#I think I’ll just sketch out day 6 to get back some motivation | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tendermiasma · 4 years ago

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i’m not even into overwatch anymore but i just wanted to say I ADORE your art style and hope to develop my own into a similar semi-realism leaning...have you made a post about your art journey? I’m assuming I just need to buckle down and do anatomy studies but any tips are very welcome!! Ty for your time <3

Oh man thank you! I’ve never made a comprehensive post about how I got to *gestures* whatever this point in my art this is, and I definitely sat here wondering what “art journey” means for me since I always feel like I’m stumbling around so I’ll answer as completely as I can. But a great way to develop a realism-minded eye is to draw from photos and life. Everyone in the world has said it over and over but it really gets it done, it’s not any more complicated than that. It’s how I started when I was little and it’s not something I planned, but the Legolas posters were right there so how could I not? Your own non-realism “stylistic” touch will bubble up whether you want it to or not and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s not something you need to look for because it happens on its own, whether it’s you seeing something another artist is doing that you like and assimilating it into your work, or it’s your own unique way that you absorb information from the world and use it to solve problems in the drawing in front of you. Some new artists also still have the idea that using references is cheating-- I’m not blaming them, sometimes this weird thing is circulated by more established people as well-- but this is a very small minority. Please use references. I’d be lost without them. The Castlevania team has a giant collection of references for faces of every character from every angle, props, etc. and I always have a second screen up with 10 different sheets of whoever I’m drawing. Feeding yourself info is essential to getting better. Look at how other artists handle something you’re having a problem with too. If they’re doing a similar pose or something, study their drawing and ask yourself what specifically, extremely technically about that drawing is convincing-- what marks are where, and what is the quality or direction of the strokes? Try it out on your own drawing. If you’re stuck, become aware of if you’re holding on too tightly to what you think something should look like. I have to remind myself this as well. Really try to let go of the idea you have in your head about how something works and simply try instead to draw what you see, even if it feels weird. The results are often pleasantly surprising.

I have a funny relationship with studies. You seem to be looking at them like a chore and I feel the same way. It’s impossible for me to sit down and just draw something over and over, disconnected from emotion or a larger narrative. I think a wonderful way to “study” is to incorporate those studies into a project that you wanted to do anyway. I’ve used my minicomics to get better at background painting or specific figure poses that I needed for the story but wasn’t sure how to do. I’m a very “oops I need it now better learn TODAY” kind of artist, if that suits you better than buckling down and doing anatomy studies for hours. Both are great ways to improve, but you have options for how to get there.

In terms of how much time I spend drawing.. well lol it’s a lot. I almost typed “but I don’t do it every day” but yes, my jobs have made sure that I do (I tend to separate personal drawing and job drawing). But the truth is, to get better, a lot of very focused drawing time is important; how much of it is up to you and your schedule. You can sit down for 6 hours and doodle or you can sit down for 3 with an extremely critical eye. It’s about the volume of time as well as focus and I don’t have a clear answer for it, but I can point to one specific year in my life where I made artistic progress like I’ve never seen from myself since. I drew a comic with regular updates during that time and, looking back, the art was not good. But the point was, I was drawing for 7 hours a day after work, at least 5 days a week, and actively looking to draw things that I hadn’t done before or knew that I wasn’t good at, and the result was that every single update was almost like it was drawn by a different person-- readers noticed and commented on the progress as well. It was very much an art bootcamp and I wouldn’t have the skills I do at this point if I hadn’t done it. It’s important that you’re loving what you do if you do it for yourself! That’s how you get through big projects and continue to be excited with where you are. Love is one of the most important motivators and discipline-keepers in art, in my experience. Draw what sets your brain on fire and attack it wholeheartedly even if it’s really weird or niche, not what you think you should be drawing, and you’ll improve a million times faster.

Art journey in terms of what I’ve done with my life (if this is what you meant from the beginning I’M SORRY I’m just trying everything you might have meant) uhhh I haven’t been to art school. I have no idea what my relationship with art would be like now if I’d had any formal training and I don’t really dwell on it. I could either be a testament to being able to get by without it or an example of someone who has no idea what she’s doing at all and lacks many basic foundational art skills. I have an architecture degree. I love architecture, I love the language of space we build for ourselves, and I’m truly, deeply glad for that eye-opening and often grueling experience, but I think my current field is a much better fit. Before animation I worked as a graphic designer mainly drawing storyboards for commercials and internal-industry stuff-- lots and lots of quick colored sketches (one of our main clients was a big glass company and my god I never thought I’d draw so much glass in my life). I was able to do that job due to the skills I developed through personal work. Maybe I’d be a hundred times more powerful if I went to art school! Maybe I’d be completely burned out and bitter and not drawing anymore at all! I just don’t know. I have friends who have had both experiences. Whether you choose art school or not it’s best to keep tabs on if the art you’re currently making brings you joy. Joy and struggle aren’t mutually exclusive. Oftentimes I’m drawing something I care deeply about but it’s VERY FUCKING HARD and I’m frustrated but it’s worth it.

I also do everything while being very scared of the thing. I have a lot of deep-seated anxiety that I’m constantly trying to root out and my brain compulsively twists things around into why I can’t do something, why people secretly know I’m below-par and are just too nice to tell me, how I’m “tricking” people into thinking I’m better than I am, etc. It’s so bad that my first thought when I was initially offered the art test for my current job was to say no; not because I didn’t want it so badly it hurt, but because I thought I’d be too much of a disappointment. After completing the test I spent an hour figuring out the most gracious way to apologize for not being enough. It’s common, but not something to accept and we’re all working on it. I just thought it was important to mention because art is also a mental journey and forces you to do all this navel-gazey shit in order to advance, and feeling like you are Not Enough is rife in the creative community. The work feels entangled with my value as a person because art is a massive part of my life. Something I’m learning is that I don’t have to be confident or sure of myself all the time. This ensures that the process is usually painful and frightening. Often there’s no way to make it less painful or frightening, and I just have to hold my breath and do it. An oddly comforting thing to me the past couple years is to remind myself that the scary thing I’m about to do won’t be the scariest thing I’ll ever do. I implies both that this isn’t the pinnacle of my progress and also that I will inevitably get over it. If you continue with art you’re going to run into things like this and I guess if it was me it would’ve been helpful to know I’m not alone in it.

I hope that maybe answered some of your questions, maybe? If you have some specific questions feel free and I’ll try my best. Hope you have a good day/night!

#anon #asks

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quickspinner · 4 years ago

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Month of Miracles Day 9 - Tradition

Find the prompt list here!

I’m mixing up the prompts a bit here because I had a plan for ‘Moments of Wonder’ that can’t happen until a little bit further on in the Hallmark AU. I was just gonna do the next prompt while I got a little bit ahead on the Hallmark ones since they tend to be longer, but...this one wouldn’t leave me alone and I didn’t have enough time today to do both. Honestly, I might not be able to keep up the one a day through the next week, but whatever I miss, I’ll catch up on Christmas week where we have some planned time off.

Marinette understood why her mother thought this trip would do her good, but the truth was that she felt at loose ends rattling around in Gina’s old-fashioned but large house, all alone. At home, there was always somewhere to pitch in, something that needed doing. Gina kept her life pretty streamlined, and when she was home, she delighted in fixing up anything that might be out of sorts in her home. Gina was just too efficient, so other than keeping her plants alive, which really wasn’t that difficult since Gina kept mostly hardy breeds that could survive being left under the care of a neighbor for weeks at a time, there just wasn’t much for Marinette to do.

Finally Marinette planted herself on the couch, set the TV to a channel covering the most recent fashion shows, and sat down to sketch. She’d have a lot of work to catch up on when she got home, so she might as well take advantage of some of this quiet time to get ahead.

She sketched a few basic silhouettes to warm up and get the juices flowing, but after that...nothing came. Every time she started a line, she quickly rubbed about it again. Stop editing yourself, she scolded. Just get it out, and you can fix it later.

It didn’t work. Everything she did felt wrong. Audrey’s complaints echoed in her mind. Too derivative, too pedestrian, where’s the art, Marinette? That’s why I hired you, and all you ever give me is this trash! Did I make a mistake bringing you on?

Did Audrey make a mistake? Marinette put down her sketchbook and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them as she dropped her face against her legs, fighting down the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. She swallowed hard and tried to breathe.

Okay. So she couldn’t draw right now. That was okay. She’d do...something else.

She got up, leaving her sketchbook on the couch and the television on, and went into the kitchen. She started pulling out ingredients without conscious thought, the spiral in her mind continuing until she actually stood in front of the mixer, measuring cups in hand.

Marinette took a deep breath. She began measuring out ingredients, repeating the recipes in her head as she worked. This, at least, was something she could do. Nobody got all twisted up over cookies, after all.

Well. Except Audrey are you trying to destroy my figure you’re FIRED Bourgeois. Marinette pushed that thought aside. Rose would appreciate cookies, she was sure. Gina’s neighbors would too. Maybe even Sally...would it be insulting to take some to Sally? She tried to remember if she’d seen cookies for sale in the café, and finally gave up. She’d just make some, and figure out who could eat them later.

This was something she could do, and nobody could say she didn’t do it well, and that...that mattered to her right now. She could feel herself relaxing into the process, and she began to consider what she could make. Gina’s supplies weren’t as extensive as Tom’s, but there were still plenty of options to choose from…

Her first batch was in the oven, and she was making some simple Russian teacakes for a breather, when Gina’s old-fashioned doorbell rang.

Frowning, Marinette grabbed a towel from the oven and went to the door, wiping at least one hand as clean as she could get it before she opened it.

If she’d expected anything, it was a package delivery, or maybe even a neighbor stopping by with some cookies of their own—this seemed like the kind of place where that stuff happened.

On the doorstep stood a grey-haired woman with a bright smile, glasses that made her blue eyes look huge, feet well apart, and her hands solidly on her hips. Behind her stood Luka Couffaine, his lips pressed together in exasperation, propping up a large Christmas tree. He gave her a tight smile when her eyes flicked over him, but the woman in front of him had a presence that was impossible to ignore.

“Um,” Marinette said, smiling uncertainly. “Can I help you?”

The woman stuck out her hand. “Hello, lass. Marinette, isn’t it? Anarka Couffaine! Yer grandma be a friend of mine. When I heard you were keeping house for her while she’s away I thought we’d best be bringing over her tree!”

“Her tree?” Marinette asked, mystified. She glanced at Luka, and couldn’t help a smile when he mouthed I am so sorry at her over his...mother? Surely she must be his mother. Only a parent could put that look of embarrassed frustration on a grown man.

“Aye, Gina always gets a tree from us,” Anarka was saying. “Thought she wouldn’t be needing one this year since she’s gone. Hated to think of her not having one when she gets back, but it makes sense, no one here to take care of it and all. But since you’re here, all’s well. You can decorate it and have it ready for Gina when she comes home. She’s still planning t’be back for Christmas Day, aye?”

“Uh, yes,” Marinette said, reaching up to tug a pigtail and remembering just in time that she’d pinned up her hair, and that her hands were still dusted with flour despite the wiping. “She and my parents and all were supposed to meet back here for Christmas Eve, so I guess—but I don’t know if—”

“Ah, that’s what I thought,” Anarka burst out cheerfully. “She’ll definitely be wanting her tree, then. No worries, lass, we know where everything is. We won’t be in your way but for a moment.”

She didn’t push past Marinette, but it was clear she intended to move forward, and Marinette backed out of the doorway on instinct.

Luka gave her a kill me now look as he hoisted the tree and followed his mother. Marinette giggled in spite of herself, and closed the door behind them.

True to her word, Anarka knew exactly where to find Gina’s Christmas tree things, and ordered her son around with a brusqueness that left no room for argument or debate. Marinette hovered, a bit at a loss for what to do. She wondered if she should go change into clean clothes, but Anarka said they weren’t staying long, and she still wasn’t done in the kitchen—

The oven timer chimed, and she automatically turned to tend to it. She hesitated in the door to the kitchen for just a moment, but Luka was half under the tree, getting it adjusted in the stand while Anarka barked orders. Neither was paying any attention to her, and even if she wasn’t cooking for anyone in particular, she couldn’t stand to let perfectly good cookies burn for no good reason.

She’d just gotten everything settled when Anarka’s booming voice behind her made her jump. “I’ve got to run, lass, but Luka can finish getting things set up. I’ve already told him what to do and where to put everything. We left the box of decorations out for ye, so ye can get things all nice for when Gina comes home. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again, so, goodbye for now. Don’t forget to check the water in the tree every day!”

Marinette didn’t even have time to answer before Anarka was seeing herself out.

As soon as the door banged closed behind Anarka, Luka made a beeline for the kitchen. Hands against the doorframe, he leaned in. “Hey.”

Marinette turned to look at him from where she stood rolling some kind of round cookie in powdered sugar. “I swear I tried to talk her out of it,” he told her, ears burning. “I’d have had more success wrestling a bear.”

Marinette laughed, blushing, and Luka couldn’t help his grin. She looked adorable, with her hair pinned up and her sleeves pushed up to her elbows, flour streaking the red and green, frilled apron she wore. “I can imagine,” she replied, placing the sugar-coated ball carefully on a pile of others already in a dish on the counter. “She seems like someone it’s hard to say no to.”

Luka shrugged. “That’s my mom.” They looked at each other for a moment, Luka thinking about what a sweet picture she made and her thinking—probably that he was completely weird, standing here staring at her. “Anyway,” he said hastily, pushing himself back upright, “I’ll get this finished up and get out of your hair. I just wanted to say I’m really sorry and I had nothing to do with this...whatever this is.”

Marinette giggled. “It’s fine.” Her shoulders came down a little, and Luka gave her one more grin before he went back to setting up the tree. He was starting, he reflected ruefully, to have some dangerous if only thoughts. If only they’d met sooner, if only she weren’t leaving in a couple of weeks...

If only the people in his life weren’t so damn pushy, so that he wasn’t sure how much of the attraction he felt was sincere or mutual. If only he could be sure he wasn’t seeing things because Rose put the idea in his head.

Luka wasn’t sure what had put his mother on the scent. It was, just barely, possible that her motives were exactly what she said they were. Gina did buy a tree from them every year, and since they were friends it was usually more of a visit than a delivery, and Anarka had more than once hauled Luka out to help set the thing up when he was home.

Luka doubted it though. Either Rose had blabbed, or someone else had. Sally, maybe, who might have seen him holding her hand at the café, or maybe one of the townspeople who had seen them say goodbye outside afterwards, smiling and friendly. Marinette blushed so easily, and he did find her extremely pretty. it might have been easy for someone to get the wrong idea.

The television was on, but Luka hadn’t paid any attention to it until Marinette’s name caught his ear. He looked up, and saw a good-looking blonde man on screen, waving to the crowd before he turned to help a lady out of the limo he’d just exited. There was a smaller picture of Marinette on the arm of the same handsome blond in the corner.

Luka put it together with what Marinette had told him at the café, and pressed his lips together, irrationally angry at the man. Clearly he has a type, Luka thought sourly, looking at the new woman on his arm as the couple proceeded down the red carpet. Luka glanced back at the kitchen, and then walked over and turned the television off. Marinette didn’t seem like she was watching it, and she certainly didn’t need to see something like that by accident.

He finished up, making sure to clean up after himself as best he could, stacking the boxes that had held Gina’s things neatly where his mother had found them. Conveniently there was a broom in the same closet, so he was able to sweep up the needles he’d inevitably tracked all over the house.

He put the broom back, and went back to find Marinette. Whatever she was making smelled amazing. Luka paused in the kitchen doorway. Marinette was concentrating hard, piping icing onto cookies laid out in front of her. Even focused as she was, he couldn’t help but note that she looked more content than he’d ever seen her, smiling and at peace, humming softly to herself. She leaned back to study what she’d done, and the humming turned to singing.

Luka took a quick step back and turned, putting his back to the wall next to the door, one hand going to clutch at his heart as it suddenly decided to gallop away.

She was singing one of his songs.

So she’s a fan, he scolded himself. I knew that. And why should he care? By the end, Luke Stone had been almost an entirely separate entity from himself. An illusion created to sell music, not a real person.

Except Luke Stone still played Luka Couffaine’s music. And it was one thing to know Luke Stone had fans, to see them screaming in a crowd or throwing themselves at the security ropes to get to him, but...it was entirely different to hear sweet, sincere Marinette, thoughtlessly humming Luka’s songs just because she was happy and she enjoyed them. It was what he’d always wanted, wasn’t it? To know that people appreciated the music, and not just the image. It was no wonder his pulse was racing.

Luka sighed and closed his eyes. I’m in trouble, he admitted to himself.

Fiction Master Post | Month of Miracles

#quickspins #monthofmiracles2020 #hallmark au #lukanette #endgame lukanette #lukanette endgame #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #promptfic #quickfic

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kingstylesdaily · 4 years ago

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Harry Styles’ “Adore You” Is Everything a Music Video Should Be (Including Underappreciated by The VMAs)

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KSD NOTE: there is a mention of suicide in regards to the beginning of Adore You.

On November 18, 2019, a website promoting a mysterious place called Eroda (“No Land Quite Like It”) arrived on the internet. Two days later, the official Twitter account for this fictional frown-shaped island began teasing local seaside attractions. You may have missed it, depending on which corners of the internet you choose to lurk, but not if you were a Harry Styles fan, a group that went into pure overdrive trying to figure out what it all meant.

I, for one, missed it at the time. I was unaware this account was cryptically quote tweeting fans as they tried to piece together what was happening, what it meant, and what it could be connected to (Greek Mythology and Lost were a couple of theories posed in comments, Twitter threads, and Reddit). Meanwhile, the Columbia Records marketing department had been hard at work for months, devising this specific and highly-detailed campaign around the music video for Styles’ second single, “Adore You” from his second solo album, Fine Line, ever since he shot the video in Scotland in August 2019 (Eroda = Adore backwards — clever!).

But it was all leading up to the morning of Friday, December 6 when the video was released, one week before the full-length album arrived. Up until that point, I had never seen an entire Harry Styles music video, but what happened next was inevitable. Somehow, as a self-proclaimed boy band scholar, I had never paid much attention to One Direction. I kept a distant eye on Styles since they disbanded, intrigued by the decisions he was making in his solo career. But I hadn’t yet realized I’d been in the ring all throughout the fall of 2019, fighting to resist the inevitable fascination that awaited. First came the jab of Rob Sheffield’s Rolling Stone profile, followed by the cross of “Lights Up”, a song that cracked my Top 20 most listened to songs of the year despite being released just two months before Spotify so thoughtfully compiled that personalized playlist. Then there was the hook of his SNL hosting stint in November (and bless you Bowen Yang for that Sara Lee sketch), which then leads us to the “Adore You” video, the uppercut and ultimate TKO. I surrendered in what felt like a near instant. I was now a Harry Styles fan. (If we’re following this analogy, I sat up to spit out some blood after seeing that cover of “Juice” before my head quickly hit the mat again with a loud thud).

Maybe it’s not quite remarkable that I took time out of a Friday morning to watch a music video, but that I sat at my desk, in an office, with other people around (back when we did those kinds of things) and proceeded to wipe away a few tiny tears from under my eyes by the end of it, was an experience I had not been through… maybe ever? In a world of lyric videos and TikToks, actual, thoughtful, impactful music videos with a full (and sweet!) story are about as rare as a glowing and growing fish these days.

Ultimately, “Adore You” does everything a music video should do. In nearly eight minutes, this video uses excellent visual effects in a cool and interesting way, tells a compelling and heartfelt story, is anchored by an irresistible leading man and an adorable sidekick, is backed up by the catchiest song you could ever dream of, and culminates with a touching and hopeful ending. It’s a treat for the eyes and the ears and the soul. It’s innovative and the kind of thing that begs you to watch it more than once to catch all the details (and yes, I do tear up every time).

So one would think that an award show with the specific purpose of celebrating this type of creativity would be extra sure to nominate such a charming and effective clip, but alas, “Adore You” was overlooked in the MTV Video Music Awards main categories this year. Of course, some could argue that that fact only adds to the video’s credibility but I’ll do my best to not be that petty as I’m still rooting for it to win in the three technical categories where it picked up nominations: Best Visual Effects by Mathematic, Best Art Direction by Laura Ellis Cricks, and Best Direction by Dave Meyers, who remains one of the most inventive and influential directors of all time and whose videos with artists such as Missy Elliot, Pink, and Kendrick Lamar have been racking up nominations for nearly 20 years now. He also saw four other videos he directed get recognized this year: Normani’s “Motivation” (Best Chorography), Travis Scott’s “Highest in the Room” (Best Hop Hop and Best Visual Effects), Anderson .Paak’s “Lockdown” (Video For Good), and Camila Cabello feat. DaBaby’s “My Oh My” (Best Cinematography).

But I reached out to Meyers to specifically ask about the intricate details of “Adore You” and how it all came to be; how he captured such a vibe with the overcast and dreary weather, mixed so wonderfully with the charming oddities of the people that make up this world of Eroda. In addition to directing the video, he also co-wrote the story with Chris Shafer and said, “It’s the first idea that popped to mind after the first listen to the song, and the first idea I pitched to Harry. It was a story that underscored my understanding of what Harry stood for and felt it was necessary to tell it as a narrative to convey his optimism.”

The extended version of the video starts with a two-and-a-half-minute introduction to the world of Eroda, narrated by Rosalia. This includes the “peculiar” people and their professions on the island, meeting The Boy (Styles) and his glowing smile that most people try to avoid, and the quirky superstitions these people continue to live by. “It all served a purpose,” Meyers said of the details. “The superstitions were a set up for how society generally reacts to different things. They fear change or oddity, even if it’s what’s best for them.”

Meyers, however, did not share in that fear, as much of this video provided for interesting and new opportunities he had yet to experience throughout his decades-long career, which he listed off: ”Compelling narrative, CG character, remote location, Scottish crew (nothing phased them),” also noting that all of the other characters in the video were locals as well. So perhaps they were less fazed by the atmosphere across the four-day shoot in Scotland, but as Meyers recalled, the “weather was nuts. It rained every 20 minutes, then the sun, then cloud over.”

However, it’s likely that Mother Nature is also a Styles fan, as Meyers recalled, “I seem to remember going up on the hill for Harry’s picnic with the fish and being worried that it was so gloomy. By the time we came to shoot, the sun came out. And then the sun went away as soon as the scene was over. Similarly, we had the worst storm when Harry was contemplating suicide at the start. Pouring rain, drenching him. So I guess in that sense it was fun watching how Scotland provided a backdrop for the emotions we were after.”

And hey, at least they had the weather on their side to add to the mood while shooting the video, as one of their main characters, well, didn’t exist. “It was very odd shooting with no fish,” Meyers admitted. “But was quite rewarding later seeing it dropped in and making empathic sense to the story we were after.”

Of course, the main character they did have on hand is an awfully useful and appealing one at that. Fans became enamored with the moment Styles uses the back of his hand to check the temperature of a coffee pot before dumping the fish inside the water so it could stay alive. I asked Meyers about this particular moment and he said, “The problem we had was apparent when Harry ran in and threw the fish in the pot. We all sorta felt — well, what if it was hot? So I believe Harry improvised that as a solution and we felt it was perfect for the character’s sensitivity and consideration for this poor fish.” And that’s not the only nice thing he does for his fish friend — he also serves him a tiny taco! “The taco was a whimsical way to express friendship between Harry and the fish,” Meyers offered. It looked pretty tasty, too.

The entire video serves as a showcase for what Styles does best and what makes him such a unique artist: his music, his acting, and his charisma, which Meyers knew would offer him a lot to work with. “Harry is a leading man. I felt that from my first meeting and wanted to play with his wonderful range of emotions. So finding a story with a real character arc was part of my focus in building this world.” Meyers described working on “Adore You” as an “all-around memorable shoot: awesome location, lovely Harry, compelling story, great effects, and… it worked.”

It did. And it was a risk: a video this complex and detailed (and one has to assume, costly), attached to a marketing campaign that proved to be even more involved, still came with no guarantee that the fans wouldn’t shrug it off. But as Manos Xanthogeorgis, SVP of Digital Marketing & Media at Columbia Records told Billboard last year, “When you have a video and a piece of art at such a level, it’s an incredible challenge for the rest of the team to build a campaign at that same level of artistry and creativity.” Oh, and that was only step one, as the marketing team engaged in “real-time marketing” with fans online, ensuring they would continue to remain engaged by dropping clues and clips in the lead-up to the video premiere and subsequently the album. “This whole campaign was around mystery and sometimes mystery is more powerful than knowledge,” Xanthogeorgis said. The Twitter handle has remained active throughout 2020, used as a continual marketing tool for Styles’ next videos including the Meyers-directed “Falling” and this summer’s hit, “Watermelon Sugar.”

With that kind of fan engagement, “Adore You” seemed like a no-brainer for the fan-voted categories of the VMAs this year, as they surely would’ve turned out to vote just as feverishly for this video as they did when searching for clues (about a made-up island, at that!). But hey, maybe MTV was just not interested in massive fan engagement this year — after all, it’s not like everything Styles does, including growing freakin’ facial hair, has the internet in a tizzy for weeks. Ultimately, as the impact of music videos (and certainly the ceremony celebrating them) continues to lose relevance, the disregard of this specific project simply feels like a missed opportunity to acknowledge a rare achievement in the art form.

While Meyers was sure to describe his inclusion in the VMA nominations this year as “lovely and flattering” (and he better have a moonperson in his possession this time next week, MTV!) it’s still puzzling why “Adore You” wouldn’t be included in the big categories, considering Styles is squarely within their demo, at the very least. That “Adore You” is also a technical and storytelling masterpiece, as well as a full moment that was used as inspiration both for the experience online and in-person at the Fine Line Spotify listening party last December, that also comes packed with one of the most enthusiastic groups of fans around, well, that should have had the entire network drooling.

Of course, some of this can simply be chalked up to a perfect storm. As far as his singles go, “Lights Up” was a nice appetizer, but “Adore You” remains the delicious entree (you already know what’s for dessert). “Adore You” is a perfect pop record if I’ve ever heard one (and I have) and deserved a special video. A Chris Isaak “Wicked Game” sexy vibe wasn’t going to work here. The song tells the story of such passionate, pure, and heartachingly naive and innocent love that it almost had to be directed toward a non-human being. Instead, Styles chose to inject those same carefree, sweaty, sticky, delicious, whimsical beach vibes into the “Watermelon Sugar” clip, which was the right choice, and not just for the summertime season (MTV has since added the Song of Summer category to the VMAs and included “Watermelon Sugar”).

But it’s “Adore You” that has melodies that bring a smile to the faces of babies, get your toes tapping even when you hear it in the dentist’s chair, and likely has my neighbors rolling their eyes when I sing along to it in the shower. The song is so simple it’s deep, a theme reflected in the video, as is the central reminder to help and care for others, a thoroughly 2020 message.

However, not all is lost. Both “Adore You” and “Watermelon Sugar” continue to rack up major spins at radio with the latter hitting number one on the Billboard charts earlier this month. Grammy voting kicks off at the end of September and Academy members should take note. Not only is Fine Line more than worthy of being acknowledged, but having Styles on hand to potentially collect trophies and perform is in your best interest when it comes to viewers and online chatter. Do not wait to take him seriously. This is the album, this is the time. Prove that you aren’t a bunch of stodgy old white men who think he’s just for teen (and um, thirty-something) girls, but that you understand the music he enjoys, is inspired by, and subsequently makes, is the same rock music you appreciate as well. An artist like Styles can be both of those things at the same time, and really, the best of both worlds. Give the album a listen, and then one more to let it all sink in. If you have not yet succumbed to the force that is Harry Styles fandom, I truly can’t recommend it enough — and please know that it will get you eventually.

Source: Decider.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: news #hs: adore you #August 2020 #Decider

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hlupdate · 4 years ago

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I, for one, missed it at the time. I was unaware this account was cryptically quote tweeting fans as they tried to piece together what was happening, what it meant, and what it could be connected to (Greek Mythology and Lostwere a couple of theories posed in comments, Twitter threads, and Reddit). Meanwhile, the Columbia Records marketing department had been hard at work for months, devising this specific and highly-detailed campaign around the music video for Styles’ second single, “Adore You” from his second solo album, Fine Line, ever since he shot the video in Scotland in August 2019 (Eroda = Adore backwards — clever!).

But it was all leading up to the morning of Friday, December 6 when the video was released, one week before the full-length album arrived. Up until that point, I had never seen an entire Harry Styles music video, but what happened next was inevitable. Somehow, as a self-proclaimed boy band scholar, I had never paid much attention to One Direction. I kept a distant eye on Styles since they disbanded, intrigued by the decisions he was making in his solo career. But I hadn’t yet realized I’d been in the ring all throughout the fall of 2019, fighting to resist the inevitable fascination that awaited. First came the jab of Rob Sheffield’s Rolling Stoneprofile, followed by the cross of “Lights Up”, a song that cracked my Top 20 most listened to songs of the year despite being released just two months before Spotify so thoughtfully compiled that personalized playlist. Then there was the hook of his SNL hosting stint in November (and bless you Bowen Yang for that Sara Lee sketch), which then leads us to the “Adore You” video, the uppercut and ultimate TKO. I surrendered in what felt like a near instant. I was now a Harry Styles fan. (If we’re following this analogy, I sat up to spit out some blood after seeing that cover of “Juice” before my head quickly hit the mat again with a loud thud).

Meyers, however, did not share in that fear, as much of this video provided for interesting and new opportunities he had yet to experience throughout his decades-long career, which he listed off: ”Compelling narrative, CG character, remote location, Scottish crew (nothing fazed them),” also noting that all of the other characters in the video were locals as well. So perhaps they were less fazed by the atmosphere across the four-day shoot in Scotland, but as Meyers recalled, the “weather was nuts. It rained every 20 minutes, then the sun, then cloud over.”

#harry styles #articles #270820 #tw suicide mention

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stylesnews · 4 years ago

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Meyers, however, did not share in that fear, as much of this video provided for interesting and new opportunities he had yet to experience throughout his decades-long career, which he listed off: ”Compelling narrative, CG character, remote location, Scottish crew (nothing fazed them),” also noting that all of the other characters in the video were locals as well. So perhaps they were less fazed by the atmosphere across the four-day shoot in Scotland, but as Meyers recalled, the “weather was nuts. It rained every 20 minutes, then the sun, then cloud over.”

#harry styles #aug20 #adore you #decider #suicide tw

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pollylynn · 4 years ago

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Title: Shade WC: 900

“Oh, is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?” — Victoria Gates, The Greater Good (6 x19)

A/N: If you care, there are spoilers for the Nikki Heat books in this, specifically for Raging Heat.

Nuance is exhausting. It’s his bread and butter as a writer—at least when it comes to his protagonists—but in the real world, nuance exhausting. He has spent the days investigating Peter Cordero’s murder building a wonderfully hard-nosed, terribly unlikable character around Gates’s sister only to have that house of cards huffed and puffed at by the genuine horror on the woman’s face when she realized what villainy her attitude—her words—had led Stephanie Goldmark into.

And he’s nowhere close to ready to deal with the nuances of the Captain herself, even if this case has sort of dropped those right on top of him like a paradoxical ton of bricks. He has, over time, come to cringe at Wally Irons—the broad, bumbling character he had dashed off in an hour so dark it still haunts him. Mourning Roy, drowning in anger with and longing for her, finding himself abruptly banished from the work that represented all he’d had to hold on to, he had dashed off a caricature—unkind, uninteresting, without nuance.

For three books now, going on four, Wally Irons has made him cringe, but he’s also been a guilty pleasure. He’s easy to write: A nemesis with utterly simple, utterly transparent motivations and only one game mechanic—pathological aversion to risk. Captain Wally behaves as he is meant to behave on every page—unlike a certain Detective Heat—and in his heart of hearts, he thinks it’s rather rude of Gates to go upsetting his caricature apple cart. He thinks that she could stop and think about his needs before she goes and gets interesting.

But she is interesting, isn’t she? He thinks about the simplicity of the story Beckett has relayed to him in whispers—the promise of a big get in exchange for bending the rules, for letting just one thing go. He thinks, with surprise and no small amount of residual hurt and pang of conscience, of the other story Kate has relayed just tonight of her first glimpse of the Captain’s complexities—a conversation from years back when he was the one pleading for this, for her to wait, to find another way, to not sabotage the political career of the man he called friend.

Who holds him accountable?

You do your job, whatever the cost.

He could write her—he could continue to write her—in the spirit of Wally Irons as rigid and plodding. He could continue to write her as a scold and an obstacle to justice. He could continue to write this character utterly without nuance, but he’s stuck on this Quis custodiet ipsos custodes vibe that’s obvious and vital and almost exactly the epiphany he’d ended up writing for Nikki in the very book where he’d first introduced the stupid, cringe-y, seductively easy to write Wally Irons.

He’s stuck on the metaphor of jigsaw puzzles. He is a box guy, He is inclined to grab the lid and take in the big picture. He is inclined to dive in and work from the top down, which is—come to think of it—how he has ended up with a four-hundred-person guest list. Because he just knows, globally, that Connelly has to be on the list and that has to be sprawls all the way out to Wes Craven.

He just knows, and that has something to do with the fact that he is the kind of guy who ends up having assembled amorphous, isolated sections that have nothing to do with one another before someone like Gates has finished turning every piece face up and sorting things into corners and middle piles, and his sudden awareness of this distinction is exhausting. These metaphor and nuances and complexities are exhausting, but that doesn’t mean that tackling them isn’t worthwhile.

His head is spinning with it all. His mind is spiraling in the dark when it should be switched off for a peaceful, nuance-free night. It’s not, though, so he kicks off the covers and heads for his desk. He opens Raging Heat to some early chapter with good old, reliable Wally in it. He plants a seed. He shifts to pen and paper. He sketches out the arc of the thing, what beat will best fall where. He turns back to the laptop and almost has a heart attack at the sight of Kate, squinting at him in sheer exhaustion, standing a foot away.

“Castle, what are you doing?” she rasps.

She reaches out to shut the laptop, but he stays her hand. “Killing Wally Irons. But then I’m going to tackle the guest list. I think we have to flip all the pieces over first. We have sort out corners and middle pieces and have a strategy—“

“What?’ She shakes off the hold he has on her wrist. “Castle, it’s the middle of the night.”

“I know.” He stands. He curls an arm around her waist and usher her briskly back to bed. “It is the middle of the night, so I’ll just kill off Wally Irons and come right to bed.”

She’s too tired to object, and too sleep baffled to fight. “And then the list. Tomorrow the list.”

“The list,” he agrees. He kisses her forehead and delights in the way the furrow in her brow smooths swiftly away at his touch. “Tomorrow, the list. The jigsaw approach.”

A/N: Jigsaws? What? This is aggressively not a thing.

images via homeofthenutty

#Castle #Caskett #Castle: Season 6 #Castle: The Greater Good #Kate Beckett #Richard Castle #Victoria Gates #Nikki Heat #Fic #Fanfic #Fanfiction #Fan Fic #Fan Fiction #Writing #Interrogatives?

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bettsfic · 4 years ago

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Hey! I was just wondering if you would soapbox a little about your creative process. I absolutely adore your writing advice but was wondering a bit more about how your ideas form and how you choose which to pursue and do finished products look like you want them to? What's a bad habit you're trying to break? No obligation to answer, especially cause an anon is like tell me your secrets! But thank you for all you've written, you are so helpful and kind

thanks for the great question anon! i wrote a bit about my drafting process here but that doesn’t encompass the idea building side of things (also i’ve made some changes to the process so i was thinking about writing a more cohesive, updated version at some point).

i tend to think of project ideas as piles of aesthetic, and usually i only begin writing once the pile has toppled over and i can’t not write it. that’ll make more sense in a moment.

i’ll walk through 2 examples of my idea generating process, from how they started to where they are now.

1. Vandal

Vandal is a novel i’m working on that i really have a lot of hope for. i’m about 60k words in right now and 75% finished. it’s about a teenage girl (sierra) who casts a spell on her hot, helpful neighbor (frank) to bind them together. the spell ends up working but backfiring when he becomes her foster father. then, in his custody, sierra gets jealous and casts a spell on his girlfriend (jenny) to break them up, but that backfires too: sierra gets taken out of frank’s custody and placed with a manipulative and abusive foster brother (leo). frank more or less kidnaps sierra and they have to Run From The Law. throughout the novel, sierra is inwardly battling Vandal, an immortal archangel that has possessed her and is trying to get her to kill herself so he can break free of the prison of her body.

the idea for that story has a looooong breadcrumb trail and a huge aesthetic pile. since i couldn’t manage to get Baby traditionally published, i had a lot of that dynamic i could adopt into something else. i wrote at length about where that idea came from but i can no longer find that post (UPDATE: here it is). it’s somewhere in my training wheels tag. in short, i spent an entire summer watching/reading age gap stories and the male perspective in them bothered me a lot, so i wanted to write a story from the younger party’s perspective, and do the reality of those situations justice. i wrote that story, though, so i didn’t want to rewrite it.

then, in december 2019, for reasons i don’t remember, i started reading snape/hermione fics. i really liked the dynamic, but it was a little too angsty for me, and none of the fics gave me the catharsis i was looking for, which was basically Grouchy Soft Boy Takes Care Of PTSD Weary Girl. being unable to find anything that fit the exact no-conflict, angstless dynamic i was looking for, i decided to write it myself using an A/B/O reylo idea i’d been kicking around for about 8 months but i could never land on, because i didn’t know if i wanted ben or ren. that fic turned out to be Reclaimed.

to answer one of your questions, Reclaimed didn’t turn out the way i wanted it to at all, and i’m still kind of shocked by the traffic it has. i felt bad about writing it, because i was setting down so many other things to work on it, and it was a struggle from start to finish. at the time (and this is a major theme of my process), i thought it was a waste of energy.

but it opened a very important thematic concept to me, which is the idea of voicelessness and trauma, and recovery through finding one’s voice.

fast-forward to february, i’m headcanoning with @star-sky-earth just days before i have to head to nebraska for a writing residency. she and i are talking about a certain male celebrity who shall not be named, flirting with his younger female costar who shall not be named, and i said something along the lines of, “wouldn’t it suck to get a crush on a dude like him, only to find out he likes you back, and then you realize he’s actually kind of shallow and boring?”

i remember distinctly saying, out loud, “god fucking dammit,” because, right then, an aesthetic pile had toppled over, and an entire novel unfolded itself in my brain. i pound out an outline. it’s garbage. i play around with a vocal gauge. it’s not quite right. then, two days later, i write an opening scene that i don’t think is great but i send it to some people and they’re like, oh this is fire.

the aesthetic pile looks like this:

lolita, where dolores is the one in control

delusions of grandeur born from a major traumatic event

obsessions with fairy tales and the escapism they provide

the consequences of extreme neglect

forced voicelessness as both a theme and a major structural constraint

a lot of wolf imagery

non-chronological timelines

i proceed to spend the next two days driving across the country brain-writing. by the time i reach nebraska, i hit the ground running, and write for basically 30-40 hours a week for 5 weeks. then, because pandemic, i decide to stay 2 more weeks, but i hit a snag. i write about 14k of really boring drivel and realize my outline has failed me. i toss the 14k and re-outline and try again. then, my attention is rattled by a crush on a composer who has no interest in me.

i go home and fall into my annual summer depression and i lose focus. so, that’s where i’m at. i really miss vandal but it’s gotten super dark and i’m finding it difficult to manage darkness with everything going on. which brings me to my next aesthetic pile that has recently toppled over.

2. Eden

that’s not the title but it’s the project name. i’ve begun writing a YA sci fi comedy with an ensemble cast. this aesthetic pile took years to build before it toppled. it started with Elixir of Erised, hands down the best fic i’ve ever written by a huge margin. i reread it this past winter and was kind of amazed i’d written it.

i really liked the idea of a potion showing you your deepest desires, but until recently have not had the patience to build an entire world around it. so, for the past 3.5 years, i’ve kept a document of “if i WERE to a YA SFF book with the themes of EOE, what would i want to include?” over those 3.5 years, here’s what the list became:

dark academia vibes

heist plot

soulmates

that list is not really conducive to an entire universe, and i never had the motivation to sit down and think through it.

then i watched breaking bad, and a lot of things started clicking. at the same time, i was talking to my buddy kyle about my fallen knight archetype schematic, and i began fleshing out all the archetypes that went with it. i came up with 12. i built a database. i thought, wouldn’t it be cool to write something with ALL 12 ARCHETYPES?? haha but who would be dumb enough to do that?

me. i would.

with breaking bad as the missing plot piece (which introduces the idea of conflict around the MANUFACTURE and DISTRIBUTION of addictive substances, with an ensemble cast of morally grey characters, which leads to a war), i had enough to get started.

i wrote an outline. i wrote another outline. i wrote a third outline. i stopped to write some histories of this place i’d built. i wrote a fourth outline. gdocs became a mess so i downloaded scrivener and taught myself how to use it. i wrote a gauge of the first chapter and landed the voice on the first try. then i did a rough sketch of how a trilogy would go. then i outlined each book in the trilogy to make sure my character trajectories were on point. then i did a lot more worldbuilding. now i’m working on my fifth outline, which breaks the entire novel down scene by scene.

and for Reasons, i’m tasking myself with writing the first draft in 6 days across two weekends. it’s a high-stakes adventure story with a very tight timeline, so i think it’s conducive to being written quickly.

which brings me to another question you asked, which is, what bad habits do i want to break? i always, always slow down at the halfway mark. sometimes i even give up. i have no idea why. no matter how much preparation i do, no matter how solid my endgame is, at the halfway mark i either slow to a crawl or set the whole project down and pick up something new. i do this with reading books, too. i can only ever read the first half of books. then i either skip to the end or put them down forever. it’s definitely something i have to figure out because at this rate i’ll never finish anything.

okay this took way longer than i thought it would to write but i hope it answers your question. tl;dr i follow aesthetic and thematic interests until they lead me to a point where i can’t not write the stories that develop from them.

#writing advice #process #Anonymous

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rhetorical-ink · 4 years ago

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Rhetorical Ink Reviews: Garden of Words (2013)

** SPOILERS BELOW**

I saw this on Netflix last night, and, seeing it was only 45 minutes, thought it would be a nice little short film to round out my evening.

Holy cow, wow. I am still reeling from this.

My Top Ten Thoughts on Garden of Words:

10. If you couldn’t tell by the various gifs in this review, the animation is a smorgasbord of AMAZING, jaw-dropping combination of CGI and hand drawn animation. It’s an eye-gasm of beauty from the first frame until the end, and should be viewed just based on that alone. Luckily, that’s not all this film brings to the table.

9. We follow our protagonist Takao, a very relatable high school student who has a habit of skipping classes on days it rains to go to a garden in his hometown to practice his shoe sketches (he wants to be a shoemaker after graduating). It’s here that he stumbles upon a mysterious woman who comes to the same spots on days it rains as well.

Takao is instantly a likable character, with his innocent kindness, passion for his shoe-making, and his naivety is something any adult can relate to at that age.

8. The mysterious woman is at first a very unknown force for Takao -- she seems to only have beer and chocolate with her, which strikes him as odd, but she also seems harmless and actually very kind. He claims he’s recognized her somewhere, an important item to note for later on, though she denies knowing who he is at all.

Over the course of one month, June (which is Kanto’s rain season), the two slowly start to connect with one another and end up meeting on several occasions at the same spot on any day it rains. For us the audience, there slowly seems to be a point become clear with our protagonist...

7. It becomes painfully obvious from early on in the movie that Takao likes this mysterious woman, as he, in a beautifully done series of silent scenes, starts to sit closer and closer to her; as well as share meals and start to engage in conversation with her.

I love how he describes her as a representation of the adult world, which he believes he has an understanding of...but doesn’t. At first, I was all for their relationship developing...and then when he says he’s only 15, my heart instantly started to sink, thinking, “Oh....oh no, this is just a boy.”

It was only compounded when we find out that the woman is 27...there’s quite a gap there. Although, I LOVE her line, “I don’t feel any smarter at 27 than when I was 15.” That line. I think it’s so true for many of us...maybe not smarter, per say, but the maturity and understanding of our world definitely shifts in that time span of 15 to 27. The realization of this gap between them definitely shifted the tone of the film, which only gets more complex as it goes.

6. I love the duality of adolescence and adulthood represented in this movie, in such subtle, simple ways.

Takao’s home life seems complex, in that his mother has moved out to live with her boyfriend, the father is absent from the family “picture,” and Takao’s older brother is moving into a new apartment with his girlfriend, leaving Takao alone with his own place. Which to me, seems like such an odd move, given this IS a 15-year-old boy we’re talking about, but Takao also seems so mature, focused, and driven for his age, that it’s easy to let this slide.

Take that in contrast to our mysterious woman, who seems on the surface to have it all put together, but we find out she’s about to be let go from her job, is struggling to “taste” things (she states she can only taste alcohol and chocolate before meeting Takao -- which is why she consumes only that in the beginning of the film), and seems to be hitting an empty snag in her adult life.

As we see a montage of Takao being inspired by the woman to pursue his goal in making a set of women’s shoes and seeming so motivated and determined, we get the heart-wrenching contrast of the mystery woman having a conversation with her former boyfriend. He seems to still be considerate of her, offering her encouragement...and then we get the reveal that she’s lied to him and told him she’s been meeting up with another “woman” for lunch, and that “woman” has been helping her through her current crisis.

It’s a beautiful tragic duality between Takao -- who is steering forward towards his future post-high school with such optimism and drive, despite the seeming complexities going on in his personal life -- with this woman, who despite appearing to have it put together on the surface, is struggling to cope with the complexities of the adult world and her own personal life.

5. One of my favorite details about this movie is Takao’s doodles of feet and shoes. I could seriously re-watch this film to see the meta animation of characters...drawing characters. It’s so gorgeous and I love that there’s this underlying sexual theme with how feet are used in this movie. At one point, the woman tries to sneak a peek at his drawings, which he’s embarrassed for and urges her not to look. He also begins to have her model her feet for him to get as a reference for the shoes.

It’s these little moments that further hint his attraction to her, which we as the audience knows isn’t going to end well down the road...and spirals to a head, when...

4. The moment those two see each other at the high school, I gasped. It comes out of nowhere, and hits you HARD.

We learn from Takao’s classmates that the mystery woman, Ms. Yukino -- finally given a name -- is a literature instructor at the high school, just one Takao hasn’t had yet. Apparently, some girls in one of the classes spread rumors that Ms. Yukino was sexually harassing a male student -- which Takao’s classmate denies actually happened -- and several parents complaining has cost her position at the school.

Having personally known an actual teacher go through this same scenario, the revelation Takao gets hits home. You can’t help but feel so sorry for Yukino, especially when her students meet her outside the school for a final farewell, several of them crying. And it makes the next scene, when Takao confronts the girl who spread the rumors, all the more satisfying -- but also gut-wrenching -- as Takao gets beaten up by the students supporting the girl.

And just when you think it’s the climax of the film...it’s not.

3. Takao finds Yukino at their garden spot, and after they get caught in a gale, he goes to her apartment for them both to dry off. Despite how painful it was to see Takao get beat up, to see Yukino fired from her job when she was seemingly innocent...

... THIS SCENE is what hurt the most.

To see Takao and Yukino so happy together, sharing in each other’s company, and seeming to have a relationship with one another that most characters and ourselves only dream of...to also have the heart-shattering realization as the scene continues that....this can’t work. He’s 15 and she’s 27...there is too large of a gap right now in their age and maturity and it just can’t work as it stands now.

So, when that moment comes, when Takao confesses that he might be in love with her, and Yukino is forced to reject him...it is SO painful. Because you can see how happy they make each other...it’s just not socially or realistically feasible for either of them...or, at least that’s what we’re led to believe.

2. Because Yukino, as Takao leaves her, makes the conscious decision to chase after him. To confront him about her own demons, how he helped her “walk again” after such a critical juncture in her life, and that he does matter to her, despite the obvious hurdles placed in front of them and she doesn’t want him completely out of her life.

Takao’s retaliation is so heart-wrenching and beautiful, and her response is equally so -- these two characters laying everything about themselves to bare. It’s an amazing climax and scene in this movie, and one that I was just staring at agape the entire time -- wanting the best for these two characters, but knowing how delicate and hard their situation was. It makes the next moment all that much more rewarding...

The shot of these two, both in the rain and the sunlight, is probably my favorite in the whole film. I love it because it’s an old wives tale where I’m from that if it rains in the sunlight, that means it’s going to rain again the same time the next day. I love that detail, because it makes me think that their story isn’t over...they’re not going to just abandon each other, even if they can’t do anything about their relationship further right now.

1. I was sad during the credits, because I thought the film would just end there, and I wasn’t ready for it to be over. But please, stick around to after the credits.

There is one more scene, that shows that Takao is still working towards his goals to be a shoemaker. He still keeps in contact through letters and communication with Yukino, who has moved and re-started her career as a teacher, and that, one day down the road, he knows he’s going to see her again in person. And give her the shoes he’s made for her.

And it’s that hope, that knowledge that he’s still going to maintain that friendship, that potential relationship, that did make me feel a lot better about the ending moving forward.

Seriously, see this short film.

I am so glad I did, and I’ll probably be going back to watch it in the dub version, just to have an excuse to get transported by it again.

#Rhetorical Ink Reviews #Garden of Words #Anime Movie Review #SERIOUSLY THIS IS ART #Coming of Age #Jesus this animation #BRB fangirling #Netflix Choice #Garden of Words review #Takao x Yukino

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the-online-marketing-alliance · 5 years ago

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How To Write an eBook in 7 Steps15 min read

Ebooks are a great way to start selling your ideas, skills, and experience online. It’s often the gateway to creating a complete online information product or membership site. They’re also an excellent way to grow your email list, by offering an ebook as a download in return for subscribing to your list, it’s called a lead magnet.

Whenever I talk to people and ask them what’s stopping them from writing an ebook…they tell me it’s the design, or the cover, the layout, images or technology.

The reality is that’s the easiest part, which I’ll cover at the end of this article.

The hardest part is actually the first part of the process…the writing. I don’t mean the typing – what I mean is producing something that actually works. Yes…something that people will actually read, get hooked on and engaged until finally you get them to take the next step. Which is when they will buy something more from you.

This article has 7 Steps: Step 1 to 6 is Creating the Content and Step 7 is Producing the Ebook.

What’s great about this method is it also helps you lay the foundation on how you will sell your ebook…or at least incentivize people to download it.

Table of Contents

How to Write an Ebook Ground Rules

Step 1) Make sure there is a market for your ebook

Step 2) Define your Avatar/Persona

Step 3) Devise the hook

Step 4) Create your ebook outline

Step 5) Fill-in the blanks

Step 6) Editing your ebook

Step 7) Convert into an ebook

Conclusion

What should I write about?

What is the ideal length of your ebook?

How long should it take to write the book?

Is there search traffic for what you’re writing about?

Is the keyword trending, declining or seasonal?

How to identify Personas

Persona template

How can you find and add hooks to your ebook?

Here are 3 methods to inspire your hook title or subject line:

2) Using Buzzsumo

The outline formula explained

Introduction

Who are you?

Describe the problem, outline the solution, paint a picture

Repeat above 5 times

Summarise what you’ve learned

Add Call to action for more information

Ebook best practices

Make it concise and review any reiteration

Checking for grammar, spelling, style and structure

The 5 Step Method

How to Write an Ebook Ground Rules

First of all…some ground rules.

What should I write about?

In the steps below, I’ve outlined a formula for getting results…but it’s useless unless it’s a topic you know something about, or you enjoy it and you have some interest in it. This is important because when you’re writing if you have no interest, you’ll get bored. Combine that with an online world that’s specifically designed to get your attention – your project will live a short life.

What is the ideal length of your ebook?

People won’t read a 500-page ebook, your readers cannot digest it and they’ll get fed up. You should plan to produce between 10 to 100 pages.

If its a lead magnet, then 10 pages is enough – it should get the key points across clearly and efficiently.

If you’re selling it as an information product…then it should be closer to 100 pages, because you will need to provide more examples to support your points.

Overall, the quality is what matters…so don’t add fluff or filler content.

Here is a book I put together with the For Dummies brand. It’s 48 pages long. It covers the key points of content marketing. Provides a framework to follow. Plus, it leads on to a course and software that we sell to help make content marketing easier.

It’s positioned like this.

It’s a 48-page ebook to wet the appetite, grow the list and get the key framework points across.

The book promotes our marketing course PICASSO, which is video and example-driven training. The PICASSO course then, in turn, promotes our software tools Kudani, Designrr and Headlinr.

How long should it take to write the book?

As fast as possible. The longer you take…the longer it exponentially takes to complete.

This means you need to focus less on getting it perfect and simply get the words on paper…or into Evernote, Google Docs (my preference) or Word.

This means you should start NOW…and take MASSIVE imperfect action.

Forget about grammar, spelling, layout…complete sentences, etc.

Get as many words down as quickly as possible.

Switch off Facebook/Email/Phone to stop yourself getting distracted. (Hint: Install Facebook News Feed Eradicator – and you’ll gain 1 hour a day back into your life.)

https://designrr.io/NewFeedEradicator

Get in the zone…and focus.

Set a timer for 40 minutes to focus and do nothing else.

Stop and walk for 10 minutes…then get back and restart timer.

Even if you do just 3 iterations of 40 minutes – you’ll find you’ve accomplished more than you probably do in a whole day.

With all that done, let’s get into the meat of this method.

Step 1) Make sure there is a market for your ebook

Sounds obvious but it’s probably the biggest mistake people make. If there is no market – no-one will buy or download your ebook. For example, let’s look at the diet niche. Should I focus on Paleo or Keto diets?

To establish this, you can follow some of these techniques:

Is there search traffic for what you’re writing about?

You can measure this by going to Semrush.com (Free registration required) and typing in the top level keyword for what you’re writing about. For example: “Keto Diet”

Obviously, a huge volume market with over 1m searches worldwide. Paleo Diet produces 368,000 volume, so still a great market to write for, but Keto is clearly the biggest right now.

Is the keyword trending, declining or seasonal?

To check this – go to Google Trends.

With this tool, I can actually compare values Paleo vs Keto.

And all diets have some seasonality as shown here, but the overall trend shows Keto is the one to go for.

Step 2) Define your Avatar/Persona

Put simply – who are you targeting this for? You’ll want to be able to relate with your target audience to meet their needs and help find solutions to their problems.

An avatar is a representation of your ideal customer. Take some time to understand and define this, so when you put your book together you can write in a way that they will understand. Using marketing personas makes websites 2-5 times more effective and easier to use by targeted users and drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.

An example for Keto could be:

A Mom, aged 35-45, who needs to lose 50 lbs quickly and has been struggling with diets that are difficult to stick to. She’s busy with her family and has little time to cook.

Focusing like this on the avatar also helps define your hooks and design style. For example, a feminine color scheme would work better than a masculine black.

I often give them a name, which helps you focus even more. Let’s call her Susan.

How to identify Personas

The easiest way to identify the persona, if you have a website already, is looking at Google Analytics for data. You can identify where your visitors came from, what keywords were used, and how long they stayed on your site. Plus, demographics such as age, gender, location, interests, etc. Learning about your current visitors just became a lot easier to create personas for.

Here are a few more effective methods you can use to identify your Persona:

Monitor social media talking about your brand or keywords

Spy on your competitors and see what they have done

Identify complaints, comments, compliments

Questions on Google Search

Questions on Quora or Reddit

Persona template

It’s easier to write an ebook about someone you know. If you already have an idea of who you want to write your ebook for, great. If you don’t have an idea, I hope that this persona template can help paint your persona picture better:

Persona name: (example Susan)

Job title

about their company (size, sector, etc.)

Details about their job role

It could also be a family role (mom, dad, brother, sister, etc.)

Demographics

Age

Gender

Salary or combined household income

Location

Level of education

Family size

Goals and challenges

Main goal

Secondary goal

How you help your persona reach these goals

Primary challenge

Secondary challenge

How you can assist in resolving these problems

Values and fears

Main personal values

Common objections during sales process

Add images and color

Use an attractive color scheme that’s indicative of your persona’s characteristics

Icons and graphics can help in understanding who they are

Of the persona: it can be a photograph, a cartoon or a sketch – create a non-bias image

Psychographics

Behaviors

Attitudes

Opinions

Motivations are what make your personas human

Brands

Help provide great insights into the user’s likes and hobbies, which may even include competitor brands

Last but not least, understanding where your persona is at in the buyer’s journey. Here’s an example of what a buyer’s journey might look like:

https://venngage.com/blog/user-persona-examples/

This will help you fine tune your ebook and create a targeted objective to where you want your readers to end up.

Step 3) Devise the hook

The hook is what forms the title, headline or subject line. It’s designed to catch the reader’s attention by promising a result for the reader. Think of them as cliffhangers. They give readers a powerful sense of what they’ll get out of your ebook without giving away everything.

How can you find and add hooks to your ebook?

Go through your ebook, and note down every solution your book provides. Then ask yourself: What is the big problem you’re trying to solve and what are the pain points of your audience?

What will your reader’s life look like, or what will they be able to do, when they implement your solution? You want your readers to say “Yes, that’s me!”. If you can create that sense of identification, relation, you��re already close to securing the sale.

Now we have our avatar defined, this step starts to become easy.

We said that Susan needs to lose weight fast and has little time to cook with a busy family. She has also struggled to stick to diets previously, probably because she’s demotivated.

So the hook should focus on words like:

Quick, fast and easy to implement methods

Quick results so you’re motivated to stick

For busy people

Here are 3 methods to inspire your hook title or subject line:

Use Amazon Advanced search, and order by bestsellers to search using your core keyword. Look at the titles that are in the top 3-5 places.

Look at the results and analyse the bestsellers:

Using ‘Keto’ as our example, the titles that appear at the top are:

Simply Keto: A Practical Approach to Health & Weight Loss with 100+ Easy Low-Carb Recipes

The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners: Your Essential Guide to Living the Keto Lifestyle

Keto Diet: Your 30-Day Plan to Lose Weight, Balance Hormones, Boost Brain Health, and Reverse Disease

The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet

Keto Diet Cookbook For Beginners: 550 Recipes For Busy People on Keto Diet (Keto Diet for Beginners)

KetoFast: Rejuvenate Your Health with a Step-by-Step Guide to Timing Your Ketogenic Meals

What are the key things that standout for you?

Best selling titles:

Use numbers. These always work well in titles as they indicate that there is an end to the information. i.e. There is only a number of things people need to know.

Use Words like Easy / Simple / Step by Step / Cookbook / Plan. All these words say that there is a simple process to follow.

Are Benefit driven. (For Busy People / to lose weight / boosts brain health) – How does your title help or solve a problem for the reader.

While you are on the Amazon page, look at the 5 and 1 star reviews for specific information that people are looking for. Here are some examples:

It’s clear from the above that the author didn’t deliver on the title’s promise and needed to put more photos in the book.

2) Using Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great tool to analyze what’s currently out there and the sentiment of what’s performing well. You can search your key term in Buzzsumo for free.

Here are some tips to help you:

Analyze top performing headlines

Competitors headline

Filter based on content type

Type of words and phrases people use

Create headlines that:

Tell readers why they should care

Make a clear promise

Hook readers’ emotions

Provoke curiosity

Provide explanations

Appeal to a tribe

3) Ask questions of your customers and/or your email list

Join a Facebook group – and create a poll.

Title it: “Hi, I’m creating an ebook for XYZ, and I want to make sure I’m on point. Can you help?

What are the 3 Biggest problems you have in doing XYZ right now?”

One or two sentences for each solution is plenty. These are your hooks, and you’ll use them later when writing your book description, title, headlines, chapters, etc.

Step 4) Create your ebook outline

In this section it’s important to be concise yet provide enough information to illustrate your point.

Remember you don’t want your ebook to be too long.

The outline formula explained

Try and cover the top 5 key problems and solutions. If there are more…that’s ok too.

Introduction

Outline what the reader will learn. Tell your story and use the pain points identified. Reveal your secret right away. When you start big and reveal that one secret right in the intro, this will make your readers trust you and expect even bigger results.

Who are you?

Why should people listen to you?

Tell a story on how you came about this knowledge.

Position yourself as an expert.

Describe the problem, outline the solution, paint a pictureRepeat above 5 timesSummarise what you’ve learnedAdd Call to action for more information

Critical – Most people forget this step

Step 5) Fill-in the blanks

Once you have an outline, you’ll want to start filling in the blanks to help expand and explain your ebook. Simple way to explain how to do just that is to:

Make it a “You and I” and just write. Use the persona to have a normal conversation and explain to Susan about your thoughts on keto diet.

Don’t stop to correct, instead get everything out of your brain. You’ll want to dedicate a separate time to correct any grammar and spelling errors later. Put your focus on getting your ideas down.

Ebook best practices

Once you’ve added all your thoughts into your ebook, you can start adding more insightful information. Some of this consists of:

Adding quotes

Adding images

Importing and highlighting stats, relevant sources, etc. (Great source is Statista https://www.statista.com/ )

Place appropriate calls-to-action within your ebook

Curate paragraphs from other sites and sources to strengthen your points

Step 6) Editing your ebook

After you’ve filled in the blanks with every idea you have, you’ll want to trim, add, and edit your ebook. One of the most important parts of your ebook is to constantly add value and engage with your readers. Creating a successful ebook is to make sure not to reiterate. Being concise and to the point rather than exhausting your readers. You’ll want to review some of your explanations to see if you can create snippets of information.

Make it concise and review any reiteration

With the paragraph above, let’s see how we can make it concise and optimized for engagement.

“Once you’ve filled in the blanks with your amazing idea, you’ll need to trim, add, and edit your ebook. Focus on creating snippets and watch out for any reiteration. Read your ebook to identify what might make your readers stop reading. It’s all about creating engagement after engagement.”

You can always reread and see if there are ways to make it shorter, concise and to the point.

Checking for grammar, spelling, style and structure

This is where you can spend your time correcting spelling, sentences, style and structure. However, instead of trying to fix everything, there are two rules to follow:

Focus on the big picture, so you don’t get overwhelmed.

And then the details like typos, tweaking sentences and grammar.

Seeing the big picture will help you spot things you’ve written in Chapter 3 that shows up in Chapter 1. During the first phase, you might make the introduction shorter, remove a whole chapter, merge two chapters into one so it feels cohesive with the rest of your ebook.

Using grammar tools like Grammarly is a life saver. However, be cautious when you replace every single error, because it might try to correct that one word rather than the whole sentence structure. No tool is perfect, so read your ebook out loud so you can notice poorly worded sentences or even check the tone of the sentences. If all else fails, there are proofreading services that might save you some time.

Whatever the path you want to use, be sure to not leave this up to the reader! So make sure to check off these:

Check spelling and grammar.

Check the length of each chapter, ensure the description flows well.

Brush up the voice and tone.

Step 7) Convert into an ebook

The 5 Step Method

Part 1: Import using Designrr

Designrr can import and create ebooks from your blog, Microsoft Word, Google docs, Medium, another PDF, Facebook, or even an Audio or Video file, including a YouTube link.

In this case we’ll be using a Google Doc.

Grab the share URL from the Google DOC. (Make sure is accessible to ‘Everyone’)

Import the link into Designrr using the ‘Import From URL’ option.

Alternatively, you could also use the ‘Import Manually’ option.

Just copy and paste your Google Doc into the draft editor.

Part 2: Choose a Template

Then choose a template. There are literally 100s to choose from.

Part 3: Tweak, Customize and Tailor Your Look

Start by checking that the layout is ok – and that there are no grammar mistakes or typos.

Then begin the design process.

Adjust fonts, colors or style of your book:

A table of contents is generated automatically:

Change the template colors, headers and footers, cover image, or even add more images from your computer or the built-in library of thousands:

Select one for a new cover:

Then click ‘Publish’:

You can publish to PDF, Kindle, ePub or to your blog.

Once your ebook is created – you can also add a 3d thumbnail to use on your website to encourage people to download it.

Conclusion

Writing an ebook can be a lengthy process if you don’t know where to start or understand the steps you need to follow. We went over how to identify if there’s a market for your ebook idea and that creating personas can help fill most of your content. Knowing what to write about is one thing, focusing on one person and engaging with that persona is another. Creating the actual ebook itself, making it beautiful, is the easiest part when using a software like Designrr.

If you received value from this post please Like & Share this post so that we can serve and help others keep and build their business, income, so that they can sustain with the tools necessary to make an impact during this time.

Yours In Knowledge - Peace & Wellness

The Online Marketing Alliance

#ebook #how to create an ebook #how to build a email list #lifepreneur #chris record #how to get more customers #designrr

3 notes · View notes

ryik-the-writer · 5 years ago

Photo

Chapter 26 - Temporary Fix

[A03]

Chapter 1: Pan meets a Wendy Chapter 2: Scars (Felix’s Story) Chapter 3: Day One Chapter 4: Revenge and Fireflies Chapter 5: Brighter than Stars Chapter 6: filler: The Tigress Chapter 7: Operation Spotless! Chapter 8: Operation Spotless: Reporters Down Chapter 9: A Dance with the Devil Chapter 10: filler: Felix and the Pancake Chapter 11: The Girl with Blue Eyes pt. 1 Chapter 12: The Girl with Blue Eyes pt. 2 Chapter 13: The Girl With Blue Eyes: Underground Chapter 14. Recovery Chapter 14.2 Recovery some more Chapter 15: Trapped Chapter 16: Filth Chapter 17: Fairydust pt. 1 Chapter 18: Fairydust pt. 2 Chapter 19: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 1 Chapter 20: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 2 Chapter 21: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 3 Chapter 22: Reflections pt. 1 Chapter 23: Reflections pt. 2

Chapter 24: Closing

Chapter 25: Felix is helping Pan

So guess what…

THIS BITCH FINALLY GOT A JOB AND HER OWN PLACE TO LIVE!!

HELL YEAH!!

So slight negative note on that: that kind of means updating is going to be REALLY slow for a while. The place I moved to, while really nice, is kind of out of my budget and I am pulling as many hours as possible to pay for it and such.

On top of that, the place doesn’t have internet and I’m trying to see what my budget will look like after I pay bills so I can consider getting my own (which I really need as a writer and as a journalist).

So just know, I’m not giving up on any of my stories. I’ve just started a new chapter of my life and have to let the ink dry before I can pick up my old interests.

Anyway, here’s Papers and Sleuthers…

-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-

Wendy half-heartedly checked that she had her notepad full of her old notes before she locked up to head to Peter’s. If he started acting up she could use her lack of supplies as an excuse to slip out. She truly hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She wanted this week to be a sort of awakening for them, a chance to finally pull the hatchet away from each other’s throats.

She was linked to him now in the worse way. They’d been through hell together so many times but it hadn’t done anything to shift their relationship into a more stable light. Perhaps if they took the chaos out of the equation something would change. Things really needed to.

She found herself checking her hair as she exited her apartment before she chastised herself. This was an after-hours investigation, not a date!

Wendy scoffed as she locked her door. Her and Pan on a date? What a nightmarish thought!

She grimaced when she reached his door, the unpleasant memory of confronting him the day Mother Superior died still vividly fresh.

“Tosser,” Wendy muttered, wanting to call him something much crueler. However, learning to tolerate him now that they were going to be in close proximity for an unknown amount of time might be beneficial.

With that, she took a deep breath and knocked softly on the door.

There was a light thud behind the wood before it opened, a wild Pan greeting her with a sharp once-over.

“You’re wearing that road-kill?” he scoffed, pointing harshly at her feathered sweater that had been more than appropriate for the weather.

So much for patience.

“Shove it,” Wendy hissed, pushing him into his trashed living room.

“The hell happened in here?”

Pan circled her, not answering, and pulled a giant marker board from the kitchen.

“I’ve started putting some notes together,” he said, adding a picture of Cruella de Vil on the board.

“Um…” Wendy started, her heart speeding up at the site of their old nemesis. “Where are we starting?”

Pan pondered at the start of his chaos. “From the beginning. The devil woman is our best bet. Somehow she set all of this off.”

“How do you figure that?” Wendy inquired.

Pan passed a folder over his shoulder to her, eyes still trained on the board.

Wendy shifted through its components, her gut dropping at the various photos of the dog murderer.

Her brow wrinkled in thought as she went through de Vil’s information. Exact date and location of birth unknown, though her last address was in Manchester…with her now-deceased husband. Wendy whistled at the rap sheet of her marriages. Four times, all but her last ending in death (the last abruptly ended in divorce following a major arrest of the husband.)

There was a scan of her passport as well, signifying that she had been in the country at least six months before she kidnapped Storybrooke’s dogs.

“Why here?” Wendy wondered aloud. “Why Storybrooke, and why dognapping? It’s such a cartoonish villain move.”

“Except in cartoons the villains wouldn’t bleed the dogs out and turn their skins into coats,” Pan muttered, back still to her.

“Coats?” Wendy gasped, the mental image making her stomach twist.

“Last page in the file,”

Wendy balanced the folder to find the page and blinked at the printed out copy of a news article before her.

MANCHESTER WOMAN CHARGED WITH 13 COUNTS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY

Wendy gulped at the picture of the drunk-looking mugshot of de Vil, her intense eyes seeming to stare right at Wendy, as if blaming her for her past crime.

A local woman is being charged with the kidnapping and death of several dogs.

The dogs, all of Dalmatian and mixed Dalmatian breeds, were taken out of the Manchester and Liverpool areas within a three week period, according to authorities.

The woman, identified as 39-year-old Cruella de Vil, was apprehended at an abandoned windmill outside of the Liverpool area where over 20 dogs were being kept. Upon her arrest animal control discovered the mutilated remains of eight dogs. The remaining five dogs very rushed to the Wrightsville Veterinarian clinic for emergency treatment, and are expected to survive.

De Vil is being held at the Wrightsville Police Station without bail.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

Wendy checked the date of the incident to find that Cruella committed her first act three years ago. She shifted to Pan’s slightly cleared off the counter to spread out the devil woman’s file and located an additional article.

MANCHESTER DOGNAPPER TRIAL UNDERWAY

The trial Manchester dognapper Cruella de Vil will begin Monday morning.

De Vil was charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty following the torture and murder of several dogs in January.

De Vil’s lawyer originally declined to comment of her client’s state for her case, but De Vil stated to the press before being led to the jail: “I’m not worried, Darlings. Who would sentence a woman in diamonds?”

Wendy snorted. Now that was quality journalism! She flipped to the next article.

‘DEVIL WOMAN’ CRUELLA DE VIL EXPOSES PLOT FOR DOGS DURING TRAIL

Manchester dognapper Cruella de Vil stated during her trial that she abducted the Dalmatians with the purpose of using their pelts for ‘the perfect coat’.

De Vil continued to go into great detail about how she mutilated the dogs ‘when it was their time’, much to the disturbance to the court.

“I took one pup by his stringy little tail and hoisted him up,” de Vil, who was clothed in an elaborate gown and furs, detailed, “The little bugger wouldn’t stop squealing, even after I slashed his throat open.”

Evidence shows that De Vil had dozens of sketches for coats not just for the Dalmatians she abducted, but also for poodle and Shi Tzu breeds. The sketches also showed plans for various muffs, boots, and glove items.

When asked what she was going to do with all the coats, De Vil said, “Why, wear them of course! I’ll be the envy of every bitch at the social club.”

De Vil's criminal record includes dozens of speeding tickets and two cases of vehicle homicide attempts. Records show that De Vil was acquitted for both cases and never paid off the tickets.

De Vil’s sentence trial will be held in October. Until then De Vil will be held in Manchester Sanitarium for the Mentally Unwell for further observation.

Wendy sighed in exhaustion. What a story! How could someone so heinous be so close to her neck of the woods?

The other articles were faded from an obvious lack of printer ink, but Wendy was able to make out enough from the headlines to guess what happened next.

De Vil was sentenced to two years in a different sanitarium that specialized in disorders like her. She was deemed “cured” after a year and released due to a special project. She left for America right afterward for a “fresh start”.

“Oh she stared fresh alright,” Wendy commented.

“Great,” Pan said from the board. “You’re where I was thirty minutes ago. Let me know when you get where I’m at now.”

Wendy resisted throwing De Vil’s folder at his head.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere else to go with this one,” Wendy pointed out. “She went crazy, killed a bunch of animals, ran here and started all over again. That’s really it.”

“But the motive!” Pan growled, looking her dead in the eye. Desperate. “There had to be something else. Maybe she was working for someone or trying to start a multi-dognapping franchise here or…”

Wendy edged back at the desperation in his voice. He was grasping at straws, but there were none left for him in this case.

“Pan,” Wendy tried carefully, “There’s nothing left,”

“How the hell would you know!” He shouted.

“Because sometimes people are just bad,” she shouted back. “Sometimes they do a few terrible things just to do them! There doesn’t have to be a reason or a great scheme behind their actions! They just cause chaos and kill over!” with a spike of adrenaline, she stepped up to him, feeling his hearted pounding in the buzzing air.

“Don’t they?”

Pan twitched, glaring at her with a raw sense of hatred.

Wendy thought for a moment he might throw her out, and she really didn’t want him to. Pan had to see logic, had to stop filling his mind with information that just wasn’t there, and she couldn’t just run off and leave him to fill in such non-existent gaps.

He’s scared. He’s frustrated. He needs to be kept busy.

With a deep breath, she stepped back to locate one of the other boxes on the couch, tensing a bit when she saw Jekyll’s name on the cardboard.

“We can start with him now,” she said, pulling out a folder.

In a flash, Pan slapped it out of her hand.

Wendy gasped and brought her stinging hand to her chest where a shallow papercut was surfacing, staring at Pan.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, looking just as surprised as she did.

It was the closest thing to an apology she would get from him, she knew, and she expected it, but it still did not stop her from hating him.

“What is your problem!” she yelled as she sucked the blood from her stinging cut.

“Nothing,” Pan defended, though he was tenser than a tightly wound spring.

Wendy looked him over, trying to pinpoint the root of his harsh mood. Of course, going through their old cases was certainly stressful, with the memories that surfaced as they saw photos of their former nemesis faces…

Ah.

She stared at Jekyll’s case box where the corner of his photo was just peeking out, turning Wendy’s stomach.

Gods know what the site of him was doing to Pan.

The journalist stepped away, twisting to pick up de Vil’s box.

“What about her lackey’s?” Wendy inquired, picking through her file. She didn’t meet his eyes as she dug through the very scarce information. “We don’t know how they play into all of this outside their association with de Vil.”

Pan looked at her, his expression solid and unreadable, but Wendy swore she saw a glint of something in his eyes.

Gratitude?

No, Peter Pan didn’t thank anyone for what they did, for him or otherwise.

Good thing Wendy didn’t expect it from him, or anything else for that matter.

They began adding Horace and Jasper’s notes to de Vil’s board, though a now were quick glance told Wendy it wouldn’t add much. They were jailbirds on and off as far back as the records could show, became acquainted with de Vil sometime after their most recent parole hearing, and thanks to her and Pan were tucked safely in a Boston prison until they could be moved to one in London. Nothing more, nothing less.

But Pan wasn’t ready to accept that, so Wendy pretended to stay busy until she commented on ordering from the Chinese menu on Pan’s fridge.

Half an hour later they were sitting silently in his living room, munching on greasy eggrolls as they stared absently at the evidence before them.

Fuzz the cat made a lazy trail from Pan’s bedroom to where they were eating, plopping himself next to Wendy.

The blonde smiled, charmed by the odd-looking cat, and reached out to pet him.

Pan readied a warning. Fuzz was known to scratch first-time visitors to bleeding shreds, but with a flash of naughtiness, decided to let the little bird find that out for herself.

However, Fuzz the cat purred in delight at the attention and collapsed next to Wendy, hungry for more.

“You…slut!” Pan hissed at his sorry excuse of a cat.

Wendy’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“The damn cat,” Pan barked, turning back to his food to begin another round of silence.

Wendy shrugged and quietly offered him another eggroll, which he took with no additional fuss.

It was strange, this quiet domesticity. No violence, no fighting, no apprehension of what was to come.

It would have been peaceful if it weren’t for the wave of uneasiness Pan was letting off.

His leg was shaking with antsiness, and he kept making small sounds to break the silence.

I suppose it’s better than him yelling, Wendy thought. Might as well attempt conversation.

“So…” she begun, earning a questioned glare mid-chew. “I…ran into someone today,”

Pan looked up at her, looking slightly bored.

“And?” he shrugged, mouth full.

Wendy shrugged. Of course it was a stupid thing to bring up. Pan probably knew everyone in Storybrooke, and he had little interest for all of them.

“It’s nothing,” Wendy responded. “Just thought he was…” She searched her vocabulary for the word to describe the man with unsettling charming manners.

“Different,”

Pan’s eyes flickered at that.

Wendy Darling was smitten.

“Sounds like a scoop,” Pan smirked. “Let’s go find him.”

Wendy coughed on her fried rice as he stood. “What?” she laughed, truly mystified.

“Let’s go meet this mystery man,”

Wendy blinked trying to comprehend his shift in emotion as he put on his coat.

“Pan, it was dark out, I didn’t get a good look at him,” she explained. “I don’t even know his name!”

“It’s Storybrooke,” Pan waved her off. “We’ll find out who he is in an hour.”

“This is insane,” she barked with a laugh.

Pan wadded up her jacket and threw it at her, earning a yelp.

“Well, I’m bored. Are you coming or not?”

She stared at him, wondering just how high up the cliff of insanity he had already climbed. Boredom was making him scattered-brained and seeking action in the tiniest occurrence.

It was sad, like watching an animal trying to chew its way out of a trap, but also fascinating. Pan needed her, whether he would say it in words or in action. He needed her to keep him from jumping off that cliff, especially when they had no way of knowing what was waiting for him at the bottom.

With an exhausted sigh, she unraveled her jacket and followed him into the icy night, missing his satisfied smirk as he closed the door.

.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.

Wendy was having trouble keeping on his heels. It was dark and cold and he was the only one who really knew where they were going.

If he even knew himself.

Pan was all over the place tonight, and Wendy was starting to get dizzy from his back-and-forth.

She was practically having to skip to keep up with him. It was like he was forgetting that she was with him. Already he was trying to focus on something else.

Her loud cobbling seemed to echo through the street of Storybrooke, and in the dim night she felt a wave of paranoia run up her spine. It sounded like there was someone behind them, following them.

“Do you hear that?” she asked Pan.

“No, here we are,”

He stopped so suddenly Wendy ran into him, her face hitting him square in the spine. She gained her balance and glared at him before she stepped to his side, staring into the bright building ahead as it spilled vibration into the night.

“What is that?”

“The Rabbit Hole,” Pan smirked. “Sleaziest place in town.”

Wendy snorted through a shiver. “And you thing the well-polished man I ran into tonight is in there?”

Pan shrugged. “Maybe. Either way I want a drink. Come on,”

Wendy followed him with a sigh. At least she would get out of the cold.

Her ears began ringing as soon as she entered the nightclub, her eyes cloudy from the flashing lights.

“I don’t know about this,” she shouted, her voice lost in the sound.

This time, Pan took hold of her sleeve and pulled her through the cluster of tipsy people.

“Good thing it’s not a workday,” Wendy muttered to herself as Pan pulled her to a cluttered table.

She swept bits of food off the sticky surface, wincing at the music and hard chairs. Across her Pan was staring out into the crowd, his eyes glistening bright as he watched the gyrating bodies.

“You…come here often,” Wendy joked, feeling claustrophobic and savagely out of place.

“Once or twice with Tiger Lily,” Pan shrugged, somehow able to hear her over the music.

“And you’re not deaf?” she shouted.

“It’s not loud enough. It never is.”

“Huh?”

Pan looked up from the dancing sin to stare at her. Really stare at her. Truly look at her for the first time in days.

Her hair was growing out more evenly, her curls had even started to come back.

But the bags under her eyes were darker, hollower. She was tired, and he knew it was his fault.

“You want to dance?”

Pan looked as shocked as Wendy was when he looked back up at her.

“Did I…did I hear you right?”

Pan’s bright red face was hidden by the flashing strobe lights. The fuck did he say that?

“You’re not deaf yet are you?” he smirked, standing. “Let’s go.”

Wendy glanced out onto the dance floor. “I…think I’m overdressed.”

Pan glanced out at the half-clothed bodies and chuckled. He slipped off his jacket and undid the first two buttons of his shirt.

Wendy’s heart leapt and her throat tightened.

“You’re turn.”

Wendy shot from her chair, her clothes suddenly feeling stuck to her skin.

“Oh don’t be so damn modest,” Pan cackled, easing out into the dance floor. These little outbursts were giving him some energy.

Wendy shivered, feeling naked under her multiple layers.

Damn it! Why the hell did he have to get under her skin so easily!

She clutched her sleeves, watching as he began to get swarmed by dancers.

Yet…strangely enough…he was still waiting for her. As if he actually wanted her to come out there with him.

Keep him distracted. Keep him busy.

And he was actually smiling!

Well…leering, but he wasn’t as threatening as usual.

With a groan, she shed her feathered coat and eased out into the crowd, instantly getting sucked into the vortex of sweat.

She reached out for stability, hoping she wouldn’t accidentally grope anyone. Out of the sea of grinders a hand grabbed her wrist and—thankfully or unthankfully, she wasn’t sure yet—she fell into Pan’s chest.

“Bet you didn’t do this kind of dancing in your London prep school,” Pan snarked against her hair.

Wendy detached herself from his chest, getting some much-needed space between them.

“I went to a public school, thank you,” she barked, a smile tugging at her lips. It was hard to find a balance with so many people crushing them together.

“What do we…how…” she yelled, desperate for just an inch for space.

She felt Pan’s laugh rumble against her chest, the feeling much more put-together than the vibrations in the air. His hands snaked up her shoulder and gave them just enough space so that they could look into each other’s eyes.

“Just do what I do.” He said.

I already do.

He took her hands and helped her sway in their tiny space. Wendy could have fainted from the heat and the shock of the situation. Here she was dancing with the biggest arse in the entire world! She must be as mad as he was bored!

Her heart pounded as she copied his movements, almost afraid to let him go. So many people were brushing and bumping into them. She could easily be trampled, and something told her she wasn’t leaving the bar tonight without at least a cracked rib.

She looked up to find Pan watching her. He looked strangely human. Less territorial and ready to fight.

Like he was actually…enjoying himself.

“Okay,” he instructed, pulling her arm over her head. He began twisting her wrist and Wendy caught on quickly, letting her twirl her until spots flashed before her eyes.

But he didn’t stop, and she kept going, catching the light in Pan’s eyes each time she spun back to him.

And before Wendy knew it, she was laughing, the sound much more soothing than the trash flowing through the intercoms.

For a moment Peter Pan and Wendy Darling weren’t small-town reporters who got into too much trouble far too often.

They were just two normal adults who were having a fun, random night.

Wendy couldn’t remember the last time she did something like this. Perhaps back in college…when she wasn’t as dark, before the bloodshed and the grittiness of the world became part of her daily routine.

And it was nice to be having this fresh taste of life with the person who had drug her into it.

“Not bad, Wendy Bird,” Pan teased as she grabbed on to his shoulder to stop the dizziness.

“Same to you, Peter Pan,

He scoffed, covering the hand on his shoulder and grasping this one.

“Let’s make you fly.”

With that, he pushed into the crowd, anchoring her with the hold on her arm. She spun back into him naturally, howling like a fool.

“Don’t let go if you’re going to do that,” she laughed.

“I promise, I won’t.”

Wendy had to admit, she rather liked this fun side of him. Sure, he was really just distracting himself from his current issues, but he was doing it in a constructive way that was keeping them both out of harm's way…mostly.

She nearly slammed into a dancer during her second twirl. When she spun back to Pan she was ready to tell him to try something else, but he looked so…happy.

She couldn’t do it…and had he had said he wouldn’t let her get hurt.

And she was safe…

Thank you.

Until he spun her out again…

Time to fly.

And let go.

He was gone in the blink of an eye and she stumbled out into the crowd.

The more drunkard dancers shoved her away and she stumbled to find stable ground.

“Pan!” She called out, drowning.

She was wedged between so many people, blind and hot.

“Pan!” She yelled again, feeling for him. “Where are—“

Someone’s elbow pounded into her lip and she flew to the sticky ground. Blood filled her mouth in seconds, and she stopped caring if she found Pan or not and started searching for a way off the dance floor.

Pan had taken them too far out. She had no idea where she was. People were stepping on her like she was nothing. On her hands, her hair.

She was going to die here. Had Pan done this on purpose? Had he really hoped her death would somehow entertain him?

She was going to die and no one would know until the club closed, or morning at least.

She was going to die…

“I got you lass!”

She was picked up effortlessly and drug from the crowd, the person clutching her moving through them like Moses through the parted sea.

A savior, it would seem.

Before her brain truly recognized what was going on, her savior had her outside, away from the noise and her unintentional murderers. Her lungs painfully filled with fresh, icy air and she started coughing up blood from her wound, very uncaring how disgusting she looked to her companion.

“There you go, love,” the savior—a man?—instructed, patting her back. “Get the sin out of your lungs.”

Love…

Wendy brushed her bangs from her eyes and met the haunting blue eyes of her earlier savior, the very man she and Pan had set off to find.

“You!” she gasped, nearly laughing with the insanity of it. “I…we…hi!”

He chuckled. “Hello again.”

She tried to catch her breath as she went back and forth with the odd coincidence and Pan’s disappearance.

Disappearance…or abonnement?

Wendy’s stomach flipped when the idea passed through her mind. It seemed almost too cruel for him to do, yet it seemed like something that he would do.

He was all over the place tonight, jumping back and forth like a frog on a scorching lily pad.

But really, he was always like that, she just hadn’t accepted it yet.

And now he had left her to be trampled to death in a night club, wandering off to gods’ knows where.

And he didn’t care. He just didn’t care.

“Are you alright?”

Wendy blinked, not realizing that her eyes had been misting.

“Yes, of course,” she breathed deeply and stood. “I just…I need to get home.” And get a club, she added to herself.

“I’ll walk you,” he offered immediately.

“Thank you, but I’m fine.”

The man chuckled. “Each time you say that I find you in peril,”

Wendy made a sound, not wanting to be rude but really not wanting to stick around much longer. “Really I’m fine. But thank you.” She nodded at him and began walking away, the raging fire in her heart, melting the ice in her bones.

“Killian Jones.”

Wendy paused and glanced back at him. “What?”

He smiled, at pearly whites and charm. “My name. I think it’s about time, you learned it.”

Wendy worried at her lip, letting the name rest on her mind. It suited him somehow. An old-world name for an old world charmed man. It was an interesting combination.

“I see. Well then, thank you, Killian Jones.” She said with a nod, picking back up her step.

“Wait.”

Wendy halted, slightly aggravated. If he turned out to be a maniac like Jekyll she’d bash his lights out with a chunk of ice.

He stepped forward, his hands resting in his pockets, showing he meant no harm, posed no threat.

“Would you like to get a drink sometime?”

Wendy laughed, her face burning. “That’s…forward.”

Jones chuckled with a shrug. “With your track record, the next time I may see you is in a hospital.”

Wendy shrugged that was true. She gave him another look over. Mysterious creature of the night.

She had learned already that trusting people was too dangerous, especially the kind who lurked in the dark.

She didn’t know him, and he, despite his multiple rescues, didn’t know her.

“Why on earth would you want to have a drink with a perfect stranger?” she inquired aloud.

Jones cocked his head, his eyes gleaming with intentions Wendy couldn’t trace.

“To get to know you, of course.”

Wendy stiffened, her anxiety rising.

“That’s not a good idea,” Wendy gasped, desperate for space. “I have to go find…” she shook her head, her mind too cluttered to find a definition for her current view of Pan.

“If you change your mind,” Jones called after her. “I’ll be waiting. Tomorrow at the diner.”

Wendy increased her speed, making a direct line to Pan’s apartment.

She was going to kill him. She’d made the threat many times before but this time she meant it.

He left her.

He pulled her into all of this madness, and then just released her to break her neck without him.

Where had he gone? What temporary rush was he following now?

Why hadn’t he taken her with him?

She found his apartment the same way they had left it: locked up and dark. She searched for a spare key in the places anyone else would, but Pan wasn’t like everyone else and thus wouldn’t think to leave a spare key.

Out of aggravation, she picked up a loose brick, check over her shoulder, and hurled it into the glass.

It was exactly something Pan would do, and Wendy couldn’t help the small flame of satisfaction that came with damaging his property—which she had to plan to fix thank you very much.

She stormed in, flicking on lights and opening doors to find him. Fuzz the cat ran out of the bedroom as she checked behind checked in his closet.

“Pan!” she howled, her hands shaking.

Why?

“Where are you?”

Pan wasn’t there. He hadn’t returned to hide from her or even to continue their work. He had vanished completely with no warning for her.

With a stiff sob, she collapsed on the couch, feeling right at him with the shattered remains of his home.

“Peter…”

He left you.

“He left me.”

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

He wasn’t sure when or where he was.

But it was bright there, and surprisingly warm. It couldn’t be a memory of his childhood. Those were always dark and cold.

But he was somewhere…at least he thought it was him. There was glass in front of him, well-made and clean, and big enough to cover an entire wall.

But he couldn’t see his reflection…

Nor anything outside the window.

That’s why when the little bird flew closer, it terrified him.

“Stop…” he tried to scream just as the bird hit the window.

A loud bang…

It landed at his feet—

Its neck was broken.

He startled into consciousness, his fuzzy mind going into an automatic death mode.

Someone had grabbed him…he thought.

One second he was throwing Wendy out—letting her fly just enough from him—and then she was flying out of his grip while he was being pulled further from her.

He wasn’t sure what happened after that, but now he was tied up in some sort of darkroom, his hands above his head on some kind of meat hook, by the fill of it.

Something equivalent to a lantern was in the corner, giving him just enough light to keep him from going into a state of complete panic.

Jekyll’s prisons were always too bright.

A noise indicated he was no longer alone. A second later a door in the corner opened, and a man stepped in, the light behind him silhouetting him just long enough for Pan to get a good idea of him.

“Good to see you again,” the man said as he pulled a chair up and straddled it.

“Again?” Pan scoffed. “Go to hell, you wanker.”

“That’s captain to you, boy,” he returned firmly. “Captain Killian Jones, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t care, and know, who the fuck you are.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Killian said casually.

“I tend to forget people who aren’t worth remembering,” Pan smirked, his face warmer from the trail of blood leaking from his temple.

Killian chuckled, charmed. This was going to be the most fun he’d had in a while.

“I suppose it won’t matter anyway,” he sighed. “Not with you knocking on death’s door.”

Pan licked his lips. A challenge at last!

“Oh really?”

“Yes,” Killian said. “You see m’boy, I’ve been sent by someone who really wants you dead.”

“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Pan winked.

“No one you’ll need to worry about,” Killian alluded. “Just know that you’ve caused enough trouble that it warrants a very clean—and if you behave yourself—a very quick one.”

Pan scoffed. “If I’m scheduled to die, know that I’ll make my last days your worst,”

Killian seemed unphased by Pan’s threat, and while Pan wasn’t yet worried about it, it did make his gut turn just enough to be noticed.

Then, Killian laughed, and tapped his fingers on the back of the chair.

“You know, you actually gained our attention after that boy with the scar inquired Henry Jekyll’s files,”

Ice…the blood can’t move.

“Oh…I can’t quite remember his name…”

You have to keep count of the spasms…you have to know where the blood is going…

“That’s his benefit I suppose,” Killian smirked, watching as the blood drained from his face.

Felix…oh Felix I’m sorry…

“After all, it’d be a shame if that poor boy succumbed to one of his little fits in the privacy of his own home one afternoon…”

Pan bolted against the restraints, blood raging and teeth desperate to break skin.

“You fucking go near him I’ll kill you!”

Killian grabbed Pan by the jaw and forced him into the wall, pressing his knee into his stomach.

“I’d love to see you try,” Killian husked, his ice blues evenly hitting Pan’s forest greens. “I’d love to see you help any of them. Him, that pixie of a girl who hates you more than life itself…” his grin widened. “And that pretty blonde distraction you brought into this whole bloody mess.”

“Wendy…” the word left his lips before could stop it.

He didn’t know how to protect her the way he did the others.

“Such a pretty name,” Killian gloated. “Such a pretty girl at that. And she’s so desperate to find you, even after to abandoned her on a dangerous dance floor,”

Pan glared at him. “You bitch,”

Killian released him and made his way to the door.

“I’ll take no pleasure from killing her, m’boy,” Killian said, surprisingly quite truthfully. “However, this is as much to do with her as it does with you.”

Pan dug his nails into the cloth binding his wrists, trying desperately to stare a whole through Killian’s heart.

“How quick or how slowly she goes depends on what you can do for me within the next few days,”

Pan winced.

“Goodnight,” Killian winked, turning off the light and enclosing Pan in a blanket of darkness.

#darling pan #darling pan fic #wendy darling #peter pan #killian jones #captain hook #papers and sleuthers #ryik's fics

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its-r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s · 5 years ago

Text

Call Me A Freak- Chapter 5: Spells

Words: 1,572

Warnings: none that I can think of?

Ch 4 | Ch 6

~ ~ ~

Jane stopped by our room that day after classes. I was laid out across my bed, sketching, and Evie was sewing at the table.

“Mom said, ‘If a boy can’t see the beauty within then he’s not worth it,’” Jane explained. “Can you believe it? What world is she living in?”

“Auradon?” I grumbled, not looking up from my work. Jane was kind of useless to me if she couldn’t get the wand.

“Mal,” Evie interrupted. “Do you like?”

I glanced up at the item she had been sewing. It was a dark blue and black dress.

“Yeah,” I responded, not much conviction in my voice. “It’s cute. Brings out your eyes.”

“I know,” she said, sweetly.

I bit down on my cheek. It was something I often did when I was trying to hold myself back or stop myself from saying something.

I felt bad that my uninterested replies were enough for Evie. I wish that she would demand more from the people she called friends. She deserved it… but I couldn’t show her any more affection than I already did.

I couldn’t get close to her…

“I’ll never get a boyfriend!” Jane’s ramblings brought me back from my thoughts.

“Boyfriends are overrated.”

“And how would you know, Mal? You’ve never had one,” Evie teased.

“It’s ‘cause I don’t need one, E,” I shot back. “They’re a waste of time.”

Evie gasped, suddenly. “I forgot to do Chad’s homework!”

She jumped up, abandoning her work to scurry over to Chad’s backpack. I watched her go, incredulously.

“You’re doing Chad’s homework?” I scoffed. “That is exactly what I mean.”

There was a loud knocking from our wide open door, and in walked a tall girl, clad in a pink blouse and blue miniskirt.

“Hey guys!” She announced. “I’m Lonnie.”

We all just sort of stared at her, waiting for her to get to the point.

“My mom’s Mulan?” she tried again.

Evie turned away to work on her second round of homework for the night. Jane and I just continued to stare, unimpressed.

“No? Anyways, I love what you’ve done with Jane’s hair. And I know you hate us, and well… you’re evil…” I smiled at the comment, which seemed to unsettle her. “But do you think you could do mine?”

“Why would I do that for you?” I sneered.

“I’ll pay you fifty dollars,” she offered.

“Good answer,” Evie said, taking the money before I could argue. “I need to buy more material.”

She stood up, looking Lonnie up and down.

“Let’s see, I’m thinking we lose the bangs. Maybe some layers and some highlights,” she analysed.

“No, no,” Lonnie insisted. “I want it cool. Like Mal’s.”

I looked up from my artwork once more.

“Really?” Evie questioned. “The split ends, too?”

I glared up at Evie. Not so much for the comment, but because I knew she was going to insist I do this all so that she could buy some more fabric

She shook the bag, a smile on her face.

I groaned, rolling off the bed to grab my spellbook. “Okay.”

I opened it back up to find the spell I had used for Jane.

“Beware, forswear,” I repeated. “Replace the old with cool hair.”

Just as last time, I waved my finger around and slowly her short hair lengthened and the plain black color became an enriching brown ombre.

She hurried to the mirror in our room, staring at it.

“I know, I know,” Evie said, joining her in front of the mirror. “It looks like a mop on your head. You know what, let’s cut it off, layer it-”

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Lonnie stuttered. “I love it!”

“You do.” Evie almost sounded disappointed, although I wasn’t sure why. Lonnie was satisfied and she got her money.

“It’s just-” Lonnie hesitated, still staring at her reflection. Then, she reached down and ripped a slit into her skirt. “There. Now I’m cool.”

I found myself smiling unintentionally. “Like ice.”

Jane walked up beside her, taking Evie’s place, and did the same.

She gasped, staring at the barely visible tear in her dress. “What did I just do? Mom’s going to kill me.”

Evie looked at me, amused by their acts of rebellion and I couldn’t help but feel for them. It was nice to know that outside of being evil, my mother didn’t care what I did or what I wore. I didn’t have to be proper to impress anyone.

I just had to be the perfect little minion for her.

~ ~ ~

When Carlos walked in, I stopped cold. “Is that a dog in your arms?”

His face cracked open into the biggest grin I’d ever seen. “This is Dude. You won’t believe this, but he’s so sweet. He’s like my new best friend,” Carlos rambled. “Ben introduced me to him while I was practicing for Tourney. You should pet him. He’s so soft!”

I grimaced as he held the dog up to my face. “No thanks,” I responded. “Where’s Jay?”

“Talking to coach about joining the tourney team. Said he’d come over here as soon as he was done.”

I nodded and went back to flipping through the pages of my spellbook. I was doing my best to familiarize myself with it. I needed to know my resources and I wanted to memorize the more important spells.

Carlos sat on the floor, leaning up against the end of my bed, while Evie worked on more homework, asking her mirror for the answers.

“Yo!” Jay called, walking in with a brand new tourney jersey on. He danced excitedly as Carlos cheered him on.

“Did your plan work with Jane?” he asked, making his way around my bed. “You going over to see the wand?”

“Do you think I would be going through every single spell in this book if I hadn’t completely struck out?” I didn’t mean to reply so viciously, but something about the room was setting me off.

It started when Carlos walked in, talking about the dumb dog he had laid out beside him. And then Jay waltzing around in his new jersey. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way people in the room were acting.

“Oh, someone’s in a bad mood,” Carlos mumbled.

“My mom’s counting on me!” I shot back. “I can’t let her down.”

It was just a bit too homey. I was now sharing a room with Evie, who was concerned about my scars and the boys simply came in whenever they pleased. I didn’t like how our surroundings forced me to be open with my friends. It demanded that I be in their presence at all times.

“We can do this,” Jay reassured. All of us looked up at him. He had himself positioned in front of the window, looking unsure. “If we stick together.”

That was a big no-no. I didn’t do dumb motivational speeches.

“And we won’t go back, until we do,” I insisted, trying to move on from Jay’s comment. “Because we’re rotten…”

“To the core.” They all finished the phrase.

“Oh, yeah. I found out that Fairy Godmother blesses Ben with the wand at Coronation and we all get to go,” Evie explained calmly. “I have nothing to wear, of course.”

I glared at her. Sometimes I desperately wanted to know how Evie’s mind worked, because she was so good at playing with other people, and yet so oblivious.

“What?” she started to say, but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Hold that thought.” I pulled my legs out from underneath me and rushed to the bedroom door.

Ben stood awkwardly in the hallway, his eyes widening as I opened the door for him. “Hey Mal. I didn’t see you guys today, I was just wondering if… you had any questions or… anything that… you needed?”

I pursed my lips, looking back at the others. “Not that I know of.”

“Okay. Alright, well uh…” He started to back away from the door. “If you need anything, just, uh-”

“Oh wait!” I called, interrupting his fumbling goodbye. “Is it true that we all get to go to your Coronation?”

He smiled, pleased by my interest. “Yeah, the whole school goes.”

“Wow,” I replied, twirling my hair in my fingers. “That is beyond exciting.”

“Do you think that it’s a possibility that the four of us could stand in the front row, next to the Fairy Godmother, just so that we could…” I took a deep breath in. “Soak up all that goodness?”

He opened his mouth, but it took a few seconds for any words to come out. “I wish you could. Up front it’s just me, my folks, and my girlfriend.”

My mind flashed back to a spell I had seen minutes prior. “And your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

I paused, trying to figure out if I needed anything else for this to work. But nothing came to mind.

I shot him a quick smile and began to close the door. “Okay, thanks! Bye!”

“Oh, no! There’s plenty of-” he tried to explain, but stopped himself when he realized I wasn’t going to reopen the door.

I looked at the rest of my gang and smirked. “I think it’s time that Ben got himself a new girlfriend.”

Everyone’s face lit up with realization. Evie was standing, running her tongue over her teeth and Jay looked almost giddy at the thought.

“I need a love spell.”

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lucky-7times · 5 years ago

Note

9,17,21,22,24

9: How much time do you spend drawing on a average day?

On most days I don't draw at all, but when I'm in the mood I can easily draw for 4-6 houres straight. A simple sketch alone takes normaly 1-3 houres for me. Time flys so fast while drawing or I'm just way too slow.

17: Do you think you're justified in giving other people art advice?

I think everyone is it. Even persons who don't draw or who have no clue of art have a sense of aesthetics or what looks good, most just don't know how to describe it or what's it exactly. Some can indeed point out, what's missing or looking off without knowing how or why.

However, skilled persons can describe better what they mean and can give direct tips and ways to improve, which is more helpful in the end. Professionals can give excellent art advice, but this doesn't make them the only justified people for that. There are actually a whole bunch of people, who may not be very skillful in drawing in generell, but have really good ways in drawing something specific. This doesn't have to be something big, most times I just come across a picture, see one good aspect or detail and think: "How did you do that?" I would like to get advice from the artist, even if they're like 10 years old, it doesn't matter.

21: Do you like to challenge yourself?

I'm playing Hollow Knight so ...

If I'm alone and nobody sees my mistakes, then yes. However, I hate when people see me struggle. I was all my life seen as a failure, I don't want this anymore.

22: Are you confident that you're improving steadily?

For most of my life I thought only time will make my art skills better. I drew hella rarely back then as a child and if I came across something difficult - I gave up. I didn't drew for like years then, because what's the point if I'm not good? Then, sometime, I tried again - and I made it, without any exercise. I don't know why that is, but I literally grew up with the mind set that if I can't do something today, I can do it later. This is still in my head if I see a really good picture and don't think I can't do that as well - yet. There's something in my head literally telling me: "Yeah wait bro, gimme some time." However, this was heaviely damaged by people who compared me to others and wanted to see improvement in like days. Even when I exercise, I can't get better in a really short time and this gave me the illusion that I won't get better even if I try. Progress is slowly and fluent, it does get faster if I draw and exercise regulary, but it's not visible if it's not compared to myself.

24: Do you feel jealous when you see other people’s art or inspired? (Be honest!)

Oh boi, seeing someone better than me felt literally like poison in my heart back then. When I was a child, I got highly excited when someone complimented my art, but something in me broke if I saw the same person was complimenting someone else too. This was because of low self-estem, nobody gave me me signs or reasurement that I'm something valueable by myself so I tried to prove it. I felt like something special for having a talent that others don't have, but it was crushing when I got conscious of how much people were more skilled than me, it made me feel worthless. Only the aknowledge of getting better over time gave me hope to become something better later. When I was 14-16 I used drawings from others more to find ways to improve than seeing reasons to quit, as long the artists were younger than me (because oh noooo, if you weren't hot shit at that age you were doomed to be a looser all the rest of your life lmao).

Later when I focused my education in art, I got critisism from all sites and I don't saw the point in drawing anymore. I was neither good nor did I have fun at it, so why keep doing that? I had nothing left again, so I tried to do it from the other site: Making fun the priority. Then it got incredible better, I could enjoy more what I do and even laughed at mistakes sometimes. I even find the bravery to look more into things I was always kinda interessted in, despite how others see or think about it. From that point, I didn't felt the need to become something special anymore if I have fun in what I do.

Now, I know how precious my creations are to me and that makes me feel that I'm already good enough for myself without a need to prove that to others. With this I can look relaxed at art that’s way ahead of what can I do now and yeah, find inspiration or motivation in trying something that I’ll probably fail at first.

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truthbeetoldmedia · 5 years ago

Text

The 100 6x07 "Nevermind" Review

Hello fellow watchers! Did y’all breathe a sigh of relief as I did at the end of this episode? And while I’m at it, I'd like to take this moment to say: I LOVE when TV shows address mental and emotional traumas in a physical way in the characters heads. Give me Sherlock mind palace games all freaking day! That said, let's dive into the episode:

Dad, I had the strangest dream...

We pick up exactly where we left off in “Memento Mori”: Jaux!Clarke going to sleep in the real world and real Clarke waking up in her old Ark cell inside her own mind, surrounded by all of her most impactful memories decorating the walls like hipster graffiti art in an Asheville alleyway. She “hears” her memories as she touches them and walks through the exit door, only to stumble into her “sanctuary” (aka the real church she raised Madi in for 6 years) and be greeted by her dead father. Or rather, her memories of her father being animated by her subconscious. He’s all kindness and warmth when he asks her, “What's the last thing you remember?” She realizes with a start “I died” but, as her father points out, she still has a beating heart. As her BFF Bellamy Blake asked once: “Are we still breathing?” as a response to “Is there still hope?” And that beating heart is all Clarke needs to get her survival spark back.

She enters the next door in her mind and is face to face with none other than A.L.I.E. (Welcome back, Erica Cerra! We’ve all missed you...mostly.) A.L.I.E. gives Clarke the 4-1-1 on how she is still able to have her memories and a foothold in her own mind. Of course A.L.I.E. is all like “I tried to save you from this pain” but Clarke still has zero patience for even her memory version of this show’s “Woman in Red”, telling A.L.I.E. “there is no joy without pain.” She does however follow A.L.I.E.’s advice and takes her memory of saving Raven from the chip and hides it. A.L.I.E. also mentions Clarke’s darkest memories, her ‘traumas’ if you will, and how she can’t ��let them go”, still being things she just buries rather than face or make peace with. She tells A.L.I.E., her voice littered with confusion, “You say these are my memories but there’s something here I’ve never seen.”

Josephine enters stage left

That something is a rather jolly door, decorated for Christmas, with a mix of music, screaming, and gunshots coming from behind it. Clarke opens the door only to be startled by Ms. Josephine herself, in her original body (I’m assuming in her mind that is how she sees herself) walking through from her memories right into Clarke’s...

She takes a minute to give some fake science facts about how both their minds can share a body, but not forever, so somebody’s gotta vacate Clarke Griffin town...and Josephine doesn’t have a body to return to, talk about an awkward roommate situation. Clarke has suffered and survived too much to just give her body over to Josephine willingly. So a battle of the wits it is.

Josephine gives us some unsettling deeper looks into perfecting the mind wipes — she was “jacked” into people with active minds before, including a six-month-old. Lovely girl. But they weren’t tech-advanced minds like Clarke’s so Josephine needs to know what makes Clarke’s mind so special. I love this kind of expositional dialogue when you are getting much needed information, and the headspace of the speaker, and Josephine is the perfect mix of this. She is ruthless, a sociopath as Clarke calls her, or psychopath — take your pick. She gets Clarke thinking so she can infiltrate her thoughts. Upon seeing Clarke’s ‘cell’ covered in all of her memory sketches, Josephine’s “I rescind my compliment” was a great line. I am a big fan of using Josephine as an audience insert into Clarke’s mind, as well as a way to callback and maybe even “fix” issues from last season’s jumble of plot. Like when she’s inspecting the sketches and reaches the Madi in a shock collar moment from Season 5 her comment of “child abuse dressed up as protection. Cool” made me actually say “ Yasss! Point out that issue from Season 5, queen!”

“Are you hiding a memory from me, Clarke?” She is one crafty B and I am into a Moriarty/Holmes kind of showdown with these two brilliant and dangerous ladies.

Of course it manifests as a physical fight, too. As they are fighting for control over Clarke’s body Clarke goes straight gang fight and slams Josephine’s head in the door jamb over and over until she is “dead” — but this being a mind fight she easily manifests in Clarke’s mind again, ready to fight. Clarke, brave but never dumb, decides running and hiding in her own mind might buy her some time.

The ghosts of choices: past, present, and future

Clarke’s first stop in her memory maze is her most recent bad decision that haunts her daily: leaving Bellamy to die in the fighting pit. But weirdly it’s a projection of Octavia there to guilt and shame her: “I really thought you cared about Bellamy.” The explanation that Octavia gives for Bellamy not being in the memory himself (because Clarke can’t stand the idea of facing him) is both a great idea, and a weak one? Because the deep trauma they’ve been through

TOGETHER would have made Clarke’s memories and reactions so much more emotional and visceral had Bellamy been there talking to her at some point. (If they don’t give Clarke a mind/memory moment with Bellamy this season, they will be wasting the opportunity for cathartic angst between main characters most writers DREAM about.)

Still, Clarke’s desperate tearful pleas of “he forgave me, he understands” was a great moment to reiterate the importance of Bellamy’s forgiveness and what he thinks about Clarke. Josephine’s comment “even your projections hate you Clarke” really hit me in the feels. Clarke hates herself so much that she injects it into how she thinks other people in her life perceive her. (With Octavia, she’s probably not wrong.)

Clarke runs from her ‘leaving Bellamy’ memory right into the cold arms of her decisions at ‘Mt. Weather’ and the horribly disfigured mind ghost of Maya Vie, one of the shows most true and noble heroes. It was so great to see her back! Though if Jasper or Bellamy had been in Mt. Weather along with her I think the emotional impact would’ve been greater. Still Maya’s snarky yet cutting “too bad I wasn’t in that group, huh?” when Clarke pulls out her classic “my people” line was perfect.

Clarke’s choices have left a lot of dead bodies behind and she has never had the proper time and headspace to deal with the impact those choices have had on her own mind, body, and soul. I’m hoping one good thing that can come out of her being a hostage in her own body is that she will come back having worked through a lot of her issues in her mind and emotions. I mean I can at least dream about this possibility, okay?

Creepy Maya making Clarke realize she’s in control of her thoughts and memories was great. Josephine falling for her trap because she is so used to being in control of the situation was such a nice way to reveal she has weaknesses just like Clarke, hers being extreme hubris.

Clarke saying “Me? I’ll find a way to survive. I always do” was such a “yassss! That’s my Clarke Griffin!” moment for me.

Also Josephine letting herself get shocked to “death” because she’s bored was such a nice touch to show her level of crazy town.

Finally we get to “that place”, the dark traumatic place Clarke hides her darkest, most hurtful memories: through the airlock she watched her dad get sucked out of and into the woods where the memories of the deaths of her only (so far) romantic partners are hiding. The first one being Finn, literally dying at her own hand because of Lexa! That should’ve been conveyed more, because it makes the fact that she loved and mourned Lexa even more traumatic and dark. But they seem to want to erase all the bad things Lexa did...which makes no sense to me but I digress. And in the lockbox two other deep loves are represented in the video of her dad and Jasper’s goggles. Also I teared up when Josephine tried to get the box open and Clarke finally gives in because she thinks Bellamy has given up the fight, so why shouldn’t she? And she puts in the code 0102 and tells her “you forgot Bellamy and Raven.” Ouch! My delinquent loving heart felt that pain deep. (I miss Season 1 so much sometimes guys!)

“Tell Madi I love her. Tell them all.” Bless her heart she was finally starting to live again and then they stole her and basically forced her to kill herself at gunpoint. But this brings us to my personal favorite cameo and part of the episode:

Hello to my son Monty Green! I love that Monty is the only version of a friend in Clarke’s memory that isn’t hostile towards her? Or mad at her? Clarke knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Monty Green loved her dearly and trusted her and Bellamy to take care of his only child. I love that Monty is the manifestation of Clarke’s moral center but also of her self love and problem solving. He’s the motivation to do better for her. And his comment “you call this doing better?” is both sad and satisfying! Leave it to the person who literally saved part of the human race to imprint his way of thinking on to her.

Of course his chat gets her motivated to not go down without a fight. When he offered her his hand...I got a little misty eyed. I miss him so much. Money suggesting entering Josephine’s mind was a great way to get to know what makes her tick. And YIKE! Her mind is a dark place. Seeing her best friend end up being her killer because Josephine killed her lover, and then seeing WHY she killed said lover: he was against oblation, aka literally leaving newborns to be slowly eaten by the forest. One of the darkest things this show has revealed (and that’s saying something) to try and keep the bloodlines “pure” for Primes. That’s some serious post apocalyptic Nazi thinking to be sure.

I love the fact that Josephine’s memories are categorized chronologically basically using the dewey decimal system because she is extra af, and of course the idea that if they can access her traumas they can control her body because our deep-seated traumas are the key to who we are as people is something you could unpack for days. Monty’s quip “I like your drawings better”, which is really Clarke saying that to herself, was a nice nod to Clarke at heart being a creative more than an analyst, if people would just let her live. LITERALLY.

So they break in to Josephine’s first trauma I’m assuming? And boy howdy it’s a doozy. College age Josephine is working away at homework (judging by the Christmas decor in the Riverdale-ish diner cramming for finals.) It’s neat to see the world before the bombs. The newspaper with Diyoza’s capture story, the magazine with Becca gracing the cover like a Fortune 500 queen. I love world building. Anyway back to the scene:

Josephine and her friend’s studying is interrupted by a very uncomfortably realistic “nice guy” taking over their space and demanding Josephine’s attention and time. Only when she says no he turns threatening and violent, tapping the handgun he places on the table — only to use the weapon on himself as he lays the blame of his own choices at Josephine’s feet, his warm blood misting her face. All of us women have had a moment where we’ve prayed this person in front of us didn’t do something like this, or worse, to us. It triggers Josephine’s mind to the point that she comes after Clarke in a fury, tossing her out of her mind and not noticing she left her clever side (Monty) in the diner. Bravo Clarke! Also I would like to mention I know what happened to Josephine would be traumatic, but I feel Clarke has endured way worse? So kudos to Clarke Griffin for always being stronger than her darkest moment.

“I win” are Josephine’s first words upon waking up still in control of Clarke’s body (or so she thinks), with just a little nosebleed but she’s back among the living! And she knows how to permanently erase Clarke’s mind. Josephine’s day is starting much better than her previous night...or is it?

Because as she enters the room with her father and Bellamy negotiating for team space pops! to have a home. Bellamy “if we pretend you didn’t murder Clarke” Blake (as always his dramatic self) notices a “new” tic Jaux!Clarke has picked up, finger tapping...and upon further study he notices a pattern:

She’s tapping out a message! In Morse code!! (Shoutout to Earth Skills teacher Charles Pike! You legend!) Clarke Griffin is pulling a Will from Stranger Things and calling Bellamy through blinking the Christmas lights of the diner into Morse code. And he’s finally “ in range” for her 2200th message! He knows within two seconds it’s her trying to tell him she’s alive. There is no doubt, all bets are off, Clarke Griffin is ALIVE. “We’re gonna get her back” he says to Miller, smiling. Screw peace. It’s not worth it if she isn’t in this world to share it. Heart Bellamy is back, benches! AND I AM HERE FOR IT.

Final thoughts and tidbits:

I really wish they would’ve shown an old scene of Wells since they couldn’t get it worked out to have Eli Goree back.

I loved the tight dialogue scenes and limited character focus again in this episode. There’s just too many characters to focus on all at once. On that note: my kingdom for a Bellamy-centric episode where we get to hear his innermost fears, hopes, thoughts. Give it to me.

I really loved the concept of this episode and how it reminded me that this is the same Clarke Griffin from the pilot, and the Mt. Weather. Sometimes this show feels it’s grown too far from its roots.

Eliza has become so good at micro expressions.

I love Josephine as the “Anti-Clarke”: she’s smart, artistic, cute, blonde, and deadly. Just like Clarke, but where Clarke wants everyone to have a chance at life,only using her power when she feels cornered, Josephine enjoys being privileged and judging who’s fit to live from her seat of power. She likes playing God. Clarke loathes it. Josephine and Sanctum are a physical manifestation of all the “big bads” this show has ever had: there’s some A.L.I.E, Lexa, Dante, Cage, Pike, Diyoza, Octavia,McCreary, Nia AND Clarke at her most ruthless wrapped up and baked into Josephine and the people of Sanctum. Echoing all the lessons learned, and not, throughout the seasons. It’s working really well for this season.

Check back next week for our thoughts on “operation get Clarke back” here at TBT!

Gina’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

The 100 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on the CW.

#The 100 #Nevermind

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