#I probably will actually end up buying two stickers and keeping one forever for emotional stability XD

[dragonsruby]

Buy multiple of the same sticker! Use one for fun, and keep one forever for emotionally stability.

Sounds good to me!

[bellasweetwriting]

Fix His Broken Heart

Jess Mariano x f.reader

(not my gif)

masterlist

request: Hiii, i want a jess fic🥺 theres not enough jess mariano fics here, how about after rory goes to visit him at truncheon he meets the reader and she helps him move on from rory and he falls in love with reader. 💞💞

requested by: @beautiful-thinking

note: I’m a big literati shipper so this was hard but also fun to write I really love this

warnings: movie references, drinking, gilmore girls s2,s3 and s6 spoilers, some fancy vocabulary, Logan hate

word count: 1,7k

reading time: 7 min

And he saw her walk away to his arms. She found comfort in another guy. She moved one.

He hated himself for realizing that after all these years of knowing this person, still, it isn't enough. He and Rory evolved separately, they don't have the same goals or the same resources. As much as they try, it seemed like destiny didn't want their paths to cross one another.

He realized that he lost her as soon as she walked out of that door. She was gone. What now?

He'll probably see her again at Luke and Lorelai's wedding; hell, he'll even see Logan there also. The way he despited that guy. He cheated on her, and still, there she was, madly in love with him.

Logan is better than him in Rory's eyes, and he couldn't do anything to change that. He was a forgotten part of her story, an item locked inside a box that she opens when she feels lost. She probably doesn' think of him anymore like she used to.

But he thinks of her at least once a day. When he walks through the bookstore and notices the new edition of Dawn Powell's My Home Is Far Away, or when his friends bring coffee and offer to him, reminding him of her slight coffee addiction. Who's he kidding? There's nothing "slight" about Rory Gilmore's coffee addiction, it's concerning.

Any little thing reminded him of her and the fact that now he's sure she doesn't think of him anymore... saddens him.

Everyone was celebrating the success of the event that day, while Jess drowned his sorrows in a cold beer, also glancing over the girls that walked past him.

"I should warn you that if you are planning to Kurt Cobain on my bar, don't." That expression provoked an immediate reaction on Jess's face. "Not a fan of dark humor?"

"Not when it comes from the mouth of a stranger, not," he replied, making the girl chuckle. "Do you always attend your costumers like that, Rick Blaine?" Asked Jess naming the main character of Casablanca, who happened to owned a bar/restaurant in the 1940s.

"Rick Blaine? Don't tell me you are one of those guys who listen to The Clash on repeat and think they are better than the rest of the world because they know references from black and white movies and have read at least one book by Bukowski in the last three months." Jess drank from his beer, making the girl opened her mouth widely. "Oh, God, you are! A living Danielle Steel novel main character drinking alone in my bar." He laughed.

"I used to be that guy," Jess corrected her. "I've changed."

"A girl?"

"A breakup with a girl, to be fairer. I work at a little bookstore called Truncheon. We are all independent writers, and to give you some credit, some of us do look like Danielle Steel's characters. Not that I have read anything by her, though."

Jess wasn't like that. He didn't tell people he doesn't know about himself or his personal life, but for some reason, probably the effects of the alcohol in that beer were making him loosen up a bit with this complete stranger. Yeah, a significant event has happened in his life. The girl he thought he was going to be with forever decided to be with someone else rather than him, and he hasn't thought of anyone else romantically. He's so used to being alone, so used to not having anyone to actually talk to, that, maybe, liberating his internal thoughts and regrets with someone he isn't going to see again is probably for the best.

Not a therapist or a friend, just, someone external who isn't going to dig dipper in his subconscious to understand his situation and actions or someone who is involved in the story; someone who just―listens.

"You read one, you read them all." She commented. "Independent writers, huh? Have you published anything I have written?"

"Probably not," he said with that typical modesty he has earned through the pass of the years. "I just have one book out, is a self-published, so..." She nodded. "I actually did a little road trip, trying to make independent bookstores like mine to put them in the store. Probably, by the end of the month, I'll have twenty bucks and a sticker that says: «keep trying, champ.»"

"How poetic," the barista murmured, and both chuckle.

"Do you have a copy of your book?" She asked, and he nodded, giving it to her. "The Subsect, by Jess Mariano. Truncheon Books," she read before turning it around and reading the back cover. "«A self-published, prominent and dark-humored coming of age short novel following the unique life of J., a seventeen-year-old with no place to call home.» That's dark. How much for it?"

"Twenty bucks and a sticker," she chuckled, "or, a free beer."

"Sounds like a fair deal, Jess Mariano." He smiled at the mention of his name. "I'm Y/N."

"Nice to meet you, Y/N." She placed the book inside her apron with a tiny smile. "So you work here."

"Oh, you said that because of the apron and the fact that I'm behind the counter? No, I'm just a big fan of... college bars in Philadelphia." The sarcasm in Y/N's voice made Jess grin. "My brother owns the place. He lets me live upstairs while I go to college, and I pay rent by working here. The books you see behind me are mine. I study on my break."

"What are you studying?"

"English. I want to be a screenplay writer." He sighed before shaking his head. "What?"

"A film writer? Why?"

"I love films. I love watching them, reviewing them, analyzing them. I want to write masterpieces. What's wrong with that? At least I'm not writing coming of age short novels."

"It's not a coming of age novel, that's just the hideous synopsis that my poet friends come up with for the book. It's actually a lot deeper than that."

"The only way of finding that out is reading it, right?"

"Right."

Both looked at each other for a few seconds before she asked for his glass to refill that free beer she offered him.

"How about... if I come tomorrow, take you out, and you buy me that beer? How about that?" Y/N chuckle before agreeing.  He didn't believe it actually worked. He had tried to ask girls out in the last two years, but they've always said that they weren't interested. But there was something different and intriguing about Y/N that had caught the young writer's attention. "At what time do you finish class?"

"Pick me up at eight here, I'll wait."

"Cool."

"Cool."

...............................................................................................................................

He was nervous.

A date. Jess has never even been on one before. Not even with Rory. He never took Rory on a date like a dinner or a movie before they started going out. He used to tease her, and she fell for him, God knows why.

He took Rory on dates when they were dating, although if you count the car ride as a date. No, it wasn't a date. She was Dean's girlfriend at the time, and he crashed her car.

Why did she even like him? He crashed her car for God's sake. If he was Rory, he would have hated himself.

He hated himself already.

It wasn't like in books. Girls are complicated, and the male writers he is so used to reading about usually don't talk about dates and how to get a girl; the girl is already in love with the main character.

She did mention Danielle Steel. Did she read that kind of dramas, like Nicholas Sparks and John Green, where the characters just die in each other's arms like a shoddy Shakespeare tragedy imitation? Did she like that? He didn't know how to be a "romance" kind of guy. He still used the "bully her because you like her" technique, and maybe that's the only part of him that hasn't changed with the years.

He still didn't know how to communicate and express himself. He still wasn't used to talking about his emotions or being in a healthy relationship where there's no such thing as privacy. He wasn't born to assist to cotillions and balls, wear tuxes like James Bond and use fancy words gentleman-like, such as "Farewell," "Luxury," "Eloquent," and "Hope you had a marvelous evening, thanks for joining us in our humble and splendid gathering."

But that was Rory's world. Probably Logan used words like that without even knowing the meaning of them.

He quickly noticed that thinking about his ex-girlfriend before a date wasn't a good sign.

Maybe he should stand her up? No, that is an old Jess move. He is a changed man, he doesn't treat girls like that anymore. He is better, he is more mature, he wants to achieve something, actually becoming a better and selfless person who thinks about the consequences before acting. He wasn't going to stand Y/N up.

By a quarter past eight, he was standing on the bar's entrance, making eye contact with the barista from the previous day. Y/N smiled at him before saying goodbye to the guy next to her, grabbing her purse and walking towards Jess.

"Thought you wouldn't show up, Romeo."

"Can't believe you took me for a coward."

"In my defense, I saw you drinking your problems away yesterday." He nodded before putting her coat on her shoulders for her, making Y/N smile. "What a gentleman."

"There are so many things you don't know about me. You would surprise yourself."

"Oh, let me guess: you've never been on a date before."

"What? Why would you say that?"

"Well, because we are walking instead of driving."

"I have a dark past with cars and girls. You wouldn't want me to be behind the wheel while you are inside the car after you hear it, believe me."

"Good to know." Both laughed as they walked under the streetlights of Philadelphia. "I've never been on a date either," she admitted, taking him by surprise, but not as much to make a comment about it.

Jess has never felt more comfortable. Next to her, he felt like he was free of judgments. Starting a new story, blank page, blank notebook. He felt safe, and he hasn't felt safe in another person's arms in such a long time.

This was good for him. To finally... move on.

And who better than her to fix his broken heart.

[neroli9]

I haven't yet read my copy of Beating the Story by Robin D. Laws, but I am sure glad to have it! He's the source of two of the most useful pieces of writing advice I've ever read.

First, what he wrote about recurring characters in RPGs and dramatic poles. Here, he further explains the idea of "dramatic poles":

Compelling ongoing dramatic characters possess dual natures, or internal oppositions. We want them to overcome one of these and realize the other. Another way to express this is to say that the characters are torn between two internal forces or impulses. These are the poles of a dramatically active character.

It's a neat, understandable way of expressing an idea I'd read before in Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting, that we're fascinated by a character's internally consistent contradictions. Sans is a great example of this: one pole is that he's an apathetic nihilist who's given up on returning to wherever it is he's from and is convinced he can't stop the anomaly, and the opposite pole is that he has things and people he deeply cares about and he always wants to believe in and support Frisk. Sans as a Lost Soul is a Sans that's veered nearly all the way towards the first pole and seems as if he may be lost to it forever; when Frisk is able to call him back from despair, when he grins and says 'nah, i'm rooting for ya, kid,' we rejoice that he's swung to the second pole -- apparently for good.

The advice about using a major character's poles to create supporting characters that reflect on them and pull them towards one pole or the other is basically what I used to develop the APJFM supporting characters, particularly Ionathia and Adaleia, Reader's old best friends. They were initially flat characters who served to deliver information about Reader's past, but when I identified Reader's two major dramatic poles -- her wish for love and desire to be open and connect with other people contrasted with her inability to trust anyone and her tendency to withdraw emotionally into herself -- it became easy to see how they would reflect these poles. Hyper-emotional, empathetic and earnest Ionathia is a foil to the first pole, while the prickly, proud Adaleia is a foil to the second one. Once I truly understood all three of them, then it became easy to slip into their heads and write for them, and they ended up adding to the story, instead of just being there so we could learn that the whitepox cure was developed in the Courtyard and that Reader was once linked to Prince Jerren.

The other useful tidbit I've picked up from Laws is from the RPG system Trail of Cthulhu. He recommends that when you're creating a non-player character for your players to interact with, you give them "three things," or three memorable quirks. He gives a great many examples of these, which I actually like to break down into six categories:

Physical characteristic (such as "red, curly hair down to her waist" or "missing his pinky and ring fingers on his right hand")

Repeated motion or tell (such as "cracks her knuckles on her jaw when she's nervous" or "constantly applying fruit-flavored lip balm, then licking it off")

Verbal tic (such as "Constantly misquoting Shakespeare" or "always calls little kids 'Peanut'")

Personal item (such as "A sapphire and diamond engagement ring" or "A water bottle covered with stickers from various places she's visited")

Hobby or skill (such as "Likes to crochet doilies" or "An avid softball player")

Odd habit or consumption pattern (such as "Reads five advice columns a day" or "Always keeps a stash of candy in his pocket")

These can then be conflated to make the characters even more memorable. Imagine, if you will, this character:

She wears a sapphire and diamond engagement ring, which she twists around her finger when she's nervous, and can't shut up about how it's just like Princess Diana's. (2, 3 and 4)

She draws attention to her beautiful lips by constantly applying fruit-flavored lip balm from one of the dozen tubes she keeps in her purse, then licking it off. (1, 2, 4 and 6)

She flirts with every man she comes across, calling them pet names like "cupcake" or "handsome" and offering to read their palms. (3, 5 and 6)

Think you'd remember her? (Think you'd mourn her when she got her throat torn out by a Deep One?)

I'm not actually all that great at coming up with details like this, so codifying quirk design in this way has really helped me. I spent some time considering these for the characters in APJFM, which helped me define their personality and what's important to them; that definition then helps shape the story. For example, Sasha likes pulp fiction -- that falls under "personal item," as she treasures the stack of magazines Reader's been bringing her during her stay in the hospital, and "consumption pattern." This led to several character defining details: 

In the 1930s, what kind of teenage girl likes pulp fiction? Perhaps someone who's individualistic and contrary, with a vivid imagination.

Reader doesn't care all that much, honestly, but she felt that as Sasha's substitute mother, she probably should try to prevent her from reading trashy stories. This shows the contradiction she feels between her roles as Sasha's sister and Sasha's guardian, and the tension it produces in her.

Sasha got pissed at this limit on her freedom and started shoplifting the magazines. This tells you rather a great deal about the true personality of this girl who, so far in the story, is stuck in bed.

Since Sasha got sick, Reader's been buying the magazines herself and reading them to her, because she was desperate to try to make her dying sister happy and felt guilty for the previous fight about something that now seems so trivial.

Sasha softened towards Jerren because he spent hours reading her favorite stories to her. That is, her love for these stories also constitutes a weakness.

The upshot is, Robin D. Laws knows his stuff, and I'm excited to be reading his new book. I'll probably review it at some point in the future. If you're interested in the craft of writing stories, right now you can get a digital and physical copy for $20.