes.”

Yoosung chuckled as he twirled his pen through the tips of his fingers, happy to feel the earlier wash of illness and emotion wane into nothing but a sense of peace and calm. “Well, can I at least have a name to call you? Butt-Kicking Classmate is kind of a mouthful.” “And yet so apt-” “Yes I understand this but-”

-       “MC. My name is MC.”

The waning was nothing but the calm before the storm, the eye of the tornado- and Yoosung was the poor cow stuck up 1000 feet in the air and she… she was the tornado. The boy sat back as he burnt up, his cheeks flaring as he bit his lip to not shout out from the sheer heat that he endured. Why did this happen every time he heard her name? Or said her name? Or even thought of her name? It was infuriating! “What should I call you if not LOL-” “Yoosung. Kim… Kim Yoosung.”

-       He had heard a soft gasp from behind the pages of the guide and he didn’t miss the way her hands trembled, or how wide her eyes had become. Slowly but steadily, MC drew the magazine down past her chin until her entire face was visible to him… that fluttering in his stomach, that fuzzy but clear feeling- it all came rushing back one hundred-fold.

-       “Yoosung… Kim… you say?” she asked, her once confident voice all but whispered.

-       He had never heard his name sound so beautiful.

-       “Yes, Yoosung Kim…” he confirmed with the smallest of nods of his head, watching as she swallowed some saliva and captivated in the way her throat moved as she did so. He was entranced by the way her mouth seemed to want to do a thousand different things, smile, talk, laugh, scream… so damn expressive.

-       MC clicked her tongue once more as she was wont to do when she made an important decision and put the guide back down on his desk before leaning forward, completely invading his personal space. Not that he was complaining. In fact… she could invade it more. It didn’t seem close enough.

-       “Yoosung Kim… I’ve been looking for you, for a long time,” she smiled, her warm hand resting atop his, a flash of electricity passing through their touch. “You have? Why? I’m just me, little old Yoosung…”

-       She threw her head back and laughed and to him it sounded like bells chiming.

-       “Yes, you are little old Yoosung, but from today - you are my little old Yoosung…” she pointed out as her pointer finger booped him firmly on the tip of his nose. “Well if I’m yours, th-then you’re mine!” he answered his chest puffing out slightly- why had he said that? When did he become so damn brazen? Was he going crazy?

“Hahaha, duh! If you’re my Soulmate then I’m your Soulmate- so of course I’m yours!”

“….. Soul… soul what?”

-       His parents had never told him anything about Soulmates, didn’t prepare him for what was to come. He was hit by a truck and completely floored.

-       The truck was named MC. He didn’t want to get up.

-       “Care to explain?”

-       MC stared at him completely dumbfounded, her mouth agape and her eyes even wider than before. She inhaled and nodded, resigning herself to the fact that the love of her life was completely innocent and that she did indeed have to teach him everything.

-       It was going to be so much fun.

-       “You see when a man and a woman love each other very much-” “MC I KNOW ABOUT SEX I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SOULMATES!” he hissed loud enough for the two rows surrounding them to snigger at. “Sex? Who said anything about sex? Geez, I say soulmate and you’re already trying to get into my pants-” “MC!” he whined, his amethyst eyes large and pleading. Of course, she acquiesced.

-       “Forever Yoosung. It means that you and me, until death do us part, no matter what… it’s me and you.”

-       He took a moment to process this, that he had literally no choice in who he fell in love with- that fate intervened and made sure that he had someone to love and someone to love him in return for the rest of his life… it was just so much to take in…

-       MC entwined her fingers with his when she noticed what she assumed was struggle painted on his face. This, he was going to have this, forever.

-       It didn’t matter that he had just met the girl, that he knew nothing about her- his body knew before he did. He already loved her.

-       He smiled and squeezed her hand back.

-       “Okay… I think I’m okay with that.”

Zen:

-       His first motion picture…

-       He was beside himself. He couldn’t believe that his agent had managed to get him this part! It was meant for a more well-known leading man and an unknown actress but they had fallen in love with how well he had read for the part and how well his headshots looked against the actress’s.  

-       He hadn’t been told who they had chosen, it wasn’t like it really mattered at the end of the day- the girl was an unknown, fresh faced and new in the show business role. She had never acted a day in her life but the casting director had seen her on the street and she had just the aesthetic he was after- it was just pure dumb luck that she was natural at acting.

-       He had planned to talk to her at the read through but she had lost her voice and couldn’t attend… it wasn’t until they were both there for the first physical run through of the scenes that they actually met…

-       “Oh hi! You must be-” “Yeah! You’re the actress playing MC right?-”

-       He didn’t get to finish his sentence, nor did she.

-       She was whisked off to fit some costumes and he… he couldn’t breathe.

-       The moment he said MC, his lips started to tingle and an odd buzzing sound rang in his ears. His cheeks felt flushed and his heart beat raced. He couldn’t understand… he had said that name more than a thousand times whilst reading the script, not once did he ever feel that way. It must have been her. Seeing her and her face must have just solidified his character’s feelings inside him of course. That must be what it was.

-       When she finally returned and they shook hands he could have sworn that he felt his own heartbeat beating in time with hers, palm to palm, one solid beat.

-       Damn it he needed to focus and not get too lost into the character… his character was the love-sick fool not him! He was a professional! He had only met this girl! He-he

-       … she had the most beautiful smile he had ever seen in his life.

-       FOCUS!

-       He had to thank whatever it was running through his system because he had never felt more “on” than at that moment. Every line he delivered to her felt authentic and organic, like he truly meant it. Looking around it was obvious that everyone else on set agreed, absolutely transfixed on the couple centre stage.

-       He could feel every word she was saying to him like it was scripture; that every word of love and devotion that she spoke had the power to let him walk on air… and god he really wanted to try.

-       …

-       He must have been a better actor than even he gave himself credit for, making himself believe that he was already half in love with the woman in front of him…

-       He didn’t even want to stop rehearsing until the Director had called out three times for them to finish up, he was just a ball of energy and wanted nothing more than to release that through this amazing acting he and this actress were performing, he didn’t want to lose momentum.

-       He didn’t want to lose what he was feeling…

-       “H-Hey! MC! Did you want to go and get some lunch with me?” he had asked before realising that he had called her by her character’s name. He felt the blood flood his cheeks as he forced himself not to slap himself or just die from embarrassment. He couldn’t be that far gone into this role to already be thinking of her as her character… this is how idiots fall in love with co-stars… “I’m so sorry, habit, I didn’t mean to call you MC-”

“And why not? It’s my name too,” she smiled as she rested her hand on his bicep, the muscle there twitching instinctively under her touch.

-       Shit.

-       Zen was no fool. He knew what this meant. He knew, deep down, that he wasn’t that good of an actor to fool himself- damn it- he was already half in love.

-       The only half evidently. She seemed completely unaffected… unless… had she said his name yet? No, she hadn’t. Only his character’s name!

-       “How silly of me! All this time I’ve never introduced myself properly! Hello MC, my name is Zen, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he beamed offering his hand out to her.  

-       Please

-       She smiled and took his hand and laughed as he flipped it over to kiss the back of hers.

-       “Oh! Hahah- wow! Um… yes, yes it’s lovely to meet you too Zen… Zen.”

-       He watched in rapt fascination as her fingers curled around his almost painfully, how her eyes widened and how her jaw fell and closed but fell back down- as if she were trying to desperately find the words… or simply remember how to talk.

-       “So… it’s true what they say…” he trailed off as he drew her closer with a simple tug of her hand still within his, “About when you meet your other half…”

Swallowing deeply and finally blinking her burning eyes MC shook her head and took a step back, though, she did not withdraw her hand. “What do they say?” she asked her voice trembling as much as her body was.

“That when you finally say your Soulmate’s name- nothing else in the world sounds as beautiful. That nothing else tastes as nice as the name of your Soulmate on your tongue. That the mere thought of their name is enough to bring tears to your eyes…”

-       She stared at him completely astonished by the ardent proclamations of this- stranger-

-       “No one says that,” she whispered as she licked her lips subconsciously her eyes fixated on his, content on watching him worry at the plump flesh. “Not out loud…” “They should��� So- um… lunch?” she asked finally pulling away and bringing her hand to her chest, her other hand cradling it almost tenderly, her fingers tracing the still- warm parts of her skin that he had held.

-       They talked about anything that came to mind, their pasts, their dreams, their favourite food and their mutual aversion to cats. “A cat scratched my face when I was three and although I think they’re beautiful, I just… I just can’t.”

-       Soulmates were made to be a perfect fit after all…  

-       Once they got back on set the tension between the two was so thick it was practically humming- everyone could see that something had happened over lunch.

-       During a pivotal scene, where they were about to finally separate ways forever and part with a kiss…  

-       MC was looking at Zen, tears brimming in her eyes –geez what a talent- merely four lines away from their kiss and-

-       … and she dropped her script and crossed the stage to kiss him. Completely unscripted. Completely inappropriate.

-       It was perfect.

-       “-But Director, they’re not meant to kiss yet-”

“Shhh… she’s absolutely right! The character wouldn’t be able to wait, she wouldn’t want to waste a moment with talk when these two people are all about action! Have the scriptwriters add it right away-”

-       Zen smirked as they continued to share their first kiss with more than fifty random people around them. He didn’t care, the Director was right. They didn’t want to waste another moment- and suddenly- Zen didn’t mind being one of those idiot actors who fell in love with his co-star.

-       “Okay guys we get the point, we should probably move on… guys?… guys?!”

Jaehee:

-       It wasn’t particularly easy being kicked out by your Uncle and Aunt… she didn’t have anyone… and she didn’t want to touch what little was left of her inheritance from her parents so- she figured it would be better if she found a part time job.

-       That way her mind would be occupied at all times and she could indeed earn some money.

-       Besides… working with coffee wasn’t a bad thing. Being a barista wasn’t a bad thing, even if it did mean she was practically drooling at every order she made, she figured there would be worse cons to a job… like being a slave to a tyrant who overworked you and never appreciated you- she shuddered. She never wanted to end up like that!

-       It was a particularly busy day being the first weeks of winter, everyone would run in just wanting a cup of something warm to hold to help them heat up against the chill in the air, the poor brunette was already run off her feet. She was barely even looking at the customers in the eyes as she pushed their orders across the counter.

-       Wiping the sweat off her brow with the back of her arm, Jaehee took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Soon. Her own break would be soon. Just the next order to do and she would be free for 30 glorious minutes.

-       Pulling the last ticket off the machine so she could read her colleague’s sloppy writing a little easier, she memorised the order and proceeded to make it perfectly. Pouring it out into the large cup Jaehee took the receipt again to make sure she got the customer’s name right- MC…

-       She nearly spilt the drink all over herself.

-       That name. She’d seen it a thousand times before. Written it a thousand times before.

-       But this time- this person’s name… it made her heart skip a beat. It made her heart feel full and happier than it had for the longest time. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. It made her think of a home, a real one with her and this MC.

-       All from a name.

-       Jaehee finished writing the name down on the cup neatly and carefully put the pen down. She licked her lips and inhaled and called out in a voice she hoped didn’t shake too much, “MC?!”

-       “Oh here!?”

-       Jaehee looked up to see an angel in a trench coat and beanie. Her skin kissed with cold, nose and cheeks rosy and eyes bright. Such beauty right in front of her. “Um… may I please have my order um… Jae-Jaehee?”

-       The two women looked at each other from either side of the counter, the noise and hustle and bustle of the small coffee shop completely going unnoticed by them.

-       Jaehee pushed the cup to the middle of the bench only to be met in the middle by MC’s hand, her gloved fingers wrapping themselves around her quivering digits.

-       “I… this is…” she stammered unable to look away from the other woman’s eyes, her own honeyed irises large with disbelief.

-       She couldn’t be that lucky… to meet them… to meet her so early in life…

-       “It is,” MC answered her pink cheeks turning red as her lips curled into a stunning smile.

-       “B-but I don’t believe in-” “I’m standing right here.”

“Nothing good ever happens to me-” “Right in front of you.” “I have a break now-” “Let’s have a coffee.”

-       For the first time since she started working there, Jaehee took her break front of house… with a customer no less… and no one batted an eye when 30 minutes turned to an hour. Then an hour into an hour and a half- the girl had never smiled like she did right then; who were they to take that away from her?

-       They did however yell at her when she accidentally kept writing and calling out MC’s name for every order for the next day.

Jumin:

-       Soulmates? Preposterous. His father had spent his entire adult life looking for his soulmate, convinced that every pretty woman who batted their eyelashes at him and feigned to feel a strong connection to him (his money) was the one. This obsession with finding his Soulmate leading their family to shame and their company to ruin.

-       Well. Not. Him.

-       He didn’t believe in such nonsense. Not once did he find a woman worth spending time with let alone believing them capable to be the other perfect half of your soul. That would be the day.

-       All throughout high school he had one vapid girl after another clawing at him to say their name, hoping that he would feel the twinge in his heart and for butterflies to zoom out of his butt or some ridiculous notion like that. By the first month of school he refused to call any girl by their name and insisted on labelling everyone “Hey you there” or “Female student in front of me.”  

-       By the time he entered university, word had gotten out that Jumin Han just hated the idea of anyone being in love- because who would so vehemently refuse to even try to find their Soulmate? Who would look down on others just for trying to find a little piece of happiness? He was just an angry, lonely man.

-       Not that they were entirely wrong on that assessment… but not entirely right either.

-       Though, he didn’t let something like public opinion of him falter his course or his ideas- Jumin never thought much of other people’s talking of subjects they had no idea about. He took great pleasure it picking apart their arguments and making them sound like fools.

-       Probably why he made such an excellent debater, Captain of the team in fact.

-       In his final year of University, they were finally pitted against their rival school; not once in all the years he had been on the team had he had the chance to face off with the national champions- he was always called off to sit in with his father’s meetings or off sick; but not this time. This time he would meet them, crush them and reclaim the title for his school.

-       He had tried every avenue to find out what they could about their new Captain but everyone was on lockdown, no one would talk and all means of electronically hacking their systems to find out who they were, were completely barred. He didn’t want to cheat, it would sully his victory- no he just wanted to be prepared. Know their history, their grades and whatnot- let it never be said that Jumin Han didn’t do his homework.

-       The day of the debate arrived and sure enough familiar faces lined the opposite team- except one. A pretty girl he supposed, hardly what he would call imposing with her sweet smile and her intermittent waves to the crowd in front of them. Hardly Captain material, he’d be surprised if she was first chair… but wait- what was she doing sitting in the Captain’s chair?

-       Good Lord.

-       This was going to be too easy.

-       Jumin barely heard the announcer listing off his teammates but he paused when he heard her name. It cut through him like a hot knife through butter, seared onto his brain.

-       MC.

-       He felt nauseous, a cold sweat forming on his upper lip as his steel grey eyes raked over her smaller form.

-       She looked just as shaken as he did; her hands ringing together ripping the tissues trapped between her fingers.

-       He thought he was going to faint- what was this feeling? He mouthed her name and the feeling of illness slipped away only to be replaced with a wash of warmth? A silly tingling in his blood that seemed to be singing her name in his ears. His mouth was dry and his throat on fire, his palms lined with a sheen of sweat and his heart beating in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know what was going on, he didn’t understand.

-       He watched as MC calmed herself all the while keeping her gaze focused on him, her cheeks burning up the longer she stared. She ran her tongue along her lower lip and he had never been so charmed by a muscle in his life.

-       Jumin she mouthed, maybe to him, maybe to herself- he didn’t know- what he did notice however was the way her hand clutched at her blazer just above where her heart would be. She didn’t look like she was in pain but she wasn’t exactly the same grinning woman he had seen moments earlier.

-       Indeed, it seemed that Jumin could barely tear his eyes off her, he couldn’t pay attention to his teammates, he couldn’t take notes- he could only focus on her. Just how far had he fallen? Over hearing a name and seeing a pretty face? Get it together Jumin!

-       Except he couldn’t. Every time he tried to rebut an argument he would instinctively look back at the opposite team and his eyes locked onto hers and he’d be lost. Each time he’d make any headway with his points he’d want to say her name instead, and of course, everything came out all tongue tied.

-       Thankfully for him, her performance wasn’t much better, she was a blushing mess but still- a coherent blushing mess.

-       Jumin’s university went home empty handed that year after all.

-       But not Jumin, not this time.

-       He wouldn’t lose twice in one day.

-       “Hello there, good performance today.”

“You too.”

“I’m Jumin Han-” “I know. I’m MC-”

“I heard, yes.”

-       Her teammates were calling for her to hurry up and get on the bus and she was about to call back to them but was cut off by the suddenly confident opposing Captain, “Please go on ahead- I will take MC home.” They looked at her and she in turn looked up to him and shook her head at his cavalier and brash assumption. He was just lucky it was the correct one. “It’s fine guys, you heard what Jumin said- he’s going to take me home.”

-       The silence in the auditorium was deafening. Jumin never spoke a girl’s first name and he certainly never let someone who just met him call him by his first name… unless…

-       Jumin fiddled with the cufflinks in his sleeves trying to buy time before he had to speak again. MC picked at imaginary lint at her skirt in hopes that the man would continue his initiative.

-       “I… I don’t know how any of this works… in fact until about an hour ago I was certain it was all a farce,” he admitted his eyes firmly fastened on her right shoulder, “but if… if it’s really what it seems like is it- what it feels like it is- I would like the chance to understand it all. Understand everything about you.”

-       MC smiled, even if she wasn’t his Soulmate, after that heartfelt speech, she would have bribed the stars themselves to realign just so she could be. “I don’t know how this works either- my mother told me it might happen one day, to just pray it would just happen before I got married to someone else who I thought was my Soulmate… is it… I mean… you felt it too? When you heard my name?” she questioned her eyebrows arching up as high as they would go. “The pull? The need to keep saying my name over and over again? Tell me it just wasn’t me.”

-       Jumin’s lips quirked to the side in an amused smirk, this girl was adorable. She could have asked to have his heart out on a platter and he’d have freely offered it, but all she required was the confirmation of his budding feelings from him.

-       Just too easy.

-       “I did. I feel it now. I have no choice but to believe in all this-” “Prove it.”

“Uh…how?”

“Scream my name out into the audience, let everyone hear it! Let everyone hear the name on the tip of your tongue, the name that your heart beats to now!” she goaded him, an excited grin on her face.

-       Jumin stared at her in shock- again another easy request… he didn’t care what people thought of him after all. Shrugging nonchalantly Jumin opened his mouth to swallow a gulp of air more than ready to scream out her name-

-       Only to have two delicate hands cover his mouth and a giggle that was not his own reverberating on his chest.

“Damn it! I didn’t think you’d actually do it! You’re crazy! I believe it, I believe you!” she guffawed, burying her face against him, her body heat and laughter seeping into him and offering a warmth that he had never felt before.

-       He liked it.

-       He wanted more.

-       “So… perhaps it wouldn’t be out of line for me to ask you out to dinner?” he asked looking down at the crown of her head. “O-Of course not!” “Tonight?”

-       The tentative slip of her hand in his was answer enough for him.

Saeyoung:

-       He was a good, diligent worker and that was all that mattered to the Agency.

-       He barely ate, he barely slept, barely did anything but exist and work.

-       The perfect agent.

-       Then they brought her in.

-       606.

-       Quiet and withdrawn but brilliant. She could code almost as well as he did and she could hack into places faster and without a trace better than him. She slept less than him. Ate less than him. Was less than him.

-       She wasn’t going to survive, she would burn out and become useless to the Agency and she would have to be disposed of.

-       … and even as far as he had come, as low as he had gone… that didn’t sit right with him. He chose this life, but someone that hollow did not. Someone that broken had been torn away from a good life, a happy life.

-       He imagined her having younger siblings who missed her, parents who searched the streets with her picture in hand begging for information, friends who no longer spoke to each other because the memory of her haunted them.

-       He wasn’t going to let the agency steal a life that didn’t belong to them.

-       It all started with innocent emails; just him asking how she was, sending her funny jokes or pictures, bantering and bitching about work in such a way that no one would be able to crack down on them for… make her smile. Make her strong. Don’t let her break.

-       606 soon became the life of the office… which didn’t say much because it was literally just him, her and Vanderwood in the small room. She was laughing and smiling and radiating joy- her work improved… the Agency was very happy.

-       707. Stay back tonight. Help me with an assignment?

-       Of course, 606, whatever you need.

-       That night when Vanderwood had finally gone past his threshold of exhaustion, the older man peeled himself off the chair and bid “the children” goodnight.

-       She kept typing, she kept on finishing her work for another 20 minutes as he sat there dumbfounded as to why she had asked him to stay back when all she was doing was literally more work. That was what tomorrow was for!

-       He was about to pack up and leave when she threw him a piece of paper.

I’m leaving. Tonight. Come with me.

-       He looked back up at her, there was nothing on her face to discern that she even sent him the message- or even blinked. “So… you in?”

-       Of course, 606, whatever you need.

-       He nodded. She kept typing.

“Come and see me in my room then?”

-       Aahhh, so that’s how she was going to hide it- she was going to pretend they were going to sleep together. That was something he often found weird in the Agency- they didn’t care or discourage the formation of relationships between agents- probably believed if you got attached they could always use the partner as insurance or worse, incentive. “Yeah, I’ll meet you in there.”

-       When he arrived she was in full combat gear, she was ready to fight her way out if needed. They went over the plan over and over again, whispering directly into each other’s ears so that not even the bugs in their rooms could pick up what they were saying. Also with occasional moan or shudder it seemed like they were just making out.

-       Her room was just above the route the laundry trucks would ride out from and she had managed to make contact with one of her friends from the outside- come midnight she, they, would jump down and escape this hell hole. They only had one chance to do this- the other agents on duty would notice a paused truck and would respond immediately.

-       The clock ticked by and before they knew it, it was 11:59 and the faint rumble of an engine could be heard, the soft hiss of the brakes beneath her window.

-       “In case I die,” she uttered, her face stoic and unmoving, “I want you to know- my name, it’s not 606. They wanted me to forget but I will never forget. My name is MC.”

-       It was like a punch to his chest, the sound of her name. It ignited something in him that he never thought he would have the chance to feel, to experience. Not there. To find her there amongst all the sin and evil that they do, he knew how to spot a miracle when God sent one.

-       “You’re not going to die MC, I promise,” he replied as he held her to him in a bone crushing embrace, “I promise.”

“Your name, 707- if I die, I want to know your-” “Didn’t I just say that you weren’t going to die MC?” he chuckled as her helped out of the window, “I, Saeyoung Choi, promise you.”

-       The look on her face as she said his name would have been enough to take him to his grave. To see her face light up with joy and surprise as if someone had turned on a light inside of her, that would be one of his most treasured memories.

-       His sharp ears caught the sounds of rushed footsteps down the hall.

-       He pushed her roughly before she was ready and heard a loud snap of something when she fell onto the truck. MC was bowed forward, holding onto her right foot that had landed awkwardly and bent inwardly- her face contorted into silent screams.

-       Saeyoung made the sign of the cross as he backed away from the window to do a run up. God please- I just found her- don’t take her away from me.

-       He landed beside her, coiling his arms around her protectively as he laid her down to see the damage to her ankle- it was bad but nothing that some doctor couldn’t fix.

-       He beamed down at her, cupping her face tenderly…

-       As he tried desperately to ignore the barrage of agents chasing after the both of them.

-       Saeyoung gently caressed her features with his fingers, desperate to feel everything under his touch, etch it into his mind.

-       “You lie down here and keep safe okay? I’m going to go and hold them off-” “No! You can’t do that! They’ll torture you to death!” she cried sitting up, screaming out in pain as she accidentally moved her foot. He shushed her, looking forward to see that they were nearly clear of the base… she was so close to being free. “Shh, shhh- it’s okay MC. It’ll be okay. I promise,” he reassured her, his eyes crinkling so much that little droplets of tears dotted his auburn lashes. “No it won’t be-” “I’ll find you. I promise. I’ll find you.”

“Saeyoung!”

-       He jumped off the truck and refused to allow himself to look back at her- if he did, he would never be able to leave her side.

-       MC ignored the searing pain rushing up her leg to twist her body to watch her Soulmate’s noble sacrifice. One man, two, twelve men on him… he had no chance.

-       “Saeyoung!” she croaked, her voice stifled by her despair.

-       You promised…

-       707: WAIT

        Yoosung: Why?                 Zen:??         707: Think someone entered the chat room;;

        Jumin: MC…?

-       Saeyoung smiled to himself as he traced the location and turned on the camera.

-       Promised I would find you.

  Saeran:

-       He had been searching for months under her orders. Months and no one was right. He was about to give up hope, that he would have to send in one of their own to infiltrate the damned RFA… but then she appeared.

-       Like a gust of wind on a scorching day or the breath of air coursing through starved lungs- she blew into his life and turned it upside down.

-       He would follow her and watch her from afar. He would tap in and listen to her conversations- not because he was interested in what she was saying- he just wanted to hear her voice.

-       Her friend was laughing on the other line, “Oh… MC… you’re too much!”

-       Saeran fell to the floor, his knees smarting from the hard concrete. No- NO!

-       He crawled underneath his desk and curled up into a tight ball, his arms hugging his knees as he lightly rocked back and forth. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, made him jittery and on edge. No- he was warned against this. Was told that if he ever felt this that it was wrong, that he should only love the Saviour and their cause. That the call of someone else was evil, that it was the work of the corrupted

-       But he was already corrupted, no matter how many times they drugged him and made him try to forget- he knew he was… but MC-

-       She was perfect, absolutely perfect.

-       Unfortunately, the Saviour agreed.

-       It was hard to have something of your own in Mint Eye, something private, something sacred.

-       He had to get her back.

-       They had sent her to infiltrate an organisation full of desperate and lonely people- the most kind and innocent person sent into a den of wolves to feast upon. He had to save her.

-       He was frantic, he sent her conflicting messages- wanting to scare her away from Mint Eye but wanting her to stay away from them- especially Saeyoung. If any of them saw even half of what he saw in her… they would steal her away.

-       Finally the Saviour said it was time to claim their prize back, that since he was so good he could take her for himself- keep her safe himself. He was so happy. But when he got to the apartment, as he scaled the building and broke through the window to reach her… she was not as happy to see him.

-       She was screaming. She was backing away from him. She was afraid.

-       He couldn’t think straight- this wasn’t right. She was supposed to be happy to see him, to come with him willingly. Wasn’t that what Soulmates were about? The moment he knew her name-

-       That was it… he knew her name but she didn’t know his… to her he was…

-       “I’m from Paradise. You don’t know this but you were invited too… I know it took some time for me to come for you… now let’s go together… you look scared, don’t be. I won’t hurt you… endless parties, overflowing love, joy without pain… I’ll save you… You invited someone? Maybe… Luciel Choi?”

“MC- Are you hurt?” “I-I’m fine!” “I… I don’t know who you are… but let go of her!”

-       No. Not Luciel. The actor. The pretty one. Of course she would fall for the pretty one.

-       “No.” She’s mine. She’s meant for me.

“If you don’t, I’ll have to use force to protect my girl.” I don’t want to do this. “You move a single inch, you see this switch here? I’ll press it.” I won’t.

“What do you want?!”

-       The truth then.

-       “To escape this place safely with the RFA planner… If you don’t want to activate the bomb you better stay still. Just watch as I take… “your girl” and disappear.”

-       The pain in his arm paled in comparison to the ache in his heart when she pulled away from him to run into the arms of another man. Away from him. Always away.

-       Never his.

-       Meant to be his.

-       “My name… My name was Saeran.”

V:

-       It was the school for the rich and gifted.

-       Some more rich and others more gifted.

-       Most loved it there. Some merely tolerated it.

-       One person hated it.

-       Brought in through a scholarship to show how the school was “giving back to the community”, bringing in the charity case and parade them around like their latest trophy.

-       Well this trophy didn’t like the case she was put in. She didn’t like the people who thought they could polish her up and make her shine to their standards. She didn’t like them at all.

-       Especially those that shone the brightest- it hurt to look at them, like the sun- blindingly beautiful but dangerous.

-       None shone more so than V.

-       Pfft.

-       Who the hell named their child V? What pretentious jackass does that?

-       Wasn’t it enough that he went strutting around with his best friend, waving and talking to the more common folk? Wasn’t it too much that he went around taking photos of people and landscapes and saying pompous things like “everything is beautiful and everything is art?” Wasn’t it over the top that he had the gall to act all sweet and kind and look like some sort of bronzed Greek God? WASN’T IT?!

-       MC breathed in trying to calm herself. For the better part of the last six months she had spent it running, hiding and keeping her distance from him. He seemed hell bent on seeking her out and trying to talk to her- well she wanted nothing from him! No help! No charity! No pity! Just to be left alone.

-       During a study period, she was cornered by none other than that trust fund kid’s best friend, super-mega trust fund kid the first, Jumin Han.

-       He chose the desk right next to hers although almost every other desk was available, which only meant he wanted to speak to her.

-       “Why do you hate V?” he asked so bluntly she was surprised by it. She sat up from her prone position laying along the desk and twisted slightly to face the man to her left. She propped her head on her hand and gave him a long, pointed stare.  

-       “I… I don’t know. I just do. From his perfect hair to his perfect persona to, god even his name pisses me off! V! There are just some people that you’re not meant to get along with and he and I are obviously not meant to be besties,” she huffed as she rested the front of her torso back down against the desk, resting her chin atop her crossed arms.

-       “I told him,” he clicked his tongue as he shook his head ruefully, crossing his arms like a disappointed adult to a child… or small pet. “I told Jihyun that you were certifiable. Who hates someone just because of what they can see? Without even getting to know them?”

-       Her fingers dug into the worn wood of the table beneath her.

-       Jihyun… now that was… that was a name she liked. Her breath escaped her lungs as she whirled around so fast she almost lost balance on her seat. That name made her feel soft and fuzzy and loved- she had never even met him and she was already in love with him. Jihyun, a good and noble man who wanted nothing more than to love and care for the woman he loved and to be loved and cared for in return. A man who would make them such horrible breakfasts on Sunday when they were married that they would inevitably go out and eat at a restaurant- yet he never stopped trying. Because he loved her and one day he wanted to get it right. A man who would stay in and read the paper to her as she lay in between his legs and slept on his chest- he wouldn’t even move at all for fear she’d wake or be disturbed.

-       She loved that name.

-       Her heart beat faster and suddenly she couldn’t control her extremities, her legs were bouncing up and down in excitement and her hands unsure of where to place themselves, every place awkward compared to the thought of her hands being linked with his. It didn’t feel right- to be on her own, not now she knew his name.

-       “Who?” she meekly asked the ebony haired prince next to her. He was fiddling with a loose thread on his blazer sleeve, pulling at the strand until it came out completely. “Jumin- who?” she repeated hoping that her insistence would be enough to show him how important it was for her to know who this man was.

-       He gave her a perplexed look, thoughtful eyes glided over her form as if he were trying to ascertain whether she was joking or not. His eyes widened and his mouth pressed into a thin line when he quickly realised that she wasn’t asking in jest, she was completely serious.

“Jihyun… Jihyun Kim is V’s real name. The man you so ardently hated?” he answered, his mouth twitching up into a wry smile.

-       Damn it.

-       MC violently pushed herself back from the desk with both hands before she started running to the last place she had seen V- Jihyun. He was entering the dark room just as she was heading to the study hall. The light was on meaning he was developing something… she should be patient…

-       … but all those months… all those wasted months- how could he forgive her? She didn’t know but she had to try!

-       The light flicked off and she knocked, waiting for him to call out that it was okay and that she could come it. She slowly opened the door and closed it behind her.

-       Less than five steps away was Jihyun, pulling down some developed photos.

-       He was right. Everything was beautiful. Everything was art.

-       He was art.

-       And she was just some dumb pedestrian trying to look at the piece and critique it without having all the history and facts behind it, not knowing the mastery it took to create it. The love that went into it. Fool.

-       He turned to her and she swore that the blue of his eyes was just that little bit bluer, the tone of his hair that much deeper and his lips, full and perfect and so ready for her to kiss she couldn’t believe there was ever a time she wanted to slap his smile off. Now she’d do anything to keep it there forever.

-       What’s in a name? Everything. What did Shakespeare know?

-       “I… I’m so sorry,” she cried, prostrating herself in a deep bow.

-       Startled, V set aside his print and pulled the bowing woman up and forced her to look at him. “What for? I’m not aware of anything you’ve done that would warrant an apology,” he replied good naturedly, his kind smile warming her to her bones. “I have been terrible to you and only because… for some unknown reason- I couldn’t stand your name. What it stood for, what you seemingly stood for,” she confessed, her cheeks burning under the harsh lights.

-       V reached behind her and turned on the dark room red lights once again- to save her from embarrassment.

-       “I know- it’s okay MC, you don’t have to explain. I know my name is the problem,” he admitted with a careless shrug. MC gawked at him, how could he know? How could he possibly know?! “I’ve known since the first day when I felt the bond but you did nothing but run away from me- I knew that my name was faulty and that although you may be my Soulmate- that I simply was not yours.”

-       All this time, he thought he was the problem. That she didn’t love him because his name was faulty, that he was faulty.

-       Her heart shattered and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying. She almost ruined this man, she continued to pile hurt upon hurt on him and now there she was telling her how much she loved him… well… that was what she wanted to do, whether or not she could do it not was the other question.

-       “No… I… I was just stupid. I thought your name was V, not Jihyun. There was nothing wrong with your name- there is nothing wrong with you. I… just, wanted to let you know that. You’re amazing. You’re perfect and I want to get to know you, just as you are.”

-       Even in the dark, the brightness from his smile could be seen.

-       “You do?” the hope in his voice evident, taking the first steps to close the gap between them. “I do. I want the chance to know the real Jihyun,” she beamed. “I would love nothing more than that, MC,” he replied, encircling his arms around her body. -       Well what do you know, they were a perfect fit.

[ambivalentman]

AN ATHEIST KING: THE LOSS OF BELIEF AND CHARACTER IN MUSCHETTI’S IT (2017)

This essay features several spoilers for IT (2017). You have been warned.

A DISCLAIMER BEFORE WE BEGIN

I was, at one point, a hard core Stephen King fan. When I entered my 20s, I owned every book written by him in hardcover -- with the exception of special edition stuff like My Pretty Pony -- including several first editions (like a beautiful first of The Shining). My copies of George Beahm’s The Stephen King Companion and The Stephen King Encyclopedia were already dog-eared and annotated. My prize possessions were the four issues of Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction I had which featured the first publication of The Gunslinger, and the other I had which included “The Moving Finger.” My parents thought I was weird, most girls thought I was scary, and at one point even my grandma suggested I seek therapy.

This was until about 2000. Then, an event took place which caused me -- like those in the Loser’s Club -- to abandon childish things. It was a bad decision, but I gave up my Stephen King collection.

I didn't rediscover my love for King until recently. Sure, I dabbled a bit these last few years, reading Under the Dome and 11/22/63, but I never fully re-embraced the hero of my youth. Until I decided to re-read IT, his 1986 masterpiece about a group of wounded people forced to face a truly terrifying force as both children and adults. I saw that Andy Muschetti was adapting the novel for Warner Bros., taking over for Cary Fukunaga, who -- despite being a true auteur -- fell out of Warner’s graces. All news surrounding the new adaptation was overwhelmingly positive, and it had been a long time since we last saw a great movie based on King’s work.

Back in April, I broke my right hip. After two surgeries, being fairly immobile has given me time to read more, so I picked up IT. Revisiting IT transported me back to that time when I was obsessed with King. The experience was overwhelming, like when adult Bill Denborough gets back on his enormous metal steed, Silver, and recalls how he once raced the devil on that bike to save Eddie Kaspbrak. A flood of joy came from reading King’s pulpy prose again. Going back to that tainted town of Derry to hang with the Losers helped make my rehab a little easier. And though I am still on the mend, I am ready to rekindle my love for King.

Which brings me to my other love: cinema. I don't write much about the movies anymore, but I am chomping at the bit to discuss and evaluate IT. There hasn't been a more anticipated film this year for me.

And no film has both pleased and disappointed me more.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD KING ADAPTATION?

Because of The Dark Tower, IT, and the forthcoming Gerald’s Game, there have been lots of clickbait “Stephen King Movies . . . Ranked” lists popping up online. Nerdist had a particularly interesting one, in which their top 10 looked like this:

10. Creepshow (1980)

9. IT (2017)

8. The Dead Zone (1983)

7. Dolores Claiborne (1995)

6. Stand By Me (1986)

5. The Mist (2007)

4. The Shining (1980)

3. Carrie (1976)

2. Misery (1990)

1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Despite the ranking, most King fans and movie lovers alike will agree with this list (although Creepshow over Pet Sematary or Christine? Really? Sincerely?). Two of these films are directed by Frank Darabont (Shawshank, The Mist), and two by pre-what-the-f-happened Rob Reiner (Misery, Stand by Me). And the new adaptation of IT made the cut. So, if we can acknowledge these are the canonical King adaptations, what makes them the best? It's a pretty steep drop off in quality after the top 10. There's Pet Sematary, Christine, 1408, and The Green Mile, meaning that out of 44 movies based on Stephen King’s novels (not including TV mini-series), there’s really only about 14 good-to-great ones. If this were baseball -- King’s favorite sport -- Hollywood would be batting a respectable .318. Be that as it may, this is not baseball, and producing only 1 solid movie for every 3 is pretty awful.

This suggests that adapting Stephen King is tough. Why, though? His books are packed with memorable characters, scenes, and visuals. You could almost say he writes movies. His dialogue is colloquial and specific, and he has a great sense of pacing. While you could easily point out that lots of his stories share only a couple variations for endings -- destruction or aliens -- he is a strong storyteller with a keen understanding of cause and effect and narrative fairness. There's a reason, after all, that he inspired a generation of writers and filmmakers like JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and the Duffer Brothers.

My theory is that King's greatness resides not in his ideas or execution, but in the spirit of his writing. King's voice is the soul of his work. When you read him, it feels like you are sitting down with a friend, listening to him share a great story. King feels familiar, like family. And the filmmakers who get that make films which reflect it.

Take, for example, the number 1 film on Nerdist’s list, The Shawshank Redemption. The use of Red’s voiceover narration immediately brings us into the tale of Andy Dufresne. Stand By Me and Dolores Claiborne also use great voiceovers. But in films like Misery, Carrie, and The Dead Zone, we are given protagonists who become our friends. We find Paul Sheldon to be kind and thoughtful, Carrie White to be sweet and misunderstood, Johnny Smith to be tortured and alone. These films understand deeply what King was aiming for with his characters. So, when Reiner changes events in Misery, it doesn't matter because not only did he truly “get” Paul, he also truly “got” Paul’s relationship with Annie Wilkes. Each of the films on this list, with the exception of IT (and Creepshow because it was an original script), truly grasped the core of King’s characters and their relationships to each other.

King is often considered a humanist author. His characters, including his villains, are often subjects for sympathy. In his work, there is a lot of insight into human nature, both light and dark. King is an observant author, grounding his most supernatural stories in a real world, with real people. This is best illustrated in his character relationships and interactions. Red and Andy develop first respect, then admiration, then deep friendship over their years in Shawshank. It is a relationship founded on honesty as they are the only honest men in the prison. Their mutual trust is what establishes the foundation for Andy’s escape plans, and ensures his success. In The Dead Zone, Johnny’s broken relationship with Sarah is haunted by lust and vitality, the very qualities Johnny loses touch with after his accident leaves him with a power which zaps the life from him with each use. Carrie White’s naive hope she can actually fit in is fulfilled by the compassionate Tommy Ross, which makes the tragedy of her coronation that much more devastating. The films capture these ideas to profound effect, which is why they endure. Once the novelty of plot dissipates, you are left with characters and their connections to each other and yourself. We enjoy a movie for plot; we love a movie for character.

King writes wonderful characters, and the best films based on his work never fail to capture those characters ideally.

Except IT.

Sigh.

THE PART WHERE I EXPLAIN WHY THE NOVEL IS A MASTERPIECE

It is not hyperbole to call IT “King's masterpiece.” Lots of critics have done it. By its publication in 1986, IT was the purest, most ambitious distillation of themes and ideas King had explored since Carrie in his fiction (and even in non-fiction dissertations like Danse Macabre). If you're reading this, chances are you know the story:

Every 27 years, the seemingly quaint hamlet of Derry, Maine becomes the feeding ground for an entity that has dwelled under the town’s surface for centuries. In 1958, after 6-year old Georgie Denborough is murdered by the creature -- assuming the shape of a murderous clown called Pennywise -- big brother Bill and his Losers Club come together to put an end to the evil. They are only marginally successful, as 27 years later, the Losers are called to return to Derry to kill IT for good.

IT is a multi-generational horror novel, spanning hundreds of years. We meet the Losers first as adults, all of whom (with the exception of Mike Hanlon, who chose to stay behind in Derry and become its resident historian and librarian) no longer remember the events that took place during the summer of 1958. Mike’s ominous phone calls, reminding the adults of the promise they made -- to return if IT ever resurfaced -- unlocks each adult’s dormant memory. As the novel unfolds, so does their collective remembrance of summer ‘58 and all the horrors it contained. King uses the flashbacks to highlight the differences between childhood and adulthood.

As with any epic sized novel, there are a myriad of themes to unpack. IT dives deep into ideas about childhood trauma, the power of personal shame, community corruption, racism, generational sin, and the coming of age ideas expected from a novel about kids becoming adults. For me, where the novel finds its most compelling thematic territory is in its exploration of belief. King wants us to recognize it is the purity of innocence, and the simplicity of belief that binds these kids together, and that the jaded cynicism of adulthood, with all its fears and anxieties, is what threatens to destroy them.

This theme hinges on the role of Pennywise. He is a shapeshifting, Lovecraftian monster, tapping into the fears of his quarry to exploit during the hunt. He appears to Ben as his dead father, to Mike as a pterodactyl-like bird, to the germaphopic Eddie as a leper, and to Richie as the lycanthropic Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. When Pennywise goes after Bev, it is by turning her sink into a geyser of blood which only she can see. Bill is tormented by the memory of his dearly departed brother, whose school photograph Pennywise animates and makes bleed. Children have very primal fears, and that which adults see as fake or absurd, kids often embrace as real. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, chupacabras, zombies . . . children do not reject fantasy outright as adults do, making them susceptible to both profound fear and hope.

We see this in the Losers’ response to IT’s attacks. They are terrified, but never stop seeking solution. They find their weapons in objects. Even after he learns his asthma inhaler is a mere placebo, Eddie still uses it to calm his nerves, and later fires it at Pennywise, believing its contents to be battery acid. With Bill’s help, Ben melts down two silver dollars into bearings for Bev to shoot at the monster with a slingshot. When Stan gets trapped by Pennywise after finding himself alone in the house on Neibolt Street, he manages to escape by chanting the names of every bird contained in his field guide. The kids build an underground fort, which they convert into a smoke house to go on a Native American “Vision Quest.” It is during this dangerous endeavor that Mike and Richie seem to travel through time back to a primordial era where they witness IT’s arrival. The Losers’ passionate adherence to ritual and talismans give them a collective power. This power keeps them unified, and even frightens their tormentor. Belief is their truest weapon, especially belief in each other.

The other themes King addresses throughout IT are compelling, but it is this idea about belief that gives the novel its soul. There is no cynicism in King's approach -- he captures the imagination of these children with remarkable affection, and this results in each kid winning our hearts over. Pennywise may be the allure the book needs to attract its audience, but these kids are what inspires guys like me to re-read a 1,000+ page book.

They are also what inspired me to struggle with a movie engineered for my celebration.

IN PRAISE OF MUSCHETTI’S IT

Before I tear apart IT, which is very popular, having made over $200 million domestically in its first two weekends, I want to praise it. Despite having some huge issues, the film does some things very well. There is a good reason why this movie works for so many people.

The major reason IT works is because of its energy and general nostalgia. While these elements often fade on repeat viewings, they are so engrossing during a first one. Being set in 1989 puts the setting during a period Gen Xers remember fondly and for which Millennials pine. Movie theater marquees are showing Batman and Lethal Weapon 2. A poster for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 is a coming attraction. The kids ride Schwinns, use Kodak Carousels, don’t have cell phones, and wear denim cutoffs. The aesthetic is perfect. Producer Seth Grahame-Smith revealed in an interview with Birth.Movies.Death that he prepped nostalgia lists for all of the child actors, from music to movies to video games to fashion as a way to show them what summer ‘89 in New England was like for him. The work paid off, because the town of Derry is authentic in its nostalgia. It is impossible not to be drawn into this world.

And this world is scary, even without Pennywise. As with all idealized nostalgic perspective on days long gone, there is a darker undercurrent (as if we punish ourselves for embracing such idyllic memories). Perhaps the darkest element are the adults of Derry. Kids go missing and the “Missing Persons” posters are simply papered over as new children are added to the list. A leering pharmacist flirts with Bev. In the library, as Ben investigates Derry’s ugly history, the Librarian lingers in the fuzzy background, grinning maliciously. Not one adult exhibits empathy for these kids, including Bill’s dad or Stan’s rabbi father. Certainly not Bev’s father, who inhales his daughter’s hair like she’s fresh out of the oven, and obsesses over her virginity with a fervor that would make even President Trump uncomfortable (or envious, if we're being honest). In some ways, the more visceral nature of the film captures Derry’s innate badness more clearly than the hundreds of pages King devotes to the subject in his novel. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand pages.

Muschietti and his casting director also got the casting perfect. As with the films of JJ Abrams, criticize all you want, but it's impossible to trash the impeccable casting choices. Each of these kids perfectly embodies the characters they portray. Kudos especially go to Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Finn Wolfhard as Ben, Bev, Eddie, and Richie. Ben’s beautiful sensitivity, Bev’s intense devotion and passion, Eddie’s passive-aggressive resolve, and Richie’s unending stream of bullshit are as sharp and resonant here as they are on the page. Even Jaeden Lieberher, as Bill, and Chosen Jacobs, as Mike, look and feel right. Unfortunately, the script makes some poor choices with their characters that nearly derails the film. But more on that in a bit. Without a doubt, these kids are legit actors. No scene better proves this than the swimming scene in which everyone is stripped to their underwear and dives into the lake from the frighteningly high cliff. The scene could have been incredibly exploitative as the boys ogle Bev, but instead the quality of these performances makes their pubescent sexual discovery innocent and real. Consider this a great contrast with the perverse exchanges Bev has with the adult world. It is both ironic and terrifying that Bev is perceived more as an object by adults than by teenage boys.

While the film finds many of its most effective scares in the presentation of Derry, and the juxtaposition of innocent and corrupt images, the advertisements promise that we will be scared senseless by Pennywise the Dancing Clown. As portrayed by Bill Skarsgard, this Pennywise bears little resemblance to the seductive, menacing clown Tim Curry created for the 1990 ABC television miniseries. Skarsgard’s Pennywise is serpentine, alien, with dead eyes and a slithering voice. His costuming suggests his age, and the cracks in his makeup reveal a facade. This Pennywise is less playful and charismatic, and hungrier. He drools as he corners the kids in the Neibolt house. And his shapeshifting is frightening, especially when he presents himself to Eddie as a relentless leper. Skarsgard’s performance is wonderful and wholly his own. He will invite comparisons to the iconic Curry, but ultimately his Pennywise will stand alone.

IT’s success as a film can be broken down into these three elements: Derry, the kids, and the creepiness of Pennywise. But its failure can also be broken down into three parts, too.

1) The absence of a thematic soul

2) The abandonment of characterization

3) The confusion of style for substance

A LOSS OF SOUL

A great adaptation isn’t necessarily about doing the book, but about capturing the soul of the book (or finding a soul no one even knew existed, ala The Godfather or The Shining). A movie can look the part, but if it fails to reveal that essence of spirit, it will eventually crumble. In the case of IT, the movie is about as hollow as the space behind Pennywise’s eyes.

The soul of this story is the children's belief. Outside of a generic, “We gotta believe in each other!” idea to which much lip service is paid, these kids are bereft of belief in anything. This is an atheist interpretation of Stephen King's story, in which our Loser’s Club prefer brute force over imagination. In the film’s climax, Bill leads the charge against Pennywise by picking up a bat and swinging at the clown’s head. All the Losers join him. The result looks remarkable, as each strike causes the clown to transform into each child's fear, but it is a graceless, uninspired physical solution to a metaphysical problem. It also ruins Pennywise. How evil can he truly be when all it takes is an angry mob armed with sticks to bring him down?

Throughout King's novel, the Losers seek many ways to defeat the demon. They melt down the silver dollars. Eddie’s inhaler becomes a chemical weapon. Stan’s bird book is a shield, the names of the birds his mantra. And the kids buy into Native American rituals, like the Ritual of CHUD, to confront IT. Obviously, the shift in setting from the 1950s to 1980s meant losing some of these talismans. After all, the 50s Wolfman, when compared to the 80s Freddy Krueger, is a flaccid nightmare. But every monster has a weakness, even human ones. The Losers spend no time thinking on this.

Indeed, Muschetti strips them of their creativity completely. Gone is Ben’s architectural acumen, which nearly flooded the Barrens and provided an underground club house. Bill’s storytelling, which keeps the group focused, is generically spread amongst all of them. Even Bev's love for fashion and art is lost. It's shocking to me how Muschetti removed the core elements from each of these characters, leaving only their gimmicks -- Bill’s st-st-stutter, Ben’s girth, Bev’s cigarette smoking, Richie’s humor, Eddie's hypochondria, Stan’s Judaism, and Mike’s blackness. In the need to appeal to every demographic, these characters were stripped for parts.

It is a testament to the strength of the performances by this group of kids that the Losers have any flavor whatsoever. The script provides them no depth, only set pieces and surface sentiment, yet they are convincing for awhile in the dark. But like Pennywise’s many facades, eventually they slide off and there's nothing remaining.

The soul of King's story is belief, imagination, and the collective power of childlike purity. Andy Muschetti’s adaptation is more in love with Halloween maze scares than it is with pursuing these ideas. His vision of defeating our fears involves angry children with sticks, not wounded children with imagination. Audiences may like the cathartic release that comes with beating the shit out of the monster, but it does nothing to feed their souls.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

I already alluded to the surface qualities that pass for characterization in IT, but it goes a bit deeper than this. Character interaction is essential to building great characters, and this is where IT fails epically.

To prove this, let’s take a closer look at Bill Denborough.

Bill is arguably the most important of our protagonists, especially in King's novel. The story begins with him making a paper boat for his brother and sealing it with wax so it will float in the gutter water outside. The death of Georgie becomes a source of guilt and shame for Bill. And since his parents pay little to no attention to him, Bill is made to face these overwhelming feelings alone. It is his determination and inner strength that propels him to lead the Losers in their quest to put an end to IT. But, this quest, while certainly obsessive, is rooted in shame and love. Bill loves each of his friends and often goes off alone because he fears their fate will be his fault, as he believes Georgie’s fate to be his fault. This is the source of Bill’s maturity, which sets him apart from everyone else in the club. Because of Bill’s maturity, the Losers follow him without much question. They are devoted to him as a leader and friend, and willingly choose to lay down their lives if need be.

This is far from the way Bill is presented in the film. He is a Captain Ahab, chasing his white clown into the sewers of Derry. He likes his friends, but often doesn't concern himself with their feelings. In fact, at one point Richie throws a punch at Bill and the two fight over their pursuit of the monster. This Bill is not a leader; he is a dictator. He lacks empathy, and mostly cares for himself. Even worse, his quest is no longer rooted in shame, but in pure vengeance. Bill doesn't express his self-loathing at what happened to Georgie. Instead, at the end of the film, when Pennywise presents Itself as Georgie, Bill just punches IT in the face.

The shift in Bill is a subtle one, but has huge consequences for the story. By changing his leadership style, it makes the other Losers look more like followers of fear than a group of equals. In many ways, Bill is no different than the crazy bully Henry Bowers, whose friends follow him out of fear. Like Henry, Bill is on a mission to destroy, has little regard for the consequences of his actions, gets others involved who don't necessarily want to be, and doesn't listen to reason. Yet, we like Bill and hate Henry because Bill stutters and Henry likes carving his initials into the bellies of defenseless fat kids.

This is not to say Bill isn't the hero, but that Muschetti misfires with Bill by removing his core empathy and giving the character over completely to obsession. While the rest of the characters don't fare as badly as Bill does, each loses something, mainly through the cutting of interactions. On a basic level, we see this in the fact that Bev only interacts with Bill and Ben through most of the movie, yet is presented as the symbol of group unity. She can't even be bothered to share a smoke with Richie, or have a conversation with Stan and Mike.

Bill and Bev certainly present issues in characterization, but no character is more problematic than Mike Hanlon. There have already been several insightful thinkpieces about the treatment of Mike that there is little I can add, but the gist is this: Mike is presented as a token black character for no reason. Granted, most of these characters are tokens in their own way, so it stands to reason Mike would receive no better treatment. It was a struggle for me to watch one of my favorite characters in the novel reduced to a handsome black face that has to face the racist white bully. It was harder to watch Mike's love for history handed over to Ben. Mike deserved better.

All of these wonderful characters deserved better. This is what happens when style trumps substance.

THE NEW HORROR AESTHETIC

IT is the culmination of the trend in cheap seat horror to rely on the jump scare as the source of terror. No horror film of this variety has handled this trope better than Muschetti’s film. Arguably, Muschetti has perfected the jump scare. His film is a maze at Knott’s Scary Farm or Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights waiting to happen. The soundtrack is pitched to screamtastic levels. Put a camera on audiences and every 5-7 minutes, prepare to see people grabbing each other or jumping like William Castle had come back from the dead to put a tingler in their seat.

This reliance on the jump scare is aided by a color palette washed in sepia tones and deeper reds, which enable the clown to do his Jack-in-Box routine in darkness that can't elicit laughter. Muschetti and his postproduction team nailed the look of this film like mad scientists.

The beauty of this is that audiences love IT. This is a horror movie that feels like a horror film. Yet, IT remains safe, like those scary carnival mazes. When you're creeping your way through one, every darkened corner promises danger, but behind all that tension you know none of the masked employees can touch you without legal repercussion. Sadly, IT isn't allowed to touch you either. Promises of danger lurk around every shot, but it is all bark and no bite.

Take the Neibolt Street House sequence. There's a clever moment in which Bill and Richie, separated from Eddie, try to find him before Pennywise gets him and are presented with three doors to escape. The doors are labeled “Not Scary,” “Scary,” and “Very Scary.” Of course the boys take the first one, and are presented with a frightening image. You would imagine they would be forced to take the third door, but instead they double down on the “Not Scary” path and are rewarded for their cowardice. This is the ultimate in style over substance. The scene looks perfect, but says and does nothing.

Still, the aesthetic is convincing. This is how we want horror movies to look, even if they have nothing to say.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF IT

Since Warner Bros.’s sinks are exploding with dollar bills right now, IT will have a seismic impact on the popular culture landscape. Some things are inevitable: we will get a “Chapter Two” featuring the adults returning to Derry for a final showdown with IT. We can also expect more horror movies. Will we get more clown flicks? I'm sure there's plenty of those being prepared for VOD as I write this.

What I am more concerned about is the state of horror film. Over the last decade, we have seen a renaissance in indie horror. Get Out, It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch, The Invitation, Cheap Thrills, Starry Eyes, Goodnight Mommy, and Raw are a few of the most notable titles. This movement has brought a variety of styles and an emergence of new voices unlike anything we’ve seen since the 70s. Even a big budget haunted house franchise like The Conjuring reinforced the brilliance of James Wan and reminded us of the power in the traditional horror story amidst all the rebels.

IT feels like a sea change, though. The Conjuring made tons of money, but it didn't make this kind of money. And while The Conjuring felt traditional, IT is being presented as something new. People are talking about it like it's different. Joe Hill, King's son and respected novelist, called IT “one of the five best horror movies I've ever seen.” This movie is a hydrogen bomb on pop culture, especially as it arrived on the heels of the poorest performing summer box office in 20 years. This movie isn't just new, it's a savior.

So while we can expect more Stephen King remakes and adaptations, we can also expect less money for horror indies. Studios will want more movies to look and feel like IT, and in this narrowing marketplace, that has the potential to choke out the little guy. This is the true horror.

I hope I am wrong. Horror films are cheap to make. That is their appeal for young filmmakers looking to make a mark. Hopefully this doesn't change.

The Stephen King fan in me celebrates the love IT is receiving around the world. The cinephile in me is afraid of what this means for horror cinema going forward.

[artsychica2012]

(via 11 Secrets to Writing Effective Character Description)

The characters in our stories, songs, poems, and essays embody our writing. They are our words made flesh. Sometimes they even speak for us, carrying much of the burden of plot, theme, mood, idea, and emotion. But they do not exist until we describe them on the page. Until we anchor them with words, they drift, bodiless and ethereal. They weigh nothing; they have no voice. Once we’ve written the first words—“Belinda Beatrice,” perhaps, or “the dark-eyed salesman in the back of the room,” or simply “the girl”—our characters begin to take form. Soon they’ll be more than mere names. They’ll put on jeans or rubber hip boots, light thin cigarettes or thick cigars; they’ll stutter or shout, buy a townhouse on the Upper East Side or a studio in the Village; they’ll marry for life or survive a series of happy affairs; they’ll beat their children or embrace them. What they become, on the page, is up to us.

Here are 11 secrets to keep in mind as you breathe life into your characters through description.

1. Description that relies solely on physical attributes too often turns into what Janet Burroway calls the “all-points bulletin.”

It reads something like this: “My father is a tall, middle-aged man of average build. He has green eyes and brown hair and usually wears khakis and oxford shirts.”

This description is so mundane, it barely qualifies as an “all-points bulletin.” Can you imagine the police searching for this suspect? No identifying marks, no scars or tattoos, nothing to distinguish him. He appears as a cardboard cutout rather than as a living, breathing character. Yes, the details are accurate, but they don’t call forth vivid images. We can barely make out this character’s form; how can we be expected to remember him?

When we describe a character, factual information alone is not sufficient, no matter how accurate it might be. The details must appeal to our senses. Phrases that merely label (like tall, middle-aged, and average) bring no clear image to our minds. Since most people form their first impression of someone through visual clues, it makes sense to describe our characters using visual images. Green eyes is a beginning, but it doesn’t go far enough. Are they pale green or dark green? Even a simple adjective can strengthen a detail. If the adjective also suggests a metaphor—forest green, pea green, or emerald green—the reader not only begins to make associations (positive or negative) but also visualizes in her mind’s eye the vehicle of the metaphor—forest trees, peas, or glittering gems.

2. The problem with intensifying an image only by adjectives is that adjectives encourage cliché.

It’s hard to think of adjective descriptors that haven’t been overused: bulging or ropy muscles, clean-cut good looks, frizzy hair. If you use an adjective to describe a physical attribute, make sure that the phrase is not only accurate and sensory but also fresh. In her short story “Flowering Judas,” Katherine Anne Porter describes Braggioni’s singing voice as a “furry, mournful voice” that takes the high notes “in a prolonged painful squeal.” Often the easiest way to avoid an adjective-based cliché is to free the phrase entirely from its adjective modifier. For example, rather than describing her eyes merely as “hazel,” Emily Dickinson remarked that they were “the color of the sherry the guests leave in the glasses.”

3. Strengthen physical descriptions by making details more specific.

In my earlier “all-points bulletin” example, the description of the father’s hair might be improved with a detail such as “a military buzz-cut, prickly to the touch” or “the aging hippie’s last chance—a long ponytail striated with gray.” Either of these descriptions would paint a stronger picture than the bland phrase brown hair. In the same way, his oxford shirt could become “a white oxford button-down that he’d steam-pleated just minutes before” or “the same style of baby blue oxford he’d worn since prep school, rolled carelessly at the elbows.” These descriptions not only bring forth images, they also suggest the background and the personality of the father.

4. Select physical details carefully, choosing only those that create the strongest, most revealing impression.

One well-chosen physical trait, item of clothing, or idiosyncratic mannerism can reveal character more effectively than a dozen random images. This applies to characters in nonfiction as well as fiction. When I write about my grandmother, I usually focus on her strong, jutting chin—not only because it was her most dominant feature but also because it suggests her stubbornness and determination. When I write about Uncle Leland, I describe the wandering eye that gave him a perpetually distracted look, as if only his body was present. His spirit, it seemed, had already left on some journey he’d glimpsed peripherally, a place the rest of us were unable to see. As you describe real-life characters, zero in on distinguishing characteristics that reveal personality: gnarled, arthritic hands always busy at some task; a habit of covering her mouth each time a giggle rises up; a lopsided swagger as he makes his way to the horse barn; the scent of coconut suntan oil, cigarettes, and leather each time she sashays past your chair.

5. A character’s immediate surroundings can provide the backdrop for the sensory and significant details that shape the description of the character himself.

If your character doesn’t yet have a job, a hobby, a place to live, or a place to wander, you might need to supply these things. Once your character is situated comfortably, he may relax enough to reveal his secrets. On the other hand, you might purposely make your character uncomfortable—that is, put him in an environment where he definitely doesn’t fit, just to see how he’ll respond. Let’s say you’ve written several descriptions of an elderly woman working in the kitchen, yet she hasn’t begun to ripen into the three-dimensional character you know she could become. Try putting her at a gay bar on a Saturday night, or in a tattoo parlor, or (if you’re up for a little time travel) at Appomattox, serving her famous buttermilk biscuits to Grant and Lee.

6. In describing a character’s surroundings, you don’t have to limit yourself to a character’s present life.

Early environments shape fictional characters as well as flesh-and-blood people. In Flaubert’s description of Emma Bovary’s adolescent years in the convent, he foreshadows the woman she will become, a woman who moves through life in a romantic malaise, dreaming of faraway lands and loves. We learn about Madame Bovary through concrete, sensory descriptions of the place that formed her. In addition, Flaubert describes the book that held her attention during mass and the images that she particularly loved—a sick lamb, a pierced heart.

Living among those white-faced women with their rosaries and copper crosses, never getting away from the stuffy schoolroom atmosphere, she gradually succumbed to the mystic languor exhaled by the perfumes of the altar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers. Instead of following the Mass, she used to gaze at the azure-bordered religious drawings in her book. She loved the sick lamb, the Sacred Heart pierced with sharp arrows, and poor Jesus falling beneath His cross.

7. Characters reveal their inner lives—their preoccupations, values, lifestyles, likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations—by the objects that fill their hands, houses, offices, cars, suitcases, grocery carts, and dreams.

In the opening scenes of the film The Big Chill, we’re introduced to the main characters by watching them unpack the bags they’ve brought for a weekend trip to a mutual friend’s funeral. One character has packed enough pills to stock a drugstore; another has packed a calculator; still another, several packages of condoms. Before a word is spoken—even before we know anyone’s name—we catch glimpses of the characters’ lives through the objects that define them.

What items would your character pack for a weekend away? What would she use for luggage? A leather valise with a gold monogram on the handle? An old accordion case with decals from every theme park she’s visited? A duffel bag? Make a list of everything your character would pack: a “Save the Whales” T-shirt; a white cotton nursing bra, size 36D; a breast pump; a Mickey Mouse alarm clock; a photograph of her husband rocking a child to sleep; a can of Mace; three Hershey bars.

8. Description doesn’t have to be direct to be effective.

Techniques abound for describing a character indirectly, for instance, through the objects that fill her world. Create a grocery list for your character—or two or three, depending on who’s coming for dinner. Show us the character’s credit card bill or the itemized deductions on her income tax forms. Let your character host a garage sale and watch her squirm while neighbors and strangers rifle through her stuff. Which items is she practically giving away? What has she overpriced, secretly hoping no one will buy it? Write your character’s Last Will and Testament. Which niece gets the Steinway? Who gets the lake cottage—the stepson or the daughter? If your main characters are divorcing, how will they divide their assets? Which one will fight hardest to keep the dog?

9. To make characters believable to readers, set them in motion.

The earlier “all-points bulletin” description of the father failed not only because the details were mundane and the prose stilted; it also suffered from lack of movement. To enlarge the description, imagine that same father in a particular setting—not just in the house but also sitting in the brown recliner. Then, because setting implies time as well as place, choose a particular time in which to place him. The time may be bound by the clock (six o’clock, sunrise, early afternoon) or bound only by the father’s personal history (after the divorce, the day he lost his job, two weeks before his sixtieth birthday).

Then set the father in motion. Again, be as specific as possible. “Reading the newspaper” is a start, but it does little more than label a generic activity. In order for readers to enter the fictional dream, the activity must be shown. Often this means breaking a large, generic activity into smaller, more particular parts: “scowling at the Dow Jones averages,” perhaps, or “skimming the used-car ads” or “wiping his ink-stained fingers on the monogrammed handkerchief.” Besides providing visual images for the reader, specific and representative actions also suggest the personality of the character, his habits and desires, and even the emotional life hidden beneath the physical details.

10. Verbs are the foot soldiers of action-based description.

However, we don’t need to confine our use of verbs to the actions a character performs. Well-placed verbs can sharpen almost any physical description of a character. In the following passage from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, verbs enliven the description even when the grandmother isn’t in motion.

… in the last years she continued to settle and began to shrink. Her mouth bowed forward and her brow sloped back, and her skull shone pink and speckled within a mere haze of hair, which hovered about her head like the remembered shape of an altered thing. She looked as if the nimbus of humanity were fading away and she were turning monkey. Tendrils grew from her eyebrows and coarse white hairs sprouted on her lip and chin. When she put on an old dress the bosom hung empty and the hem swept the floor. Old hats fell down over her eyes. Sometimes she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, her eyes closed and her shoulder shaking.

Notice the strong verbs Robinson uses throughout the description. The mouth “bowed” forward; the brow “sloped” back; the hair “hovered,” then “sprouted”; the hem “swept” the floor; hats “fell” down over her eyes. Even when the grandmother’s body is at rest, the description pulses with activity. And when the grandmother finally does move—putting a hand over her mouth, closing her eyes, laughing until her shoulders shake—we visualize her in our mind’s eye because the actions are concrete and specific. They are what the playwright David Mamet calls “actable actions.” Opening a window is an actable action, as is slamming a door. “Coming to terms with himself” or “understanding that he’s been wrong all along” are not actable actions. This distinction between nonactable and actable actions echoes our earlier distinction between showing and telling. For the most part, a character’s movements must be rendered concretely—that is, shown—before the reader can participate in the fictional dream.

Actable actions are important elements in many fiction and nonfiction scenes that include dialogue. In some cases, actions, along with environmental clues, are even more important to character development than the words the characters speak. Writers of effective dialogue include pauses, voice inflections, repetitions, gestures, and other details to suggest the psychological and emotional subtext of a scene. Journalists and other nonfiction writers do the same. Let’s say you’ve just interviewed your cousin about his military service during the Vietnam War. You have a transcript of the interview, based on audio or video recordings, but you also took notes about what else was going on in that room. As you write, include nonverbal clues as well as your cousin’s actual words. When you asked him about his tour of duty, did he look out the window, light another cigarette, and change the subject? Was it a stormy afternoon? What song was playing on the radio? If his ancient dog was asleep on your cousin’s lap, did he stroke the dog as he spoke? When the phone rang, did your cousin ignore it or jump up to answer it, looking relieved for the interruption? Including details such as these will deepen your character description.

11. We don’t always have to use concrete, sensory details to describe our characters, and we aren’t limited to describing actable actions.

The novels of Milan Kundera use little outward description of characters or their actions. Kundera is more concerned with a character’s interior landscape, with what he calls a character’s “existential problem,” than with sensory description of person or action. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tomas’s body is not described at all, since the idea of body does not constitute Tomas’s internal dilemma. Teresa’s body is described in physical, concrete terms (though not with the degree of detail most novelists would employ) only because her body represents one of her existential preoccupations. For Kundera, a novel is more a meditation on ideas and the private world of the mind than a realistic depiction of characters. Reading Kundera, I always feel that I’m living inside the characters rather than watching them move, bodily, through the world.

With writers like Kundera, we learn about characters through the themes and obsessions of their inner lives, their “existential problems” as depicted primarily through dreams, visions, memories, and thoughts. Other writers probe characters’ inner lives through what characters see through their eyes. A writer who describes what a character sees also reveals, in part, a character’s inner drama. In The Madness of a Seduced Woman, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer describes a farm through the eyes of the novel’s main character, Agnes, who has just fallen in love and is anticipating her first sexual encounter, which she simultaneously longs for and fears.

… and I saw how the smooth, white curve of the snow as it lay on the ground was like the curve of a woman’s body, and I saw how the farm was like the body of a woman which lay down under the sun and under the freezing snow and perpetually and relentlessly produced uncountable swarms of living things, all born with mouths open and cries rising from them into the air, long-boned muzzles opening … as if they would swallow the world whole …

Later in the book, when Agnes’s sexual relationship has led to pregnancy, then to a life-threatening abortion, she describes the farm in quite different terms.

It was August, high summer, but there was something definite and curiously insubstantial in the air. … In the fields near me, the cattle were untroubled, their jaws grinding the last of the grass, their large, fat tongues drinking the clear brook water. But there was something in the air, a sad note the weather played upon the instrument of the bone-stretched skin. … In October, the leaves would be off the trees; the fallen leaves would be beaten flat by heavy rains and the first fall of snow. The bony ledges of the earth would begin to show, the earth’s skeleton shedding its unnecessary flesh.

By describing the farm through Agnes’s eyes, Schaeffer not only shows us Agnes’s inner landscape—her ongoing obsession with sex and pregnancy—but also demonstrates a turning point in Agnes’s view of sexuality. In the first passage, which depicts a farm in winter, Agnes sees images of beginnings and births. The earth is curved and full like a woman’s fleshy body. In the second scene, described as occurring in “high summer,” images of death prevail. Agnes’s mind jumps ahead to autumn, to dying leaves and heavy rains, a time when the earth, no longer curved in a womanly shape, is little more than a skeleton, having shed the flesh it no longer needs.

[howellrichard]

14 Sensational Books for Your Summer Reading List (2019 Edition!)

Hiya Gorgeous!

If you’ve been tuning into my weekly Wellness Wednesday live series on Instagram and Facebook, then you know that I recently launched our #CrazySexyBooks club with my friend Sheri Salata’s new book, The Beautiful No (and I also recently shared the next book I’m reading, which is also on this list!). I’ve been having such a blast connecting with our amazing community over our shared love for reading books that make us think, question, laugh out loud, vision, tear up and everything in between.

That’s why I couldn’t be more jazzed to bring you my 2019 summer reading list, hot off the press! It’s got something for everyone… fiction and nonfiction, brand new and classic must-reads. These books touch on everything from environmental issues and the powerful feminist themes behind Mary Magdelene’s gospel, to psychedelics, small business marketing and finance, wellness, and set-your-heart-on-fire inspiration!

But before you dive in, I’ve got a special gift just for you…

My 2019 Summer Reading List

1. Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson

This amazing new book by Meggan Watterson, a Harvard-trained theologian, dear friend and one of my spiritual teachers is my latest pick for our #CrazySexyBooks club. In Meg’s words, Mary’s gospel reveals a radical love at the heart of the Christian story (and for many of us, it’s a story we haven’t heard yet!). I feel that love as I read this beautiful book, and I think you will too. It’s a love that transforms everything—and it’s available to all of us. Add this book to your morning spiritual practice. Your heart will open and your soul will thank you.

Get Mary Magdalene Revealed here!

2. More Than Enough by Elaine Welteroth

We all have so much to learn from Elaine Welteroth, who broke barriers as the youngest Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue and paved the way for it to become the socially conscious publication it is today. I love this quote about the book from another woman I admire, Malala Yousafzai: “More Than Enough is a guide for young people who want to find their voice, a crash course for those who want to challenge the status quo, and an adventure story for all of us.” So whether you’re young in years or young at heart, this one is a must-have for your summer reading list.

Get More Than Enough here.

3. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Calling all dreamers, small biz owners and solopreneurs! I didn’t think talking about money could be fun, but Mike Michalowicz has proven me wrong. If talking financials makes your head spin but you want your company to grow (and be profitable!), this one is a must-read. You’ll get practical advice paired with case studies that’ll help put you and your business baby on the path to success.

Get Profit First here.

4. How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

You might know Michael Pollan for his famous food-centric books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. This time around, his unique brand of skeptical curiosity takes us into the world of psychedelics. Pollan started the research for this book by exploring how some people are using LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in psychoactive mushrooms) to treat health challenges like depression, anxiety, PTSD and addiction. In doing so, he discovered a whole world of possibilities for using psychedelics to expand our consciousness, better understand our own minds and transform our fears around dying (especially for cancer patients). If that sounds too trippy to you, I encourage you to keep an open, expansive mind! This book is fascinating.

Get How to Change Your Mind here.

5. Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo

My BFF’s sizzling new book launches on September 10 and I couldn’t be more excited! I’ve been along for the behind-the-scenes ride for an entire year as Marie wrote this glorious gem. I’m devouring the advanced copy now and let me tell you, this brilliant baby is full of spirit-stirring wisdom and life-changing perspective. It’ll fire you up and fill you with hope and the knowledge that it doesn’t matter how many crazy roadblocks threaten to throw you off course, your dream is and always will be figureoutable. I may be biased, but I have a feeling you’ll agree. This masterpiece will definitely be a fall #CrazySexyBooks club pick!

Pre-order Everything is Figureoutable here.

6. A Bright Future by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist

I had to share this book because I know how passionate this community is about protecting our planet! The authors unpack how several countries have already replaced fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources and how the rest of the world could follow in their footsteps to (literally) save the world. This is a compelling, no-nonsense, yet hopeful book that will motivate you to influence change however you can.

Get A Bright Future here.

7. The Beautiful No by Sheri Salata

We just wrapped up chatting about this scrumptious book in our #CrazySexyBooks club, but it’s not too late if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet! Like many of us, Sheri dedicated a big chunk of her life to a career she loved (working with Oprah!). As fulfilling and magical as that was, she found herself wishing for a life she loved just as much. So she left it all and went on a soul pilgrimage. And lucky for us, she shares what she learned and how you can apply it to your own life in this transformative book. I can’t recommend it enough. And my mom agrees!

Get The Beautiful No here.

8. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

I adore Elizabeth Gilbert and her captivating new release is perfect for this time of year. This instant bestseller is set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. It’s got love, sex, glamour, adventure and a little dose of danger—what more could you ask for in a yummy beach read? Grab a champagne cocktail and drink in these delicious pages.

Get City of Girls here.

9. From Poop to Gold: The Marketing Magic of the Harmon Brothers by Chris Jones

Team Crazy Sexy and I have been reading this book and absolutely loving it! If you’ve seen the genius ads for brands like Poo-Pourri and ChatBooks, then you know Harmon Brothers! This book takes you behind-the-scenes of these viral ad sensations that have not only cracked up millions of people, but also boosted these companies’ reputations and helped them sell a whole lotta product. If you’re an entrepreneur like me, then you’re always hungry for proven tips about what works and what flops—and this book is loaded with ‘em!

Get From Poop to Gold here.

10. Let Your Fears Make You Fierce by Koya Webb

We’ve been exploring fear and how to make it work for you (instead of against you!) in a couple of our recent Wellness Wednesdays. If those conversations resonated with you, you’re gonna love this book. Koya Webb, holistic health coach and yoga teacher, shares how she’s turned her fear into one of her greatest superpowers—and how you can too with her straightforward tips, breathing and journaling exercises, mantras and more. I met Koya at an event this spring and I instantly loved her. I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer afternoon!

Get Let Your Fears Make You Fierce here.

11. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

I love my therapist and think folks can benefit from talking to someone. Unfortunately, there’s a long-standing stigma that going to therapy is somehow a sign of weakness. That’s why I’m so grateful for this wonderful book—we can start to break down the harmful notions our society has about mental health. Lori Gottlieb’s intimate portrait of her experiences as both a clinician and patient pulls back the curtain on the world of talk therapy. It’s funny, eye-opening, thought-provoking and so much more.

Get Maybe You Should Talk to Someone here.

12. Beauty Water by Tori Holmes

If you’ve been following me for a while or hanging out with me on Wellness Wednesday, then you already know how I feel about hydration! It’s one of the most important (yet undervalued) aspects of living a healthy life. Now you can turn your H2O routine into a nourishing self-care ritual with this gorgeous book. It landed on my desk a few months ago and I’m grateful it did. This book is packed with 50 recipes for deliciously quenching elixirs that use ingredients like CBD oil, ashwagandha and lion’s mane. Cheers!

Get Beauty Water here.

Looking for something special to read this summer? These 14 gorgeous books are at the top of my list!

13. Do Less by Kate Northrup

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book as soon as my dear friend Kate told me she was writing it. If you’re ready to ditch the damaging belief that your worth is based on your productivity, then I suggest picking up a copy for yourself! Instead of trying to squeeze every last thing into your time, Kate encourages a more minimalist approach to life rooted in mindfulness and presence. These powerful lessons are the soul medicine that our busy, overwhelmed, stressed out world so desperately needs! For more on this topic, check out this fascinating interview with Kate on Jenna Kutcher’s Goal Digger podcast.

Get Do Less here.

14. The Future of Fashion by Tyler Little

I’ve written a couple of articles recently about the environmental, human and animal impacts of fast fashion. If that topic moves you, you’ll really dig this book. It’ll help you understand the problems with the global fashion industry on a deeper level, as well as what innovative people and businesses are doing differently to flip the script. You’ll be inspired and empowered to make sustainable shifts in your own life!

Get The Future of Fashion here.

I can’t wait to hear what you decide to add to your summer reading list! And don’t forget to join me for Wellness Wednesday on Instagram and Facebook. Going live has become one of the things I look forward to every week—I love this special space we’re creating together. In addition to chatting about #CrazySexyBooks, we dish on lots of juicy tips to help you live your healthiest, happiest life. It’s also a chance for us to just connect and get to know each other better… so fun!

You can catch up on past Wellness episodes here and sign up for reminders (so you never miss another one!) here.

Your turn: What books are on your summer reading list?

Peace & bookworm buddies,

The post 14 Sensational Books for Your Summer Reading List (2019 Edition!) appeared first on KrisCarr.com.

[topmixtrends]

OF HOW MANY literary journalists can we say that one of the defining intellectual publications of the second half of the 20th century grew out of a piece of that journalist’s occasional criticism? Probably not many, and yet that’s exactly what Elizabeth Hardwick achieved with her 1959 Harper’s Magazine essay “The Decline of Book Reviewing.” Four years after the essay appeared, the editor who had commissioned it — Robert B. Silvers, who died earlier this year — went on to found, with Barbara Epstein, The New York Review of Books, enlisting the support of A. Whitney Ellsworth, Jason Epstein, Robert Lowell — and Elizabeth Hardwick, whose essay Silvers always pointed to as the earliest source of inspiration. “That essay is crucial,” he told New York magazine on the occasion of the Review’s 50th anniversary in 2013.

“The Decline of Book Reviewing,” included here in a long-overdue collection of Hardwick’s essays (selected by the novelist and critic Darryl Pinckney and published by NYRB Classics), is a powerful and persuasive broadside against the “sweet, bland commendations” that were all too common in the book pages of daily newspapers in Hardwick’s time — and, one is a little embarrassed to admit, are still too common in the twittering society of mutual admiration that is our literary culture today. In a famous passage, Hardwick berated The New York Times for the “flat praise and the faint dissension, the minimal style and the light little article, the absence of involvement, passion, character, eccentricity — the lack, at last, of the literary tone itself,” that too often characterized its literary coverage. She viewed the Times as a kind of bloated provincial rag — a judgment that surely must have ruffled a few metropolitan furs over at the Gray Lady. Yet Hardwick, despite her polemical tone, was being more than just polemical: she was being hostile in the defense of a value. (She did not generally traffic in gratuitous hatchet jobs or cultural postmortems.) She took books — literature — seriously, and could not suffer the sight of alleged newspapers of record treating something so important so blandly:

[T]he drama of the book world is being slowly, painlessly killed. Everything is somehow alike, whether it be a routine work of history by a respectable academic, a group of platitudes from the Pentagon, a volume of verse, a work of radical ideas, a work of conservative ideas. Simple “coverage” seems to have won out over the drama of opinion; “readability,” a cozy little word, has taken the place of the old-fashioned requirement of a good, clear prose style, which is something else. All differences of excellence, of position, of form are blurred by the slumberous acceptance. The blur eases good and bad alike, the conventional and the odd, so that it finally appears that the author like the reviewer really does not have a position.

Hardwick was in her early 40s when she wrote “The Decline of Book Reviewing.” The last essay included here in The Collected Essays, an appreciation of Nathanael West, appeared in The New York Review of Books in 2003, when Hardwick was 87. In the intervening four decades she not only managed to live up to her own exacting standards (the dull thought, the tired phrase, may knock but never enter), but she also grew to become one of the 20th century’s towering writer-critics, deserving of a seat at the table of Virginia Woolf and V. S. Pritchett. Like them, she approached criticism artistically, metaphorically. George Eliot, she writes in one of the essays collected here, was “melancholy, headachey, with a slow, disciplined, hard-won, aching genius that bore down upon her with a wondrous and exhausting force, like a great love affair in middle age”; William James and his siblings, in their childhood, were “packed and unpacked, settled and unsettled, like a band of high livers fleeing creditors”; the Jewish businessman Simon Rosedale, in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), is “weighted down, as if by an overcoat in summer, with a thickness of objectionable moral and physical attributes.”

On every page of this book you will be reminded that Elizabeth Hardwick was not simply a great critic but a great writer. This distinction matters. Hardwick’s essays are always sticking their neck out; their aphoristic grace and easy impressionism are a way of speaking to their subjects in their own language, without deafening them with comprehension and analysis. For instance, in the great essay on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) — is there, indeed, a greater essay on this story? — Hardwick is not, in the scholarly or theoretical manner, trying to solve the enigma of Bartleby’s resignation; she eschews this temptation, and even gently reprimands Melville for, in the story’s final sentence, inviting it. Instead, she follows Bartleby’s language — his style — and offers up her own in comparison:

Bartleby’s language reveals the all of him, but what is revealed? Character? Bartleby is not a character in the manner of the usual, imaginative, fictional construction. And he is not a character as we know them in life, with their bundling bustle of details, their suits and ties and felt hats, their love affairs surreptitious or binding, family albums, psychological justifications dragging like a little wagon along the highway of experience. We might say he is a destiny, without interruptions, revisions, second chances. But what is a destiny that is not endured by a “character”? Bartleby has no plot in his present existence, and we would not wish to imagine subplots for his already lived years. He is indeed only words, wonderful words, and very few of them. One might for a moment sink into the abyss and imagine that instead of prefer not he had said, “I don’t want to” or “I don’t feel like it.” No, it is unthinkable, a vulgarization, adding truculence, idleness, foolishness, adding indeed “character” and altering a sublimity of definition.

I find this passage astonishing. Notice how quickly Hardwick is tempted into literary detail (“suits and ties and felt hats” [my emphasis]) and metaphor (“a little wagon along the highway of experience”), and then, tellingly, how she encourages us to view Bartleby from the perspective of his creator, Melville, by entertaining poor alternatives to his famous utterance. She is writing as a creator herself, sharing in the language of literary creation, and all the while still managing to perform the task of the critic. No comprehensive analysis of “Bartleby” that I’ve ever read is as suggestive — perhaps because Hardwick, in the end, dares to be just that: suggestive, as opposed to conclusive; aphoristic, as opposed to comprehensive; metaphorical, as opposed to merely critical.

Born in 1916 in Lexington, Kentucky — a place she wasn’t sorry to be from, she said, “so long as I didn’t have to stay there forever” — Elizabeth Hardwick moved to New York City in 1939 to study English at Columbia University. She published her first novel, The Ghostly Lover, in 1945 and shortly afterward was enlisted by Philip Rahv to pen book reviews for Partisan Review, where she quickly gained a reputation for her acerbic, cutting style. (When Rahv asked Hardwick what she thought of Diana Trilling, The Nation’s book critic, Hardwick quipped: “Not much.”)

In 1949 she married the poet Robert Lowell, a decision that would shape her life for decades to come. They were engaged while Lowell, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was recuperating from electric shock treatment in a hospital north of Boston. Hardwick was warned against the union by the poet-critic Allen Tate, who described Lowell’s mental state at the time as being “very nearly psychotic.” Shortly before the engagement he even went so far as to call Lowell “dangerous,” claiming there were “definite homicidal implications in his world, particularly toward women and children.” Lowell’s Boston Brahmin father was no fan of the engagement either. “I do feel,” he wrote to his afflicted son, “that both you and she, should clearly understand, that if she does marry you, that she is responsible for you.”

But even these warnings could not have prepared Hardwick for the mental breakdowns and momentary break-ups, the impulsive infidelities and public indiscretions she would suffer through for the next 20-odd years. “I have sat and listened to too many / words of the collaborating muse,” Lowell self-incriminatingly wrote, “and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, / not avoiding injury to others, / not avoiding injury to myself.” Their turbulent marriage finally ended in 1970 when Lowell left the United States for England to live with Lady Caroline Blackwood, whom he married in 1972. For Hardwick, however, worse was yet to come: Lowell famously made public art of their marital difficulties and divorce; in the poetry collections For Lizzie and Harriet and The Dolphin, both of them published in 1973, he quoted from Hardwick’s personal letters to him, a trespass his friend Elizabeth Bishop scolded him for in a stinging letter: “It is not being ‘gentle’ to use personal, tragic, anguished letters that way,” she wrote, “it’s cruel.”

Though she suffered greatly, Hardwick maintained that marrying Lowell was one of the best things that had ever happened to her. She called him an “extraordinarily original and brilliant and amazing presence, quite beyond any other I have known.” Speaking to Darryl Pinckney in 1985, she said that Lowell, for all his flaws, was at least encouraging of his wife’s intellectual pursuits:

He liked women writers and I don’t think he ever had a true interest in a woman who wasn’t a writer — an odd turn-on indeed and one I’ve noticed not greatly shared. Women writers don’t tend to be passive vessels or wives, saying, “Oh, that’s good, dear.”

Women writers — and women in literature more generally — were the focus of Hardwick’s most influential collection of essays, Seduction and Betrayal, published in 1974. (Regrettably, and a little ill-advisedly, it is not included in The Collected Essays; it was reissued separately, in 2001, also by NYRB Classics.) These stirring, evocative portraits — of the Brontë sisters, Zelda Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Wordsworth, and others — have sometimes been viewed as a veiled response to Lowell’s betrayal, though this notion seems reductive, as if Hardwick needed Lowell to betray her in order to challenge perceived truths about literary history. Seduction and Betrayal was a challenge to precisely such notions: the romantic view that women writers are either victims or heroines (or both). “Toward the achievements of women,” Hardwick had written in an earlier essay, “I find my own attitudes extremely complicated by all sorts of vague emotions.” These attitudes and emotions were to the benefit of her readers, for if they were not complicated they would not interest us, at least not from a literary perspective. As Hilton Als has beautifully put it, the human impulse in Hardwick’s writing always outweighed the abstract.

Though Hardwick achieved her greatest success in 1979 with Sleepless Nights, a much-admired collage-like quasi-novel, the compressed density of her style was always more suited to literary essay, which may be why it was the genre she remained most faithful to. In sheer size alone, The Collected Essays, which spans six decades and 600 pages, is a testament to the happy union between author and form. Hardwick could quite simply squeeze more into a sentence than most writers could an entire paragraph. Reviewing a new biography of Ernest Hemingway, she writes of the literary biographical genre that “in a hoarding spirit it has an awesome regard for the penny as well as the dollar.” William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), was guilty of “running on both teams — here he is the cleverest skeptic and there the wildest man in a state of religious enthusiasm.” And, in an essay on Simone Weil, we are told: “the present fashion of biography, with the scrupulous accounting of time, makes a long life of a short one.”

There is a danger for the reviewer, when describing Hardwick’s essays, of becoming a mere anthologizer, a dazed and dazzled collector of writerly gems. This is partly because Hardwick herself was a serial jeweler: “I like the offhand flashes, the absence of the lumber in the usual prose,” she once said. But now and again, the writing becomes all flash and no lumber — her style, so hypnotically idiosyncratic, can veer off into eccentricity and become difficult to follow, as demonstrated by her tendency to write sentences that are hardly sentences at all but dashed-off story outlines. From a single essay: “The overwhelming scene, the tremendous importance of the union and its dismaying, squalid complications of feeling, Yasnaya Polyana, the children, the novels, the opinions”; “Every quarrel, every remorse, moments of calm and hope and memory. Diaries, rightly called voluminous, letters, great in number, sent back and forth”; “Lady Byron’s industry produced only one genuine product: the hoard of dissension, the swollen archives, the blurred messages of the letters, the unbalancing record of meetings, the confidences, the statements drawn up”; and so on. It’s like reading literary criticism written by Augie March.

Still, these are minor complaints — the unavoidable thumbprints of such playful, busy hands. For whether she is reporting from the front lines of the Civil Rights movement or tracing the contours of Robert Frost’s reputation, Hardwick revels in her subject matter. Everything in these essays, be it real or fictional, comes alive to Hardwick’s touch. And how funny she is! In Marge Piercy’s novel Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1970), “the girls are constantly available and practical — I’m afraid rather like a jar of peanut butter waiting for a thumb.” William James (again) was guilty at times of being “a sort of Californian; he loves the new and unhistorical and cannot resist the shadiest of claims.” And Peter Conrad’s Imagining America (1980) is described as “a text that bristles like the quills on a pestered porcupine.”

¤

If Hardwick’s achievement as an essayist has been left to cool somewhat in the collective shadow of her more illustrious contemporaries, The Collected Essays is a much-needed bringer of heat. For Hardwick was mercilessly free of the many occasional sins of her time: she had none of Susan Sontag’s modish, Francophile theorizing, none of Norman Mailer’s wounded egoism, but neither did she succumb to the breezy generalities of Alfred Kazin. She was, on the contrary, George Orwell–like in her good judgment and common sense, admirably demonstrated in this collection by the moral beauty of her essays on the Civil Rights movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Because she outlived them all, the last third or so of The Collected Essays revisits many of those fellow writers who belonged, like Hardwick, to the intellectually gilded age in American letters that spanned the second half of the 20th century (an age that might be said to have ended, earlier this year, with the death of Bob Silvers). Hardwick knew and befriended the likes of Mary McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald, and Philip Rahv, not to mention European exiles like Hannah Arendt and Nicola Chiaromonte. In the last half of this collection, then, we learn that an “evening at the Rahvs’ was to enter a ring of bullies, each one bullying the other”; that Edmund Wilson gave the impression of “a cheerful, corpulent, chuckling gentleman, well-dressed in brown suits and double martinis”; that Hannah Arendt, in her apartment on Riverside Drive, served “cakes and chocolates and nuts bought in abundance at the bakeries on Broadway.”

Yet such anecdotes are kept mostly in the margins; Hardwick always stopped short of outright memoirism. Despite her strong voice and presence on the page, the impression she leaves is one of humility. She was not a romantic of the self; living with Robert Lowell and witnessing the self-destruction of so many of her contemporaries (Randall Jarrell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman) probably inoculated her against the myths of the mad genius. Thus what she admired in the Brontë sisters was not the romantic notion of them having managed to write any novels at all but rather “the practical, industrious, ambitious cast of mind too little stressed. Necessity, dependence, discipline drove them hard; being a writer was a way of living, surviving, literally keeping alive.” Similarly, she was impressed by Zelda Fitzgerald’s “fantastic energy — not energy of a frantic, chaotic, sick sort, but that of steady application, formed and sustained by a belief in the worth of work and the value of each solitary self.”

In Sleepless Nights, the narrator writes of her mother’s child-rearing (she gave birth to nine children): “It was what she was always doing, and in the end what she had done.” In a similar vein, The Collected Essays are a tribute to Hardwick’s ceaseless activity as a literary essayist, as a critic and a reader — proof, indeed, that being a writer is a way of living.

¤

Morten Høi Jensen is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen (Yale University Press, 2017).

The post Flash and Lumber: Elizabeth Hardwick’s Essays appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2AAKd65