#As always the unspoken politics are my favorite part of world building

[backpackingspace]

Okay but it must have been a political disaster for xie lian to have ascended. Like he was the only heir wasn't he? Only child that he was. Who inherited next? Was it qi rong? Can you imagine

[noturprobiem]

A short horror story for my little series.

This one is about tunnels. Toxic yuri included.

Today we got a bit carried away in the hotel and almost missed the sunset. I wouldn't really care, but Julia threw me off of her and ran straight to the bathroom the moment she noticed what time it was. The sights were her favorite part, after all. She loved to stand, unmoving, looking at the flowers or the clouds. I never fully understood her obsession, to be honest.

Julia and I have been to dozens of ruins in the last few years. We have an established routine at this point, unspoken rules that let us work together despite our differences. It started by complete accident when we bumped into each other during one of my explorations. Julia helped bandage my sprained ankle and walked me to the hotel room that night. A remarkably embarrassing experience, but it worked out as we woke up together next morning. I don't remember how exactly it started but since then we've worked as a team, meeting exactly once a month. 

When we arrive, the sky is already blood red. It is beautiful, I admit. Sometimes even I get hypnotized watching the darkness slowly descend onto the world, gently coating the old building and the remains of what was once a lavish garden. We stand there, not saying a word, for a long time. The night air is fresh and chilly, it is about to rain. I feel relieved. A night is not the end for me, it is the beginning of my weekend, and I can finally drive to the end of the world, turn off my phone and disappear from the radars. I can passively float through time and space, not wanted or needed anywhere at all. Isn't that what freedom is?

We don't really spend much time above ground after dark. There is nothing to see, only parts of old walls remaining, trashed and covered in graffiti. I politely wait for Julia to take her pictures before we both move on. The basement looks promising. As we get closer, I feel a surge of anticipation building up deep in my stomach. Something tells me this time is not like the others, this time I will discover something truly breathtaking. Julia doesn't seem as excited but it's to be expected, she never understood my love for underground.

It's a small room, covered in moss, trash and dirt. It smells of mold and other unpleasant things so Julia covers her mouth with a respiratory mask. She's always been more of a lady than me.

One wall calls out to me. It's not special in any way, at least not outwardly, but I feel a gentle pull towards it deep in my soul. As I come closer, I realize it's not concrete, but a thin material. It's fragile, and somehow I am the first one to discover that. There shouldn't be anything behind that wall, but my gut is telling me to break it. Julia is laughing at me when I take out a hammer. 

But I have to see for myself. So I hit twice, then three times. And finally, the hole is big enough to illuminate what lies behind the wall — it is absolutely nothing. I don't mean that there is a wall, I mean that there isn't. The light drowns in the darkness before it can meet anything solid.

“You'll just «discover» some pipes. Or questionable design choices.��

Now Julia is invested, too. Still holding the torch for us both, she kicks the cracks in the wall, revealing more and more of what’s behind it. We step inside, on an old-fashioned marble staircase. 

“You told me you've researched this place,” I say.

“I did,” Julia huffs. “This place was built on a random plot of land and got bombed into the state it is today, I don't know what to tell you. No matter where I looked, no mention of previous structures. I have no idea how it's even possible.”

“Maybe it's a secret bunker.”

“Doubt it.”

We descend the stairs slowly. My heart is pounding in excitement I have never felt before, an euphoric sense of belonging. It's not long until the stairs end to reveal a long corridor. I feel weightless as I slowly go ahead, sliding my hand against a wall. It's bare, untouched. The air here is clean, dry and warm, like in my childhood bedroom. There's still a residue smell of earth, calming and reassuring. I don't need Julia's torch to see anymore. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness.

“What if it collapses? We should leave,” Julia says.

“Leave?! Do you understand what we just found?” 

“Yes, and we could come back more prepared.”

I shake my head but Julia can't see it anyway.

“We must see how far it goes, at least.”

We leave our bags on the ground. Julia only takes a few items with her in a small backpack, but I don't even feel the need to.

“Okay.”

The tunnels change with every passing hour. Some sections look ancient, built out of uneven stone, some are concrete structures, some — raw dirt and rocks. The change is smooth and pleasant, relaxing like no walk in a park could ever be. Julia can't stop whining and calling out to me. I tell her to leave but she doesn't.

We reach an opening. Brick walls disappear, and in front of us is a space so grand I can't help but run through it. Julia's worried voice quickly fades into the background. With every passing minute my eyes become better and better at differentiating the beautiful floral patterns painted on the floor. This place is stunning, it's enormous, and it could all belong to me.

“Lily,” Julia begs, “we must go back. This isn't right, this place is completely wrong in so many ways. If we get lost here, we won't be able to go back.”

“Do you still want to go back?” I ask, letting anger seep into my voice. 

Her presence has been making me uncomfortable for a while now, ruining my solace, preventing me from being truly, completely alone. She has been blessed with a sight no one has ever seen; with the privilege to walk across those grand hallways; a chance to hide from the world in a comforting darkness. She doesn't cherish it.

“I don't like this place,” Julia admits, her voice shaking. “We haven't been eating, drinking or resting for hours, and we are completely fine.”

“Then leave.”

Julia looks at me like I'm already dead, and I'm content with it. She is as tired of me as I am of her, disappointed and mad. We weren't even close enough to stick together for that long, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she says and tosses me a spare torch. I catch it so it won't shutter on the beautiful floor, but immediately put it away. Light hurts my eyes as I look at Julia, but not for long. Her steps echo in the hallways. Soon, it's dark and quiet.

The hall is round. There are tunnels leading in every direction, all different in shapes and sizes. I sit in the middle for a while, breathing in the warmth.

Then I go deeper. 

previous

[utilitycaster]

Actual Play: How it works

This is a collection of how I think of actual play as a medium, because TTRPG actual play is a unique one - a combination of improvisation, a rule set, and randomizing elements. This isn’t fully comprehensive, and I may add to it in the future as I come up with more ideas. I’m also thinking of providing some examples/more in-depth stuff for the items in separate posts, so please let me know if that’s something you would want.

Most of the observations here heavily skew towards D&D and Pathfinder actual play, as they are what I know best. Other systems I’ve listened to (PbtA, Cortex, Savage Worlds) fit in here as well, but this may not apply to all actual play, particularly GM-less games or games that are primarily played as one-shots.

Finally, and I say this only because it is a recurring problem on the social media that I happen to find incredibly irritating: you are also welcome and encouraged to have other opinions, disagree with me, dislike all of this, etc. If you have things to say, my inbox is the best place; this is too long for multiple reblogs and this is a sideblog so replies are tricky. However, if you are the kind of person who is inclined to say things like “Actually, there was an exception to this rule! It’s in the backmasked audio at 06:59:32 in the outtakes of episode 192c of Dungeons and Discotheques! :)” I would like to provide you with this actual play line quote from Adaine Abernant in Fantasy High: I think that you feel like you have a lot to offer, and please take this the right way... you don't.

Onto the thoughts, below the jump!

On narrative devices and rules and the random element:

Foreshadowing is possible, but limited to specific circumstances. A GM can (and should) foreshadow! The point of foreshadowing is to set expectations, and GMs should have hints that indicate things about the world that the party may encounter later, provide potential plot hooks, or otherwise provide the party with information. Similarly, players can do things that nod towards as of yet unrevealed elements of their backstories. However, it is impossible to deliberately foreshadow plot resolutions, because it is unknown what they will be. That doesn’t mean that in retrospect things may happen that echo back to earlier events, but the intent to foreshadow was not there - it’s a happy accident.

I don’t want to say normal narrative rules don’t apply because what are the normal narrative rules, really? However, I think an important thing to emphasize is that narrative satisfaction is not guaranteed. This is especially true if the cast has agreed character death is an option, but even beyond that, an unlucky or lucky roll can seemingly cut an arc short or take things in a weird and unforeseen direction. Because there is an element of randomness, randomness will occur. This, along with the character agency I discuss later, is one of my favorite things about actual play. It strips out the need for a moral or message or specific beats - not that those can’t arise, but they can’t be forced - and as such it can make for unusual, creative, and very true-to-life stories even in a fantasy setting.

On character role, viewpoint and agency:

Actual play stories have an ensemble of viewpoint characters (the PCs). This is perhaps the clearest restriction that exists, at least in all of the game systems I’ve mentioned. There is no good way to depict NPCs acting on their own unless the PCs have a way to observe them, unseen (magical or mundane). It is extremely difficult to have one player play multiple PCs, and if a player leaves there is not a good way to recast their PC. This doesn’t mean NPCs can’t do things with each other offscreen that have implications for the story, nor that PCs can’t come and go or become NPCs, but it does mean a good GM is very careful about NPC interactions because it gets very boring and non-collaborative very quickly to watch someone talk with themselves.

The PCs hold a level of agency that characters in other media do not. Statements about how the characters have a mind of their own in original fiction aside (sidebar: I am team ‘they don’t, you just didn’t realize that the way you wrote their personality and the way you wrote your plot conflicted until you actually started writing it out, which is very understandable’) PCs do in fact have a mind of their own separate from the GM and from each other.

Something I like about this is that unless you are coming up with conspiracy theories regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the players themselves (in which case I think you’re both a creep and a weirdo (derogatory)) or if the GM is not respecting player agency (which I feel is usually very easy to see; see below for more on that) you do not get cases of “these characters are together simply because the author felt like pairing them off” as can happen in scripted media. Any romantic relationship is, inherently, a mutually agreed choice between the originators of these characters, and more generally any plot or relationship necessarily needs to have something that appeals to all characters involved. It may be as simple as “these are my friends and I want to keep hanging out”, but, despite this being improv, it’s a medium where saying “no” is always an option.

With that said there is still room for players to be uncooperative or selfish. It’s rare, but it does exist, and I’m personally of the opinion that it’s in part the GM’s responsibility to have a conversation with that player and to not play into their attention grabbing. That said, with one notable exception, all the accusations I’ve seen about this have seemed to me to be more “I don’t like this player/character/ship/arc and I am going to claim they are stealing focus, despite it being justified,” and not genuinely about a player being obnoxious.

Agency separate from the person who creates the world is perhaps the most unique element of actual play and at this point I’m going to talk a little about how a good GM fosters that.

I’ve said before that when a GM has things happen that are not at least mostly a direct response to character actions, they are typically either world-building or a hook, and can be both. I think of this sort of as a variant on Chekhov’s gun, actually; the gun doesn’t have to go off, ultimately, in actual play, but it is saying the following:

This is a world where there are guns hung on the wall sometimes.

Someone else might do something with this gun.

You can attempt to do something with this gun before they do.

And then the players decide how they want to interpret it and what they want to do, and the dice indicate the level of success in doing so.

A good GM should encourage the players to explore and be creative, and more than anything, reward agency. This doesn’t mean rewarding it with success; rather, it means if someone explicitly indicates they want to interact with an element of the world, you should give them the tools such that eventually, they can try to do so. You can also give them reasons in-game why they should change their mind, or make it so that it’s almost certain to fail if that is reasonable, but if you are trying to flat-out shut it down without providing an in-world reason why, the cracks will almost certainly show.

One important thing to remember about GM-ing: GMs will probably come into the game with some ideas of what’s going on in the world, and some level of understanding of what the world looks like. That will be influenced by the players, both in terms of the consequences of their actions and choices, and also by what the players are interested in. Which is to say: even if there is a session zero, and the GM states a specific premise, that can change! Characters develop, player interests change, dice rolls do weird things, and so a good GM absolutely must if not kill their darlings at least remove, recycle, and adapt them based on the direction of the game and motivations of the characters. Even in a plot-driven campaign, the players and GM and what makes them happy needs to drive the story, because fundamentally, this is a game that should be fun. Which brings us to...

On the Watsonian and the Doylist in actual play:

Stepping back for a second: the context in which people are creating fiction influences them. End of sentence. It’s ridiculous to think it doesn’t. This means everything from political events and worldwide trends, to the media the creator is consuming or has consumed, to personal life events. There are always going to be in- and out-of-universe explanations for choices in fiction.

In actual play, the players and GM know the underlying rules of the world, and it’s difficult to truly split the party and have everyone not involved leave in a way that feels fun, so everyone always has information that they can’t really use in-game. Also it’s a fully improvised medium that is primarily theater of the mind, so unconscious choices, misunderstandings, and accidents are frequently not edited out, and people are human. Which is to say I think it’s important to take this into consideration in one’s analysis; it’s not that you can’t incorporate a Watsonian reason for something that happened, but Doylist reasons are given a weight that they may not have in an edited work.

Three of the Doylist reasons beyond the misunderstandings and accidents I wanted to cover are metagaming, awareness that this is for an audience, and character knowledge.

Metagaming exists in many TTRPGs, and it’s not actually inherently bad. When a DM in D&D says “that just hits” you get an idea of the AC of the creature, and you know your own attack rolls, and you can make decisions based on that, when, in a ‘real’ fantasy battle scenario, you probably wouldn’t gain all that insight from a single hit. The rules of the TTRPG are considered part of normal acceptable metagaming. There’s also the more general one; if you start the first session in a tavern, there is an unspoken expectation that the PCs will interact and form an impromptu group and not just quietly drink their ale and leave - basically, the rules of improv still apply. This is a good thing. And finally, there’s the acknowledgement that you are people with feelings and this is a game and so if someone is upset you stop, or you have discussions about consent between sessions that inform actions in-game. Metagaming just gets obnoxious when someone rolls a nat 1 and then argues that this is obvious information and they should know, or looks up every monster in the manual when you encounter it instead of playing true to the character’s knowledge.

In actual play, the ‘hey fellow tavern-goers, would you like to be a group’ form of metagaming, the “oh right this is a story and we should move the story forward,” is even more important than in home D&D games. This is where I recommend listening or reading some Q&As or watching some after shows, because you’ll hear players talk about this. A 5-hour shopping episode or extensive foraging can get boring to watch or listen to (and unlike accidentally boring or frustrating things, are pretty easy to predict and avoid). On the flip side, a risky choice might seem more appealing when you know there’s an audience who would love the payoff.

I am personally, perhaps unsurprisingly given what I said about player dynamic conspiracy theories and randomness (or, outside of this post, my strong dislike of certain popular fan theories), not a big fan of creators catering to audiences’ every whim...but it’s unavoidable that they will take the audience experience in mind.

Finally, character knowledge, which is the opposite of metagaming - when a character knows something the player doesn’t. This is sometimes covered with, for example, GM statements like “you would know, as a person with history proficiency, that this country is actually in a regency period.” If the character had, in improv, before the GM had a chance to say that, mentioned the king, that’s just because the player did not know that and had made an assumption.

Personally I find going deep down the rabbit hole with things like this - “why doesn’t this character, who CLAIMS to be from this country, not know this?”, or clearly OOC statements - tends not to actually spark any interesting theories, but that is, ultimately, an opinion.

A few final thoughts on different formats of actual play

True livestream/live-to-tape (Critical Role, Into the Motherlands, and the second season of Fantasy High): the main thing to keep in mind is Doylist explanations are even more important because there is quite literally no editing. Also, there will possibly be some of those more boring stretches or even a little OOC metagaming discussions within the structure of the game, because there’s no way around it.

Editing, but primarily just to remove long explanations/math and doing soundscaping (NADDPod, Rusty Quill Gaming): Pretty similar; a lot of them even make the choice to leave in OOC metagaming discussions, so it’s mostly that there are fewer cases of people slowly adding numbers.

More extensive editing and possibly some predefined other elements (TAZ, most Dimension 20 shows): this may fall into a more traditional story structure. It’s not to say that there won’t be surprises, because the players do still have agency, but the ‘rails’ might be a little more apparent; there might be some DM monologuing done after the fact (beyond just cleaning up the audio) or choices that were not scripted per se, but not exactly improvised either (think how D20 tends to have pre-set battle maps and earlier seasons had a pretty strict RP/Battle structure.

Somewhat relatedly there are broad story structures, which is more of a spectrum, ranging from sandbox (Critical Role) to very clearly GM-driven missions (TAZ Balance and, to an extent, Amnesty); nearly all of the other shows here fall into a structure of “here is your overall goal, how precisely you get there is up to you although, like any GM, I will provide in-story information on where it may make sense to go that will often funnel you towards specific places.”

I do have a theory that since TAZ Balance in particular was an entry point for so many people, it takes them time to adjust to the more sprawling, unpredictable, and difficult-to-organize stories other actual play can have, but ultimately it is a matter of personal preference and all of these still fall into the category of actual play.

[bigdaddib]

Gendry Who?

She sort of expected it. Expected him.

 Jon and him still got on, Jon was only just moving out of their shared flat. That was the whole purpose of this party, to celebrate him moving in with Ygritte and all that. It was still his bloody flat after all, this was the last hoorah, Jon would be officially moved out in the morning.

 It was only…she had simply thought…

 Well their family was bloody huge wasn’t it? As was Ygritte’s, and she had an army of friends to pile onto it. When you got into it with all the math and statistics and such, what were the odds she’d catch a single glance of him? One in a hundred, at the least. That’s what she kept telling her self as she was getting ready, trying to commit herself to the conversation Sansa was hardly maintaining.

 She wasn’t sure if she had wanted to see him or not. She knew the thought of, well, him, frightened her into nervous nail and lip biting, and she knew the last time she saw him was the first time she had cried since she was a small child. No one else saw that part of her, no one else brought out that part of her, but he had managed it just fine. Easily, even. Not even a year in and he had her doubled over herself, choking on her own sobs, telling him to get out but wishing he wouldn’t. Wishing he would stay. But he didn’t, and she’d spent the last two years telling herself that was a good thing.

 She was stupid to think there was the slightest of chances she wouldn’t see him. Sure, maybe if she were dealing with regular people with regular builds maybe she’d manage to come out unscathed. But he wasn’t regular, he was taller than everybody else in the world and his eyes were bluer than any ocean she happened to stumble across, you couldn’t miss those sort of things, no matter how hard you tried to.

 “You alright?” Sansa asked her. “You look…tense?”  

 Arya had just seen him, behind Jon’s shoulder, looking down at his drink. For the first time in her life, Arya felt a deep resentment towards Jon. Which wasn’t fair, he hadn’t known. No one had. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? No one could ever know about them. They had been friends once, she had introduced him and Jon to each other and suddenly they were the ones who were friends. Roommates, something close to brothers. But Arya had nothing to do with him anymore, you could mention his name right in front of her and she’d be forced to ask his last name. Because she wasn’t supposed to know anymore.

 Gendry who?

 There were so many, it was hard to narrow down.

 Oh right, Gendry Waters. Her brother’s living with him, isn’t he?

 Sorry, it was hard to keep track of all these things now that she’s off at ballet academy, she should make more of an effort.

 Arya nodded forcefully, turning her back to the best friends who had been living together the past two years.

 “Why don’t you come and visit ever?” Jon would ask her over the phone. “You visit everyone else.”

 “I visit home, not my fault that’s where everyone else happens to live.”

 “Well, why don’t you visit me? I am your favorite after all, aren’t I? I thought that was sort of an unspoken thing.”

 Arya was tired of unspoken things, she’s dealt with enough of those to last her the rest of her bloody life. “Well now you’ve gone and spoken about it. The whole things ruined.”

 “Really Arya, come down! We could all—”

 “You know you could visit me, also.”

 “At a ballet academy? Seems pretty frigid to me. I’ve seen Center Stage.”

 “That’s the message you got from that movie?”

 This was Arya’s first time actually stepping foot into the flat, and she wished she had stuck to her guns. She should be at school, the recital was coming in a month, her entire future was on the line, that’s what should be worrying her. Not tall legs and blue eyes, things of that sort weren’t supposed to worry her at all anymore.

 “Just…worried about the showcase is all. I should be practicing,” she told Sansa.

 Sansa rolled her eyes. “That’s literally all you do Arya. You deserve some time off to spend with your family.”

 “Okay,” Arya didn’t feel the need to argue, since she had lied about what was really bothering her anyway.

 “Why don’t we go say hi to Jon?” Sansa offered, thinking that would cheer Arya up. And it would, if it was just Jon. It probably wouldn’t be just Jon all night, knowing Gendry, he was sticking to the one person he was comfortable with. He was probably upset about having to be there at all.

 Or maybe not. Maybe she never knew anything about him after all, it wouldn’t surprise her. He was done surprising her.

 “Uhm…you go ahead, I’m going to find another drink,”

 “You’ll meet up with us later, though?” Sansa tried to clarify.

 Arya shrugged, “You know,” she responded, moving as fast as she could from the room they were both occupying.

 She could breathe better when there was a wall between them. Taking a deep breath, she was angry to already feel a sharp sting in her eyes. He hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even fucking looked at her, and she was fighting off tears. How was he doing this to her? No one else but him could do it, and she wasn’t even sure what it was about him that did her in.

 His look? His steadiness? The thrill of making him smile? Feeling as though there was no one else in the world who could bring it out of him and being crushed when that wasn’t true?

 Who knows… maybe it was. She didn’t know what she was supposed to believe and what she shouldn’t.

 That he loved her?

 That he didn’t?

 That entire fucking voicemail?

 Arya realized she had been taking larger, desperate gulps from her drink that was now horribly empty. She moved quickly to fill it back up again, finished it, and filled another one. She had to keep going until she felt steady again, until she didn’t feel the need to cry just from him being in the next room over.

 “Arya!”

 Jon’s voice was loud and exasperated. She turned and he was already folding her into one of the tightest hugs she’s even been in. Not as quite as tight as Gendry used to hold her, but she wouldn’t call those “hugs” she’d call them…well, she wouldn’t call them anything at all anymore. Not much of a point to sticking a name on something that wasn’t to supposed to have ever happened, according to him. Before he had taken all of that back, that is, and decided it should’ve happened and should happen again. Then he didn’t know what he had been thinking and they couldn’t ever talk about what had happened with anyone else, and then…

 Well then he went and got himself noticed with Melisandre and she managed to finally be hurt enough to walk away. So hurt that bloody voicemail didn’t have her crawling back either. Not that she hadn’t thought about, thumb hovering over his name in her contacts, fist raised to knock at his door, but she never followed through. The look on his beautiful face always flashed violently in front of her in those moments. The expectant way he looked at her, as though he had that whole interaction planned before he had gone over to see her.

 “It’ll just make more sense to people is all, Arya. There’s not much more to it, it’s not like with us.”

 “Like with us,” she had echoed. “How’s it different then us, then?” her lip had started quivering immediately, she almost didn’t know what was happening to her, it had been so long since she had cried, she didn’t know how to keep herself from doing it. “You mean, you two get to walk around in public and talk about each other, while we aren’t even allowed to look at each other with the doors open.”

 Gendry had blinked at her, “Not for me, Arya, for you. You can’t be seen with someone like me, they’d—”

 “How noble you are Gendry,” she said as the first tear fell. Gendry had froze, staring at it, as surprised by it as she was. “I think you should go,” she whispered.

 He didn’t at first. He kept staring; lips parted. “Arya—”

 “No Gendry.” She said firmly, she knew what was coming now and couldn’t stand the thought of letting him watch her break down at his feet. “You need to leave.”

 The second the door closed she fell to her fucking knees. That was the last time she had seen him, the last time he had heard from her. But not the last time she had heard from him. He had texted her, obviously, for about two weeks before giving it up. Nothing spectacular, he was never good with words, or writing, or anything besides giving her looks and smiles that made her feel special.

 He was good at making things. Fixing things. He was a wonder at math and fixing the wifi at her flat when it would go spotty. But never talking, that is until he left that fucking voicemail.

 She shut her eyes as tight as they would go as she hugged Jon back, not at all prepared to see him right there in front of her. So she lingered in the hug, trying to do just that, prepare. The second she let go she would have no choice but to face him, and she had to be sweet and polite. She had to not give anything away.

 And that’s what you did, landing back onto her heels she looked up and there he was. Expression as dark and brooding as ever, eyes as blue as ever…

 Beautiful as ever.

 He looked down at her and she remembered first finding him with her flat tire. She was stopped at the side of the road, no reception, drenched from the rain, and he had pulled over to help her. He took care of everything, and she insisted on doing something for him, obviously taken with him immediately. He was hard to persuade at first, but she had put her hand on his shoulder, just the two of them in his dark blue truck, and he finally agreed to let her pay for his next dinner.

 “Gendry,” she greeted with a nod. “It’s good to see you.”

 He managed a half smile. “Yeah. Y-you too…”

 “Why don’t you two talk anymore?” Jon inquired, looking between them.

 “You stole him from me, didn’t you?” Arya joked, taking a much needed drink. “This is it, then?” she looked around. “Good thing I haven’t come around sooner, doesn’t quite live up to the hype.”

 “It wasn’t the apartment I was wanting you to visit, it was me,” Jon pinched at Arya’s arm and she shoved him, all too aware that Gendry was looking at her, all too aware of what his looks did to her. She felt it happening right there, the support in her knees giving away.

 Her and Gendry never did much standing when they were together. And if they did, it was usually only him that did it, her hoisted up and wrapped around him, pressed as tightly to one another as they could get. She remembered it vividly, his scruff scrapping up her neck, large hands holding her so tightly they would sometimes leave marks…not that she minded. She would often find herself staring at them in the mirror, tracing over them gently.

 He always apologized for them, but she didn’t want to hear it for once. Those apologies had truly meant nothing to her, she wanted those bruises, loved them. She loved the ache of them. She’d sit down, stretch, shift into a new position as she slept, and suddenly be reminded of him, of his desperate grip. Of his hungry need of her. It was a good sort of reminder, the best kind.

 There were worse reminders, to be sure. Like the way his head had started to duck when they to bumped into each other outside of the bedroom, how he sat as far away from as he could get, how he always found an excuse to leave early. She had gained Gendry as a lover, but had lost him as a friend. Which was sad, since he sort of become the best one she had.

 Now he wasn’t anything to her at all. So why couldn’t she look at him?

 “You’ve gotten needy,” Arya smiled, turning her head as she mocked a look about. “Where’s the bathroom, then?”

 “Just behind you there,” Jon pointed and Arya quickly moved away.

 Arya sat on the toilet for no reason, staring at her phone.

 She still had that fucking voicemail. She listened to it, now and then. When she missed him. When she needed to remember his voice, remind herself that he had been real. They had been real.

 She found herself listening to it there, on the toilet, tears rolling down and over her lips.

 “Arya…i-it’s me…you know that, obviously. That’s probably why…why you didn’t answer. And I shouldn’t push it, I know. I should let you…let you g-go,” something caught in his voice and he had to take a deep breath. “That’s all I’ve been trying to do this past year, isn’t it? Let you go.” He paused again. “I don’t know exactly why I’ve called, maybe just to hear your voice or something like that, but I didn’t hang up on time and now I’ve got to commit…” another pause, Arya always pictured him looking away from his phone and clenching his jaw as he often did when he was thinking, “…I miss you,” here his voice was a whisper, “I always miss you when I do this and have to come back. But it’s…it’s not me doing it this time, is it? No, no, you’ve finally seen reason…saw I wasn’t worth any of it, any of my fucking shit, and did the right thing. Which is good, Arya, it’s right for you,” now it sounded as though he was truly fighting off tears, his voice so thin and wavering, “But…but I…I miss you and I don’t…I don’t know what to do without you anymore…I keep,” pause, “I keep accidently driving over to your place, I keep making your dinner, I keep recording your shows and I k-keep…I keep checking my watch wondering what’s taking you so long to get here before remembering you’re not coming and it,” a heavy exhale, almost like a sob, “it…hurts every time. So…I-I…I was maybe just, th-thinking that we could…t-talk about something. Anything. I’d love it if we could talk, I’d love to just…talk to you,” he was officially crying, there was no denying it and the voicemail ended.

 Arya’s head collapsed into her elbow, trying to keep her breathes steady. She could manage this. She managed not to call him back, she managed to stay away from his these past two years, she could manage to keep a straight face at this fucking party.

 Collecting herself, Arya straightened out her dress, wiped under eyes, and left the bathroom.

 And was immediately confronted with the bluest eyes in the world.

 They stared at each other quietly.

 “H-hey,” he whispered at some point, gulping as he broke down to look at his shoes then back to her again.

 Arya nodded.

 “Could we…could we talk?”

 The words were so close to his voicemail she had listened to, she had no choice but to only nod again.

 He seemed surprised she had agreed for a second before acting. Hooking his pointer finger around her last two fingers he lead her somewhere private. She assumed it was his room, but didn’t ask.

 “I…uhm…” he shut the door, running a hand through his wild hair, looking around the room. “I…how are you? Is your wifi…holding up?”

 Never good at talking. That voicemail was his first and only break through, maybe that’s why she’s kept it these passed two years.

 “The academy keeps it pretty spotty, to be honest,” Arya gave a smile she didn’t feel. He stared again.

 “Right,” his throat cleared before he sighed heavily. “Right, sorry. Sorry…I just…” he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just…I just…Sorry…sorry, I’m just…I…I’m…sorry…I’m so sorry, I’m just so sorry, Arya,” he looked to his feet, really anywhere that wasn’t her. “I’m sorry.”

 Arya cleared her throat. “You don’t have to do this.”

 “No, I do. I have to…you have to know it’s haunted me. Everything that I…how I jerked you around acting like I was being noble for it when all I was doing was…hurting you. Over and over, and just expected you to…to…to…understand…” he ran his hands down his face. “And all you did was…you just wanted to be with me,” his voice cracked, causing him to turn away. “Gods, Arya, this is a mess. I was meant to be more collected for this.”

 Arya was crying for the second time that night and was fighting a near irresistible urge to go to him, hold him, put him at ease. But maybe that’s not what he wanted, maybe he just needed to clear his guilty conscious.

 Taking a single step forward she whispered, “I believe you.”

 He turned and looked at her for the first time since they had walked into this room.

 “I believe that you’re sorry, so I forgive you.”

 Gendry’s shoulders slumped as he took a step toward her. “Yeah?”

 “It’s been long enough…I think it’s a good time to let ourselves heal, yeah?”

 Gendry nodded, reaching out to her then right away thinking better of it. “Yeah. Yeah…thank you, Arya. Really.”

 Arya smiled, walking up to press a kiss to his cheek. Just like she had when she had first left his car that first night, just like she had after their first dinner together, just like she had each time they had parted during that year. It felt the same, warm, a bit scratchy, strained as she struggled to reach for him, but all in all worth the feeling of being close to him.

 It almost made her cry for the third time, so she left. 

---

heavily influenced by Normal People, lol

Probably gonna make a part 2!

[sasorikigai]

I'm gonna avenge myself here and ask you to do the whole alphabet (or at least all the letters that can apply) for Hanryou :^)

fluff/cute alphabet || @sonxflight​​ || accepting

A = Attractive (What do they find attractive about the other?)

Generally, Hanzo Hasashi is attracted to people who express themselves and their passions freely. He is drawn to people with a bit of mystery, but he wants to be able to open this person up and hear about their hopes and dreams. For him, the chase can sometimes be appealing, since it makes them feel excited and on edge. He just doesn’t like anything boring, and so he is attracted to people who can make him feel excited and ready for whatever comes next. It can be hard sometimes for Hanzo to differentiate when someone is playing games, or when the connection is sincerely strong between them, but he is often willing to take this risk. He doesn’t like being around people who keep everything bottled up and don’t know how to really share themselves with him.

Hanzo is attracted to people who are passionate about life and have exciting hobbies to share. He needs something he can connect with and want to be able to share himself with this person as well. Hanzo also is attracted to people who can be adventurous and willing to take chances in life. If this person can really shake things up and keep him guessing, he is likely to be drawn to this. And Ryou Sakai fits the majority of these categories, as Ryou is such an exquisite balance of being an enigma, while also being direct and simple in the deliverance of not only in his vocalizations, and his gesticulations as well. 

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?)

Hanzo is usually more strongly connected to the need to make others happy than to traditional values or roles, which gives him this openness and acceptance of the needs of others. If his partner or family prefers a certain structure or roles, he will most likely just go along with it because he doesn’t really mind either way. Because he has a natural need for independence and space that can make them seem a little distant to some family members. They dislike having their own personal boundaries breached and will usually withdraw if this happens. For other members of their family, who prefer closer and more intense bonds, this can feel like rejection or neglect, when it’s really just the ISFP protecting themselves against intrusion.

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?)

Hanzo Hasashi is a very physical person and truly enjoy observing the beauty in the world around him. He often enjoys giving and receiving hugs, even when he isn’t always the one to initiate this. He enjoys feeling close to his loved ones, and might want to constantly be touching his romantic partner. Hanzo enjoys physical touch as a way to express himself, and often love being close to people in this way, as this is one of his main ways to express his love and affection along with his words of affirmation. 

D = Dates (What are dates with them like?)

Hanzo has a true exploratory nature in which he loves to discover new things and have new experiences. He is charming and easy-going, attracting many potential dates to his agreeable and adventurous nature, despite the traumas and unapproachable visage he frequently wears as he happens to wear many different faces professionally, socially, and personally. Since both Hanzo and Ryou are both introverts, they frequently spend their off-days and free time lounging at home, exploring their sensuality, while they also like to explore outdoors and nature. They would most likely have a weekend getaway to an undisclosed secret location, more private, the better. Or just building a pillow fort at home could make Hanzo’s heart soar, as he is an adventurous introvert who likes to experience new things out of the ordinary to make them extraordinary. And with Ryou as his dedicated husband and lover, he doesn’t require too much extraneous things in order to enjoy an easy day in or out. 

E = Everything (You are my ____ (e.g. my life, my world…))

“Despite darkness tearing at the light of my being, biting into it with sharp teeth, but every time the darkness manages to gain the upper hand, your presence and weight settled in my heart will always manage to push it back, preventing it from ever truly going dark. You are always somewhere, anywhere, as your love manifests as celebrations of the magnanimous light as my purified everburning flames will burn sempiternally in continued anticipation, excitement, and yearning.” 

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?)

Since both looks and personality are important when it comes to Hanzo Hasashi’s idealized aesthetics. The former determines the first impression and presentation is really important, but a nice face with a horrible personality would definitely be out of the question for him. Jack/Ryou encompasses all the characteristic which Hanzo finds worth revering and respecting; Jack strongly exhibits not only the characteristics of a stoic hero. He is unfailingly kind and generous, and will always attempt to help those in need, as well as dispatching sagacious wisdom to those he believes are in need of guidance. He often ends up sacrificing a chance to return to his own time in order to help someone else. Those traits are the surefire ways Hanzo finds endearing, and Hanzo also knows that Jack/Ryou grants the most unadulterated trust and conviction of his love towards him. 

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?)

Hanzo feels very strongly about his values and about treating other people right. Bullying, harsh words, and cruelty all impact him greatly. He has strong empathy and he comes across as gentle and sincere. While his brutal honesty and directness may come across as authentic and real, Hanzo is rather independent than opting for the idea of fitting in, which could make him a lone wolf amidst his squadron and even his colleagues, despite him having strong chemistry and bond due to multitudes of life-threatening, physical and mental injuries shared. That being said, Hanzo Hasashi is definitely not weak or a shrinking violet. He is practical, resourceful and creative when it comes to his gentility and he can think quickly in a crisis, which is why Hanzo excels at his perilous position of being a Commander. He is gentle but unyielding, sensitive but factual, and when it comes to his romantic/sexual relationship with Ryou, he can be more so be adventurous, even more kinky as their modern verse is much more open and viscerally raw, compared to their more vanilla, and proper canonical verses. 

H = Hands (How do they like to hold hands?)

As Hanzo is affectionate and a warm person, especially towards his loved ones. He doesn’t mind displaying his affection in public, and often become swept up in the moment. He becomes very present and enjoy being a part of the physical world around him. Hanzo wants to follow his heart and do whatever makes him the happiest, which is why he often doesn’t mind a little PDA. If he wants to express their affection in that moment, he won’t let his head get in the way as long as he finds the circumstances appropriate. With Ryou, he specifically enjoys small little touches that gradually builds up for them to entwine each and every finger, interlocking them together as they walk shoulder to shoulder, the expanse of their exposed flesh brushing as they do so in tandem. 

I = Impression (What was their first impression?)

Hanzo perceived Ryou as polite and intelligent upon first meeting him, but as both of them are particularly not the most outgoing people, Hanzo would have resented Ryou at first because how withdrawn and reticent he seemed to be, which could come across as dispassionate and unenthusiastic. But at the same time, Hanzo knew Ryou to be how to behave around others. Considering they both are naturally good communicators in their own ways, and will do their best to appear more extroverted in front of new people, especially Hanzo in his professional setting. Ryou often came across as the person who knew the right things to say, and eventually, despite the pent-up frustration and impatience on Hanzo’s side, eventually made a pleasant first impression for most people. Now Hanzo knows his beloved seemed to be more reserved at first, since he was attempting to be appropriate.

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?)

He isn’t definitely not a jealous person, since he likes to giving people space and room to be themselves without coming across as clingy and possessive. The last thing Hanzo wants is to smother his loved one, since he enjoys being able to have his own freedom as well. He wants to inspire the people he cares for to be themselves, no matter what that means. Hanzo does not want to possess people and prefer to trust them at all times. There might be moments where they want to have plenty of attention from their favorite person, which might make them seem possessive.

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?)

While Hanzo comes off as quiet, supportive and encouraging, he is a partner who is meek yet a passionate individual. Although he is flexible and easy-going about many things, when it comes to relationships, he is utterly committed and serious. It was as if unspoken poetry was being born on his lips with that very first kiss.. a few thousand words shy of an entire language as it had been a slow and sensual, yet emotionally charged and determined one at that. Hanzo most likely initiated it, for he could be a lover who is full of spontaneity, affection, and sensuality. In fact, Hanzo is probably the most impulsive, and always has been on the lookout for someone whom he believes he could spend the rest of his life with. He can be counted on as a loyal and serious partner who will do what needs to be done in order for the relationship to thrive. 

L = Love (Who says ‘I love you’ first?)

Hanzo, despite his initial hardness, seriousness, and being always equipped with an intimidating and assertive facade, he could be very sensitive and will put forth great effort to mask his emotions (too often failing) so that others are clueless as to what is really going on under the surface. Ideally, he would choose a lover with a gentle and thoughtful disposition; one who is capable of handling problems and criticism in a smooth and careful manner. It is important that Hanzo is not harshly judged or criticized by his partner because he take this to heart and suffer a debilitating blow to their self-esteem. He knew by spending enough intimate/private time with Jack/Ryou to perceive such characteristics. And it was his way to solidify their relationship further, by admitting the candor, visceral truth of his words. 

M = Memory (What’s their favorite memory together?)

Their honeymoon for sure; and also their ‘arguments,’ or rather, deep, philosophical discussion in regards to Hanzo’s own trauma and how he functions in his modern verse. Because Hanzo considers Ryou as the sunshine through raindrops drowning his atmosphere with thickened clumps of clouds, the world which had gone imperviously dark will breach through a prism of light with their solidified relationship. Hanzo may hold Harumi in his heart as a hauntingly beautiful, a graveyard of feelings that would never satiate fully if he was truly honest with himself, but with his love with Ryou, Hanzo is truly moved on more than he ever has in the past, and healed enough to once again re-explore and get in touch with his jovial, humorous side. 

N = Nickel (Do they spoil? Do they buy the person they love everything?)

They are not the most materialistic people, but they definitely can indulge more in sharing experiences, than material goods. If they are material goods involved, they are always tasteful, aesthetically beautiful, with exemplary craftsmanship and practicality. They would take joint days off and go on a road trip, or fly to a foreign country if their interest matches. As they are well-respected experts in their respective fields, they make more than enough money to live more of a luxuriant life, but they do not like to splurge and be wasteful on things simply they want to fulfill their greed and avarice. They adopt kids, they may do charity work, and give things back to community often as well. 

O = Orange (What color reminds them of their other half?)

Hanzo thinks the color gold, or ki, is the symbol of the sun, and of the gods’ power and mercy befitting Jack/Ryou. Gold is often used at temples and shrines. Blue is also a color which represents purity and cleanliness in traditional Japanese culture, largely because of the vast stretches of blue water that surrounds the Japanese islands. As such, blue also represents calmness and stability. 

P = Pet names (What pet names do they use?)

Both in their verses do not hold high regards to pet names, for they may call each other ‘my beloved,’ or ‘my concern,’ or other much more respective and proper names. While Hanzo and Jack/Ryou know that pet names and nicknames are just meant to be ways to show a deeper bond, or some sort of private and intimate connection between each other, they are strictly reserved for private endeavors. In their modern verse, everything is off-limits; more intrusive and playfully degrading, the better, as they would hold no qualms of calling each other ‘dipshit’ and ‘fucktwat.’ 

Q = Quaint (What is their favorite non-modern thing?

They are warriors (ninja/samurai) held strictly in traditional Japanese upbringing. They would always find their inseparable and rudimental connection to nature has always being an important feature of their living space. This can be attributed to Japan’s Shinto and Buddhist beliefs, which have had a significant influence on its architecture. This can be clearly seen in the focus on natural light and the use of raw wood as a building material, both on the exterior and in the interior. Also, I see them immensely appreciating minimalist design. Unlike Western architects who have traditionally tried to make to make their buildings interesting to look at by adding unnecessary decorations and arranging modules of differing heights, Japanese architects focused on making their structures sublime and mysterious on a horizontal level. They would most likely prefer simplicity and appreciate buildings that have clear construction and transparency.

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?)

Either lounge in their shared bed, do a marathon of their favorite movies (most likely documentaries, historical dramas, thrillers, crime-related or even modern dramas and romance) while snacking on foods they made for one another (Hanzo finally gets to cook while Jack/Ryou is the one who often does the cooking during their weekdays - at least in their modern verse) and simply sensually exploring one another. They don’t require any over-the-top, grand gestures and acts to make one another happy and satiated. 

S = Sad (How do they cheer themselves/others up?)

Jack/Ryou may retreat inward and shut himself out from others when he feels extremely saddened. He will probably attempt to fix whatever problem is occurring that is making him feel this way. While he will work hard to make everyone happy and try to mend the harm that may have been done, seeking to fix everyone’s pain is how he would attempt to cope with sadness, as Hanzo is much more raw, visceral and exceedingly open with his emotions. While the best way for Hanzo to relieve his own sadness would also by retreating, but not doing it alone. And even without words of comfort and reassurance, Jack/Ryou’s presence alone will help Hanzo greatly. Having that special someone to make him feel loved and understood is the best way to heal and overcome whatever is bothering him. So in the end, I’d like to really think that they are made for one another. 

T = Talking (What do they like to talk about?)

Hanzo is generally private and gentle individual. He will usually feel uncomfortable if someone is too forceful, debative, or inquisitive of his personal life. He needs time to consider the details and reflect before making a decision (unless he is functioning out of his intuition and recklessly making decisions on his own), so being rushed to decide or respond quickly can frustrate him. While Hanzo generally isn’t interested in debating things or arguing because he dislikes conflict and also because he doesn’t see the point in debating theories that may have no real impact on his life, he rather enjoys discussing philosophical and fantastical concepts in conversations. They don’t necessarily have to be deadpan serious, nor their problems somehow magically solved, but repeatedly talking about his own traumas and anxiety out in the open serves as panacea, as Hanzo simply likes to engage in deep, lengthy conversations, only specifically and exclusively with Ryou. 

U = Unencumbered (What helps them relax?)

Hanzo enjoys a peaceful, serene life where he can live according to his moral convictions and make a real difference in the lives of the people that he loves. For both Hanzo and Ryou’s professions are highly stressful and they are workaholics who are highly involved, since they are altruistic, self-sacrificing and magnanimous almost to a fault. When Hanzo is stressed, however, his naturally easy-going nature can seem distant, withdrawn, even eroded to become crude and brutally rough and he could feel irritable and critical instead. They would simply stay put in their home, sensually exploring one another’s body and mind, enjoying the rarity of shared domestic bliss. 

V = Vaunt (What do they like to show off? What are they proud of?)

Hanzo doesn’t like being prideful in a negative way, instead he wants and strives to be someone others can connect with. Most often, he is kind and approachable, despite being steeled and assertive in his outward demeanor and composure, who loves being around likeminded people who understand and trust him. He doesn’t like being around others who are prideful in a more arrogant way, and who seem to push others away with their inability to be vulnerable.

W = Wedding (When, how, where do they propose?)

It was nothing grandeur and extravagant; as it was from their apartment, each of them getting one another a wedding band, matching one another’s skin tones (yellow gold for Hanzo, white gold for Ryou). As they prefer things to be minimalistic and simple with low-key and quiet wedding, it would regardless be a beauteous and solemn moment of declaration, as Hanzo would most likely ramble poetic nothings, and drown in surging emotions as he might shed a tear or two. 

X = Xylophone (What’s their song?)

Imagine Dragons: I Bet My Life

I've been around the world and never in my wildest dreams Would I come running home to you I've told a million lies but now I tell a single truth There's you in everything I do

Now remember when I told you that's the last you'll see of me Remember when I broke you down to tears I know I took the path that you would never want for me I gave you hell through all the years

Y = Yes (Do they ever think of getting married/proposing?)

They are already married <3 They proposed on the same day, Hanzo beating out Ryou by a close margin. They have such great empathy and understanding towards one another, that they would be able to at least pinpoint the moment of one another’s reciprocated proposal. For Hanzo, ever since they started to live together and spend more intimate time to believe such improbable love he once thought would complicate things further with his past trauma just became simple; that Ryou Sakai would be his clarity and anchor that gravitates him towards the present and now, and near future, instead of his irreversible past and all of his accumulated despair and hopelessness, he knew then, almost immediately and instinctually that it was time to acknowledge it. 

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?

They’re not homebodies when they are fully occupied with their professional work (as Hanzo as an active SWAT Commander and an officer of the law will frequently travel around, and Ryou’s work could get extremely packed also with clients and liaisons from the FBI and the likes), having a cat or even a bird would be most likely than dogs. They are lower-maintenance and much easier to take of, especially cats. 

[anonthenullifier]

Considering how many times Thomas gets called to detention, it would probably come as a huge shock to their parents if William was the one they had to come talk about.

You really have a knack for giving me prompts that lead to a sudden word dump of ideas. Here’s how it could go down, in my mind.

Wanda steps a foot back, arms held up and steady as her fingers weave a scarlet net to contain a cluster of the floating blobs - or, as Scott has lovingly named them, Snot Aliens. Slowly she hovers the imprisoned beings towards the containment unit Stark finally set up, inching the aliens closer while ensuring she is out of range in case they drop to the ground. She’s already seen almost all of her teammates fall prey to the fatal error of directly engaging with these things, Steve’s shield is still stuck to the ground with an, as Vision explained, impressively structured natural adhesive compound. Wanda figures she has paid her penance in the realm of encountering mucous, raising twin boys who caught every single cold that was passed at daycare, school, between friends, and even just people passing on the street, and instead of blowing their noses (kleenex were a sure way to cause a tantrum), the boys would find ways to wipe it on her. The net tightens with a scrunch of her fingers, only two more feet before she can let go.

A buzzing fills her ear, not the typical two note burst that indicates someone on the team is about to talk, but a constant, unwelcome ringing. Wanda straightens her pinky enough to send a flash of red to accept the call. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Maximoff,” the voice is perky, the polite smile clear in the hyperactive spewing of her name, “this is Jody from the Principal’s office.”

One hand pulls away from holding the aliens long enough to rub her face in exasperation, Jody is never who she wants to find on the other end and yet even her phone recognizes the frequency of their conversations enough to label Jody as a favorite in the contacts. Wanda tries to imbue her response with friendliness while also hoping the woman can pick up on the fact it is not a good time. “Hi Jody, everything okay?”

“We have your son at the office,” it’s an innocuous enough statement, minus the judgmental harshness of the unspoken again.

Wanda glances at the scarlet net and then at the numerous official news cameras and the even more multitudinous amateur videographers filming the entire attack. “Can we come in some other time, we’re a bit,” one of the aliens starts to ooze through the net, a sickening sight that will haunt her dreams for the week, “busy right now.”

A well-oiled sigh, one that has likely taken years to perfect, judges her through the communicator, “At the Academy we truly believe the children are the pinnacle of existence, no one should ever be too busy for their child.”

Which is a statement that, though true on the face of it, really doesn’t apply, in Wanda’s opinion, to dropping a net full of noxious Snot Aliens just to be lectured for a sixth time on why Tommy is apparently doomed to fail in life because he wore the wrong khakis.“Have you seen the news?”

“I have a job to do, Mrs. Maximoff.”

The correct answer here is that Wanda also has a job, a very interesting one that is also important and that some things can wait, yet she gives in, not wanting to risk losing their spots at the one school so far that the boys seem to mostly enjoy. “Fine, we’ll be there shortly.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Maximoff.”

The line dies in her ear and Wanda shakes her head, wrists snapping flippantly as she tosses the aliens towards the containment unit, ignoring the Watch it! from Tony, and finds her husband, who is currently flickering in and out of existence. “Maximoff?”

His body solidifies long enough to showcase a sheepish roundness to his eyes and the neon green patch of slime that covers the entirety of his chest. “Wanda?” The phasing resumes, likely his foolhardy attempt to get the substance off of him.

“Jody called.”

Vision stops, head cocked to the side as his cape floats regally down behind him, “Tommy?”

“I assume so.”

His shoulders cave and he might, though it could just be a trick of the shadows caused by the buildings, rolls his eyes. “What is it this time?”

Wanda shrugs, “She didn’t say.” Her hand sneaks between his arm and torso, coming to rest on the inside of his elbow, careful to stay away from the slime, and tugs him into action, “Let’s just get this over with.”

The hallways are empty as they follow the memorized path, their feet moving automatically as their hands take turns gesticulating their concerns. “I believe we need to rethink our forms of punishment.”

Wanda agrees, the continued disobedience at school an undeniable signal that Tommy isn’t learning much from their lectures and grounding. “I don’t even know what else is left, Vizh.”

“I believe you do.” A reluctant, grave foreboding drips from his sentence and she immediately knows the next logical step, one they’ve tiptoed towards but can never seem to justify actually going that far, particularly because the offenses are usually so small. Vision, if she tried to argue that now, would point out that, though small, the conglomeration of all the offenses is actually enormous, especially if they look beyond just this school and at the others, some of Tommy’s behaviors the impetus for them no longer welcomed at those institutions.

Regardless of the rationale, Wanda can’t bring herself to agree. “The Young Avengers is literally the only thing that keeps him somewhat manageable.” The number of offenses and backtalk at home have greatly decreased in the time the Young Avengers Initiative has been active, and the peace from that is hard to willinging give up. “It could lead to worse behavior.”

“Or,” Vision draws it out, allowing her to interpret his disagreement before directly going against her, “it could show him that he needs to act in accordance to certain standards if he wants to be part of it.” A hand to her arm stops her right before they reach the glass walls of the office, turning her to face his sympathetic, swirling eyes. “We cannot always protect him from himself, at some point we have to let him face the full consequences.”

It was easy to shrug off this statement three years ago, five years ago, and especially twelve, when they were still just rambunctious toddlers, yet the closer the reality of them becoming adults, of forging their own paths in the world gets, the greater the panic that rises in Wanda. She knows they’ll be fine, both are strong (and strong-headed), fiercely independent, compassionate boys, but they are still her boys and she isn’t sure she’ll ever let go of needing to protect them. Neither will Vision, based on his confessions in the middle of the night whenever the twins are out on a mission, or the way she has to talk him down from following along and watching them or from immediately correcting them on all of their social mishaps. “Let’s just see what it is this time, okay?”

“That is reasonable.” Vision leans forward, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead, an understanding smile on his face when he pulls back. “Should I change?”

They’re both still in uniform, the after effects of the battle untouched. “No,” Wanda doesn’t have the luxury of phasing into new clothes and has no desire to be singled out even more by Vision changing, “they think we don’t work, so let them experience it,” she pats his shoulder, steering clear of the gunk still clinging to his chest, “nasty smell and all.”

“Shall we?”

Wanda leads the way, opening the door with a forced smile at Jody before turning towards the chair with a, “Tommy what did–” except the face she meets doesn’t have the cocky I-can-get-away-with-anything grin nor is his hair white or his feet and hands tapping with pent up energy. No, instead she is staring into terrified, ashamed doe-like eyes, “Billy?”

“Um,” he swallows, fingers lacing together in nervousness, mirroring the exact grasp Vision uses when faced with something overwhelming and incomprehensible. “Hi mom, dad.”

“Will-” her husband stutters out the name, which makes her feel better to not be alone in this shock, “William, what is wrong?”

A curt, invasive “Ahem,” comes from the woman barricaded behind the sleek lines of the oak and glass desk, “You know the rules.” Jody follows it up with a cheerily malevolent smile, “I’ll buzz Dr. Bennett to let her know you’re finally here.”

The wait is just over five minutes before the door opens, a promising sign given Vision has provided graphs tracking the data of these visits, analyzing it to confirm a significantly positive correlation between the severity of the offense and the time they have to wait before seeing the principal. Wanda turns towards Billy, who is still wilting in his chair, trying to keep her voice sympathetic but also firm, “We’ll be back.”

Vision places his hand on Wanda’s lower back as she enters the office in front of him, their bodies easing into the familiar and uncomfortable chairs where they will encounter unwarranted levels of scrutiny from the vaguely concerned face across from them. “Dr. Bennett.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Maximoff,” the woman scrunches her nose, hand rising delicately to her face in disgust, “What is that smell?”

Wanda holds in her snigger at the flare of humiliation from her husband’s mind, his body squirming slightly under the disgusted gaze of the Principal. “I am,” he coughs, eyes turning to Wanda for help but she just smiles, hand patting his arm. “My apologies, we were battling lifeforms today with a very different chemical composition, one that is quite unappealing to our own senses. I-” Dr. Bennett’s face only becomes more troubled the longer the explanation lasts, “could not get the residue off.”

“I see,” her attention turns away from the smell and to the papers on her desk, ones that are always splayed out just enough to require her to sift them back together with three precise taps to the desk. “I’m happy to let you know that William has already accepted his actions and the required afternoon of detention.”

This is not usually how their talks with her go. “Then why are we here?”

“Because, Mrs. Maximoff,” the now aligned stack of papers is laid gingerly on the desk where the woman steeples her fingers over them, “we believe it is vital to apprise parents of misbehavior in person and in a timely manner. From our experience, even the most well-intentioned students do not convey the full truth if we allow them to be the messenger.”

Vision tenses beside her, never comfortable with the roundabout, deeply layered insinuations people insist on issuing in meetings, far preferring straightforward approaches. “We understand, what precisely did he do?”

A single paper is moved from the stack on the desk as the reads off of it, “Truancy during the lunch period.”

This isn’t what Wanda expected, nor did Vision, if his confused side stare towards her is an indication. “Did he say why he left?”

“The teacher who reported it said she saw him get into a car with another young gentleman and then not return until the end of the lunch period.” Dr. Bennett’s face informs them that this offense is just as severe as the soccer goal Tommy vaporized the other month. “We have very strict rules concerning students remaining on the campus during the school day.”

“I see,” Wanda doesn’t doubt the actions, her own suspicions quite strong on the motivation, and she most certainly has no desire to remain in the office since Billy already agreed to the punishment. “Thank you for letting us know.” She stands, a movement instantly mimicked by Vision and the principal, “have a good day.”

A wave of her hand encourages Vision out of the office, a long, unwavering stare at Billy let’s him know to follow them, and then Wanda leads the two men to a small alcove. She turns to Billy, the crossing of her arms causing him to shrink in stature just a bit more. “So how’s Teddy?”

Vision’s surprise is palpable and adorably naive, particularly from a man who turned off his communicator to sneak away with Wanda. Billy’s surprise is feigned, nervous and instantly shifts into a weak defensiveness. “You know it’s ridiculous we aren’t allowed to leave at lunch. I was back on time.”

“There are rules though,” the thing about being a parent is that even when you agree with your child’s rationale, sometimes you have to recognize that your agreement is not as important as the lesson. “You could just wait until after school.”

Billy nods, eyes not quite meeting hers, “Yeah, but he had a flex day and-“

“Being in a relationship,” Vision’s intrusion quiets the explanation, his face set in an empathetic softness, “is very exciting, especially at the onset. But it is imperative to learn when it is appropriate to embrace that excitement and when you can delay the gratification until a better time.”

“I’m sorry, won’t happen again.” Vision smiles, proud of figuring out how to handle the situation, Billy far more receptive to his logic than Tommy. This however tends to blind him to the fact that Billy still has a lot of Wanda too, the grin inching up his face a trademark Maximoff I’m-about-to-sass-you-with-my-defiance look. “You do know there are entire blogs dedicated to all the times you and mom make out during missions, right?”

“I-“ if flustered Vision wasn’t so damn cute, Wanda would counter back, but watching him flounder in the face of resistance is quality entertainment. “I um, there are?”

Billy nods, torn between enthusiasm and disdain, “Cassie likes to send them to us.”

“I see.”

“Let’s just agree for now,” Wanda does her best to contain her amusement at watching the two of them, “that context matters and in this context the school has rules that should be followed so you can deal with their punishment and we’ll call it good.”

Billy sighs, resigned to the illogic of the moment, “Fine.” The lesson presumably learned (or at least accepted for now), Wanda laces her arm through Vision’s, about to say goodbye until Billy sniffs three times, “Dad, you smell worse than Tommy’s socks.”

Vision’s body sinks in her grasp, an exasperated, “I am aware” dispelling any last defiance or negative feelings from their talk.

[sheismental]

how it’s supposed to be — tom holland (chapter VI)

CHAPTER I \ CHAPTER II \ CHAPTER III \ CHAPTER IV \ CHAPTER V \ CHAPTER VI

→ “You know we’re supposed to be together. I knew it the first time I saw you, and you know it, too. I know you do.”

pairing: tom holland x fem!reader.

summary: the way things are supposed to be are not always the way things are.

warning: angst! angst…and foul language. and tom holland sexiness

6 MONTHS LATER

The breeze of NY hits your skin lightly, your white tennis skirt flowing as you stroll down the busy streets. It was somewhat therapeutic for you, the buzzing sound of NY filling your ears, stranger’s faces popping by - Everyone in New York always seemed to be off into their own world, mind always elsewhere and you could see it. You could see everything. 

You walk into your favorite cafe, just a few blocks down from your apartment. You smile bubbly making your way to the counter.

“Hey y/n!.” Shelley smiles brightly, rubbing her hands on her apron. “The usual?.”

“Hi Shelley, yes please.” You reply, taking out a five dollar bill and placing it on the counter. Shelley’s black raven hair brushes against her skin as she makes her way through the kitchen, making your order before placing it on the counter along with a croissant. You raise an eyebrow at the baked good and she simply chuckles.

“On the house.” She replies and you smile gratefully. 

“Thanks, Shel.” You mumble kindly before sitting on your usual spot. Crossing your legs, your hands fiddle with the handle of the cup of coffee - you idly stirred the contents of the cup. The morning was rolling in slowly, the smell of coffee and the baked goods filled your nose and with it, a sense of familiarity with it.

“Is this seat taken?.” You hear the voice behind you, an accent as thick as honey. You don’t want to turn your back, from the corner of your eye you see the empty seat beside you - and you curse at the devilish ways of destiny.

“No.” You reply nonchalantly, your eyes stuck on the cup of coffee before you. You hear the sound of a chair being pulled back, and an arm grazing your slowly - Your locks fall in front of your face, a curtain of hair between you and the man you had promised to forget. 

Tom’s hands are clasped together, his left knee bouncing up and down as his eyes darted from your profile to the table in front of him. 

His presence alone was enough to make your heartbeath quicken, and you hated it. You hated how much he made you feel with so little.

“How have you been?.” He asks slowly, turning his head to you. You shrug, befoe lifting the cup to your lips and sipping on the warm beverage, feeling as it falls down your throat - A small moment of pleasure between the growing tension between Tom and you.

“I’ve been good, really good. And you?.”

Miserable, he wanted to say, but when he heard how much you emphasized on how good you were doing - Well, how could he do that to you?.

“Good.” He mumbles, nodding his head, trying to convince himself that he was alright. “I didn’t know you came here too, whenever i’m in New York i like to come by.” He comments looking around and you feel your stomach churn.

“Yeah i like it here too.” You follow, though you wanted the conversation to be over - With every single word shared you feel how your heart strings were pulled on a little more. 

Tom feels anxious, he wanted things to be the same way they were, but how? He knew he couldn’t, he was too in love with you to pretend he was alright with just friends.

“I’m sorry to bother you, y/n.” He mumbles, Shelley comes by - placing a coffee to go in front of Tom, he smiles politely at her. 

You wanted so badly to tell him he wasn’t bothering you, but how could you?. 

“I hope you have a good day.” He says, standing up - looking at you for what he thinks will be the last time through his dark sunglasses. You bite your bottom lip.

He turns his back, walking out of the cafe with his heart being ripped with every single step. You look up, turning to see how he walks away - His fit frame walking straight, so sure of himself and full of life. He is alright, you think, smiling bitterly. 

You walk into the fancy building, chandelier sparkling above you and everywhere you look there’s people speaking to each other bubbly. Women wear the most glorious sparkling gowns you’ve ever seen, men wear the fanciest of designer suits. And you feel out of place wearing the scarlett red gown - The dress had costed almost as much as what you earned in a year, but of course it had been a gift from the company. They needed ‘Someone familiarized with the media’, it was a true cosmic joke.

You make your way to the bar, your dress makes your walk a little more difficult than what you wanted but you make it through. The bartender smiles kindly.

“A martini please.” You mumble, your red tinted lips smacking against each other, your hands go up to the golden necklace fiddling with it. The bartneder nods and makes his way behind the counter. 

“You are a sight for sore eyes.” You hear a sweet voice behind you, and you shut your eyes. Of course he was here, you turn around just enough to see Tom approaching you, all dressed in elegant wardrobe from head to toe. No doubt he was wearing a designer’s suit, Armani most likely, his hair styled back as his lips form into a smile.

“Tom.” You breathe out, you see his eyes sheepishly traveling from your head to your toes. You wanted to have the safety of your hair covering your face, but much to your dismay it was pinned up into an elegant bun. 

He stands beside you, hands in the pockets of his dress pants. He looked more than charming, with that playful smile of his.

“I had no idea you were attending this fundraiser.” He comments, as the bartender places the elegant martini on the counter. You smile kindly before taking the glass between your hands. 

“My job demanded me to come.” You explain and he cocks his head to the side, staring at you curiously. “I got a job at company that devotes itself to donating money for this kind of events.”

“Oh that’s nice.” He mumbles truly amazed, he eyes your lips before locking eyes with you. “You look gorgeous, by the way.” He compliments and you feel blood rush to your cheeks. 

“Thank you.” You mumble, taking a sip of your martini - playing with the olive inside of it. 

Tom meant it, the dress was beautiful - But you made it gorgeous, he saw you from miles away, as soon as you walked in it was as if a certain glow had reached the room. It was as if he could feel your presence, and he was glad you came - He needed to see you again so badly, and he was simply stunned at how marvelous you looked.

A song rolls in, filling Tom’s ears, it is a slow song. Tom takes his hand out of the pockets of his pants, stretching it out at you.

“May i have this dance?.” He breathes out, his eyes sparkling. 

Your lips part, and your heartbeat quickens - You so badly wanted to run away from all of this, from your feelings. 

You place the half empty glass on the counter before placing your hand on top of Tom’s hand, he takes it gladly and walks with you to the ballroom.

You feel the whispers and glances of several people, and it makes you anxious. While Tom feels on top of the world, his soft eyes lock with yours as he places his hand softly behind your back, the contact makes a shiver go down your spine. You had almost forgotten his touch.

He sways you both through the floor, gliding and all smiles. You wouldn’t dare to look at him straight on the face, you knew that seeing him so close to you would mess with your feelings - And were you really ready for that?.

“How long have you been in New York?.” You ask, clearing your throat as you gaze connects with his.

“Couple of weeks now.” He replies sheepishly, the hand on your back pulls you closer to him, the smell of his musky sweet cologne fills your nose as memories flash through your mind. The soft music fills the silence between you both. 

You both had so much to say, yet neither could find the right words to speak out. Tom was just wandering, looking at every single feature of yours - He had them memorized, the wrinkles that formed on your eyes with each laugh, the curve of your lip - a few faint scars that held childhood memories, and he was aching to kiss every single one of them. 

“Perhaps i shouldn’t say this-.” He trails off, his sweet voice filling your ears like a sweet melody. “But i have truly missed this, i have missed your face, your touch - everything.” He breathes out, you barely notice when his hand pulls you closer and closer to his chest, his face hovering over yours. 

“T-tom.” You stammer and he bites his lip.

“I know - I just need you to know that i will always be in love with you, that i am in love with you.” He confesses, his eyes sparkling with a longing you had never seen before. 

You swallow the lump on your throat, your lips parted and without words to speak. You were speechless, of course you felt the same way but you thought he was fine - I mean how wouldn’t he move on when he was one of the biggest movie stars and when he could have literally any girl he wanted?. But he wanted you.

Your feet were moving on it’s own with unspoken sync - Your eyes stuck on his, your gaze softens and his tongue glides over his lips, there’s an irrational thought swirling through your head. You want to kiss him. So badly, so needly that it made your heart ache.

You lean in slowly and his breath hitches as he feels your minty breath hover over his face. 

“I think i’m in love with you too, i think i have always been.” You confess wholeheartedly and he feels as if the world has imploded into a million stars. He feels his heart beat out of his ribcage. 

A goofy smile creeps onto his face.

“Let’s get out of here.” He breathes out and you chuckle softly, your eyes sparkling.

“Where are we going?.” You wonder as he clasps your hands together and leads you to the exit of the building with a fast pace, earning weird and confused looks from the people. 

He turns to you just for a split second, his eyes twinkling eagerly. 

“To take you to a proper date, love.” His lips curl into a never ending smile, and you do too - You feel as if a wave of relief has washed over you, and you were happy, for the first time in months you were just good - you were happy.

NOBODY LIKES THIS SERIES BUT IT IS ENDING SOON, I’LL BE POSTING THE EPILOGUE SOON.

sheismental masterlist

tom holland masterlist

tag list:

@choke-me-sweet-pea @taylorjrs13 @ooopsharry @spidyboyholland   @imatrisk@distantsmiles @xallyouhadtodowasstay @thelyinglady  @sterolinelover13@nihilistisright  @sangstersvalentine @roses-hxlland @exposingrande@keilanimelton @oops-is-my-life @greenarrowhead  @bagelbiites @why-am-i-here-again-shitheads @kendratheweird

this means i couldn’t tag you!

[toddlazarski]

Last Suppers Vol. 4

Shepherd Express

“And I try to wash my hands,

and I try to make amends,

and I try to count my friends...”

— Neil Young

I never realized how much white existed on a kitchen wall calendar until we flipped to last month. May 2020: like an endless sea of milk, spilt, all over ripening spring and coming summer and everything between now and the distant horizons sprawling in every direction. The Target-bought spiral-bound hope of organization and forward-thinking adulting now somehow resembles a hanging talisman of the old joke about how to make God laugh: “make a plan.” There it sits, sometimes taking on the sense of a mirror, the unsmudged kind, too well-lit, the Windex-ed type necessitating looking away, the seeking of distraction. And there it remains, post-dentist visit luminous, crisp, unfettered, yawning, as we’ve quieted the ceaseless streaking of Sharpie, the scribbling and jotting and plotting, the road signs of an appropriately lived, full life, like all of us were looking up at the professor, scrunching brows, nodding knowingly, doodling something in the margins to play at attention and appropriate labor. Something to look forward to is the key to happiness, an old adage of sorts, is a wise thing a smiling, knitting grandma would say from a rocking chair, indicating you should get moving, with the plan-cementing and the aspirations of nights out and days together. For now though it is but a march of indistinguishable blocks of vivid pale, a tiny number in the upper left corner of each that means approximately nothing. 

March 11th was a date, in hindsight, that stands out. A memorial-type night where, within the half hour it took to put a toddler to bed, the country froze and sought in vain for the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys on a foreign keyboard. The NBA season was suspended. Rudy Gobert was positive. Tom Hanks had it. An impossibly incongruous confluence: Forrest Gump and a tall French shot-blocker I target in every fantasy basketball draft existing together as the collective harbinger of societal doom. It felt like being in a movie, or the first episode of Leftovers, but the part that would pass as an emotional montage, and then move on. March 13th—Friday the 13th, but not soundtracked or jump-scaring, quiet, and directed by a Fincher or Polanski or Lars Von Trier—was where an unspoken contract was entered by sentient and capable-of-critical thought Americans, a day where laying low, taking it easy, became a gesture of care, an act of society. June 13th is a wedding we’ll attend this year. An idea, an event to schedule a haircut close to, a thing to cause ponder on the state of my black suit, something to look forward to that will have too many long-unseen friends and reunion fueled by an open bar. It was a wedding we would attend this year. It’s been moved to the fall. July 20th was once a road trip start date, years ago, the commitment steer-branded on my mind, I remember, because people would ask: “what are you doing this summer?” “When are you leaving?” “When will you be in New Orleans?” Everything else of the fruitful season seemed mere preamble, fun-enough filler before an apex, day-after-day of appetizer or salad, a mere whetting of appetite. A big day was coming, anticipation followed me like cartoon character stink lines. July 4th was a date I saw Tom Petty at Summerfest; June 28th was a date I saw Tom Petty at Summerfest; June 30th was a date I saw Tom Petty at Summerfest. These were constellations, a solid reading of the charts, the blipping beacon the control tower sends up when it is stormy and time to turn off autopilot. Now our plain is mostly like the map you see where dragons are fire-breathing around the edges. I remember the dates, like jersey numbers of favorite players, of all the Fridays in whichever is the upcoming month: aims of nocturnal revelry to make all the Tuesdays and Wednesdays and nothing days pay. This year, so far, May 26th meant something, for a while, and April 24th before that. The end, the other end, of Safer at Home. Instead the political panoply that is supposed to represent us sat at home and decided we don’t need that guidance, or a plan. Public safety is less important than dollars. Our Supreme Court sided with all those guys outside all the Capitol buildings with guns.  

So maybe it’s time to get back to this, with the togetherness, the glasses clinking, hugs and unprotected mouth-open laughs at sunny beer gardens, the days you circle on the calendar and hope will have no rain, all the times where there is no greater mark of the specialness of a day than the meal. Like when my mom took me to Max & Erma’s for my 8th grade graduation. I don’t recall where the rest of the family was, but I definitely remember the tortilla soup. I’m not sure where my parents took me after high school graduation, but I remember knee-bobbing antsiness, the polite nods at congratulatory mentions of the future, because I was distracted by the prospect of going to go get very, very drunk. I remember my college graduation, where mom, somehow, before Google maps or Yelp or my Milwaukee food yammering, procured profound reservations at long-lost white table cloth gourmet Mexican southside spot El Rey Sol. Of course, I also didn’t care that much, because it was mostly a pitstop on a day well-deserving of getting very, very drunk. 

The rest of my Milwaukee occasion-eating can likewise be charted like a sprawling pinned Google map of identity-carving. La Merenda is where I told my parents my novel would be published. Palomino is where we told my mother-in-law we were having a kid, over Bloody’s and Maria’s, piping curds goo-ing with expectation. It is also where I’ve told my wife everything, through the years, our spot of sanctuary, gut-growing comfort, fingers always slick with grease and cocktail condensation. I began my food writing ventures with a dinner at Braise. Vanguard was dad-rock-appropriate and rightly meaty for my first Father’s Day as a father. Von Trier was memorable for impossibly hard news scrubbing. A liquid yuletide dinner at Jamo’s is where I told a new friend that Die Hard 2 was my favorite Christmas movie, thus cementing an annual tradition, quick-contracting an adult life together of corner bars and such ridiculous conversational ping-ponging. I think of the spots and memories as a kind of incomplete Pinterest board, accomplished peak experiences that add up to an old man’s personality, the only truly prized collections of a weathered damaged person as he ambles down creaky basement stairs to be with his thoughts and his whiskey and his sad music. 

This is where I ponder them all these days, because, of course, we can’t congregate. Not fully. Not at any more than 25% capacity. Not yet. We must continue to backlog the graduation and retirement celebrations; the birthdays, the date nights, are heretofore banished to arrears. Zarletti has long been a favorite for such big deal days: something so classic in it’s brand of old-school, low-lit, cozy, big-ish city downtown class; a spot from the Billy Joel song, the one about the bottle of white and the bottle of red, that turns drastically halfway through, and always reminds, surprises, wow, Billy Joel is really good. The spot to bring parents, when they are in town, and making a night of it, destination-dining for before a Jerry Seinfeld show. Or James Taylor. Or maybe another Paul Cebar night. Something at Riverside or Pabst or Turner or one of the other venues we sometimes forget about downtown because we only go downtown a few times a year that aren’t Giannis-related, the kind deeming it appropriate to bring parental credit cards and parental-type wine knowledge and the from-out-of-town desire for every appetizer. It was a New Year’s Eve, frigid beyond reason, a reservation and a window seat gazing on Milwaukee Street’s exhibit of amateur night: illegal-looking mini-skirts scooting by, vehement disregard for jackets, everyone flying trashily against the indifferent wind, quick to get to wait in line, outside, at a place called Dick’s. It was a night where I realized all I wanted was to eat, eat more, chase and maintain a wine buzz, and go home to cozy pants and couch hibernation. I realized I’d turned nearly full adult. Zarletti is currently offering curbside, another step in this direction during our time of being grounded, suspended. It’s a bit of make-believe, like when I put a pinky up in the air while pretend-sipping from an impossibly small cup at a tea-party, playing at elegance, it can be a reason to take a shower, put on non-elasticized pants, and be in the world.     

Of course, it’s not as easy as it once was. In our DIY celebration experience there was an unexpected iIrritability over what to order across the homefront, unease, uncertainty about such a menu existing on my phone—phone menus generally more of the realm of pizza and tlayudas and short rib melts, the unrefined domain within which I thrive. But, it’s also this: I simply love asking a waiter what to have. The guidance, the expertise, a cultivated person who knows how to pronounce aglio e olio, one who has probably been to Italy more than once, who can do the whole wine presentation rigmarole with appropriate authoritative nonchalance while maintaining white shirt. I was reminded of the crisp, professional Zarletti service and all that our curbside culture leaves me wanting for. All of the plan and the know-how and the guidance that our political system leaves us all wanting for, too. I sought out the phone server’s recommendation, not knowing what to expect—-this is a person answering the phone, this is a person freaked out about job security, this is not your guidance counselor. And, still, there it was, a cheery, helpful rundown of appropriate Chianti’s, clear-voiced reassurance on precise pick-up time, an unabashed endorsement of the bolognese, lending conviction and a jarring reminder of days where you could talk to people who knew more than you, when you could be led, by a leader, united, when somebody in a place of esteem and prominence knew to steer with a gentle hand on back. As if you could talk to a favorite grandma again, count on the chief of your country to pretend to care or know how to think or speak in coherent grown-up sentences.  

Even the server seemed to take part, ushering our fare outside before my brakes could even squeal, everything in a crisp stapled bag. Donning a medical mask and gloves, he seemed to have my best interest at heart: “I was starting to worry about you,” he said, coyly indicating my tardiness. You and me both, bub, I thought, but didn’t say, because it’s the kind of banter that doesn’t quite translate that well through a mask. Also, I simply felt slow. My interaction-ability, my small talk, seemed to have grown rust, an attempt at rapport seemed foreign, even dangerous. The languor was likewise synonymous with the entirety of downtown around me, dreamily desolate, like an hour of a city where only criminals are out, it all sucking me down, sponging inertia and energy for big weekend night specialness. In the backseat my daughter didn’t care, she was insistent only on seeing the monstrous inflatable lobster or crab or whatever it is atop the Milwaukee Public Market. I obliged, willingingly, thinking, honestly, it was actually probably the hottest thing going in town at the moment.

By the time we cracked the bottle, lightly re-warmed polpette di carne, veal and beef meatballs in bright pomodoro sauce, started guzzling old unpronounceable grapes, began twirling linguine flecked with pecorino and chile flakes, lacquered with olive oil and garlic, began greedily sponging bolognese stew with torn bread pieces because the all-day-seeming simmer of beef and pork had too much heart for rigatoni-conveyance, everything was right, and, somehow nothing seemed quite right. It was not just the takeout containers, needing to be dumped into real bowls. Or the fact we couldn’t find a candle. Or the dimmer switch in our dining room that buzzes subtly when romantic-levels are sought. Or the presence of a baby monitor between us, where a candle should have been. Or that I had to sweep up my own crumbs, and I don’t even have one of those special server crumb-shovels. Or my Nespresso machine, usually seeming quite nice, adequate for after-dinner digestif-ing, was now somehow not noisy enough, not old enough, not machine enough, more of an espresso app, really, compared to any real Italian joint. Or that I still had white paint crusted on my hands, because I’m at that point in quarantine of wandering around the house, simply wondering what else I might give a coat to. Maybe it was that, mostly, being home after all, I didn’t feel particularly rude looking at my phone mid-meal, and thus ruined the moment like the obvious bad date guy in every Nora Ephron piece. The food could not have been better—and yet it underscored that I’ve never missed a restaurant so much. 

Of course I can just as much be a liability in a restaurant. My Clark’s always look too scuffed, I don’t know how or when to tuck in a shirt, when we go through the wine tasting, testing bit—so formal, a pretentious thing all our 18-year-old selves would loathe us for—I feel that I’m suddenly sitting in my father’s borrowed and oversized suit, that I’m about to be called out as a fraud, politely asked to leave the place, be told, “this is for the grown-ups.” But if anybody likes the whole charade more—the welcome of the owner, as Frankie Valli seemingly always hits overhead, who kind of puts out his arms like he’s been waiting, the accepting nod from the host when she finds my name, validates my existence in the tablecloth world, the cocktails at the bar stoking expectation, being handed a menu like a fresh Choose Your Own Adventure but after a two-Negroni buzz, the recitation of clandestine specials from the server like a def jam poetry flow where I feel like snapping fingers, the big night conversation so much more potent, charged, so much less small, the feel of spotting your waiter across the room, seeing his hands full, knowing this is it, your time is now—they have a serious problem. 

Places like Zarletti don’t exist solely for special occasions. Under now unimaginable normal circumstances, we could go on a random Wednesday. Or for lunch. But, looking back, what did we ever do to deserve that? Did we get good grades? Memorize enough things in school to progress, avoid the margins of society? Did we have all our vaccines as a tyke and eventually quit smoking and go to the doctor once a year-ish and the dentist twice-a-year, more or less? And so now, yes, we should be good, barring car accident or one of those freak early cancer diagnoses that only really happen to other people anyways? Or are we all, the ones here, now, looking forward to going back to a lifetime of memorable meals so numerous we barely notice them, just incomprehensibly lucky?  

As of this writing June doesn’t look much better than May, and July—who knows? I notice a chiropractor appointment has sprouted like a weed in an innocuous white cube a few rows from now, making me wonder how the quarantine time warp has trapezed us into our late middle ages. But otherwise there is certainly space to contemplate, reckon, know and grow expectant of how the Sharpie will be ready—so unused, so hard-up—as to come out in those satisfying soaks where you have to write fast to keep from bleeding out, and then keep going, on to the next weekend. For now, out of nostalgia, out of caution, also out of reasonable hopefulness, I’m setting sights again on New Year’s. There will be reservations, and Milwaukee Street a-twinkle with clamorous revelry and mini-skirts like glorified handkerchiefs going by, the biggest fears of everyone just catching a cold, all of us ready to burn 2020 to the ground, dance on the ashes, drunkenly, irresponsibly, appreciatively clinking glasses, and here will come the waiter, expectant of all my wishes, eager to help, ready to hold my hand. 

[faeriefully]

I want you to answer ALL THE QUESTIONS in the writer's ask. ALL OF THEM. lol

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE ASKING FOR, MY DEAR??? DO YOU REALLY??? 🖤 Okay, let’s go! Thank you, lovely. 

1. Tell us about your WIP!

I am currently working on the first draft of the Fire Novel™️, a contemporary fantasy set in a small town filled with magic and secrets and unspoken politics. 

There are also a few fanfic WIP that I am tossing around, including a PJO Princess Protection Program AU, an angsty pjo fic. (I’m pretty sure a Star Wars fic is about to join them.) 

2. Where is your favorite place to write?

I’m not too picky, but I do prefer to be somewhere I can be left alone. My current home life has made me able to adapt to people moving around me and background noise (though most times I write with headphones in… like right now). I’ve written in bed, at a table, in my closet, on the floor, and I’m rather fond of writing outside. 

3. What is your favorite/least favorite part about writing?

Favorite: Being able to explore worlds and characters that I’ve created. (Or, in fic, the situations and complexity of characters that I love).

Least Favorite: Constant doubt that I can do this, pressure I put myself under in order to call myself a writer. 

4. Do you have any writing habits/rituals?

Do making character charts, outlining other stories, and searching twenty minutes for the perfect “mood song” when I should be writing, count as habits or rituals? 

5. Top five formative books?

This one is hard. I’ve been reading as long as I can remember- and before that, my mother read to me. There are a few that stand out, I think, as what you could call formative for me as a person and writer. Most are children’s books. (I’m going to cheat and mention series.)  Also, I’m not listing the Bible because I’m sure this is meaning fictional books. 

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis was the first series I bought, then read all by myself. It’s been dear to my heart and taught me so much as I’ve grown. 

The Little House books by Laura Ingles Wilder taught me so much about family, and they were something my mother and I bonded over as she read them to me. (She also read me the first three Narnia books as a child.) 

Harry Potter… because… Harry Potter… 

The Willow Falls series by Wendy Mass taught me a lot about getting older, people, and threw me into what would be my book hoarding collection. 

The Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter opened the door to YA for me, and gave me a fun, optimistic start to my teen years, and the basis for my first fanfic which is nearly 100k, and I’m still writing it almost five years later. 

6. Favorite character you’ve written?

That would be Mari, the sarcastic, blunt, mortal girl who shows up at random times when the magic is becoming too much in the Fire Novel™️. 

7. Favorite/most inspirational book?

You expect me to choose one? Um, no. I will give a few titles that are on the ever expanding list. 

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (damaged teenagers working in the FBI…) 

Heartless by Marissa Meyer (the Queen of Heart’s story before Alice…) 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (college freshman and fanfic writer tries to survive in a world she doesn’t understand…) 

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (because I love Jane Austen) 

8. Do you have any writing buddies or critique partners?

I used to. 

9. Favorite/least favorite tropes?

Favorite: Everyone knows/understands something except for one character. OR ‘secret sibling/family member’ or ‘we know each other but we can’t let anyone else know we know each other’. 

Least favorite: non-con (despise it with all my being), also not a fan of “nerdy girl takes off glasses and suddenly everyone wants her.” 

10. Pick an author (or writing friend) to co-write a book with

*cough*@colubrina​*cough* or Jennifer Lynn Barnes 

11. What are you planning to work on next?

*looks at my giant file labeled ‘ideas to write’* *nervous laughter* 

For novels… probably my book about a corrupt monarch system, a girl who doesn’t know when her birthday is, and a gardening boy who’s not all he seems… 

Fics? Umm… probably my Slytherin story about the Greengrass sisters staying with the Order, and most likely a star wars fic… 

12. Which story of yours do you like best? why?

There’s a 100k Gallagher Girls story I wrote over the course of two years (when I was 14-16), and to this day, it is the longest fic and the most complicated plot I’ve ever thought up. It’s my favorite because it was my first real story. It made me realize I could do this. The actual writing is absolutely horrible. 

13. Describe your writing process

Sit. Put in headphones. Scroll through spotify for an absurd amount of time. Open document and read what I last wrote. Cringe and scroll to the end and start writing. 

14. What does it take for you to be ready to write a book? (i.e. do you research? outline? make a playlist or pinterest board? wing it?)

I’m never ready. “Ready” is a concept that writers construct in order to force themselves to push aside the million questions and start writing. But, I do make playlists throughout the writing process, I do have multiple pinterest boards for my characters, and I do like to have at least an idea/sentence summary for the main scenes. I construct the base plot points, and wing it on how I get to them. 

15. How do you deal with self-doubt when writing?

I have a pintrest board with nothing but motivational writing quotes. I remember that I am not obligated to show anyone what I just wrote. I remind myself that published books have not only gone through numerous drafts, but also have been looked over by the author, author’s friends, an agent, and a professional editor. (This: IT’S MY BOOK AND IF I WANT IT TO NOT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL THEN THAT’S WHAT IT WILL DO BECAUSE IT’S MINE.)

16. Cover love/dream covers?

I like this picture? That’s about it for ideas on covers for Fire Novel. 

17. What things (scenes/topics/character types) are you most comfortable writing?

Twins. If it were up to me, every single character would have a twin. Ironic, because I have no twin, nor do I interact with twins regularly. I’m also intrigued by unspoken understandings. I love writing those. 

18. Tell us about that one book you’ll never let anyone read

The book with six siblings (four of which are pairs of twins), a zombie apocalypse, a bunch of inside jokes, weird romance, and basically no plot other than forever looking for someone? The one that hasn’t really ended, it’s just a forever story I write when I’m bored or procrastinating? I don’t know what you’re talking about. 

19. How do you cope with writer’s block?

Normally, I play on spotify, making playlists for characters or scenes, read, or make character outlines. Then I sit and set a timer and force myself to hit a word count goal before the timer ends. 

20. Any advice for young writers/advice you wish someone would have given you early on?

Don’t delete anything, just move it to a “deleted stuff” document, you never know when you’ll want to go back to it. It’s okay not to like it, but don’t let everyone saying “I hate my writing” cause you to second guess yourself. If you like your writing- good! Be proud of your writing. Your favorite writer has been exactly where you are. There are billions of people on this planet. Pick one to talk about your writing to. It helps. 

21. What aspect of your writing are you most proud of?

Oh, this won’t sound arrogant or snobbish at all… 

I’m proud of complex characterization, which is something I’ve tried to improve on over the years. The darker characters have always been my fancy. 

22. Tell us about the books on your “to write” list

Only the tropiest book ever about neighboring best friends with overlapping roofs and a girl who moves in across the street. 

And another tropey one about a corrupt monach/class system and the girl who meets the rebellion. 

There’s also one about underground Mages in a darker version of New York and a boy who finds them during a heist. 

23. Most anticipated upcoming books?

Not if I Save You First by Ally Carter

whatever book Jennifer Lynn Barnes is working on

Again, But Better by Christine Riccio

24. Do you remember the moment you decided to become a writer/author?

After two years of reading fanfiction, I decided I wanted to write one because none of them had this one scene I couldn’t get out of my head. Then two years after that, I had this idea for a book, and decided if I could write other people’s worlds, why couldn’t I write my own? 

25. What’s your worldbuilding process like?

It mainly consists of asking, how/why the heck does this happen? And somewhere in there lies the answer to about five world building questions. 

26. What’s the most research you’ve ever put into a book?

For the Fire Novel, I’ve spent hours delving into the severity of burns, multiple myths and folklore, and what life is like when you live at the base of a mountain. 

27. Every writer’s least favorite question - where does your inspiration come from? Do you do certain things to make yourself more inspired? Is it easy for you to come up with story ideas?

I… have no idea. When I’m washing dishes or in karate class or falling asleep is when I get most of my ideas. I have a giant folder of them… I don’t know how they interlock or what half of them mean, but they just pop into my head, begging me to let them distract me from the story I’m currently working on. 

28. How do you stay focused on your own work and how do you deal with comparison?

Focused isn’t really a problem, as I am a very obsessive person. I’ve actually been happy when people compared my writing to others’ in the past, because it was people I used to admire. I’ve had an experience which has made me very individualistic when it comes to my writing. It’s mine. It’s unlike anyone else’s. Good or bad, it’s mine, and I’m (most of the time) proud I’ve written anything at all. 

29. Is writing more of a hobby or do you write with the intention of getting published?

I want to be published eventually. But for now, it’s a hobby. 

30. Do you like to read books similar to your project while you’re drafting or do you stick to non-fiction/un-similar works?

Similar. 

Then again, I read things both like my book and unlike my book while drafting, because it helps to keep my brain from getting into a repetitive cycle. 

31. Top five favorite books in your genre?

My genre? Of my novel? Ummm…

The Darkest Part of the Forrest by Holly Black 

Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan 

Tithe by Holly Black 

Harry Potter 

Elenor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Those are kinda different… but they fit??? I don’t know the genre of my book, okay? 

32. On average how much do you write in a day? do you have trouble staying focused/getting the word count in?

I’m trying to stick to 1,200 a day. It’s hard some days, and others I fly by it. Really, it’s a matter of not letting myself get distracted by what’s going on in the house when I’m home. If I can do that, I’m okay. 

33. What’s your revision/rewriting process like?

Open document. Look at document. 

Scream. 

After the first draft is done, I pull it up side by side with a blank document, and rewrite the whole thing, adding/taking out/changing the obvious things. Then I step back from the second draft and read it through and dissect it first by plot points, then by characters. Then I work on actual writing quality. 

34. Unpopular writing thoughts/opinions?

Not all my writing sucks? It seems to be the norm that no writer likes their writing, and while I don’t like my first drafts at all, I actually like my writing… it’s why I do it. 

35. Post the last sentence you wrote

Eyeing the twins nuzzling their sister’s side, Seri wondered where Deirdre fell in the line.

They’re Weres… Seri’s meeting Deirdre’s family… It makes sense in context, I swear. 

36. Post a snippet

From a Harry Potter one shot I’m working on… 

Her eyes widened slightly, and her hands lowered from whatever she was about to do with the bundles in her hands. “Oh, hello.”

Theodore blinked. His gaze hadn’t left her hands. “Is that… raw meat?”

The girl glanced down at the pink lumps in her hands, then to the small pile by the tree. “Yes.” The clumps made an horrible squishing sound when they landed in the pile.

37. Do you ever write long handed or do you prefer to type everything?

I journal long handed. I outline and take notes and develop characters long handed, but all story writing is typed unless I am struck with clarity for a scene and I write it down to remember it. 

38. How do you nail voice in your books?

I don’t think I do???

39. Do you spend a lot of time analyzing and studying the work of authors you admire?

Yes. I’ve read and reread so many different books and even fanfics that I love just to study the writing style and techniques. 

40. Do you look up to any of your writer buddies?

@colubrina​, and there were a few others but I can no longer call them buddies. 

41. Are there any books you feel have shaped you as a writer?

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis fed my love of magic and fantasy that means something a bit deeper than the surface appearance. It was the first series I read on my own as a child.

Thirteen Gifts by Wendy Mass was the first book I read with more subtle hints of magic woven in a contemporary setting. It taught me not all fantasy has to be in other worlds or past years. I read this book (the third one) before the others in the series. This book is what made me fall in love with the tropes of “inside jokes the protagonist doesn’t understand, but the reader does” and “I know something you don’t”.

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass is the book that showed me point of view is everything. Your main character can do and know a lot, but they will never know what the other characters are thinking (unless they have a mind bond or something, but you know, let’s ignore that.) Wendy Mass was wonderful to read as a child.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee showed me the impact writing can have, the deeper meaning a simple story can have. There are some books that leave me blown away, and this was one.

1984 by George Orwell is by no means a favorite. Reading it was a blood-chilling, horror; but it did teach me the depth and psychology writing can expose, predict, and explore. The worldbuilding in this novel is solid, and leaves you feeling as if you’ve fallen into a terrifying world- especially considering the intentional parallels.

42. How many drafts do you usually write before you feel satisfied?

Define satisfied. I’m ready to show someone after draft two, I’m convinced it’s decent after draft four. I haven’t ever gotten past that stage. 

43. How do you deal with rejection?

Thankfully, I haven’t had to face rejection yet. (Partially because I haven’t let anyone read my writing in a long, long time.) 

44. Why (and when) did you decide to become a writer?

I’ve been writing since I was six. But it wasn’t something I thought about it. There were just little prompts in my little journal thing, and I would write small poems or stories and show them to my parents. 

When I was fourteen, I read a lot of Fred Weasley/OC fanfiction, and couldn’t find the one I wanted to read so I decided to write it. (I tried, and instead got caught up in the Gallagher Girls fic.)  When I was sixteen, a thought for a book concept popped in my head, and a few days later, I told my mother the (first) idea for Fire Novel on our way home from a grocery store. I won my first Nanowrimo that year, and I have yet to finish the first draft for Fire Novel because the story keeps changing, life keeps me from writing, small bout of depression, and some people made me not want to write anymore for a while. 

In the past few months, I’ve decided to be a writer again. 

45. First or third person?

Third. 

Because I jump from character to character too much for First. But, I have written a few things in first person. 

46. Past or present tense?

Past Third Person.

Present First person. 

47. Single or dual/multi POV?

Depends on the story. Most of the time in fafics, I have multi POV. In my novel, I’ve been trying to keep it single POV, but we’ll see where revisions take us. 

48. Do you prefer to write skimpy drafts and flesh them out later, or write too much and cut it back?

Skimpy first drafts. I want to get the first drafts down as fast as possible. Get the plot out, then I can flesh it out when I know where it’s going. When there’s small first drafts, it’s easier to change things. 

49. Favorite fictional world?

Harry Potter. 

STILL MAD I DIDN’T GO TO ILVERMORNY OR HOGWARTS. 

50. Do you share your rough drafts or do you wait until everything is all polished?

Rough drafts are not even recognizable as stories. Most times the story is completely different in the beginning than as the ending. I wait at least until the second draft to show anyone. 

51. Are you a secretive writer or do you talk with your friends about your books?

I used to talk to people. 

I’ve become a very secretive person about my writing. If I talk to you about my stories, if I tell you anything more than two sentences about the most basic summary (see above), then I honestly trust you more than I trust a LOT of other people. 

52. Who do you write for?

Me, myself, and I. 

53. What is the first line of your WIP?

Fire Novel:

Trains, Seri thought, should invest in some windex.

Theodore/Luna HP one shot:

There was a spot at the edge of the lake, partially hidden by a small cluster of trees, that had become Theodore’s favorite spot to read when he wanted to be alone.

PJO Princess Protection Program AU:

The bell hanging over the door chimed as a customer walked inside.

54. Favorite first line/opening you’ve written?

Trains, Seri thought, should invest in some windex.

55. How do you manage your time/make time for writing? (do you set aside time to write every day or do you only write when you have a lot of free time?)

I really need to work on this. I have the time, I simply suck at managing it properly. I write at night mostly, before I go to bed. 

THERE YOU GO, MY DEAR COLLIE! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!? THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME PROCRASTINATE AND TALK ABOUT MYSELF OFF AND ON FOR A FEW HOURS!!!! 🖤✨🖤

[btsjfans]

Class Clown Pt. 10

masterlist

part 9 

Summary: The class clown Taehyung has a lot more going on than anybody realizes, especially you, the class valedictorian.

Taehyung x Reader, fluff/angst

You heard you alarm go off, and you groan rolling over to shut it off. It was 9:30am on a Friday, your favorite day of the week. Every Friday either you or Taehyung would drive out to see each other, and this week it was his turn to visit. You’d been in college for 3 months now, and the November air was crisp in New York. You loved it here. You loved the people, the campus, the dorm, the classes, the city, everything. What made it better was that you could brag to your friends that your boyfriend attended an Ivy League as well. Life was almost perfect here. Almost. You didn’t have the company of your best friend Amari, or really any of your old friends here. Of course you’d made friends here, and you had a great group, but you had nothing that felt like home, which is another reason Tae’s visits were sweet. He was a piece of home, he made you feel safe. He made everything okay. 

He was enjoying college as well, he settled in nicely and he made a lot of friends. He mentioned how he said he wouldn't fit in at Yale, and yet he was in the ‘popular crowd’ once again. Always at social events, always posting pictures of his hijinks with his new friends, always being the class clown you knew and loved. 

You smile at the thought of him as you hastily pull on your clothes and get ready for your 10am class. You grabbed your coffee on your way out and stepped out. The air was crisp, and the sun was shining while casting a yellow-gold glow over the campus. You smiled to yourself, satisfied with where you’re at in life. 

Life had been good for you, being at college. Being out of your little bubble back home. Being free, being yourself. You knew you had to keep up your good grades here, but you didn't feel the pressure you’d felt before. Before you had to get into an Ivy League. Before you had to be valedictorian. Now, you just had to do your best. 

Your favorite class was at 2 - political science. You loved that class because it was all about facts and opinions. You loved hearing new perspectives, you loved to argue, you loved to talk, you loved to learn and surround yourself with more ideas. That, and your two best friends on campus were in there with you.

Xavier and Beth, you guys had hit it off from day one. Beth lived in the same building as you, which was convenient for late night snack runs, last minute study sessions, and impromptu sleepovers and movie nights. And Xavier, well he was his own story. With honey blonde hair, emerald green eyes, broad shoulders, golden tan skin, and an award winning smile, Xavier was easily one of the hottest guys on campus, and the recipient of many girl’s affections. You and Beth got some grief about it once you started being friends with him. Girls would give you the evil eye as you passed by with him, and you’d heard a few girls in your class complain about how you ‘so obviously wanted him’. But you really didn't care, he was so fun. You guys were like the three amigos, and it partially made up for the absence of your childhood best friend. 

You went to class and sat by Xavier and Beth, taking notes and whispering to each other in a hushed tone. Xavier put his arm around the back of your chair like he usually did, earning an annoyed huff from a girl a few rows back. Occasionally his thumb would brush your back and send chills down your spine, distracting you from what you were doing a couple times. You cast him a glance as you paused in your writing, only to find him staring at you with his enchanting green eyes. He smiled, and your mind went blank. Suddenly you seemed hyperaware of everything around you. The way he sat so close, his arm around your chair, the heat radiating off of him and that oh-so-heavenly smell that mixed with his natural scent and his cologne. You blushed and looked back to your notes, mind swimming.

You must really miss having Taehyung around if Xavier’s presence was affecting you this way.

Taehyung

Man I hate Xavier.

I drove a freakin hour and a half to see her, and yet here he is. It’s so clear he likes her, but I don’t think she realizes it. My little Y/n doesn't realize the affect she has on boys, bless her heart. I know she's beautiful and so amazing and that other guys will want her, but why this guy? I can’t compete with him, that’s for sure, so here I am, left at his mercy.

I love Y/n L/n, and that’s the one thing I know for sure in this world. I know she’s the reason I got into Yale. I know she’s the reason I turned my life around. I know she’s the reason I’m okay. 

Another fact I know for sure is that I’m scared.

I’m scared I’ll loose her.

I’m scared one day she’ll wake up one morning, and forget me. I’m not here every day, so she spends more time with Xavier than me. What if one day my weekend visits aren't enough?

My fist tightens around the flower’s stems as I watch him wrap an arm around her shoulders. They don’t see me. They just got out of their political science class. I knew she’d just be getting out, but I still wanted to be here to surprise her. I’m trying to stay calm and optimistic, but that’s kind of hard when you feel your legs shaking and heart pounding at a hundred miles an hour. I just want her so bad. I want her out of his grasp and back in my arms. Away from him.  Somewhere it’s just her and I, and we’re together and there’s no doubt that we won’t be together. I just want assurance. I want to know things will be okay. Does that sound weird and possessive? Yikes. 

You walk out of your political science class with Xavier and Beth. Xavier wraps an arm around your shoulders and playfully pushes you around, and you laugh. You three start to walk down the sidewalk when you look across the grass to see Taehyung, standing in a black turtleneck and black overcoat, with black jeans to match. He holds a bouquet of 5 roses in one hand, and has a disheartened look on his face. You blush realizing how this must look, Xavier’s arms around you. You break free of Xavier and sprint across the green to Taehyung, crashing into him. You hear him let out a soft “oof” as you two collide, but his arms still automatically find their way around you. You smile and look up at him, your face cold from the crisp air, but body coursing with heat at his touch.

“Hi,” you giggle, and he grins and cups your face kissing you. Your kiss starts out rushed and needy and excited, but slows after a moment. You both pull away, feeling flushed. You feel out of breath and excited, your heart is pounding, and you can’t wipe the smile off your face. 

“Hi,” He giggles back and holds out the roses proudly. “I brought you these.”

“Thank you Tae! They’re so beautiful,” You grin and accept the roses, hugging them to your chest, grateful he got the ones without the thorns still on. He takes his hand in yours and you wave goodbye to Xavier and Beth before turning back. You two start to walk down the sidewalk, a crisp autumn breeze in the air.  He tells you about the drive, about his life, even though you’re already caught up.

One hour passes, then two. Your heart starts to ache when you remember by Sunday evening he’ll be gone.

You’ve both quieted, and walk in comfortable silence. 

“I wish we could see each other more.” Taehyung says after a moment.

“Me too. But hey, Thanksgiving Break is coming up and we’ll get a long weekend together back home.” You smile, reminding him and he grins at the idea. You can tell he’s excited to go home, to see everybody.

“That’s true. Then after that is Christmas break, and then Spring break, and then summer vacation. Think of all the adventures we’ll have together.” He grins and twirls you. “Heck, lets go out sometime soon. Go on a weekend getaway together. Do something. Lets go now!” He grins grabbing your hands and you roll your eyes grinning.

“Hey, that sounds great, but let’s go tomorrow okay? We should spend tonight planning. Then tomorrow we can have our adventure.” You grin and smooth his hair. 

“Oh Y/n...I’m so crazy about you.” He smiles and presses his forehead against yours, kissing your nose softly.

Typically the girls you share a room with don’t bring tons of guys home, but when one of you do, it’s an unspoken code for everybody else to G E T O U T. They know the deal with Taehyung, and they’re cool with it. You’re really glad you got such chill girls who you can have this kind of deal with. You and Taehyung had the dorm to yourself for the night, which meant movies, snacks, cuddles, and kisses. 

You two were laying on the couch, cuddled up together when Taehyung started to kiss your neck lightly, sending chills down your arms. You loved it when Tae did that, he was so soft and gentle and knew all the right spots. He tightened his arms around your waist and held you close to him and trailed his lips up your jaw. You bit your lip, getting into the mood when he started blowing raspberries on your neck and tickling you, making you squeal and laugh, hitting his arms. 

“TAE!!” You yelled amid your laughs, kicking and squirming, only making him more determined, and making his laughs more wicked. 

After you watched a movie and spent a couple hours cuddling, Tae got some paper and started drafting ideas for your adventure. You guys loaded up on soda and candy, and spent your sugar high planning your adventure. 

Tomorrow was going to be perfect.

The next morning you wake up to somebody knocking at the door. You’re laying on your back in bed with Taehyung on top, his head buried in your neck. He sleeps right through the knocking and you smile kissing his head softly. You hate to get up but you were worried it was one of your dorm mates. You slipped out from beneath his body and crept out the door. You heard Tae groan in response to the absence of your body and you grinned at the image of him pouting. As you reached the door, another knock resounded and you pulled it open, grimacing at the cold breeze you were met with. Standing before you was Xavier, whose blonde hair shined in the morning glow. His green eyes shone bright, and his smile sparkled. He wore a navy blue polo sweater and khaki skinny jeans with vans. He looked like a prep model, and here you stood with messy hair, and wrinkly pajamas. Embarrassed and confused was the only way you could describe your state right now. 

“Xavier what’re you doing here?” You smile at your friend but can’t hide your confusion.

“Oh, um it’s my birthday and you, Beth, and I were going to go out remember?” Xavier tilts his head. 

“Oh my god that was today..” you breath, closing your eyes. “I’m so sorry I forgot, here I have your present in my room, sorry it’s not wrapped.” You rush back and see Taehyung smirking under the covers at you, but frowns as he looks through the now open bedroom door to see Xavier standing in the doorway. He gets up and shuts the door.

“What the heck is this?!” He hisses and points to the door where Xavier stands outside. 

“I promised him we’d go out for his birthday and he’s ready to go out and I don’t know what to do!!” You whisper back and grab the card you’d prepared a couple weeks ago and the gift you’d gotten him - a few polos and a picture frame with a picture of you, Beth, and him in it. 

Taehyung frowns and bites his lip sitting on your bed. “What was your plan for his birthday?” 

“We were going to go into the city and mess around all day. I can ask if we can go tomorrow..” You can see how hurt Tae is and feel bad. You know he was excited for your adventure today. You were excited too, Taehyung’s visits were what you lived for.

“Just go.” He sighs and rolls back into bed, facing away from you.

You frown and nod to yourself bringing out the gift to a grinning Xavier.

Taehyung

Of course. Of frickin course. It just had to be his birthday. The day of our adventure. 

I can hear his laughter outside the door. God my girl is so charming no wonder he wants her. She’s such a good person, she does so much for her friends. She-

“Oh Y/n you’re just the best friend I could have asked for!” Xavier’s laugh echoes through the apartment and I squeeze my eyes shut and yell into a pillow. He knows I’m here, he’s doing this on purpose, I just know it. I bet it’s not even his birthday. 

I grab a white turtleneck I packed and my black coat, and slip on some dark jeans and lace my vans. I stride out, looking my best.

“Hey darling, I’m going out. Text me when you’re done playing with..sorry what’s your name?” I tilt my head and give Xavier a pleasant but unimpressed look. I want him to know his place. 

“Oh, Xavier. Nice to meet you. And you are...?” Xavier returns with the same look. He’s good. He knows exactly what game we’re playing.

“Kim Taehyung, Y/n’s boyfriend of 3 years. Do you go here,or the community college? I go to Yale.” I smile and put my arm around Y/n, narrowing my eyes. His green eyes flicker but his smile never wavers.

“Oh sorry, she’s never mentioned you so I didn't realize she was taken! And yeah I go here. Y/n and I hang out every day.” He smiles at me with a charming smile. No wonder Y/n trusts this guy, he’s a walking Ken doll, the poster child for trustworthy-harmless boys. 

“Mmm I’m sure she’s mentioned me. Anyways, my dear just text if you need anything. I love you,” I smile and cup her face in my hands, kissing her deeply and slowly. I want him to see what true love is. Maybe then he’ll leave her alone.

Xavier and you stood in the kitchen in silence, staring at the door Taehyung just walked out of. There was so much tension between the two boys, and this weird unspoken..thing. You couldn't explain what you just witnessed, but it was weird. 

Xavier laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “Taehyung seems great! I’ll whip you up a breakfast, and you go get changed and we’ll head out.” Xavier smiles, and you can’t help but smile back. You walk back to your room and get changed, their conversation replaying in your head. Xavier definitely knew who Taehyung was, and vise versa. What was with them?

You walk out to see Xavier smiling at the table, pancakes and eggs spread before him. 

“Breakfast is served,” He winks.

Taehyung

I walk down the sidewalk, anger, fear, confusion, hurt, all warring inside of me. Today was supposed to be our day, today was supposed to be our adventure. I sit down on a park bench, looking out over a pond. A few ducks who haven't migrated yet quack and float around, not a care in the world. I reach into my pocket and pull out the paper we wrote our plan on. I smile as I think back to last night. Us both fighting over control of the pencil, the paper wrinkled from our warring. I read the messy, 1am handwriting.

**(below, bold is Taehyung, regular is Y/n)

Taehyung And Y/n’s Adventure Day

Wake up at 6:30am NO DUMMY THATS TOO EARLY 

Wake up at whatever time we freakin want 

Have Y/n make Taehyung breakfast  HAHA not happening babe

Make breakfast together

Get dressed and go to the city. Get kicked out of as many stores as possible

Go streaking 

Spend over $50 on dinner (WE BETTER SPLIT THE CHECK)

Make out in 5 elevators

Visit every park in the city

Take a ferry across the river 

Have a picnic

Stargaze

Talk about how much we love each other

I smile imagining what we would be doing right now. Would we be in Macy’s trying to get kicked out? Would we be making out in an elevator?

My smile fades as I fold the paper and put it away. Here I am, alone in a cold park, while she’s out with him. 

“God Y/n, how do I compare?” I ask aloud, burying my head in my hands. 

Xavier said Beth was sick as you two left your apartment. You offered to go check on your ill friend, but he acted really weird.

“N-no! She’s on bed rest! We can’t.” He shakes his head, smiling nervously.

“Well alright...what first?” You and Xavier take a taxi to the city, and while he makes you laugh and makes chipper conversation, you can't take your mind off of Taehyung. Where is he right now? What’s he doing? Is he okay?

You carry on with your day, smiling along with Xavier’s jokes, but not really listening to him. 

“Y/n?” He asks. You snap out of your daze and look up at him. You two are sitting at a cafe as night is falling. Fairy lights sparkle around you, french music plays, and the air is chilly with the November breeze; in other words, the mood is perfect for romance. “I..I know we have something.” He stands up and pulls you up too.

“Yeah, you’re one of my best frien-”

Your words are cut short as Xavier kisses you. One hand on the back of your neck, the other on your waist. His skin sends warmth through your body everywhere he touches, his sweet smell makes you dizzy. He kisses you deeply, passionately. You feel yourself kiss back.

Sooooo here’s 10..you like it? I wanted to make it good but I didn't know how so I really hope you enjoyed it. Want 11? Be sure to send feedback, it helps. Thanks!!

[suspected-spinozist]

[ooc: It’s @theunitofcaring‘s birthday! With love, always.] 

I almost can’t believe it. Makel Alasi’s writing his memoirs, and I have a friend who works for his publisher, and she managed to get me an advanced copy! I don’t want to leak too much, but this is one of my favorite parts. (Tagging @colorjustice since I know she’s a fan, even if she sometimes has trouble admitting it). 

“I could always write a movie soundtrack. I’ve never done one before, and it seems like it could be fun.”

“You know the difference between a movie and a music video, right?”

“Of course –“

“Because in a movie, the music’s generally supposed to stay in the background.”

“Not the way I write it.” – a matter of public record, incidentally. Just look up my film licensing agreements. “Anitami audiences have taste, Telkam. You can’t seriously believe they’d rather watch you than listen to me.”

“Yeah.”  

There wasn’t really much I could say to that, so I just let him sulk for a couple of minutes. I did apologize, eventually, I’m not heartless.

“It’s fine.” (It obviously wasn’t. What my brother lacks in eloquence, he more than makes up for in emotional volatility).

“No, it’s not. You know how I get when people imply I’m not talented.”

“Yeah. Makel, I’m not you.”

That’s obvious, I’ve heard him sing. “You’re still an artist. Well, in a manner of speaking –“ “What I am is I’m employed, that’s what I am.” He turned away. I think he may even have grunted.

“You’re really not happy, are you?”

“Guess not.”

“I just thought it would be nice to collaborate on a project with my little brother.”

***

We were all so relieved when Telkam told us he was going to be an actor. So, it seemed to come out of nowhere, so – and it’s not easy for me to admit – he’s not even that good. He’d get better. My father is always saying any of us could excel at anything we set our minds to.  Of course, it’s not like he tried especially hard to be the world’s best diplomat.

It was different with Aitim. I mean, when we first started to notice that Aitim wasn’t happy. Dad took it especially hard. He felt like he’d betrayed him; that is, like he’d broken the unspoken contract he’d signed when he bought his first credit that his children wouldn’t feel trapped the way he’d been trapped, and what’s worse, he felt like a failure. Failure makes him get all defensive, it’s not as if he’s had much practice.  Mom just didn’t get it. She sees politics as a kind of applied psychology, and both my parents tend to think of the applied sciences as things other people do after all the really interesting theoretical problems have already been solved. But Aitim had passion, he had ambitions, and he was willing to move metaphorical mountains – or at least sidestep social institutions – to fulfill them. That’s something they both understood.

*** I decided to visit Telkam at work, since I was curious, but mostly to fuck with him. They were shooting on some backlot in the middle of – and I do mean – nowhere, three hours outside of Lina by train, one of those depressing exurbs full of identical row-houses full of identical purples. It’s still mostly apartments out there, but no more than three or four families to a building. They’re all a dingy sort of off-white – the buildings, not the families – with squares of patchy grass and the occasional optimistic swing-set. I’ve heard people move out there for the space, but I can’t imagine they’d need it. I didn’t see any children. Then again, it was school hours.

The lot was easy enough to find. Telkam was wearing something that looked like a couple of old laundry machines wrapped in aluminum foil. (“Astronaut or sentient household appliance?” “Radiation suit, obviously”).  You couldn’t see his face, nor much of the rest of him, which meant either a surprising dedication to realistic radiation safety standards on the part of the producers or just plain stupidity – after all, they certainly aren’t paying him for his acting skills.

(You may think I’m habitually cruel to him – and I am, though not more than any older brother. Don’t misjudge me. The advance on my exclusive memoirs is going straight into a trust fund to pay for his first-born child. What? It’s not as if he’s going to earn one on his own.)    

In any case, I snuck in the back during a take, and watched him flail at a kind of rubbery-looking facsimile of a post-apocalyptic mutant organism for a little while before someone caught sight of me. She was a little yellow with a clipboard, clearly some species of assistant, and I must say she made a valiant effort to squeal in absolute silence. But then an electrician noticed her, and had to nudge his friend, who had to nudge her friend, and – well, have you ever seen a very, very quiet mob starting to assemble itself? Until then I hadn’t either, and it’s an experience Eventually the man with the puppet joined in and they had to stop filming. It took another ten minutes to get Telkam out of the suit.

“Congratulations, asshole. They’re going to lose the whole day, do you have any idea how much that costs?”

“Not as such, no.”

“It’s not a high-budget operation, but there’s still about 200 people working here, and they’ve all got salaries. And equipment, and renting the space –“

“I know I can pay the difference.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Sure it is. Just point me in the direction of your line producer and see what happens.”

“Fuck you.”

Articulate, isn’t he? “How do you feel about abandoning the land of the living laundry machines and taking the rest of the day off?”

“I don’t come and bother you where you work.”

“Not for lack of trying. And we both know that that’s not strictly true.”

“Makel – “

“Remember that time, you would have been, what, one and a half? And I was recording something at home, when suddenly I heard this banging – “

“Makel! Don't talk about that where there are people!” (And so I won’t – but you should really look up the video on MyStream.)

In the end, he did leave for the day, and since I’d given them permission to play my latest single over the opening credits, the director even thanked me. (Thematically, it’s completely inappropriate, but don’t we all make sacrifices for the sake of family?)

“Feel like telling me what that was all about?” – we’d been on the train to Lina for about two hours at this point, but when Telkam feels like sulking – as in all his endeavors – he commits.  

“I haven’t seen you for a while.” Which, for the record, is true.

“You’re not on a secret mission from mom and dad?”

“To, what, make sure you’re still alive. They’re not that neurotic, and they’re definitely not that subtle.”

“Aitim, then. But he probably already has spies.”

“Oh, Telkam. You’re assuming he cares.”

The thing about Telkam is that it’s impossible to guess what’s going to upset him. Most things that would reduce a reasonable person to tears just roll right off him, but he can be surprisingly vulnerable. Especially when it comes to family. So – “They all want you to be happy,” I say eventually. “They love you. For reasons that pass comprehension, admittedly – “

“I know I haven’t been home in a long time.” He hasn’t. I’m not even sure where he’s living right now, in fact, which is why I had go and kidnap him at work – “How’s Kantil?”

“He’s doing well. Math track, says he wants to do something practical. Dad’s hoping he’ll be an engineer, of course, but mom thinks economics. And Kefin’s talking.”

“I thought Kefin was talking months ago.”

“He was, but only in Anitami, and you know dad, that barely counts.” (My father raised all of his children to speak at least six languages – to varying degrees of success – and I’ll have you know that I translate all my own lyrics in four.)

“I’d visit more, but – “

“Yeah.”

“They might ask me how I am.”

***

I remember when Aitim went off to live with our grandfather (you may have heard of him?). I’ll never forget what it was like after he left. I don’t think the house has ever been so quiet, and that’s before or since. I did a lot of singing. My parents worked, somehow, even more than they usually do, and if I hadn’t been there I don’t think they’d have remembered to come home – this was just before Telkam.

The only people who gossip more viciously than blues are green academics (and I know whereof I speak), so if you’ve had the misfortune to move in those rarified circles, don’t believe what they tell you – dad never tried to force him to stay. Once he was sure that it was what Aitim really wanted, he didn’t even try to persuade him. My father doesn’t understand why anyone who could be green would ever choose to be anything else, but he knows what it’s like to be forced to be something you’re not. Yes, it’s an unusual way of looking at caste, and for all I know it may be unique to my family, but I’ve always considered myself the better for it. Patrilineality be damned, I’m green. I know it. You know it, too – would you have picked up this book if you hadn’t heard me sing?

Aitim himself says much the same – not that he won’t deny it if you ask him.  At least he did one night a few months later, at dinner with just grandfather and his wife and the two of us and our cousin Kan, age three seasons, because sometimes even Fen Neli wants to see his grandchildren without having to smooth over some sort of familiar conflict.

“You’re not blue,” I told him between courses. “It doesn’t matter who our grandfather is. In our family we’re green.”

“Poor grandfather! Someone will have to tell him we’ve stopped being related.” This all happened years ago, six or seven at least, and I can’t recall if grandfather laughed, and ruffled Aitim’s hair. I like to think he did. “Besides, I don’t think I’m blue because our father is really blue – it’s just that some people will be more willing to work with me if they think I do, so that’s how I explain to them.”  

“That’s not what dad thinks.”

“Really?”

(Grandfather, not paying attention: “No, Kan, we don’t eat the flatware, yes, yes, that’s the way, or grandmother’s necklace – where did he get that? – Kan”)

“Really. He said so. And he’s so angry he’s not going to let you come home and you’re going to have to go live with Uncle Nolime ‘cause you think he’s so much better than us.”  

It would have been a fairly transparent lie even if you didn’t know our father well, or weren’t Aitim, but he did, and he was, and of course, being Aitim, he smiled. “If that’s so, then I suppose shall live with Uncle Nolime, but I’m afraid I should miss you all terribly.”

“Don’t you miss us now?” I think I mentioned, before, that father felt like he’d somehow betrayed his firstborn son. I was two years old, my big brother had just left for what seemed, at age two, to be forever, and I just felt betrayed.

“I know I’ll come back, Makel. And if I lived with Uncle Nolime, I don't think father and mother would visit me nearly as often.”

“He puts up with Entis” – Entis, thankfully, being too occupied by Kan to notice – “so why’d you do it, then?”

“Do what?”

“Be a blue, if it’s not because of dad.”

“Hmmm. Makel, why do you think we have castes?”

“Historical contingency, right? Societies that had castes hundreds of years ago did better than the ones that didn’t, and now we all have them. Except – well, I’ve always thought, we can’t know if they did better because they had castes, or because they matched particular castes to particular niches, or they just happened to have more resources to begin with, or something else entirely. There must be archeologists who know something about it, but it was so long ago – “

“There were confounding factors.”

“Right, that. And greens really are smarter than other people, even if they weren’t always, and grays really are stronger and faster, and blues are –“ Kan, seated directly across from me, was gnawing on the edge of the table – “well, blues are something, probably, but we don’t go around saying that especially smart people are really greens. Unless they’re dad.”

Aitim nodded. “What they’ll teach you – at least in blue school – is tat heredity obviously isn’t infallible, and sometimes people really might be more productive in different caste than the one they’re born to. But that’s so vanishingly rare – especially compared to the number of people who’d want to switch for more power, or prestige, or cheaper credits, or something else like that – that it’s a waste of resources to try and sort out all the valid claims. So we just don’t allow it.”

“Except for dad.”

“That’s right. And father didn’t get away with what he did because he was talented enough to justify it. He is, of course, but that isn’t why it worked.”  

(I’m going to have to interrupt my brother, here – just for a moment – because most of you don’t know him, and have consequently never heard him speak. I don’t remember his exact words, and I can’t explain how the looks in his eyes, and his gestures, and his tone made them seem so perfectly, irreproachably reasonable. People say I have the magic voice.)

“Father got away with it,” Aitim continued, “because there’s a certain way that people expect greens to act, and part of that – for better or for worse – is that they really don’t think they should have to follow the rules so long as they’re clever enough to get around them. All the things that would have made him a terrible blue – his impulsivity, his single-mindedness, his, ah, – “

“ –complete lack of social skills?”

“Yes, that – they’re not exactly virtues, in a green, but they make him seem more consistent with himself.”

“I don’t think dad cares about that.”

“Really? I think he cares a great deal. And other people care even more.”

“Is that why you want to be a blue? Because it makes you more consistent with yourself?”

“Yes. And no one really thinks that there’s anything ontologically significant about patrilineality or matrilineality, in a mixed-caste marriage. We simply need a way of deciding edge cases – that is, of determining who we should think of as blue. They’ll think of me as blue. That’s what matters.”

Grandfather must have gone upstairs to put cousin Kan to bed, because I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have had something to say to that.

“So it’s all in people’s heads?”

“The most real things usually are. You know –“ Aitim was looking at a framed photograph of our father as a child of one or two, sitting in grandfather’s lap and looking desperately unhappy – “the only thing that could have made the caste system look more arbitrary than letting father switch would have been making him stay. Can you imagine? It would have seemed so cruel, and so stupid –“

“It’s a good thing he left.”

And, after a while – “I think so too.”

I took a few moments to digest that, along with my dessert. “It sounds like you’re saying that it’s fine to ignore your birth caste, as long as you can get enough people to take you seriously.”

“I never said that.”

“You pretty much said –“

“Well, I won’t acknowledge it.” Even then, you see, he was already running for office.

***

“I don’t see why you had to tell me all that.”

We’re getting off the train in Lina, in my neighborhood, which is mostly green, when I start to notice the strange expressions on people’s faces. Of course, Telkam’s hair. Either he’s wearing a wig or he’s bleached it for the part.

“Why do you think the leads in action movies are always gray?”

“What?”

“Your hair, I just noticed – I mean, it would make sense if you were playing an astronaut or a soldier or something, but you’re the last survivor of a nuclear holocaust, it could really be anybody.” “I guess it’s just what people expect.”

“I suppose so.”

“Besides, if action hero were a job, it would definitely be gray.”

It’s a beautiful night, perfectly clear. The city sparkles, forty, fifty, a hundred stories tall, with little cracks of sky shining between the buildings in the hazy, reflective darkness. If you live near the river – and I do – you can see the lights reflected in the water, quavering and sinking and surfacing as the little waves calm, like the stars it’s always just too bright to see.

“I think you have more in common with Aitim than you’d like to admit,” I said.

“Oh?”

“That’s why I told you that story earlier.”

“Aitim’s blue.”

“Only because he wants to be.”

“He dyes his hair. I know he wants us to think it’s naturally coming in teal, but he last time he was home, I saw his roots showing.” A girl with pale jade-colored hair walks by, gives us a funny look, and scurries off. Telkam tosses his hair and blows her a kiss. “You know, I think I just might keep the gray? It suits me.”

[mredlich21]

This is perhaps my least favorite part of the movie.  Not because it is boring or unbeautiful or anything, just because it feels like the part that fits least with the rest of it.  I can make it work (as I will explain below), but it isn’t quite the perfect fit with no struggle that the rest of the film is. (full index of Jab Harry Met Sejal posts here)

Previously, Anushka and Shahrukh were officially “just” a tour guide and his client.  But they became closer through starts and stops on the surface, fighting, talking, admitting things to each other.  He is angry about having to work for her when he was ready for time alone, she is frustrated and scared about being alone in Europe and looking for a lost ring that could end her engagement/life plan.  Both of them break through their usual barriers because of the unusual situation they find themselves in.  On a deeper level, there is something there that literally ties them to each other, they cannot be more than 20 feet apart without one of them getting up to follow the other, and the distance keeps getting smaller and smaller over the course of the film until they can’t be more than 4 feet away from each other without getting uncomfortable.  This whole thing just reached it’s peak the night before, they were in a dangerous stressful situation (chased by thugs after a bar brawl) and instinctively clung to each other, including her waking up in the middle of the night and going over to sleep curled up against him.  The next morning, they both have a bit of an emotional catharsis when he sings his Punjabi songs for her and she sings back the traditional good girl “Radha” songs she has been taught, until eventually they are singing and dancing together and the two songs merge.  Afterwards, he pulls away from her, returning to reality where he has no right to touch her.  And she rejects that, instead offering that the rest of the time they are traveling together, she will be his “girlfriend”.

  Now, the SUPER SUPER important thing I talked about in my last post is that “girlfriend” means something very very specific to Anushka, and she knows that Shahrukh will understand exactly what that specific thing is.  “Girlfriend” doesn’t mean they are in love or making out or anything.  It just gives him permission to be slightly freer with her than a well-brought up protected woman like her would usually allow a man to be.

(that’s why he looks so puzzled in this moment.  She is slightly breaking the “girlfriend” rules, this is more than holding hands or leaning on his shoulder, this is something else)

And that’s what we see in the beginning of the next scene.  They are riding the train and Shahrukh is resting his head on his hands and studying her face when she catches him at it and he immediately looks away.  And she says “no no, I am your girlfriend!  Look as much as you want”.  She poses for a moment, batting her eyelashes.  And then he rearranges himself so he is facing her directly, and she turns to face him, and they both kind of widen their eyes so they are obviously starring at each other, and we pull back outside the train window as they go through the countryside, and the love song starts.

See, this is the kind of thing Anushka means when saying “I am your girlfriend”.  Without that status, a man outside her family wouldn’t even be allowed to look at her face, especially “just” a tour guide.  When she catches him looking, I don’t think she sees that he is falling in love with her, I think she just sees that he is looking at her a fraction longer than acceptable, and jumps in to offer that he is allowed to look longer than that if he wishes.  And then turns it into play acting, batting her eyelashes in a pretense of being a sweet girl in love, while he still stares at her, actually falling in love.  And then finally they turn it into a game, no longer playacting in love (well, playacting on her part, real on his part), but just two people looking at each other.

See, what seems odd to me in this whole section is that she appears so unaware of him and what she is doing to him, and he has this swoony over the top love song already.  And love acting already.  It just doesn’t make sense!  There is no build to the film if he is already all in to this degree at this point.  But, see, there IS a build to the film.  A definite build of their relationship going from “there is some unspoken thing between us” to “there is now a spoken thing, a special bond” to “somehow without noticing it, you have become vital to my happiness” to “I am terrified of separating from you to the point of lying and denial”.  And you can’t just skip to the end with this song, with all the lyrics about “I keep you where I keep my faith”.

It’s an incredibly pretty song, my favorite from the film purely in terms of how it sounds (sound and visuals would be “Radha”), but it’s also very, well, what my friend called “cheesy”.  Just swooningly romantic, as are the visuals, Shahrukh studying her face as the world speeds by, then continuing to watch her once they reach the cafe in Budapest.  And finally, after she asks him to “act like a boyfriend”, the over the top way he kisses her forehead, spins her around, all of that is just too too much for this point in the film.  How can we have any emotional response to the “Yaadon Mein” song if he is already this in love pre-interval?

(Also, Arijit Singh here.  Who always sings his internal dialogue in this film, while other singers do the diegetic songs.  Interesting!)

But, we do have that response.  Post-interval, a lot of what we are seeing in this section here is kind of erased.  You could go straight from the last scene in Prague to “Beech Beech Mein” and the film might actually work better.  And that’s how it plays out for the audience, after “Beech Beech Mein”, this section never comes up again even by implication, their relationship kind of goes back to where it was before.  And yet I don’t feel like this section, particularly the song, is necessarily totally untrue to their characters.  So how do I reconcile that?

I think Shahrukh is playacting a little bit here too.  Anushka offered to be his girlfriend, but he never said aloud that he would try being her boyfriend.  She is there for him to touch, to look at, to talk with, in a way a woman like her would not usually allow.  But she is asking and expecting nothing from him necessarily.  And yet, without saying it, he is also trying out being her boyfriend.  He studies her face and thinks about her, trying to follow his reaction.  She offers to let him keep looking, and he lets his fantasy take flight, pretending that she really is his, that he really is that “cheesy” romantic guy that is his imaginary vision of what being a boyfriend is like (remember his reaction early on that Anushka’s boyfriend isn’t treating her well by leaving her to travel alone).

This is the only way I have found to make sense of the little dialogue interval in particular.  First, Shahrukh has this swoony romantic track playing in his mind, but we see that Anushka isn’t exactly swoony and romance fodder just then.  She is frowning and clomping around, and thinking about her fiance and looking for her ring and nothing else.  He is projecting this romance on to her, but it doesn’t really fit.  Not like it will in “Yaadon Main” when it doesn’t matter where they are or what is happening, they are so in love.

And then Anushka comes up and asks him to “be” her fiance, to come down the steps and greet her and help her remember what happened next, where he took her.  His response is “really?  this will help?”  she insists, so he does it.  In a very bland way, just runs down the steps and greets her and says “this way”.  The sound is also a little out of whack here, we can hear very clearly the tourists talking in the background.  The whole effect is very unromantic and unfantasy.  Anushka is tired and frustrated, Shahrukh is polite but not very interested, there are people around.  And then Anushka asks him to try again, to do it as though he were her fiance, after all she is his “girlfriend” now, it’s allowed.

And that’s when the music swells, he takes a moment at the top of the stairs before running down, kisses her forehead (surprising her), then spins her around until his arm is around her shoulder, gently leads her through the crowd, spins her again around a tray, and again onto the seat, maintaining eye contact only with her the whole time.  Until the end, faces barely touching, eye to eye, on a love seat.

Okay, what’s up with all this?  Maybe you have a better explanation, but what I see is that he is trying on the fantasy, and then she breaks through it, making a request that jolts him back into tour guide/helpful friend mode.  Until she gives him permission to go back into the fantasy and he decides to really let loose, to feel what it would be like to be that innocent boy with the girlfriend who loves him.

I guess that would be the other difference from “Yaadon Mein”.  That time, there was no coming back.  This time, he is just testing the waters, he can go back to “tour guide” mode whenever he wants.  That’s why the talking sequence is in the middle, to show how he can fall in and out of reality (complete with loud American tourists), unlike the later love songs when there will be no stopping them.

But then there’s the bit after the song ends.  Which is just STUPID!!!  I’ve been struggling and struggling with it, and no matter how I turn it, it is a break from the characters for the sake of an interval cliffhanger that is then forgotten.

The first part is okay.  Anushka takes a deep breath and says sincerely, still with her face close to Shahrukh’s, “I wish you would give lessons!  I would be set for life if [fiance] acted like this.”  Shahrukh smiles kind of ruefully, pulling himself out of his fantasy, and says “sure!  Get him up on facetime now, I will do it”.  Anushka laughs it off and stands up, and then while she is standing Shahrukh turns and kind of stretches up to be close to her face again and softly sings “Dhak Dhak Karna Lage” and then adds “Your lips are softening, your breath is faster, it is pleasing.”  The subtitles didn’t quite catch it, but he is doing this little alliteration thing with the “s” sound, which is kind of hypnotic and also makes you focus on small movements of his mouth.  Yeah, he is a very experienced seducer.  He probably worked that line out a long time ago.  And it works perfectly on Anushka, she is caught in his gaze.  And he knows it and kind of sighs and says “Now the [Raula] starts”.  And Anushka still holds his gaze and says softly “So?”

(This is also a cool little moment of their age difference.  Beta came out in 1992.  Shahrukh is supposed to be in his late 30s, he would have watched this song over and over as a teenager.  But Anushka looks blank, it’s possible she missed it entirely, growing up in the 90s)

And he rejects her.  Stands and turns away, and then turns back and says something that I can’t remember (Grrr!). And Anushka laughs and says “Don’t worry!  I am selfish.  I may say I am your girlfriend and play sweet and nice, but in the end, I am going to get married.  You can come to the wedding, November 25, Bombay.  Oh, but you won’t, right?  You will be too sad?”  Shahrukh kind of smiles ruefully and just takes it, then says sincerely “someday you will have to leave.  Promise me you will put your ring on your finger and go without looking back”.  Anushka laughs again and says “High hopes, eh?  Don’t worry, I am not the type to fall for a tour guide.”  Shahrukh has had enough and says “We’ll see.”  She echoes it “we’ll see!”  And then as she starts to crawl on the floor looking and “Beech Beech Mein” starts in the background, Shahrukh starts to walk away and then turns back and bends down to meet her eyes since she is on the floor and says “Game on?” and she says “Game on!”  And the song rises, and Interval!

At least, that’s how I remember it.  This section is really hard to remember, partly because I am watching through my fingers thinking “why are you both being so horrible????” and partly because, well, it just doesn’t make sense!

I think, after many watches, the problem is that it goes on too long and goes to far.  The initial moments are perfect.  Anushka translating her attraction to Shahrukh in that moment to “I wish my fiance were like you” because she is still too scared to think the obvious thought, “I wish I didn’t have to be with my fiance and could be with you instead”.  And Shahrukh kind of smiles at that, because he sees through to the thing she really means, but is also kind of sad that she is still too innocent to see through it.  Both because it means she isn’t openly coming on to him, and because it means she is still too innocent for him to justify coming on to her himself.

The follow up, that’s because he is giving in for just a second to his desires, acknowledging what he is feeling instead of holding it in.  And it works, immediately and completely.  Anushka has no protections against him, the smallest taste of seduction and she is completely won over, falling into his eyes and saying “so?” in a kind of breathless hypnotized why when he indicates that they shouldn’t do this.

So far so good.  Feels realistic to their characters, Shahrukh has been playing with the boyfriend fantasy and is going slightly too far with it, Anushka is unprotected and there for his taking if he wants her.  Which is why he backs off, because it would be wrong to take advantage.  And then Anushka gets offended and lashes out.  Again, all of this is fine.  She feels rejected and disappointed and so retreats to her confident rich girl persona, attacking him and laughing at him like a servant boy.

It’s when it keeps going that I feel like this isn’t right.  Shahrukh is playing this as sincere and emotional, and Anushka is playing it as needlessly cruel.  He is too far advanced, and she is too far regressed.  Most of the film is magical in how it shows them slowly moving forward until they meet in the middle.  They are both unpleasant terrible people at the beginning, in totally different ways.  And then she gets less spoiled and he gets less bitter, and it works out.  But here, he is being super in love and noble and perfect, warning her away and trying to make her promise to leave without looking back.  And she is being incredibly childish and thoughtless, making fun of the “girlfriend” idea that has already come to mean so much to both of them, making fun of him.  Why?

(Girlfriend!)

Well, I know why.  It’s because the interval requirement caused fake drama.  The normal thing, what they really wanted to convey in this scene, is that moment of rejection followed by retreat on both their parts.  That Anushka is still too immature and too much in denial to say “yes, you are right, I am falling for you and in danger of forgetting my fiance.”  She will retreat to “no no, it could never happen, I love him and I am getting married”, or else we can’t explain her still traveling with Shahrukh in the second half when she should know better than to be alone with him.  We, the audience, need to have her denial confirmed in order to believe the rest of it.  And Shahrukh needs to retreat back to his nobility, to show the audience why he is resisting his obvious power over her, that he is sincerely afraid of ruining her life.  Not because she will stay with him (he isn’t there yet), but because she will break her engagement and be unhappy with herself.

All of this, fine so far.  What ruins it is the need to end on this challenge, like “hardy-har-har little lady, I will seduce you!” and “oh no no no sir, I shall protect my virtue!”  Totally not true to these characters!  Just a way to suck is in so we will come back after the interval.  Like they don’t trust us to want to see the end of the story just because we care about these people.

The natural interval point is after “Radha” when Anushka proposes being his girlfriend.  That’s a natural turning point in their relationship that will bring us back in.  And then we can open with the way things shift back slightly when they get back to the hotel, then a brief conversation and “Hawayen” to tell us the interval is officially over, then the lower key version of their confrontation as the first “real” scene of the second half, and then “Beech Beech Mein”.  But, that doesn’t fall exactly half way through the movie, so they had to dredge up some other drama.

What actually ruins it isn’t the challenge itself, but the work they have to put in to get there.  Anushka has to be really cruel and awful and tip over to that rich brat type that Shahrukh would want to cut down to size in order for him to accept the challenge.  And Anushka also has to go back to being completely unaware of her attraction to Shahrukh, all that work that was put in to carefully build her subconscious awareness just thrown away, in order to claim that she can hold out against him.

And from the other side, Shahrukh has to be way way too tormented before he can bring himself to admit his feelings enough to trigger Anushka’s challenge.  And that means he has to be like totally in love, and aware of being in love, much sooner than he should be.  At this point, he should still be able to kind of laugh her off, like he does in the first moments of the scene when he notices her attraction.  He shouldn’t be all “NO!  I mustn’t![hand to forehead]” kind of acting.

The only way this scene kind of works for me is if we jump to the end.  Shahrukh is saying he can’t go to Anushka’s wedding and ask her not to get married, because she asked him 3 times and he turned her down.  And I’ve been puzzling over those 3 times.  There’s right before she leaves, she asks him what he wants.  There’s the Portugal scene, when she says “let the [raula] happen” and then he turns away.  There’s the moment in the first club when she asks if he finds her sexy.  But what if one of those 3 times is this moment?  If Shahrukh recognized that her pushing about if he would be too sad to come to her wedding, telling him that she is going to marry her fiance and be happy, she isn’t foolish enough to run off with a tour guide, was actually an invitation.  She wanted him to say “yes, I will be sad.  no, don’t marry him.  Yes, run away with me.”  It would turn her speech from mean to an invitation in a strange way, and his tormented reaction from “you’re torturing me!” to “I am forcing myself not to respond”.  I don’t know if that is the right way, but it is an interesting way to read this scene.

Oh, and one final thing, this is the scene that for me most clearly evokes the shadow of DDLJ.  This is DDLJ with an aware Kajol and Shahrukh.  A Kajol who is needling Shahrukh with her purity, with her impossibility for him.  And a Shahrukh who is being forced to say his feelings clearly, not to leave it with a wordless headshake that no, he won’t be at her wedding.  And Imtiaz must have known he was doing it, I mean, having her invite him to the wedding and then say “oh, you won’t be able to come?  too sad?”, it’s a little commentary on that classic moment.

#JabHarryMetSejal scene by scene part 11 the #DDLJ moment re-invented by @iamsrk This is perhaps my least favorite part of the movie.  Not because it is boring or unbeautiful or anything, just because it feels like the part that fits least with the rest of it.  

[defacewalls]

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

I’ve seen a few pieces of junk and a few mediocrities this month, but somehow I’ve managed to fit in some really interesting viewing into a schedule that doesn’t always allow for much of that. Think of this as a ‘column,’ for my own edification if no one elses, where I can talk about some things that inspire or please or enrich me - largely if not exclusively from cinema and video, and probably more in terms of some of what I like and love rather than a summary or synopsis of all I’ve seen. It’s not a consumption journal, more like a digestion aid. The French have Positif. My cine-zine, here, can be Digestif.

Jon Jost’s Frameup (1993) is further evidence that he’s one of the great geographical filmmakers of the age, not just in his formidable sense for landscapes, flora, or altitudes, but also for his sense of human rootedness. Movies like Sure Fire and The Bed You Sleep In (this era in Jost’s filmography is roughly my favorite) have a keen sense of locale. That’s expressed also through the characters, who are always granted the freedom to be nowhere and nothing: they are significant despite, maybe because, they are rarely eloquent or imaginative. Jost is mapping them and us, all of us, in a sharp sketch of a particular time and place’s cosmos. In this case, the Palouse and its thereabouts, where Ricky Lee hails from Walla Walla, Washington and the dry rolling hills and roadside gas stations feel like they’ve been there forever but could blow down in a gust tomorrow. 

And then characters use phrases like “I seen” and “I been,” and they’re reminders of some of my own family in that part of the country, and maybe one of the reasons why I like Jost’s Northwestern United States films is because they seem steeped in a world where other filmmakers are just well-meaning tourists.

There’s some quiet desperation for you in Frameup, which is sad and grand and relentlessly, defiantly, proudly provincial, whose political gestures do not amount to slogans.

Similarly, the political thrust of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal (1982) might have a certain blunt force but it’s refracted by the strategies of genius director Alan Clarke, whose career (like Jost’s) is marked by experimentation and ferocious political probity. Also, like Frameup, Baal features some split screens used to impressive effect, although in the Jost I think the effects are playing with aspects of time, and in the Clarke the impressions are largely building on visual and textural elements.

Plus David Bowie, with thin facial hair and gray teeth, is remarkably well cast here. His insolence and insouciance never bury the sense that he has some kind of drive, and a similarly destructive impulse born from the rot of an unjust world.

The best new film I have seen recently, and maybe the best film of 2018 that I saw, was If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018), which is simultaneously presents a handful of scenes or moments that capture the feeling of romantic optimism as well as anything I’ve seen, that can move seamlessly from domestic comedy to social commentary to stylized melodrama, and that also solves the puzzle of forceful political art by knowing how to arrange the elements so that the things left unspoken, or only barely said, become overwhelming.

And sometimes the unspoken elements can be too pointedly unspoken, or can represent a timidity, but not here. The assured way the material is handled represents another step forward for Jenkins, who is developing as a filmmaker, but not necessarily because he’s getting better so much as he is growing and churning through different kinds of material. I think Medicine for Melancholy and Moonlight are both excellent; I also like his short film for Future States, Remigration, which I recommend if you haven’t seen it.

The colors in If Beale Street Could Talk are quite beautiful, too, and that reminds me that one of the unexpected pleasures of two Charles B. Pierce films I watched recently was the color work. I’d seen The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) before, but only on a pan-and-scan VHS, and I’d never seen The Evictors (1979) until recently. The docudrama structure of the former and the true crime, magazine-flashback sensationalism of the latter are intriguing in their own right, but the subtle ways the production design popped have stuck with me. The shadows of fan blades in the sheriff’s office in Sundown--unremarked upon, “unstylized”--are exactly the sort of touch that mark a film as hopelessly low-budget or as wholeheartedly invested in detail. Either way, it works. The primary colors alongside the dusty tones of earth and police uniform show how much can be missed, when films too bound to attention-grabbing genre markers dictate a limited color palette.

Finally: word is coming in for the new Joanna Hogg film, and I look forward to it, especially as I continue to work (slowly) on a piece on her brilliant film Exhibition (2013), one of my favorites of the past decade. More to follow.

[onceandalwaysenglishmajor]

Easy as Apple Pie

More Greed!Hughes! Because I am trash. This installment includes more Bido and Gracia’s signature apple pie. @dailymaeshughes @ladywiltshire

After the third day, Gracia got tired of tripping over the sad lizard man every time she opened the door, so she invited Bido to stay with them. This necessitated some rearranging of the house and yet another conversation with the surprisingly over protective Colonel Roy Mustang. With a sigh, Gracia patiently explained to Roy (again) why she had invited Bido to live with them.

           “Your team decided he wasn’t dangerous, correct? You let him go. He came here. He refuses to leave here. He is for some reason fond of the spirit of avarice that is currently inhabiting my husband’s body. He is surprisingly good with Elicia. I have moved her bed into my room, and Bido is sleeping in Elicia’s room. Greed is still on the couch,” she told the colonel, who had gone strangely silent on the other end of the line.

           “I still think I should have my own room!” Greed yelled from the other room.

           “Bido is a contributing member of this household!” Gracia yelled back, hand over the receiver, before continuing her conversation with Mustang.

           “If you’re really that worried, send over one of your people. I know you’ve set up a base in the apartment three doors down on the other side of the hall.”

           “How do you know that?” Roy spluttered.

           “Maes is military intelligence. You don’t think he works everything out on his own, do you? It’s basically pillow talk,” Gracia said.

           “I did not need to know that,” Roy groaned. Gracia just laughed.

           “Who did you set up there, anyway? Falman or Fuery?” Gracia asked. Roy was silent on the other end of the line for a long moment.

           “I feel like I should be concerned about how much you know, Gracia Hughes,” he said seriously. Gracia laughed again.

           “Then it’s a good thing I’m on your side, isn’t it, Colonel?”

           “Yes, yes it is,” the colonel muttered quietly. Gracia could almost hear the gears turning on his mind through the phone.

           “Fine,” he said abruptly, as if coming to some sort of conclusion to an unspoken problem. “The lizard man can stay, as long as he doesn’t cause you any problems.” Gracia’s eyebrows shot up.

           “As if Greed doesn’t cause enough problems? Bido’s been nothing but polite, but you can trust that I will deal with the situation should the need arise,” she said, steel in her voice. Roy swallowed.

           “I don’t doubt that, that’s the scary part,” Roy said almost to himself. “Have a good day, Gracia.” The line went dead.

           “Dramatic as always,” Gracia muttered under her breath. And he still hadn’t told her which of his people he had set up in the apartment down the hall. Hanging up the phone, Gracia made a decision.

           “Ok crew, gather round! I’m going to need everyone’s help! We’re going to bake an apple pie for our new neighbor down the hall! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

           “I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the word I would use…” Greed said laconically.

           Shhh! Highes hissed in his head. Gracia’s apple pies are better than anything you have ever tasted! Shut up and do what she says so that we can have a slice.

           I need it, Greed decided.

           Good choice, Hughes said. Greed ignored him. It was his idea after all, and he was only going to participate for his own benefit.

           Whatever helps you sleep at night, Hughes muttered. Neither would acknowledge that between their nightmares, they didn’t sleep much.

             Gracia took a deep breath as she looked at the group standing in her kitchen, hoping that this idea wasn’t a huge mistake. Her daughter bounced eagerly, she loved baking with mommy, and knew what was coming. The homunculus currently inhabiting her husband’s body was trying to look bored, but something told Gracia that he was secretly interested. She supposed that his greed included knowledge, even something as simple as how to bake an apple pie. The lizard chimera (another new concept for Gracia, one she really didn’t want to wrap her head around) twisted the hem of his shirt nervously, as if he were still afraid of being kicked out at any second. This could very easily turn into an unmitigated disaster, Gracia thought. No. I can make this work.

           “Ok, aprons first!” she instructed cheerfully. Elicia squealed and raced to dig her favorite apron out of the bottom drawer. Gracia motioned for Greed and Bido to follow the toddler.

           “Help please?” Elicia asked, holding out the pink floral apron that was far too big for her. Laughing, Gracia swung Elica up onto a chair to tuck, fold, and tie the apron until it was the appropriate size. Bido picked a white one patterned with small pink hearts. Greed held a ruffled apron with ‘Kiss the Cook’ in looping red letters between two fingers, mildly horrified.

           “It’s that or get messy,” Gracia told him. Greed reluctantly slipped the apron over his head.

           “Tie it for me?” he asked with a smirk. Gracia leveled a stare at him.

           “I do believe you are perfectly capable,” she said, turning away from Greed. He fought to keep the pout off his face.

           Why doesn’t she respond to my charisma? Greed wondered.

           You don’t have anything she wants, Hughes told him.

           What?

           Your charm works because you offer what other people want, in exchange for what you want, whatever it might be in that moment. But you can’t offer Gracia any of the things she actually wants. Hughes explained.

           What could she possibly wants that I can’t offer? Greed scoffed.

           Her family safe, Hughes said, sadness hanging heavy in his voice. A better world for Elicia to grow up in.

           This conversation is over, Greed said abruptly. I’m going to bake that pie. Make those skills mine. No way was Greed even going to touch the emotions he could feel rolling off Hughes’ soul. Nope. Focus on the pie.

             Well. It wasn’t a complete disaster, Gracia thought as she surveyed the national disaster that was once her kitchen. Two gorgeous apple pies sat cooling on the counter. The rest of the kitchen, and her “helpers” however… Greed, Bido, and Elicia are covered in flour. And bits of apple. Greed has sugar in his hair, and Elicia has a smudge of butter on her check. Bido is nervously trying to brush flour off Greed and straighten the kitchen. He breaks Gracia’s heart a little, she knows he’s still afraid that she’s going to kick him out. Too late, Hughes always said she was the worst about picking up strays. (She won’t know for a while yet that she actually shares that quality with Greed.) Gracia scoops Elicia up and plants the toddler on her hip while she gave instructions to the other two.

           “I’m going to clean up Elicia, you boys get cleaned up, then we’ll take a pie down the hall to meet our new neighbor, ok?” She disappeared into the bedroom before Greed could offer an appropriately sarcastic reply.

             “Oh, Mrs. Hughes,” Fuery stuttered, opening the door. Gracia smiled softly, pleased that she had been right about which of his subordinates Mustang had coerced into monitoring her ‘situation’.

           “We just brought you an apple pie to welcome you to the building!” Gracia said with a wink. “I like to meet all the new residents. You’ll have to join us for dinner sometime,” she continued cheerfully. Fuery didn’t quite know how to handle it.

           My, my, our little family is growing at quite a rate.

           What are you blathering about now? Greed asked in frustration.

           In case you missed it, Gracia definitely just adopted the private. Fuery is officially part of the family now. It happened the moment the kid opened the door.

           This is not a family! Greed argued. I am not part of a family. I don’t need one.

           Check your trauma, Hughes told him without malice. You’re part of a family whether you like it or not. My daughter calls you ‘Uncle’. Hughes could feel Greed’s disgust and confusion.

           Don’t think too much about it, kid, he offered. It’s weird for me too.

           I am centuries old! I am not a kid, and definitely not your kid! Greed informed him petulantly. The argument only ended when Gracia turned the group around to eat their own apple pie and clean up the kitchen.

           Just maybe, Greed thought as he inhaled his second piece of pie, this family isn’t so bad.

[lodelss]

Samuel Ashworth| Longreads | September 2019 | 13 minutes (3,389 words)

  Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) are nestled in one another’s arms, sweat glistening on their muscled chests. They kiss softly and tenderly. It’s the middle of the night in a hotel somewhere on the campaign trail, and they are in love.

“So, if you were an animal, which would you be?” asks Ted.

“Let me think,” says Marco. “A manatee.”

Welcome, friends, to the glorious world of congressional fan fiction. If you’ve always associated fan fiction with the kind of people who hand-sew their own Star Trek jumpsuits, think again. Since going online in the late ’90s, fan fiction — a fan-created spinoff (sometimes way, way off) of an already-existing pop culture presence — has exploded. Its protagonists range from fictional, like Han Solo, to real, like Ariana Grande or members of the British Parliament. Published stories, which can range from a few hundred words to a few hundred thousand, number in the tens of millions, and boast an immense readership. The genre also remains one of the few resolutely not-for-profit corners of the internet: Since the work often involves trademarked intellectual property, fair use rules forbid fanfic authors from making money off their writing, unless they change all recognizable details, as E.L. James did with her BDSM Twilight fanfic story, Fifty Shades of Grey. Stories about congress fall under the penumbra of “Real-person fiction,” which isn’t bound by copyright laws in the same way.

For as long as people have been telling stories, people have been telling stories about those stories. It’s a basic human impulse: The Greeks wrote fan fiction about the Trojan War; the Chinese wrote it during the Ming Dynasty; the Spaniards wrote it about Don Quixote; the Victorians about Sherlock Holmes. Typically, we date its modern iteration from the late ’60s, when Star Trek fans began to circulate mimeographed zines full of their own adventures aboard the USS Enterprise. It was the punctuating backslash in “Spock/Kirk” that created the genre for stories which literalize unspoken sexual tension between same-sex characters: slashfic.

While not all fan fiction is erotic or romantic, a lot of it is. Pop culture mega-properties like Harry Potter or the TV show Supernatural have the biggest constituencies, but niche fandoms abound (for example, there is even one — mercifully chaste — story devoted to my favorite podcast, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour). One growing niche is political fan fiction; the influential fanfic site Archive of Our Own (AO3), with more than 2 million users, has a thousand stories dealing with 21st-century American politicians alone.

Fanfic is inherently delightfully goofy, but it’s also worth taking seriously. Fandom has become one of the driving forces of American pop culture. When provoked, fans can rescue a TV show like Brooklyn 99 or One Day at a Time from cancellation, or they can kill a project in its infancy, as numerous young adult novelists have found. Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

Most political fanfic features world leaders: AO3 features dozens of erotic romances between Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, or David Cameron and a rotating harem of male British MPs, while the past two years have seen a proliferation of meme-ready “Trump/Shrek” slashfic. Sample line: “Donald Trump was building a wall. No, not to keep out the Mexicans. He built it around his heart, to keep anyone from getting there and breaking it like Shrek did.”

But since the 2016 election, as American political engagement has boomed — the 2018 midterms had the highest voter turnout percentage for any midterm in 104 years — fan fiction scholars have noted a spike in stories featuring the U.S. Congress. What makes this boomlet strange is that at its core, fan fiction “is about genuinely liking a person,” says Dr. Amber Davisson, coauthor of Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. And historically, well, not many people like Congress. As of August of this year, the institution’s average Gallup approval rating was 17 percent — somehow an improvement over the first half of this decade.

And yet, the more I spoke to authors, the more congressional fan fiction began to make perfect sense as a response to our high-strung political moment. To Ehren Hatten, a prolific fanfic author living in Austin, Texas, people gravitate to fanfic because it’s “writing something you want to see.” During the Obama administration, Hatten wrote a series of stories modeled on the “Hetalia” universe — a Japanese webcomic turned manga and anime series featuring nations personified as broadly stereotypical characters (France, for instance, hits on every woman who crosses his path). In her tale, the embodiment of America storms onto the floor of Congress and delivers a scorching tirade against the Affordable Care Act, which he calls an unconstitutional attack on the “will of the people.” The law, he warns direly, will bring about another Civil War — and a justified one at that.

Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

“I was trying to point out how wrong and out of touch Congress has been for years,” Hatten told me. What she wrote was mostly “a way for me to get ideas out of my head,” but at the same time, she was annoyed by other Hetalia-based fan works “that would portray things like America being a superfan of Obama.” In the climax of her story, America triumphantly punches Obama in the face.

Similarly, Amanda Savitt, an ACA supporter, said writing fan fiction “made me feel like I had a little bit of control.” In her story, Steve Rogers is divorced from his role as Captain America’s alter ego and is now a young diabetic art student. (This is typical of the “alternate universe” genre of fanfic, which takes characters from one world and reimagines them in another, often with completely different characteristics. One such story features Rand Paul as a high school goth tormented by/in love with rich bully Donald Trump.) Afraid the Republican Party will kill the ACA and take away his access to health care, Steve and his best friend Bucky Barnes decide to marry so Steve can secure health insurance. Eventually, Steve and Bucky attend a town hall led by a Paul Ryan–esque figure. Steve delivers a scorching tirade against the repeal of the ACA. In the climax of her story, Steve triumphantly punches the Paul Ryan–esque figure in the face.

For many political fanfic writers, this catharsis is the main point of the exercise — to blow off steam. While William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility,” fan fiction omits the tranquility part, which may explain the sheer ferocity of a lot of the eroticism. One author in Alaska who wrote a story about Mitch McConnell (R-KY) having intense and almost feral sex with Paul Ryan (R-WI 1) after failing to repeal Obamacare told me they banged the whole thing in an hour when they were feeling ground-down and angry.

***

Somewhere in Washington, rain is pouring outside as a young person curls up under a blanket with their girlfriend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14). Suddenly, a blackout ripples across the city, plunging them into darkness.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

Yet for all the rage that has soaked into our political rhetoric lately, stories wherein characters physically attack politicians are rarer than you might think. Instead, most congressional fan fiction, even the really out-there stuff, is all about the romance. In one story, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 12) get intimate after a spirited game of one-on-one basketball. In another, Paul Ryan and former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL 18) long for each other from across the House floor. The exception to this rule is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose stories, so far, are loving but pointedly nonsexual. This has much to do with the fact that fanfic authors are overwhelmingly female, making sites like AO3 something of a refuge from the male gaze. “When the media reports on AOC and ‘girlifies her,’” Davisson explains, “they’re diminishing her. … [Her fans] care about her as a person.”

All of which brings us to Rubio and Cruz nuzzling, flushed with the thrill of new love and discussing their spirit animals. There are no fewer than 24 separate stories under the “Crubio” tag on AO3, but one of the first, “Fifty Shades of Red,” was written in 2016 by two high schoolers, who asked, not unreasonably, to remain anonymous in this article.

“Fifty Shades of Red” runs over 15,000 words long and chronicles a sweet but relentlessly raunchy (a phrase that could capture fan fiction at its core) senatorial affair, culminating in the two men admitting their love on a debate stage. They then exit stage right to apologize to their wives — who, in a classically Shakespearean twist, have also fallen in love with each other. “Our first taste of politics was Trump,” said one of the young writers, who collectively published the story under the nom de fan MikeRotch. “So it was kind of fun to turn the shitshow that was that election and make it into something more funny, and try to imagine that there’s something else inside these men aside from terrible policies and homophobia.”

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Both writers describe themselves as left-leaning and queer, and their story began as a dare during a sleepover. “We were just spiteful,” they said, but as they kept going, something unexpected happened. They became profoundly attached to their characters — Cruz as the gruff, masculine daddy, and Rubio as the besotted, timid younger man. A narrative which began as pure raunch turned into Cruz tenderly reading his favorite W.S. Merwin poem to Rubio, and Rubio confessing that “every day, I wake up questioning everything. Who I am. Who I want to be. Who I should be.” Their farce evolved into a real romance, fueled by an empathy that the authors never expected to feel for two men representing everything they loathed. That empathy stayed with them even after the story was written, and many of the other writers who wrote their own Crubio slashfic preserved it in their stories, too. On March 15, 2016, when Marco Rubio dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination, one of the MikeRotch authors called the other, crying.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt. Without the writer’s willingness to probe the motivations of each character, good or evil, the story will not go. The plot will sit there, limp as wet cereal, and convince no one. This is why so much overtly political fiction is lousy: Instead of empathizing, the writer sets out to convince and condemn. The story groans under its own seriousness. But resonating fan fiction revels in humanizing its villains — there are 33,995 works on AO3 wherein Harry Potter hooks up with his nemesis Draco Malfoy. “I think there are a few reasons for that,” Savitt told me, “one of which is the fact that in popular media, unfortunately, villains tend to be queer-coded.” Just look at Disney: Ursula from The Little Mermaid was deliberately patterned on the immortal drag queen Divine. In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent’s magical powers are just an outlet for her overflowing top energy. Male villains from Jafar to Hades to Scar (the Jeremy Irons version, not Chiwetel Ejiofor’s butch performance) are heavy-lidded, louche, effete. In fan fiction, authors have the power to overwrite that coding, to rethink the knee-jerk contempt we’re supposed to feel for these characters and depict them instead with an empathy the source material rarely affords.

This empathy makes congressional fan fiction remarkable in a political reality so divided that empathy isn’t just rare, it’s almost impossible. According to “The Perception Gap,” a 2019 study from the nonprofit group More In Common, the more politically engaged an American citizen is, the more likely they are to be wildly misinformed about the other side. Democrats flail around trying to divine the humors of the Trump voters, and Republicans believe that half of all Democrats are ashamed to be American.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt.

Fanfic authors, on the other hand, tend to delve into objective research about characters and their worlds. Most stories about congresspeople feature direct quotes from speeches (in “Fifty Shades of Red” Cruz makes Rubio read one of his speeches while they have sex — something the authors spent “an embarrassing amount of time” researching), nuanced conversations about policy, and often, strikingly honest presentations of the villains’ arguments. In Ehren Hatten’s stories, Democrats assail America’s embodiment with real talking points (uninsured people “drain the system when they end up in the emergency room”). America has his answers ready, of course, but Hatten’s congresspeople are far from straw men. “I’ve been called a bigot and a racist more times than I really thought possible,” Hatten told me. “However, I still feel humans in general want to remember that the people they disagree with are still human and not some creature from the black lagoon. At least that’s my hope.”

That hope — the hope that maybe some of it isn’t fictional — is what drives people to write stories about Congress. Authors who write humanizing stories about politicians “are hoping in some sense that they are that human,” says Anne Jamison, an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. If you can imagine a world where all Mitch McConnell needs is the love of a good man, or one where Susan Collins has a backbone, then you can convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, it could be true.

***

On the senate floor, senators are voting on whether or not to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Dean Heller (R-NV) weeps in the strong embrace of Mark Warner (D-VA), torn between his desire for moderation and his fear of a primary challenge.

“Be brave!” Warner urges him. Heller sniffles into a handkerchief.

Ten years ago, it might have seemed ludicrous to think that people would be penning heroic epics about members of the U.S. Congress. But troubled times are fertile soil for heroes. In Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo, Galileo says, “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Judging by our recent cultural diet, we live in an unhappy land. In the movies, heroes flourish: The Avengers, Star Wars, The Fast and the Furious. These blockbusting franchises depend upon the absolute, indisputable goodness of the hero’s quest (and, in the case of The Fast and the Furious franchise, the limitless redeemability of villains). Meanwhile, we’re living in the new golden age of television, which derives its popular and intellectual voltage from daring us to fall in love with charismatic antiheroes: Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Succession. The West Wing is dead, long live Veep.

In our fiercely divided time, the politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them. This distinction is crucial: “Fandom is perverse,” says Davisson. “I mean that in the best possible way. Fandom is about love, and love is seldom a rational thing.” Rather, love is blind, jealous, obsessive. What it really wants is more — more access, more story, more flesh, more time. More content.

As Davisson points out, “we’re very aware that everything we’re seeing is being produced. A lot of [fan fiction] is about wanting to see behind the curtain. [People] want to see that these politicians that they see on TV have real passion — something genuine.” It is this perceived sense of genuineness which gives us permission to trust — and therefore permission to love. And increasingly, the savviest politicians — like movie studios and TV networks — are learning how to operate the levers of that love.

Much of Donald Trump’s appeal as a politician is the way he offers completely transparent, un-stage-managed access to his inner thoughts. Being a fan of Trump is probably delightful, even addictive. At all hours of the day — or in the dead of night — his fans have access to his unfiltered inner monologue, stripped not only of the political calculus with which virtually every other politician speaks, but of any inhibition or caution whatsoever. In essence, Trump is a fountain of glittering content; he is pure fan service. He is the triumph of quantity over quality. And his fans are hammered drunk with love.

Few politicians have understood popular love better than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Instagram feed offers fans an unprecedented level of access to a politician’s personal life. From her first days in Washington, she has created a self-produced reality show. She brings followers (that word is significant here) into the madcap world of a freshman congresswoman. She takes them on trips up to her roof garden where she asks for advice on how to harvest her spinach plants, and she offers long, thoughtful reflections about shifting from a bartender’s salary to a congresswoman’s (she can now afford oat milk). She is perhaps the most relatable politician in the country. In addition to the tender, puppy-love-like stories about her on AO3, there is also a comic book, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force. The cover features her in a gleaming suffragette-white pantsuit, standing astride the prone form of a red elephant, holding her phone in one hand and beckoning the reader to join her with the other. “New party,” she says, “who dis?”

The politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them.

Drawing an equivalence between AOC and Trump is common to the point of cliché, and to do so ignores a crucial distinction between them: the nature of their fandoms. Fandom, at its best, is what patriotism should look like — loyal, welcoming, but not infinitely forgiving. Good fandom, according to Ashley Hinck, an assistant professor at Xavier University, “will hold you accountable.” But at its worst, fandom looks like patriotism at its most toxic: hostile to outsiders, utterly entitled, deaf to criticism. And increasingly, it’s getting harder to tell the difference.

On any given day in America, the president might signal-boost a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi. Theories floated on Fox News find their way into White House policy. Tweets intended as parody are accepted as legitimate. An echo chamber of commentators swiftly warp political developments whose audience does not care if they are accurate, so long as they are angry. In this world, the fear that fictional narratives — even those meant as jokes — can overwhelm the actual facts is well-founded. But for better or for worse, we are in an age of political fandom, and there’s no going back.

“We’ve entered a world in which fan identities matter,” says Hinck. “And if we underestimate fandom — and the importance of fan identities — it’s dangerous.” According to Hinck, the old demographics are outdated. The political world populated by easily targeted union members and soccer moms and Rockefeller Republicans is gone, and it is not coming back. The internet has broken the old molds of identity, and now we are gluing the shards back together into shapes that fit us better. “People are looking for new sources of belonging,” says Hinck. “People are members of these fan communities in the millions. These are huge voting blocs.”

“That’s true,” agrees Amber Davisson, but she points out that “the day you organize fandom, you destroy it. Creative work exists at the margins because they’re exploring the thing we don’t want to talk about. Fans need to exist at the margin because they need to push the rest of us. There will always be people pushing at the edges. And sometimes people pushing at the edges win.”

* * *

Samuel Ashworth is a regular contributor to the Washington Post Magazine, and his fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Hazlitt, Eater, NYLON, Barrelhouse, Catapult, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Rumpus. He is currently working on a novel about the life and death of a chef, told through his autopsy.

Editor: Katie Kosma Fact-Checker: Samantha Schuyler Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

[how2to18]

FOR A WRITER, reading Karl Ove Knausgaard is a master class in creating reader-writer intimacy, as devotees of his six-volume, 3,500-page autobiographical novel, My Struggle (2009–2011), well know. Even when he writes in a formal mode, as in the novel A Time for Everything (2004), which investigates the existence of angels through the retelling of biblical stories in a Norwegian landscape, we are thrust into the primordial psyche, as if standing in a circle around a communal fire and passing a live, beating, bloody heart.

In contrast, Knausgaard keeps the reader at a friendly distance in his Season quartet’s first two collections of essays, Autumn and Winter (2015–2016/2018), which are both presented as “Letters to an Unborn Daughter,” for whom he philosophically muses on topics of home and the world. In Spring, the third, he does something entirely different; he narrates a single day of life with that daughter, now three months old, during which they drive to the hospital where the mother of his four children is being treated for bipolar depression. The book is a bare-knuckles psychological thriller, sprung from the flashback of his interview with Child Protective Services. The fourth volume, Summer, is less propelling — a combination of musing on his quintessential subjects and diary entries. Midway through the book’s June diary, Knausgaard writes about having once considered crafting a religion-themed thriller under a pseudonym, giving me reason to anticipate some genre fun after the great tease of Spring.

The quartet’s parts, which are fragmentary and epistolary, do not have the stand-alone world-building weight of, say, the individual volumes of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet; Summer, in particular, is uneven and uncategorizable. Ingvild Burkey, who so capably and poetically translated Autumn, Winter, and Spring, has returned to finish the series; Scandinavian artists Vanessa Baird, Lars Lerin, and Anna Bjerger, respectively, illustrated the first three books, while German painter Anselm Kiefer provided Summer’s art. Each month is organized by topics — Lawn Sprinklers, Fainting, Ground Wasps, and the recurring subject The Bat (one of my favorites) — with June’s and July’s lists followed by diary entries. The diaries comprise his day-to-day activities, such as going to the doctor for a checkup on his bloody stool (a cliff-hanger from Spring) only to find himself on the table studying his own nakedness, embarrassed by what he considers to be a disappointing penis size. As always, he is unflinching in self-examination.

Surprisingly, in these diaries the first-person narrative is taken over by the voice of a 73-year-old Norwegian woman remembering her affair with an Austrian soldier during World War II. Based on an actual woman his grandfather knew, her narrative is underwhelming, and not nearly as interesting or courageous in its revelations as Knausgaard himself. Taking on a female perspective is refreshing, but he fails to give this character equal gravitas. He also rather disappointingly leaves out an ending diary for August, though his final chapter “Ladybirds” brings a sufficient conclusion by considering the Anthropocene — when every part of the globe seems to either be freezing, flooding, or frying at any given time — and thus suggesting the inevitable world’s end.

Despite his despondency, Knausgaard is, finally, an optimist; his way of seeing in the quartet most often leans toward description of nature’s inexhaustible beauty, such as this rhapsody in praise of birches:

[H]ow in winter they lost their volume entirely, like dogs or cats with shaggy fur who seem to shrink when they get wet; how their thin twigs were covered with pale green buds in spring, which no matter how old the trees were — and some of them must have been my grandparents’ age — made them look young and bashful; how their small sequin-shaped leaves hung in dense garlands in summer, so that their foliage resembled gowns; and how in the early-autumn storms they could look like ships with sails stretched taut by the wind, or swans beating their wings as they rose from the water.

Beauty abounds. Here, on the subject of Summer Night and disappointment in love, Knausgaard gently sets the scene at a hotel with a woman he loved:

We didn’t say anything, we didn’t need to say anything, I thought, it would just spoil it, for the silence was like a vault above the landscape. From here we could see the moon suspended high above the forest, perfectly round. With no competition from mountains or cities it owned the sky. Though the water around us was still and smooth, it seemed to well up, I thought. Now and again a faint splash sounded, from fish feeding near the surface. Isn’t it beautiful, I said. Yes, she said. It’s very beautiful. And soon it will start to get light, I said. Yes, she said. Neither of us knew then that it would be the last night we spent together, but over the next two days everything that had lain unspoken between us came out, and we found no other way to handle it than to break up. It still hurts to think about it, that we were together that night, which is the most beautiful night I have experienced, and that we can’t have shared any of it, as I thought we did. The “we” I had felt so strongly held only me.

In a February 13, 2018, BBC News interview, Knausgaard insists that he’s the opposite of the narcissistic brooder some readers assume he is: “I am a very positive and optimistic person,” he says. Despite all that is happening politically in this world, “there are more good people than bad people […] more clever people than stupid people.” He proclaims his happiness, asserts that writing brings life to him. When asked what purpose or message this quartet may hold for his daughter, he answers, “Life can be and will be incredibly hard, but it is always worth living.”

This may come as a surprise to his steady readers, and to those who feel the world is falling apart. For the past six years, one of my oldest, closest friends has been answering calls at a suicide hotline from staggering numbers of those who increasingly believe the opposite about life. My nephew’s bar mitzvah fell only a few days after the Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain suicides, and his group of seven finished their respective presentations with the stats on American suicides and those hospitalized for attempts. The audience gasped.

This also might be the kind of moment we have come to expect from Knausgaard — from Norwegian writers, in general. Hanne Ørstavik’s 1997 novella, Love, which was published this year in English with a translation by Martin Aitken (co-translator of Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book Six), follows a young mother and her 10-year-old son as they wander separately at night through a carnival in the town to which they have just moved without knowing that the other is also out alone in the snow. The pacing of their inner turmoil, loneliness, and psychological dread never lets up — it’s a relentlessness reminiscent of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s Thelma (2017) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), as well as an endless succession of these countries’ desolate works. We assume Scandinavian artists favor bleak inner landscapes, and they appear especially adept at portraying the kind of despair so many feel, all over this globe.

In Knausgaard’s Spring, he flashes back to a singular happy trip to a festival in Sydney with his (now ex-)wife during which they discuss the particular relevance of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to their own relationship. Teased with this comparison, I wanted to read Knausgaard’s specific Scenes, rather than the beautifully protective interstitials and enclosed miniatures (I assume to shield his daughter) that are meant to foil what the reality of living with mental illness has otherwise been for them. I wanted to shake each scene like a snow globe for more fascinating possibilities, even if his periodic restraint throughout Spring serves the tension between darkness and the romance of living.

Whenever he opens wide in the dark, where things are seriously falling apart, he always returns, like a mindfulness teacher, to the idea that if he is still and notices what is around him — nature, objects, sound, or even just the room he sits in — he can find infinite and inspiring awe. I have found myself painting leaves in frost, seaweed, and pebbles on asphalt, then wondering would they be my subjects had I not read him. He brings it all alive in his prose, makes it shimmer. Whether intellectually parsing for meaning or playing this existential video game of political turmoil, horror, and heartache, his writing flows easily from quiet, thoughtful engagement to ecstatic communion with the world.

Early in the Summer diary entries, Knausgaard is reading the Swedish scientist-cum-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg to try and understand how his transformation occurred and observes,

The shift from the outer to the inner world is so abrupt, and the inner world so chaotic and heavy with meaning that at first it is nearly impossible to orient oneself in.

What is happening with him?

When I was reading his journal earlier this evening it struck me that my inner being, the person I am to myself, has changed in recent years, and how often I get the feeling that I am no one, that I am merely a place which thoughts and feelings pass through.

These thoughts and memories no longer belong to him, he concludes, because others have now read them — he has given them away. He decides that ultimately there is freedom in that, since the writing process becomes a self-less state:

When the person writing about him or herself has moved out of the self, thus incorporating an external gaze, a strange kind of objectivity arises, something which at one and the same time belongs to the inner and the outer, and this objectivity makes it possible to move around in one’s own self as if it belonged to another, and then we have come full circle, for that movement requires empathy.

Over lunch in a beautiful cabin overlooking the woods, a good friend, also a writer, blurted out, “I have a great relationship with my mind!” As this seemed to come out of nowhere, I burst into laughter. It felt impossible; I experience constant subconscious chatter within mine. I wondered if having a great relationship with one’s mind is a necessary ingredient in constructing a solid self-narrative, as well as in achieving a hint of serenity. Knausgaard’s deeply personal, bracing internal explorations surely suggest that it is. He may be done with this quartet, the My Struggle series, and autofiction altogether, but I still want more of it. That kind of passionate literary intimacy is rare. And wanting more and even more — isn’t that just like being in love?

¤

Lisa Teasley is the author of the acclaimed novels Heat Signature and Dive, and the award-winning story collection, Glow in the Dark. She is senior fiction editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

The post Ecstatic Communion: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Seasons Quartet Conclusion, “Summer” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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