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makeste · 3 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 318: On Your Left

Previously on BnHA: The Hawksquad+Lurkers were all “well this sucks” and sat around a bit talking about how maybe they should actually come up with a new plan that is actually good, but then in the end they were like “nah.” Deku was all, “THERE’S SOMETHING INSIDE ME THAT PULLS BENEATH THE SURFACE!! CONSUMING, CONFUSING!! THIS LACK OF SELF CONTROL I FEAR IS NEVERENDING. IT’S HAUNTING HOW I CANT SEEM TO FIND MYSELF AGAIN. MY WALLS ARE CLOSING IN.” Just, literally that whole entire song. All Might was all “Deku you should take care of yourself, try eating a thing,” and Deku was all “BYE, ALL MIGHT,” and just LEFT. He left!!! What the fuck!!!

Today on BnHA: Endeavor is all, “maybe if Deku didn’t listen to All Might he’ll listen to me instead.” Deku is all, “[doesn’t listen to Endeavor]” because, well, yeah. The Vestiges are all, “surprisingly, even we are a little concerned -- maybe you should get some rest, kid.” Deku is all, “((Ò ‸ Ó)).” The Vestiges are all, “holy shit.” Deku is all, “[wanders the ruined city streets terrifying the populace on account of him looking like Shelob had a baby with one of the Nazgul].” Some shriveled-up puppeteer villain asshole is all, “HORIKOSHI SAID IT’S MY TURN TO ATTACK DEKU TODAY SO I AM GOING TO SUMMON MY FRIGHTENED HELPLESS ATTACK MOB!!” Kacchan is all “WHADDYA MEAN THEY FOUND THE NERD!!! -- oh wait, that’s me, I found him. I found the nerd, you guys.” And just in time, too. I was about to owe a whole lot of people a whole lot of dollars.

so I have been super good about spoilers this week as always, but let me tell you guys, for the past 36 hours my dash filters have basically been nonstop “manga spoilers” this and “bnha 318” that, and so I’m coming in with a fair amount of hype here. your move, Horikoshi

oh, good! they got Endeavor to call Deku to try to talk him out of it. what a great and wonderful plan

“listen up kid, you haven’t slept since March and you are basically a walking biohazard right now, I’m just telling it like it is. didn’t you get shot like three times?? and there was a whole thing about how you urgently needed medical attention?? and supposedly we gave it to you, but I mean you haven’t even changed your clothes and don’t seem to have any fresh bandages or anything, so did we?? did we, really?? and also we all got blown up yesterday, so yeah.” hmm he’s making some reasonable points here you guys, but you sure do go on and on, Endeavor

oh he says foreign aid is finally on its way! I’m sure they’ll be very helpful. I mean in fairness they can hardly be worse than the home-grown heroes at this point

hey Enji, could you maybe try appealing to Deku the sixteen-year-old human boy, as opposed to Deku The World’s Last Hope? he does have value beyond his quirk. I know that’s always been an incredibly difficult concept for you to grasp, but could you maybe TRY, jesus

and also we’re worried about you as a person?? you’re just a kid and you’re pushing yourself way too hard?? you were going to say that part next, right. why the hell didn’t Hawks make this call instead

“don’t worry about me... I’m completely fine” Deku you do understand that saying it over and over again doesn’t actually make it true

and again with the rush!! all the rush rush rush!! we’re running out of time, we can’t let AFO and Tomura keep getting stronger, I have to end this now, there’s no time to rest, etc. etc. etc. just the constant pressure of this whole big countdown on top of everything else

holy shit, you KNOW it’s bad when even the Vestiges are telling him to chill

these guys are basically the walking talking embodiments of self-sacrifice; if even they’re telling him he needs to take five, then he must seriously be like half a step away from death’s door

OH SHIT LMAO

DIDN’T EVEN LET HIM FINISH HIS SENTENCE BEFORE HE SENT HIM INTO THE FUCKING SHADOW REALM WITH THAT FUCKING LOOK. HOLY FUCK. DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE TO DIE TWICE. SHIT

(ETA: so I’m pretty sure this was just Danger Sense activating and so he cut them off to go do more hero stuff, but I’m gonna go ahead and stick to my original interpretation anyway lol.)

anyway so how’s everybody doing. we all good? En, you good? Banjou? Shino? I’m imagining you guys all curled up in a little ball on the floor right now lol. can’t say I blame you though, no shame

lmaoooooooooooo

“SHEESH.” sheesh indeed, lmao. “what in the FUCK was that”

see, this is why y’all need Kacchan. you need someone who’s not going to back down from him no matter what. if it’s a matter of out-stubborning Midoriya fucking Izuku, then there’s only one other person on the planet capable of that, and we all know it. don’t pretend like you don’t. I am not going to shut up about this! we’ve had our hurt so now what about SOME COMFORT, DAMMIT

“I’m afraid that he’s becoming influenced by my conscience” nah are you kidding Nana this is all 100% made-in-Japan pure original Deku right here

see, Banjou gets it. “that kid, he’s totally going on his own.” exactly. this was so inevitable it was basically scientific law

“well I for one don’t see the problem with Deku being so obsessed with saving everyone else that he pushes himself until his body and soul literally fall apart” okay, whose speech bubbles are these?? we’re about to have words

lol of course

well you always did prefer the direct route didn’t you. but even you can’t possibly think this is okay lol

dark AU!Kacchan please tell us more about your badass doomed timeline in which everything went to shit and you apparently had the same character arc that Deku is having right now except it somehow made you sexier instead of turning you into a rabid t-rex. I have so many questions

oh so now you want to help??? well -- good, actually. sorry if that sounded offended just now lol

(ETA: so at first when I got to the end of this chapter I was wondering if Katsuki B. had somehow summoned his alternate-universe counterpart through trippy OFA space telepathy lol. but in the original Japanese there’s no reference to “we”, so this appears to be a mistranslation. this line should probably read more like “if there’s something/someone out there that would be able to complement/complete the current Midoriya Izuku [it would be]…” which, oh hello, is that Horikoshi once again reaffirming that Deku and Bakugou complete each other lol. “guess what guys, the Vestiges ship it too" heck yeah. they know what’s up!)

look how admiring his boyfriends are. HORIKOSHI GIVE US THE REST OF THIS BACKSTORY ALREADY GODDAMMIT

“meanwhile somewhere in the depths of the ruined city, Deku was having a dance-off with the villains”

I like how the villains all have this “AHH WHAT THE FUCK” kind of body language to them lol. I mean if it were me, and an eldritch horror suddenly clawed its way from the shadows with its writhing glowy tentacles and pants-shitting nuclear death stare, I would probably just die on the spot. no need to stick around. only pain awaits

lol for a minute I thought this was Can’t Ya See-kun and I was like “WHAT A FASCINATING CROSSING OF PATHS” but it’s just some random girl

he seems genuinely confused lol

Deku it’s because you look like something that crawled out of a sewer drain, sweetheart

lol they just took his word for it?

so trusting. even though they’re immediately hauling ass anyway just to be safe lmao

“my appearance is frightening to others” no shit Deku it’s because you look like a fucking alien exorcism. you look like a Lich that got caught up in an oil spill my dude

NO NOT THE CHOSEN ONE ANGST AGAIN

I RAN OUT OF ESSAY JUICE FOR THIS ALREADY HORIKOSHI!! I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT IT FOR MONTHS NOW WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG!! BUT ANYWAYS, GOOD!! I MEAN, BAD, THOUGH, OBVIOUSLY. BUT YES

“ENJOY THIS MONTAGE OF DEKU BATTLING A RANDOM KAIJU AND WANDERING THE WOODS LIKE A DERANGED GREEN BABA YAGA” okay yes but sir, exactly how much longer is this going to go on. if it’s a matter of you wanting to make sure we get it, let me assure you that aside from a few stray chuunis who think that Deku embracing the Darkness is the coolest thing he’s ever done, all of us here in fandom fully comprehend that this is Not Good

-- OH SO IT’S LIKE THAT

really. with the flashbacks to his loved ones’ smiling faces and everything. not even gonna try to aim above the belt, huh

AND NO KACCHAN??! NO CLASSMATES?!?! IS HE PURPOSELY NOT THINKING OF THEM??? OR ARE THEY BEING SAVED FOR THE NEXT PAGE??? SO HELP ME, IF THE NEXT PART OF THIS SENTENCE IS “CAN PROTECT THEM”, OR EVEN WORSE, “CAN SEE THEIR SMILING FACES AGAIN”, I...

WHAT DID I JUST SAY

(ETA: my man did Sero and Kaminari fucking dirty lmao. I miss their smiling faces too omg.)

the sheer, unparalleled irony of him saying this while he stands there looking like the gargoyle demon from Fantasia got crossed with an umbrella that got struck by lightning. Deku :(

oi who the fuck is this clown

is he controlling this mob with his evil hair. “what if I made an exhausted, running-on-fumes Deku battle a brainwashed mob at Ground Zero.” Horikoshi do you just have like a checklist of horrible things you want to do to your protagonist

easy there Sasori

well joke’s on you buddy because he’s apparently “completely fine”, so

“here’s to hoping that you know more about AFO’s location than the others” jesus christ Deku you really have hung your mercy out to dry huh

now he’s forcing his mob of terrified prisoners to attack Deku ahhhh. sucks to be them. at least they’re not being controlled by bees

so Deku is saying that Sasori’s control can be broken with “physical trauma.” similar to Shinsou’s quirk I guess. but so does that mean he’s gonna have to hurt them? ( •﹏•)

NO NOT MORE SAD EYES

“DEATH BY EMPATHY!!!” HORIKOSHI NO

fuck. he looks like he’s on the verge of passing out

this is what happens when you nerf a character’s self-preservation stats in favor of spamming their bone-breaking stats instead. NOW ACCEPTING BRAIN CELL DONATIONS FOR A BOY IN NEED!! with your loving generosity we can hopefully help him live to the ripe old age of seventeen

OMGFGGG

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[grabs your hands] ლ(*꒪ヮ꒪*)ლ [swings you in a circle] へ(ﾟ◇ﾟへ)

THASSSSSSSS WHATSSSSSSS UPPPPPPPPPP

HORIKOSHI REALLY SAID FUCK THAT MASK (ノ°ο°)ノ YOU FINALLY LEARNED!! IT’S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!!!

JUST FOR YOU KACCHAN, HORIKOSHI LEFT THIS ONE BAD GUY WHO’S STILL WEAK TO FIRE. GOD BLESS

IT’S YOUR COUNTERPART, KATSUKI B!!!! HOW WE DOIN OVER THERE IN THE TRIPPY COSMIC OFA SPACE REALM LOL. DO WE BELIEVE YET, FANDOM???

LIGHTS!!!!

INSTANT RESULTS!!! IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!!!

(ETA: imagine what this must look like to Deku though. he’s been caught up in this dark cloud of despair and exhaustion that’s been building up over... I’m gonna go ahead and say “weeks”, because yeah. and now he finds himself here, in the place where All Might’s legacy ended and the torch was passed to him. and the world is in ruins, and he’s surrounded by frightened people who are all trying to hurt him -- because who isn’t trying to hurt him, these days -- and he’s scrambling to figure this all out, but meanwhile the weariness is finally starting to catch up to him, and so he’s basically just standing there in a fog of complete and utter misery.

and then all of a sudden through that haze, he hears the one voice that’s more familiar than any other that he knows. like, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was just imagining it at first. Kacchan showing up to save him right when he’s at his most desperate and feeling the most alone. Kacchan, showing up to save him.

this is the person he always looked up to as a child (to be fair he was quite a strange child lmao). the person who was even closer to him than All Might. the person he always thought was amazing. and bam, here he is now. appearing in the sky out of nowhere to one-shot the bad guy with a single blast (which, btw, that was his armor-piercing attack too lmao dslkjlk take it easy there kiddo). like, that must have felt absolutely surreal to him, especially coming at a time when he’s already half-delirious and barely hanging on to reality. he must have really thought that he was losing it there for a second.

but he’s really there. it really is him. and for this brief moment -- before the rest of the situation catches up to him, and he remembers about all of the fucked-up AFO stuff, and remembers why he was so afraid and why he was pushing everyone away -- for just this one brief moment, he’s too exhausted and stunned to do anything except to just react. just stands there, looking up at him in awe.

and you know, it almost reminds me of...

just. you guys. the character development. the freaking character development. someone who brings reassurance. someone who shows up and makes you think, “oh, it’s all going to be okay now, because [person] is here.” the role reversals. the growth. the payoff!! because who is the one person who always had faith that Kacchan would one day grow up to become an amazing hero like that. WHO IS IT. YOU ALREADY KNOW.

omg. anyways, bless you Horikoshi, my feels which have been on backorder since fucking September have finally arrived lmao. yes, good, thank you. worth the wait. it is always, always worth the wait. fuck yeah.)

“LOWFRIES” SO YOU’RE TELLING ME THE WHOLE GANG IS HERE, AHHHHHHHH (º̩̩́⌣º̩̩̀ )

BEAUTIFUL. WONDERFUL. SENSATIONAL. I DON’T EVEN CARE THAT JUMP IS ON BREAK NEXT WEEK. THIS RIGHT HERE WILL SUSTAIN ME

#bnha 318 #midoriya izuku #BAKUGOU KATSUKI #!!!!#twowy mctwoface #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha meta #bakudeku #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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ot3 · 4 years ago

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i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey.

anyway. here you have it.

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith. I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it.

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene.

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land.

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass.

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area. In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.

#long post #really long post guys. look out !#rvb

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changyang-cloud · 3 years ago

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Chapters: 1/4 Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín/Niè Huáisāng Characters: Nie Huaisang, Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin Additional Tags: I don't even know what to tag this, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, i guess, Accidental Baby Acquisition, later on, they're just gonna be there for each other now Series: Part 2 of Write Our Names On Dragon Wings and Lift Our Hearts Summary:

Surrounded by the bright smiling faces of his family-- his brother, and husband, husband's brother and sister and their husbands, their children, nieces, and nephews...-- Nie Huaisang finally felt relieved. More than that, he felt happy.

Nie Huaisang had overheard what those other sect leaders were saying. That the sect of Yunmeng Jiang was almost negligible at this point, much less “great.” Why would they waste their resources supporting a lost cause?

Nie Huaisang remembered when he first heard the news of the massacre at Lotus Pier, worrying after Wei-xiong and Jiang-xiong, and even Yanli-jie. They had all been kind to him, had been friends to him. They didn’t deserve this kind of fate, leaving everyone unsure as to whether their sect had any survivors left.

He also remembered how relieving it felt to know that Jiang Yanli had been away at the time, safe in Meishan, and that Jiang Cheng had made it out alive.

That he was here in Qinghe, no less. He remembered running out of his private room faster than he’d ever run in his life, barely taking time to compose himself before walking into the receiving hall where his brother was talking with Jiang Cheng.

He was well. Largely uninjured, and not very eager to tell about how he escaped and where he had been these past few weeks. But he was well, and that was enough.

“Whe--where is Wei-xiong?” Nie Huaisang asked, noticing his striking absence easily in the tense quiet of the room.

“He--” Jiang Cheng tried, but his face was dark, and the words didn’t come.

It was months, and still, Jiang Cheng heard no news of his shixiong. And even those months were not spent comfortably. Nie Huaisang watched as sect disciples left on missions, coming back with only a thread of life left. He wasn’t particularly good with handling blood, but he helped the best he could delivering clean rags and keeping everyone organized.

Maybe if he had trained like Da-ge told him to, he wouldn’t be so useless, but that was a past mistake, and couldn’t be helped. Besides, he wasn’t just an extra pair of hands. When Qinghe was a chaotic mess of servants and disciples running about, he kept everyone on the same page, got everything where it needed to go. When he accompanied his brother to the war camps--despite his insistance on sending him to stay home, safe--he helped organize rations, double and triple checked that everyone was fed and well before going to bed hours after everyone else.

He wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t useless, he could prove it!

And if he could prove he wasn’t just the useless second son of Qinghe Nie, then Jiang Cheng should have no problem proving himself a capable soldier and sect leader--because he was both those things, far more than Nie Huaisang could ever hope to be.

Those old sect leaders didn’t know what they were talking about, anyway. They didn’t bother to look at was right in front of them, so why listen? The truth was, Jiang Cheng had inspired hope in many, and dozens from rogue cultivators to children were eager to join his ranks--and follow him to the death, if need be. The numbers didn’t lie. After this war was over, if they were able to make it through, the Jiang Sect would rebuild itself to its former glory, there was no doubt.

Though, in Nie Huaisang’s opinion, they would likely even exceed that reputation.

Nie Huaisang racked his brain, pulling up old memories of Jiang Cheng, trying to think of something to comfort him. He also particularly avoided hoping to “cheer him up,” because there was really no hope in that. It was completely understandable for the situation. But if he could ease the pain, that would be enough.

In passing, Nie Huaisang thought it would have been easier to comfort Wei Wuxian. Then again, he questioned whether Wei-xiong genuinely enjoyed so many things, or if that was just his bright personality.

Either way, he finally landed on the one thing that he thought Jiang Cheng really loved more than anything. His sister. More doably, his sister’s soup, since his sister was sent safely off to Lanling and Nie Huaisang did not have the means to bring her here just to cheerp Jiang Cheng up for a moment.

So, soup. Nie Huaisang couldn’t cook by anyone’s standards, of course. Not that he’d tried very hard, as he rarely felt the need or desire to try hard at anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t , right? Resolved, Nie Huaisang made his way to the Bujing Shi ‘s kitchens.

“Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang, a few steps away from slipping into the kitched where no one could catch him skipping class, whipped around to face the voice. “A-Fen-jiejie?”

Nie Yanfen walked lightly, a familiar teasing smile decorating her face. “Why aren’t you in practice?”

Nie Huaisang grimaced. “I have more important things to do, actually.” Nie Yanfen raised an eyebrow skeptically, and Nie Huaisang threw up his hand in defeat. “Okay, maybe more important is an exaggeration. A-Fen-jie, I really have a good reason this time!”

“Huaisang, since when have I told on you for skipping classes,” Nie Yanfen countered with a laugh. It was true. Nie Yanfen was nearly Nie Huaisang’s brother’s age, and her cultivation was nothing to scoff at, but their temperaments couldn’t have been more different. Nie Yanfen wasn’t just occasionally indulgent in Nie Huaisang’s mischief, but sometimes even an active participant. “What’s your ‘good reason’?”

Nie Huaisang pouted at her tone, but answered, “I want to make something nice for Jiang-xiong, before they leave for Hejian.”

With a fond smile, Nie Yanfen put a hand on Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, “What kind of ‘something nice?’”

“...soup.”

Nie Yanfen gave him a knowing look, and walked with him back into the kithcens. “I’m afraid we don’t have any lotus root on hand…”

“That’s alright,” Nie Huaisang replied. “It’s not like I could compete with Yanli-jie, anyway. Might as well try something different.”

And Nie Huaisang may not have known how to cook, but Nie Yanfen did. It took nearly the entire afternoon and one failed pot before Nie Huaisang managed something good--under Nie Yanfen’s careful instruction, of course.

The satisfaction alone from the fragrant secnt wafting up from the bowl in his hands was almost enough. All that was left was to give it to Jiang Cheng.

“Jiang-xiong?”

Jiang Cheng’s grouchy face greeted him as the door opened, a crease between his brows that seemed rather permanent as of late. The smell rising from Nie Huaisang’s hands didn’t go unnoticed by him either, though, and he gave Nie Huaisang a questioning look. “What is this?”

Nie Huaisang put on his most carefree smile, gently pushing past his friend to set the tray on the table. He stood and turned around with a little flourish, saying lightly, “Soup?”

For all he was grouchy, Jiang Cheng was a total sap. Not that he was going to let anyone know it, but Nie Huaisang had been close enough to the two brothers from Lotus Pier that he knew to look for it. The smile when he tasted the soup wasn’t disguised, but the tears were.

It felt as if their troops had no sooner left for Hejian that they had returned, with Jiang Cheng’s arm slung over Nie Mingjue’s shoulders and his other hand pressed against his chest. The soldiers behind them looked exhausted. At least, the ones that were still fully-conscious.

Da-ge wasn’t injured, fortunately. And the cultivators that had come back only accounted for a fraction of the ones they had left with, who were still at the Hejian front with Nie Zonghui as commander.

Nie Mingjue was hurrying to get to Gusu, and insisted Nie Huaisang come with him. If Nie Huaisang wa in Gusu, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be in danger.

But Nie Huaisang didn’t think of any of that. He only thought of how Wei-xiong was still missing, but Jiang-xiong was here and alone. And if Jiang-xiong was here, then he could help him.

Nie Mingjue stormed off to Cloud Recesses without him. Jiang Cheng woke up that night.

“Jiang-xiong?”

“Huaisang,” he said, voice coming out weaker than he seemed to have intended.

Nie Huaisang hurried to his side, forcing a smile. “No, no. Don’t sit up. You need to rest. I’m afraid Da-ge will drag you back out to the field on account of lacking manpower too soon anyway, so you should rest while you can…”

He hurried around, not stepping more than a few feet away from Jiang Cheng’s side, but going down a seemingly endless checklist of questions and tasks. Getting him to eat some soup from the kitchens that he reheated, asking if any of his injured were bothering him…

“Huaisang,” his voice came roughly, while Nie Huaisang’s mind was still racing.

“Y-Yes?” He was confused. They didn’t usually call each other by name like that. Sure, they were friends. But it wasn’t like Jiang Cheng to just change his address so flippantly. That was more of a Wei Wuxian thing, and Jiang Cheng was most definitely not his brother. Nie Huaisang had thought before was just a one-time thing. A slip-up.

But he had done it again. And it felt so intimate…

“Thank you.”

But this was war. There was no time to think about these things, now was there.

Wei-xiong was back. And for once since the war started, Jiang Cheng’s smile fully reached his eyes. He looked like an idiot like that, and it made Nie Huaisang grin. He bombarded Wei Wuxian with questions the second he caught sight of him, and he merely laughed as he answered each one vaguely. But Nie Huaisang couldn’t really be bothered to analyze his words. He just knew that this finally felt almost like old times, as he brought them something to drink and they caught up.

And that Jiang Cheng looked happy, and Nie Huaisang wished it hadn’t taken so long for him to see that expression again.

Of course, in war, these types of moments never lasted long. Wei Wuxian was back, and apparently more powerful than ever, so Da-ge didn’t hesitate to sweep the Yunmeng siblings out to the field again. And they got good knews almost every time upon their return.

Almost every time, being the key word.

“A-Cheng…” Nie Huaisang whimpered. He silently berated himself for breaking down so easily. This is a war, Huaisang. You can’t be the same delicate kid you’re used to being.

Jiang Cheng looked at him with hurt-filled eyes. No doubt, the pain in his heart was a thousand-times greater than Nie Huaisang’s. But that was what hurt. Nie Huaisang couldn’t help but laugh and commend Jiang Cheng’s will. Even under all that pain and all that pressure, he still had the courage to keep fighting. Seeing him like this, though, tattered and broken, both inside and out, with Wei Wuxian off tooting away on his Chenqing elsewhere, and Jiang Yanli safe in Lanling. He looked alone, and cold--hurt and scared. But he still put on a brave face. Nie Huaisang really couldn’t believe him, how he could do it.

And the sight broke his heart.

The wounds on his chest were superficial, easily treatable. The wounds in his heart, less-so. On some level, Nie Huaisang imagined that seeing your loved-ones die might be easier than this, seeing the person you care about beaten down by the world and fighting to hold on. Wasn’t this kind of life a fate worse than death?

But this was war, and the threat of death loomed closer each day. Even that thought couldn’t bring relief, only fear.

There were tears in Nie Huaisang’s eyes, but he blinked them away. Crying wouldn’t do him any good, all he could do was figure out the next steps. Figure out how to keep the people he loved safe, and the people they loved. More than Nie Huaisang couldn’t bear to see Jiang Cheng die--his body reduced to a cold and lifeless corpse, forever alone and unsmiling--he really couldn’t stand to see him lose anything more.

Gone was the friend who hid his amusement with harsh words; who smiled behind everyone’s backs, a smile that could burn the whole world down and leave you with nothing but brilliant light and contentment. He was replaced by this man, quick to anger and hard to please; who cried behind closed doors into the night, sniffling with a sorrow enough to sink a thousand ships and flood a thousand lands. And Nie Huaisang loved him, still.

That was why, in the end. Why he had to do his best to get them through this war. He wasn’t useless, he couldn’t be. Useless means letting go and throwing your fate to chance. Only by finding control in life could Nie Huaisang help the people who he cared for. He wouldn’t hesitate to do so, for Jiang Cheng; for Nie Mingjue.

Nie Huaisang squeezed his hand one last time before daring to peel his eyes away. Though, he had barely stood when a breaking voice called, “Huaisang…”

Nie Huaisang bit back a laugh amidst his stifled cries. “What is it, Jiang-xiong? Can I get you something?”

Jiang Cheng shook his head weakly, his eyes still fluttering between open and closed in the dark room. “Huaisang, don’t leave.”

Nie Huaisang hesitated for a moment, but sat back down anyway, tracing the back of Jiang Cheng’s hand with his thumb as if that might bring him some comfort.

Maybe it did, Nie Huaisang couldn’t know.

After a few minutes, Nie Huaisang whispered, “Jiang-xiong, I need to sleep too, you know. I’m going to go for now.”

Jiang Cheng didn’t say anything, his eyes already lightly closed and his face relaxed and dreaming. Nie Huaisang didn’t leave without one last whispered goodnight, and the silent promise to keep trying. Not until they made it out this pitch-black, blood-drenched tunnel would he give up and surrender, he swore it on his life.

A-Cheng, be careful.

The war was over. This statement alone should have been a cause for celebration, but as always, there was more to life than that.

Nie Huaisang didn’t celebrate that night, nor the next.

He flew from Qinghe to Qishan he second he heard the news, but his cultivation was poor, and it took longer than it should have. The news. That the siege on Nightless City was a success, and Meng Yao had delivered the final blow to Wen Ruohan.

That his brother, who had been captured, was seriously injured, and two of the five generals that had been captured alongside him, dead.

The war was over, but it wasn’t yet time for celebrations.

“Xichen-ge,” Nie Huaisang gasped, still unable to catch his breath after running all the way here. “Da-ge.” His eyes floated over a third figure. Someone he hadn’t expected to see, but nonetheless recognized. “Meng-xiong?”

Lan Xichen was standing between the two others, his eyes not leaving Nie Mingjue and his expression insistent. Nie Mingjue grumbled, giving up whatever argument they were having and turning his attention to Nie Huaisang.

But Nie Huaisang was still quite bewildered, and upon realizing that his brother was at least well enough to be standing, and even arguing, he was only staring at Meng Yao, an expression on his face that he himself wouldn’t have been able to decipher.

“Huaisang,” Nie Mingjue called sharply, but Nie Huaisang didn’t move, words still trying to form on his lips.

They never did, before a hand gently grabbed his wrist and brought him back to the real world. The touch was gone as quickly as it had come, but now Jiang Cheng stood in front of him, arms folding in salute to Nie Mingjue. “Nie-zongzhu.”

Finally capable of normal thought, Nie Huaisang hurried over to his brother, “Da-ge!”

Nie Mingjue responded with some mumbled harshly, in a way Nie Huaisang knew to signify fondness.

After making sure his brother was really okay and giving Lan Xichen a pointed look which said, don’t let my idiot da-ge walk on his injuries for too long, Nie Huaisang let out a sigh of relief as the three heads disappeared from sight.

“Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang turned his head, remembering the tug on his wrist and the fifth figure in the room. He smiled. “Jiang-xiong.”

The war was over. And maybe it was just about time for a goddamn celebration.

#WoN 'verse #write our names #sangcheng #nie huaisang #jiang cheng #mine #my fics

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cockasinthebird · 4 years ago

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Now I don’t know if you take requests, but If you do here’s an idea. What about Steve being the King Steve he was, but he’s very slutty one and lets guys fuck him a lot. He would be such a tease to Billy at a party, grind his ass on Billy’s cock on purpose while they’re dancing, because he really wants this hot Cali boy to fuck him senseless already and that’s exactly what happens when Billy finally makes his move and fucks Steve somewhere away from other peoples eyes (Wow this got long sorry!)

Dearest anon, Don’t ever feel the need to apologise for such a long message, especially not one as grand as this!!! Here you go, just grazing 9 pages with the last line, so this is long yes, and I will “warn” you that there’s an excessive amount of dirty talking, at least to my standards, and a bit rough play, but nothing severe of course. Enjoy!

Another Saturday, another unsupervised party in the distant Harrington Mansion, music pulsating so vividly that Billy swears he can feel it through the soles of his heavy boots as he walks between cars parked on the grass.

It doesn't take a fool to know that the high and mighty King Steve has issues with the solitude his house brings, nestled between grand trees, so distant from the rest of the town that there's never once been a noise complaint. That he has issues with the lack of parental attention, and instead seeks to fill the emptiness of his house with his loyal subjects; particularly his bed.

Which might be why Billy always shows up, or maybe not, but who's to tell. Everyone's always at these parties filled with alcohol that Daddy Harrington pays for unknowingly, so it would be weird if Billy wasn't here, too, right? At least he's content with thinking so.

Billy knows loneliness like Steve does, seeks the cure for it just as well, finding brief notions of it when he's got his dick buried in any hole really, his body flooded with liquor, his head pounding to the beat of shitty synth.

So here he is, looking for a saving grace, to have another night filled with sweaty, writhing bodies, stepping through the front door to King Steve's castle once again; having stopped counting how many times around 20.

Just like last week, there's people everywhere – every single junior and senior that knows what's good can be found here, perhaps even a few older drunkards that has nothing better to do in this shit hole town than to crash a high school party.

And just like each and every other time, it's overwhelming in the best possible way. All senses gets fulfilled the second he's completely inside;

Sweaty bodies bumping shoulders as he squeezes his way through the hall, guys patting his shoulders, girls bashing their eyes, and he can't help but grin all smooth and charming at the attention.

Tight jeans and short skirts, bulging muscles and exposed cleavages, all so pleasing to his wandering eyes as his peers twists and turns to ensure he sees it all.

Through the music he can barely hear it when one girl says, “Looking good, Billy,” or when a guy leans in to ask, “Can I get you a drink?” as he makes it into one of the living rooms.

With every breath he takes, a wild and intrusive mixture of perfumes and colognes and deodorants fills his lungs to completion, cheap and expensive alike, and it brings him to life.

All there's left now, is to taste a nice, cold beer, and his soul will be satiated, the checklist for a good party completed, and the festivities could truly begin. But when he turns in to the kitchen, it isn't the giant fridge he focuses on, or the girls passing by, giving him all kinds of bedroom eyes, or the impressive array of chips on display on the kitchen island.

No he sees the host immediately, Steve Harrington, leaning with his back to the wall. His jeans sit a bit more snug than usual, and his tee a bit higher up; not exactly a crop-top per se, but just short enough to expose a gorgeous, wiry trail of hair dipping beneath his pants.

His face is turned towards Tommy Hagan who stands awfully close for that to just be a friendly conversation, and there's no doubt in Billy's mind what they're talking about, if the way Steve's eyes sliding up and down is any indication, or the way he bites into his lower lip.

There is no hiding why Steve is so popular, or why he remains on the top even though Billy managed to beat his keg stand record with ease. Hadn't been any hiding the way Steve leered at him at Tina's Halloween party either.

The first week in Hawkins Billy had caught Steve twice doing the most salacious things, that Billy to this day, 7 long months later, still think about daily.

Steve, on his knees in the showers of the boys locker room one Monday after practice, probably nearly drowning under the water with his mouth wide and stretched around some teammates cock. Even now Billy can recall the way he was moaning and gagging passionately; hears it louder in his mind than the music of the party.

Steve, underneath the bleachers during third period, skipping class to fuck hard into some blonde bitch who struggled to keep quiet as she stood bent forward, arms wrapped around one of the supporting beams for the seats above. And he can still see Steve's lewd expression as he caught Billy staring, Steve's mouth slipping into a sly smirk, eyes dark and heavy as he kept their gazes locked, cumming with the most enticing groan.

Of course that wasn't the last time he saw Steve like that.

Sometimes Steve was the one bent over, against a tree or knees in the grass. Billy has passed by that brown BMW bouncing and wiggling by the side of the road indiscreetly plenty of times. And at almost every party he's attended, he's watched Steve go in and out of rooms with anyone really.

One time he followed along, peeked in through the crack in the door, and watched from start to finish as Steve laid on his back on a desk, hands firmly around his neck, some dude balls deep inside of him.

But with one blink, Steve turns his head and looks directly at Billy, as if he knew the other was watching. And he tilts his head aside, allowing for Tommy to kiss and suck his way down the exposed neck, Steve's lips parting from the smile into something more comfortable.

Billy keeps staring, intently. Walks to the fridge, blindly reaches in to grab what he's hoping is a beer can, then leans against the counter; scarcely ever blinking as to not miss a single second of the show.

And it is ardently clear that Steve enjoys having an audience, enjoys performing. Eyes heavy on Billy, Steve lifts up his right hand in a slight fist, tongue poking at the inside of his cheek as he simulates giving a blowjob.

Something which Billy can't help but snort at for some reason, despite how the suggestion courses through him rapidly, and Steve seems to find that equally as humorous, as he laughs quietly.

He then grabs Tommy by the chin and guides him off of his sensitive neck. Steve says something that might sound like, “Not tonight,” which wipes Tommy's lustful grin right off. And when Steve looks towards Billy, Tommy's gaze follows right along, and now the freckled guy looks downright pissed off.

Billy stares with a strong intensity, daring him to try anything, as Tommy walks right by with a clear scowl, jaw tense and hands curled by his sides. But he manages to make his way out the kitchen without as much as a word.

When Billy turns to look for Steve again, he finds him standing right by his side, hip against the counter.

“Hi,” Steve purrs.

“Hey,” Billy says and lifts up his beer to take a sip, but Steve is quick to snatch it from his hand, to then drink from it slowly, eyes locked together.

Steve gives a little satisfied hum and licks his lips clean, a gesture that at this short distance sparks inside of Billy's chest, lighting him up.

“What's his problem?” Billy asks and nods in the direction of where Tommy had marched off. “Thought he was dating that Perkins girl.” He tries to play it cool, pretend he's above knowing who's who here, despite the fact that Carol has flirted with him enough times to need more than two hands to count on.

“Him and Carol loves to play this little game where they flirt with others at parties, get all excited at the thought of being unfaithful, then find a place to bang it out.” Steve offers Billy what's left of his beer, which is less than a half, and much less than what Billy needs to keep somewhat calm right now.

“So you and Tommy never...” he trails off, hoping that the insinuation is clear enough.

And judging by the way Steve smiles something so suggestive might just be enough of an answer, yet he says, “Wouldn't you like to know?” And watches how Billy's mouth opens to take a sip.

Neither of them talks as he empties the can. Billy watches how Steve is almost admiring the view; the bob of his Adam's apple, the way his shirt is unbuttoned nearly all the way, the tight fit of his jeans. And Billy wants to say something, a slight quip about enjoying the view, or if he sees something he likes, but it's redundant, because who doesn't like what they see when they look at Billy Hargrove, Keg King.

The tense silence between them gets interrupted, when some drunk girl shouts, “Steve!”

She's got dark hair, a low cut blouse, and an impossibly tight leather skirt. Pretty enough, Billy would say, but he can't remember her name; too many cows around here for him to bother learning what they're all called. It's only important that they know his name, yet it's Steve she calls for and reaches out to grab his hand.

“Steve come on,” she coos and sways even when standing still, “You owe me a dance for doing your essay!”

Steve doesn't resist when she starts pulling him along, just turns to Billy with a certain grin, and says lowly, “Duty calls.”

Admittedly, Billy is kinda impressed with just how easy it is for Steve, or rather, how easy Steve is.

And maybe he spends the next hour thinking about that, as he walks the party with a fresh beer in hand and a searching gaze, always keeping a lookout for where the host might have sneaked off to.

When he stops by the dining table to assist in a victory of beer pong, he's thinking about how often he's seen Steve in compromising positions, rarely ever with the same person twice in a row, but always with such a euphoric expression.

Or when he's standing with a gaggle of girls, charming his way into their hearts, and hopefully their panties, he's thinking about how Steve pays others to do his homework with the pleasure of his company, and how Billy got an A on his history test last week, and how he knows that Steve struggles with that especially.

And when he walks into the other living room that has been designated as a dance floor it seems, he's thinking about that happy trail being exposed whenever Steve raises his arms too high, the way his hair moves fluidly along with the motion of Steve's lively expression, the way his hips goes from side to side in rhythm to the music, and the way his grin twists something so delicious when almond eyes catch angelic blues staring.

Without missing a beat, Steve prances through the crowd; the flow of his body uninterrupted and damn near beautiful as he makes his way to still before Billy's motionless stature, and they share similar smiles as Billy looks at Steve with hooded eyes and something darkening the calm skies in his eyes, tongue out to wet his grin and Steve's appetite.

You Spin Me Round plays louder than Billy's thoughts, and Steve turns his back to him, dancing, arms up, making the shirt expose his dimples of Venus, and Billy finds himself wanting to grab on to the swaying hips, press his thumbs into where the skin dips in the small of Steve's back.

Billy's not much of a dancer himself, but he still sways slightly to the song, shoulders pumping to the rhythm of the least detestable song that's been played so far tonight. All the while he stares at Steve putting on quite the sweaty, twisting, swirling show, and it wouldn't be hard to believe that it is all for the enjoyment of Billy only, despite how others occasionally shoot jealous glares at the pair of them.

He doesn't even notice it when Steve takes a step closer, having once stood a respectable distance away, now so close that Billy can smell perfume on him; whether it's Steve who's gone diving in his mothers drawers, or from girls having been all over him tonight, is an uncertain factor, but he smells good. And perhaps Billy takes a step forward, the movement of Steve enchanting, but the Keg King would absolutely deny it. Deny that there's someone in town who can so easily bewitch him with barely any effort. Deny that he's not in control of this attraction no more than magnets are to metal.

But when there's contact between them as Steve accidentally grazes against Billy with his ass, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain plausible deniability, and his salacious little smirk falls. And as Steve continues to flow with the rhythm, he meets with Billy's crotch again, this time with more accuracy- more force, and Billy chokes back a, “Fuck,” that wouldn't have been heard no matter what here. When it happens again and again and again, Billy feels heat drain down to pool near his gut, and with every timid grind against his swelling flesh, it ripples through him, like rain breaking surface tension, a fever pulsating.

And this time he takes a definite step forth, pressing himself into Steve's confident movement, who pushes back against him, hips circling around, plump cheeks pressing deliberately into the noticeable bulge now, and although Billy can't see Steve's face, he would bet money on how he's undoubtedly smiling at the attention.

Enough is soon enough, and Billy grabs on to Steve's hips with near brutish force, stopping the irritatingly erratic motion and pulls him as close as possible, so that hopefully Steve can feel just how hard he is.

He leans forward, lips at the shell of Steve's ear, as he growls, “If you don't stop what you're doing, I won't be able to hold back.”

Steve turns his head as far as he can, ass flush with Billy's trapped erection, and shows just how eager he is for that little promise; mouth not turned up in a smile, but hanging wide open as he pants out, “Then don't.” Honeyed eyes drowning in black, lashes fluttering as he gives a tentative roll of his hips, causing Billy to lurch forward, grinding into the friction with a stuttering notion.

Behind a locked door, Steve's desk slams against the wall as he lands on it, Billy shoving at him, tearing off his shirt and dipping down to kiss rudely and bite along the exposed shoulder. Steve with his legs spread wraps them around Billy's firm hips and draws him closer to feel just how eager he is, too, as if the way he's moaning wasn't enough proof of that.

Steve yanks at golden hair to guide Billy up for a desirous meeting of lips, when Billy pulls away to hiss out, “You taste like pussy,” almost in wonder.

“Didn't think you'd mind that,” Steve chuckles then drives his slick tongue into Billy's mean mouth, feels how he sucks it all in, groaning at the mix of spit and booze and pussy that lingers. “How you want me, big boy?”

It takes Billy a second to understand he's being spoken to, as alcohol and his own unadulterated lust mixes in his system, making him grind all animalistic into the spread of Steve's thighs, like a fucking dog humping a leg.

“On your stomach, in bed,” he breathes out wetly and licks his lips to savor what's left of Steve there.

With a hand spread out onto his chest, Steve pushes Billy away, so that he can move off of the desk and step around the hulking, panting stature of Billy's burning hot body. There's a not-so-subtle chime of Steve's belt, his zipper going down a joyous melody, and honestly Billy shouldn't be this surprised to find out that Steve is going commando tonight, and perhaps he always is.

Billy doesn't move at first, paralyzed by the gorgeous curve of Steve's naked ass, how long and perfect his dick is, and he understands now why girls flock to him the way they do. Each and every mole across pale, lean skin the landmarks of a treasure map guiding you down between his legs.

And Steve crawls on to the bed, his knees just on the edge of the mattress, his back turned to Billy still, and he bends over, cheeks spread to expose his tight hole. Moves his right hand down between spread legs where his leaking erection hangs lonely, starts stroking it with slow pulls that brings out fresh moans, while his left hand goes past parted lips; two fingers knuckle deep as he sucks on them, tongue slipping between to get them proper wet and dripping.

“I want you so bad, Billy,” he whines once he's removes his fingers from his mouth. Leads them behind himself, presses both inside with ease, voice stuttering as he pumps them in and out. “Every since I saw you at Tina's party, ahh, when you knocked me off my throne, beat my keg stand record- fuck-” Fingers speed up for a moment, then slows down again, teasing himself- teasing Billy. “I've- I've never felt so defeated, so... alive.”

Billy feels his underwear stick where he's leaking, untouched, but the performance that of a lifetime, and fuck he wishes he had a camera – convinced Steve would be into that, into being filmed like this. He's heard rumors about certain Polaroid pictures circulating school, but he hasn't had the chance to see yet, although that only makes this all the more sweeter, to see King Steve in all his glory afresh.

He tugs his shirt off over his head, unbuckles and unzips, moving closer with a hand down to massage his painful, throbbing cock. Knows that Steve is watching him as he leers at his entrance begging for more, clenching something so unsatisfied at his own two fingers. Without warning, Billy slicks up his own fingers with spit and plunges them inside along with Steve's own two digits.

“Fuck, ahh!” Steve cries out and arches his back, “Your fingers are so thick.”

At a pace set by Billy, they dive in and out, stretching him together, and Billy sees it fit to spit right on him, lubing him up a bit more and moves faster as he intently listens to how Steve is moaning and calling out for more, harder, deeper.

“Jesus Harrington, you're so fucking insatiable...” Billy looks down at where Steve's eyes are closed tightly, knitted with pleasure, mouth wide open to let out all these delicious noises. “Such a slut,” Billy drawls, and is convinced that Steve's ass clenches a bit tighter at that word. Slut. “So hungry for my fat cock, huh?”

“Yeah,” Steve whines and nods profusely, opening his eyes finally to catch cold waters meeting his gaze immediately. “Please,” he begs.

And as Billy pulls out his fingers, so does Steve, who brings both hands down to clutch at the bed sheets, his breathing shaky with anticipation, his prick drooling all over the blue covers.

“Lube and condoms in the top drawer, there,” he pants and points to the bedside table.

Where Billy is quick to yank it open and grabs both in one hand; his other continuously stroking himself through the trunks that are suffocating him, knowing that if he didn't keep that barrier of fabric in place, he'd blow far too soon from just the sight of Steve being so damn horny and needy.

“Can't wait to fill you up so good, princess,” he huffs as he slips on the condom.

Steve shakes his ass in a taunting manner with a lazy smile, and Billy can't help but laugh lightly at it, then brings his hand across one cheek, and-

“A-ah!” Steve moans out and presses his face deeper into the duvet.

And the grin that cracks across Billy's handsome features is awfully telling.

“I'm gonna fuck you so hard, baby, you won't be able to walk or sit straight for month,” he growls and licks his lips. “When I'm done with you, no other guy in Hawkins will be able to make you cum as good, won't satisfy you the same way I do.”

The cap of the lube pops open, and Billy slicks up two fingers, then promptly pushes them inside to lather Steve's ass up, who whines impatiently and moves his hips against the broad digits.

“Please, Billy,” voice all pathetic, “Just fuck me already.”

“Mmm patience,” Billy coos as he removes himself again, “Don't wanna hurt you by going in too dry.”

He covers his steely erection in a spirited amount of lube, excessively so as he strokes himself through the condom, and then goes to line up with Steve's fluttering hole, gasping, aching to be full. Pushes inside with nary a hint of kindness, bottoming out in one headlong swoop, leaving Steve moaning out long, and Billy grabs on with both hands to quell all motion between them, as he revels in how tight Steve is, how he's sucking him in.

“Oh fuck, Billy,” Steve keens and tries to move, but stern hands keeps him locked in place. “You're so big.”

“Yeah, I know,” Billy chuckles out like rumbling thunder in his chest.

Hands move off of Steve's hips to go grab two fistfuls of soft ass, where he spreads the cheeks as far apart as they can go, as to get a good and proper look at how his girthy cock is sunk deep inside, watches how the rim clench around him with a hunger to be thoroughly fucked. And at a pace menacingly slow, Billy pulls out, feels how every muscle clings to him like he's the most important thing in the world right now, and Steve whines as if it's true, too.

He keeps his stare there, watching with great interest as he moves till just his fat head remains inside, then shoves right back in, receiving the most vivid and alluring cry of his name from Steve's pretty pink lips.

“Billy- fuck, ah-” Steve moans with no inhibition as Billy sets a brutal pace of pulling out just to snap his hips back against Steve's exposed ass.

Skin slaps louder than the music downstairs, accompanied well by the squelching of Steve's dripping wet hole and his lascivious singing of praises and curses; the bed concurring with slight creaks. Steve arches his back in the most gorgeous curve, a pose with his plump ass raised with such expertise it shows just how often he's found himself like this, yet still calls out as if it's his first.

“Shit, princess, harrh, for being such a slut you sure keep tight,” Billy groans out as he slams his veiny cock into the most fantastic velvet heat.

A warmth that stirs perfectly at the base of his dick, waves of it washing down his thighs as he continues to chase his own high with the most ferocious will.

He bends forward, driving himself as deep as physically possible, and brings one hand down onto the back of Steve's neck, squeezing and pressing him into the bed.

“Yes- yes! Ah-” Steve croons like a bitch in heat, eyes rolling back, hands seeking for something to grab on to.

And Billy barks a laugh at how lost Steve becomes, how indignant and uncontrolled his voice becomes.

“You like it rough, huh bitch?” Billy growls like a wild hound, baring his canines and licking across the sharpness there, his thrusts rapid. “Like it when a real man fucks you?”

“Yes,” Steve chokes out, oh so pliant and dazed.

“Mmnh, hah, feel so good inside baby, sucking me in- my thick cock splitting you open.” Billy grazes his teeth across where he can reach on Steve's shoulder.

The response a whine, high pitched and erotic, and Steve reaches for himself-

But his wrist is quickly grabbed by Billy's other hand, pinning it above Steve's head; now most of Billy's heavy body weight pressing onto his neck, and his body tenses tighter.

“Fuck, ah,” Billy grunts as he feels muscles clasp around him like a vice. “Why don't you show me how beautiful you look cumming on my dick alone?”

“Billy,” Steve moans in a telling way of how close he is, and of how helpless he is. “I'm- I'm close-”

“Yeah you are.” Billy grins and bucks his hips all cruel and ruthless; wants Steve to remember this, to maybe be a bit sore after, cheeks red and ass puffy, throat sore from overuse. Want hims to know that absolutely no one else is ever going to make him nearly scream like this. “You're such an easy little whore, Stevie.”

“I am, ah- shit-” Steve admits readily, mumbles something more in agreeance, but all Billy can make out is his own name being called for again and again in tandem with his girthy cock hitting all the right spots.

It barely takes more than that before Steve's cumming; shooting hot and white all over his expensive sheets, body tensing up to a choking point that pulls Billy closer, the tightness unparalleled by any pussy he's ever been this deep in.

“Fuck that's hot,” his voice dripping with lust thick as honey.

“Don't- don't stop, please,” Steve's voice barely there, fucked out and hoarse, body going limp as he whines at the delicious overstimulation.

“Oh yeah, pretty boy? Want me to-” Billy gasps as he can barely manage words as he slams hard against Steve's worn ass, desperately clenching around him, and he stands up fully, plants his feet and digs his nails into fleshy hips. “-Want me to use you? Like a fucking toy?”

“Yes! Yes, Billy, fuck me-”

The wet slapping of skin in perfect harmony with Steve moaning a whole ballad, brings Billy to his blinding climax, forcing a stutter to his hips as he slams home hard enough for Steve to move up the bed, and he calls out with no restraint as his throbbing cock pulsates and kicks; draining him of all heat and energy into the condom buried deep in Steve's desirous hole.

As adrenaline seeps out, exhaustion comes in and he slumps forward, shoving at Steve's shoulder to keep him in place as he twitches and goes soft. Chest heaving, curls sticking to his neck and forehead, thighs sore from a good days work. He rubs the space between Steve's shoulder blades with a firm thumb, who hums pleasantly between equally exhausted pants.

But Billy has to pull out, takes off the condom and ties it neatly, before collapsing next to Steve on the bed.

And Steve rolls on to his side, rests his warm palm on sweaty pecks, smiling all satisfied and admiring the view of Billy's spent dick. “You did good, tiger... think you can go another round?”

Billy snorts abruptly – he can barely keep his eyes open right now. “Are you serious?”

Steve climbs right on top of him, landing with his own impressive cock side by side with Billy's vastly shorter, but definitely thicker, dick. He rocks back and forth all lazy like, sighing with a definite promise of more.

But Billy winces with a sharp inhale and reaches down to stop the motion of those pale hips on top. “Fuck- stop! I'm spent, go find some other hole to fulfill your needs.”

“Hmm...” Steve thinks about something, but climbs off never the less. “I'm gonna give you fifteen minutes, and if you're still to weak after that I can easily find someone else.”

He's quick to get dressed again, leaving Billy to feel, yes, weak and perhaps a bit piteous, sprawled out on King Steve's bed, a mess of sweat next to a pool of semen, yet Steve steps up to him and leans down.

“But,” he coos softly and smiles just so, “If you ever want to do this again, or something else, I can make room for you in my busy schedule.”

And Steve kisses Billy on the lips, making the poorer guy immediately desire more, but as Steve pulls away again, Billy continues to feel defeated and impossibly exhausted.

The last thing he notices before dozing off is the bedroom door closing.

#Harringrove #Lemon #My Writing #request #Steve Harrington #Billy Hargrove #Anonymous

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empanator · 4 years ago

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This Was Unplanned, Us Holding Hands

Preview: Apparently, something lighter has taken root inside of her these days. Something that allows her to linger, to forget hesitancy. Only now, she’s afraid she’s misstepped in letting her guard down enough to act naturally without calculation. Pairing/Characters: OC Miriam x MC Nel, some Portia, a bit of Nadia Rating/Genre: Friends to lovers/friendship fic, safe for work Word Count: 2,093 (5 pages)

Part 1 of MirNel adventures is here! Part 2 [coming soon] Part 3 [coming soon]

Miriam belongs to @apprenticealec

“Her ladyship will be here in just a moment!” Portia shows Nel to her seat within the grand dining room. They pass by platters and porcelains filled with the most vibrant and aromatic foods the likes of which Nel has never seen.

The palace sommelier, Miriam, moves in and out of the room, directing an array of servants as they finish the plate setting. Miriam looks over the hard work and mentally ticks each item off a checklist. Nothing is missing, and all is ready, but she notices that there have not been any special requests from the wine cellars. This strikes her as a bit odd, considering her title and all. Thinking there may have been an oversight in the meal arrangement, Miriam presents herself at the end of the table closest to the magician whom she has yet to meet. Now is as good a time as any to make an introduction.

“Ah, Nel.” Miriam welcomes warmly. “I hope what we’ve prepared today is to your liking. We house an extensive and diverse collection of wine with plenty that pair perfectly with this evening’s meal. Would you care for some samples to best suit your tastes?”

Nel stammers for just a moment before her answer comes from elsewhere in the room.

“Oh, that’s quite all right, Miriam.” Nadia gently steps in and subtles a knowing glance Nel’s way. “Our guest does not partake, if I recall from earlier discussions of her forthcoming stay.”

Nel clears her throat, a hint of red glowing up through her olive cheeks. “That is correct. Though—Miriam, is it? I do appreciate the offer.” She gives a slight bow of her head in respect for the woman, not wanting her refusal to be taken as anything more than preference.

Introductions and the basics out of the way, Miriam returns to her post with Portia and one or two more servants to ensure the meeting and dining operations pass smoothly. Conversation progresses through Nadia’s intentions for Nel’s employment and their shared expectations. Through the distracting clinking of tableware and bustling of workers, Miriam deciphers just a few points regarding this new guest that have her... thinking.

For one, Nel is already expressing a quick, earnest, genuine loyalty to Nadia. The more they speak, the more apparent it is that they are of the same mind and will work together wonderfully. And two, Nadia is… or was a dear friend and lover to Miriam. Back when things were different, before she lost her memories and all connection to her. Miriam is relieved that Nadia seems to be making a new, positive connection to someone with whom to share her burden. Someone who can make things easier for her. Someone so willing to step in and make things right, just as she herself had done while Nadia was asleep. If anything could instill within Miriam confidence, faith, and interest in a visitor to this palace, it would be just that.

Not to mention how kindly Nel regards her, or how many times she glances over to her before embarrassedly averting her deep brown eyes, or the return of that blush when Nadia asks Miriam to escort her to her palace accommodations, or the peculiarly nervous energy she carries along with her the whole way there. Teasing nudges from Portia sure do nothing to downplay any of it.

For Nel, this whole ordeal is a bit rattling, but she can’t remember the last time she felt purpose. Well, she can’t remember much at all. But being tasked with something so monumental, and in a place like this? It’s all a little unreal, but the people she’s been meeting—the countess, the head servant, the sommelier—seem grounded and true, as does the cause. Miriam chats and tours her through the many halls and corridors, and Nel follows diligently, committing all to memory and admiring the woman’s knowledge and guidance all the while. She finds it easy to pay attention in a leading presence such as hers in this moment. It’s rather exciting, for lack of a better word.

Once at the guest room, the pair pause in front of the door. “I suppose I’ll leave you to it, then,” Miriam sighs with a slight smirk. But one more thing before she leaves: Beginning again, she drops her voice on the next few words. “Or, if there is anything you need… Anything. You let me know.” She winks, sealing the meaning of her message tightly in Nel’s now-whirring mind.

Burning up physically, visibly, and at a loss for anything of use to say, Nel stands rigid as a statue with death grips pulling taut her sidebag strap. Miriam merely breathes a small laugh and signals a parting hand wave, bidding the magician a pleasant evening. Nearly stumbling out of her shock and over her words, Nel calls out.

“Um, I—thank you for showing me the palace. It is quite beautiful. I do hope to cross paths again.” Her tone and complete lack of innuendo strike rather clearly that she means precisely what she says and nothing more. No implications, or expectations. Reaching that understanding together and exchanging soft smiles, they part, Nel entering her new place of residence and Miriam heading back the way they came.

Time proceeds, and the investigation is fully underway. Through her many searches and explorations, Nel gains greater familiarity with the grounds and its many inhabitants, employees, and visitors. By the same token, she has been running into Miriam and Portia on a frequent basis, gaining both their friendship and their collaboration. This trio keeps quite busy, buzzing around and sharing information, stopping for bits of light fun and relaxation (well, as much “relaxation” as people like them can hope to achieve, at least). Countess Nadia herself is as attentive to their findings as one can imagine, and even she can be seen enjoying company among the group.

But the closer of friends they become, the more comfortable Nel becomes with reaching out for moments of friendly, physical affection. A touchy-feely type at heart she is, though resigned to small and brief displays that fit within her reserved nature. A comforting hand on a shoulder, picking a spot of debris off one’s clothing, or even offering a shoulder to lean on—these are common and expected of her. What Nel doesn’t seem to realize, though, is how much more open and drawn she is to one particular friend.

Miriam.

Nel is trusting her, connecting with her. Subconsciously letting a hand pause against her, a gradual, and admittedly mutual, closing of their respective personal spaces. And Miriam, for all her touch starvation, can’t help but feel each moment linger, the warmth remaining present in body and in mind long after they have parted. With every passing day, she wonders what this means. Since Nel had politely declined her advances not that long ago, when they’d first met, Miriam didn’t want to assume anything. But, boy, does she wonder. In the back of her mind, she may even hold a sliver of hope.

During one of their near-routine breaks on the veranda, Nel, Miriam, and Portia chat while sipping teas and tasting fresh goodies Portia picked up on her way past the kitchens. Portia gossips about some inconsequential thing, Miriam cracks a particularly well received joke. They erupt with laughter, but something is different. Nel allows herself to laugh joyously, freely—without her usual self-imposed restraint. Without any thought in the midst of her delight, she places her hand squarely on top of Miram’s. A brief squeeze, an absentminded winding of her fingers. With a blush as pink as her hair, Miriam’s widened eyes lock onto Portia, whose jaw is not-so-subtly dropped. Miriam can feel her breath snatching in her throat while her brain attempts to remind her to just breathe.

Unaware of her lunch companions’ reactions, Nel merely wipes away a tear under her glasses lens with her opposite hand as her laughter reaches its ending sigh.

To Miriam’s dismay, Portia quickly, loudly excuses herself, obviously gesturing at the new development in Nel’s and Miriam’s “friendship.”

Miriam nearly scrambles. “Portia, wait!” But nothing serves as a better motive to take an early leave than watching her two good friends flounder on their own. Yes, of course Portia has been picking up on how close the pair were getting, and yes, of course she’s been waiting for this day to happen, and YES, of course she continues observing from just around a corner.

Nel, startled by what she’d done, snatches her hand back and holds it towards her chest as if to protect it or obstruct it. She hadn’t exactly been distant since her arrival by any means, what with her all warmed up and chummy with even the countess at this point in her investigation, but any and all contact heretofore had been more reserved, or perhaps stifled. As established, she’d been conscious of things like a habitual tap or nudge when sharing files and notes, or a gentle hand on Miriam’s back when she seemed to be having an extra busy day catering to visitors. Apparently, something lighter has taken root inside of her these days. Something that allows her to linger, to forget hesitancy. Only now, she’s afraid she’s misstepped in letting her guard down enough to act naturally without calculation.

Through an abundance of stuttered apologies, steam may well be rising from beneath her shirt collar with the blush that mars her cheeks and nose.

“No, no. You haven’t done anything wrong.” The pink in Miriam’s own freckled cheeks grows into a deep red. Sensing it might take more than just that bit of reassurance, and despite her own flustered and fluttering nerves, Miriam opens her hand face-up on the table. An offering. “I actually enjoyed it, but I understand if my reaction made you think otherwise.”

“You… enjoyed holding my hand?” Tense, but beginning to soften once more, Nel cautiously returns to her place on the table—close to it at least, hesitating to make contact again.

“Well, technically, you were holding my hand.” Miriam manages to point a teasing smirk her way.

Oh, stars, I was, Nel thinks. Stricken face, balled fists, tensed posture—everything a silent scream of embarrassment. She can’t believe that this is happening, nor the fact that she’s the one who started it.

Miriam flexes her fingers and nods. “But, yes. And I wouldn’t mind doing it again, if that’s all right with you?”

With a tentative brush of fingertips, Nel accepts. She studies the way their hands fit together, now that the gesture is a shared one. Over her glasses, she glances up at Miriam and back down at their intertwined fingers. She gulps with a twitch of her brow before attempting to speak.

“It is all right with me. In truth, I have thought about this a lot lately, but—” She strokes her thumb into Miriam’s palm, causing the slightest shiver in the woman. Not so far in the distance is a tiny gasp from a gawking Portia, to whom Miriam feigns disapproval in a light-hearted scowl. Nel quickly resumes despite the audience, if only just to settle her nerves sooner.

“—But I was unsure how you would feel if I were to, um, to as- to ask you on a date.” Shimmering umber eyes search Miriam’s face for a response.

“Well, are you going to ask me or just think about asking me?” Miriam tries her best to be composed and make Nel laugh with a tease, and while she is successful at the latter, it’s incredibly easy to notice how her voice and hands jitter.

Nel sighs, amused and not at all opposed to reiterating herself for Miriam’s satisfaction. “I am asking, yes.”

“Then I would love to.” Admittedly, it has been quite some time since Miriam’s been on a real date. The prospect of it makes her heart scamper around her chest, and in that rush she finds her lips pressed to the back of Nel’s hand. Before Nel can fully react beyond looking like she’s just been proposed to, Portia comes marching around the corner.

“Okay, okay, I’m back! I promise I didn’t hear too much!” Portia beams as she assumes her seat once more. Excitement radiates from her as she clasps her hands together. “Actually, I heard everything. Sooo when’s the date?!”

Without even knowing that answer for themselves, Miriam and Nel simply laugh. In this moment, they need only share this air of relief until palace duty calls. And yet, all the while, they don’t let go.

#thank you dani for letting me write for miriam i am her self-proclaimed number one fan #IN OTHER NEWS this was supposed to be my 1000th post but I forgot and reblogged the happy birthday miriam thing out of excitement #the arcana #apprentice nel #oc miriam #miriam x nel #mine #this was unplanned us holding hands #apprenticealec #the arcana fanfic #text

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acadimia · 5 years ago

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After making a grand total of 11 cheatsheets since starting university less than a year ago (I know, my uni is weird), I wanted to share some of my tips and tricks for making the most effective cheatsheet for your needs! They're a hassle to make, but depending on how you make yours, it could either be an incredibly useful resource or just an extra sheet of paper on your desk.

(By "cheatsheet", I mean a typically printer paper-sized memory aid, usually handwritten, that is allowed to be brought into an exam.)

1. You don’t need to write small, nor do you need to write a lot.

Some people go out of their way to buy 0.1mm pens to cram everything they can onto a cheatsheet. But okay, hear me out: unless you plan on using your cheatsheet to study (more on this later), what is the point of writing as much as you can? It is super difficult to find the exact piece of information that you need in the stressful environment of an exam, especially when you’ve written in the equivalent of size 4 font and your page is cluttered with information you definitely know . And honestly, for most exams, it’s a waste of time trying to look at your cheatsheet. Just put down whatever you’ll definitely need; the rest will only slow you down or overwhelm you.

2. Use colours, or at least find some way to keep it organized.

Once again, you need to spend as little time as possible looking at your cheatsheet in an exam. If the exam allows cheatsheets, the class probably has something else to up the difficulty level of exams. In my experience, it’s usually either application questions or a time crunch, sometimes both. So, make your cheatsheet efficient. Colour-code it so you know what to look for in order to find any given piece of information. Find some sort of format, so that you also know where exactly to look.

3. Don’t wait until last minute to make it. If it comes to that point, just put down the major points and sleep.

There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t do this. Just trust me, my lowest exam marks are from exams where I made a cheatsheet the night before. You shouldn’t be staying up the night before your exam. Copying the textbook onto a sheet of printer paper isn’t effective studying. Most importantly, your cheatsheet becomes so much more effective when you’ve actually done practice exams with it. Or else, how would you know how well it actually functions and what else you should add?

4. It doesn't need to be perfect.

Please don’t spend too much time on your cheatsheet. Obviously, interpret this advice based on practice exams and the scope of whatever course you're taking, but don't get to a point where you're relying on your "perfect" cheatsheet to pass the exam. Instead, spend your time studying the material and question formats so that you almost don't need your cheatsheet. No matter how informative or detailed your cheatsheet is, it won't matter if you don't have time to use it during the exam, or if you haven't done enough practice so you don't know how to format the cheatsheet's information.

5. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

I think this goes without saying for practically anything, really. Just do you. If the prof says you’re allowed a single piece of printer paper, front and back, it doesn’t mean that you need to fill that. Nor does it mean that you should be intimidated when you walk into the exam and see that you’re the only person who hasn’t filled up your cheatsheet completely. Do whatever you need to succeed. If spending a few extra hours cramming information onto your cheatsheet won’t help you, then don’t do that. If it will, then don’t let me and my opinions stop you.

1. For the stuff that you actually don’t know and isn’t worthwhile to memorize

This is pretty obvious, but you should prioritize the stuff that you actually don’t know and is too difficult to memorize. For example, the 20 amino acids for Biology.

2. Diagram compilation

Personally, I think that the most useful thing you can do with your cheatsheet is to add diagrams and charts. They are the easiest thing to find on your cheatsheet. Also, diagrams are able to sum up a whole list of details, so you don’t need to worry about missing something. It is always useful to refer to your diagrams for inspiration!

3. Checklist

What are the three points you need to include to describe a histogram? What steps does the prof want you to do to show autosomal dominance? If you are someone who often loses marks because of missing details or the way you format your answers, your cheatsheet can function as a checklist. Write down exactly what you need to address to get full marks on certain types of questions.

4. Personalized formula sheet

If you are anything like me (ie. I am so afraid of Math that I chose not to major in Biochemistry just so I don't have to do Calc III), then writing out some formulas in the way that you like them written might be useful, even if you are given a formula sheet. It's a comfort thing.

5. Study guide

As a heads up, this is the only situation where I would condone writing as much as possible on your formula sheet. If you're the type of person who studies by copying out your notes (ie. you memorize things by writing them out), then you might as well kill two birds with one stone and just copy your notes onto your cheatsheet. But, then again, your cheatsheet will probably be less functional during the exam, so do this at your own discretion.

Here are two of my own cheatsheets, to illustrate some of my points. The first one is for Biology, the second one is for Statistics.

I don’t keep a consistent colour code, but generally, red is for categories or units, blue is for definitions or important terms, and blue underline is for things I commonly forget or refer to (ie. the 4 factors affecting membrane fluidity). The units follow the order that we learned them in class. Although I tend to write small and there is a lot more information than strictly necessary, I can easily find anything I’m looking for.

Here’s the bottom line: do whatever is the most useful for you!! These are just a few things that have worked for me and some people around me, but do whatever will help you succeed.

Happy studying, everyone!

#studyblr #student #studyspo #uni #notes #study #productivity #science #biology #statistics #cheatsheet #memory aid #exam prep #exams #studying tips #advice #mine

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dishonoredrpg · 5 years ago

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Congratulations, REY! You’ve been accepted for the role of THE HERMIT with the faceclaim of LUCY BOYNTON. History loves a revolutionary, and there’s no doubt in my mind that this sentiment will extend to Marceline. I could feel her desperation to be part of something bigger than herself -- maybe even larger than her father’s ambitions -- they practically leapt right off the page. I felt for her in her loss, ached for her in her need for revenge, empathized with the pain and appreciated her determination to change things for the better. The Hermit has the potential to be small-scale, but you’ve taken her far beyond that, and I cannot wait to see what Marceline does on the dashboard!

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OOC

NAME: Rey PRONOUNS: She/Her AGE: 25+ TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL: PST. Because I am currently working from home, I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, I am a 7. I try to log on at least once a day. ANYTHING ELSE?: Just how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood!

IN CHARACTER

SKELETON: The Hermit NAME: Marceline Ash Pelagius FACECLAIM: 1. Lucy Boyton 2. Lindsey Morgan AGE: 22

DETAILS: I’ve chosen the Hermit because she reminds me so much of the French republican youths that got involved after the French Revolution (as most famously depicted in Les Misérables) and I’d love to dig into the historical parallels. Like Enjorlas, Marceline is born into wealth, but she sheds herself of this reputation and becomes a bleeding heart for the revolution. (Also like Enjorlas, she’s a “charming young (wo)man who is also capable of being terrible.”)

Revolutions rarely begin with noble aims, even if the outcome might not suggest so. For Marceline, revolution begins with vengeance. Her attempts to get closer to the Fool and the guards of the city in order to avenge her father’s death opens her eyes to the social and political inequalities of the kingdom. What was once simply about revenge is now about so much more. She’s a woman who knows she wants to kill a king, but her reasons for deciding to do so only keep growing with time. Before long, she begins to assume her father’s radical political beliefs: tear down the monarchy and replace it with a republic. I find myself drawn to dedicated characters with unyielding drives - especially ones whose moral compass seems so set but will in actuality change at the shift of a tide in order justify their end goals.

Marceline is very much a person to be reckoned with. Her fight becomes a fight against her own grief, her unknown magic and the monolith of monarchy. Each of these seem to be an immovable object, but she is the unstoppable force that beats against them. The Hermit tarot card can signify someone who is taking too much time for self reflection or too little. In the case of Marceline, she is someone who thinks she knows herself well enough to simply act; she is so set on her path that true self-reflection is something she doesn’t spend enough time on.

BACKGROUND:

You know this is not a rebellion, you know it’s a revolution.

You are born of a noble house, the only child, last of your name. Your mother is revered in court as the Keeper of Coins. She has a mind for finances and business, though you inherit the steel of her spine and the cut of her jib more than anything else. If you trace her lineage far back enough you’ll see that before nobility came piracy and maybe that’s why she’s always been so good with gold. She’s a smart woman with a sharp eye that upholds her family’s reputation by being someone that can sniff out a poor deal or a tampered book with ease. She’s never really sailed the seas, but you can see that she misses it. And thus, so do you. Most of your lullabies are sea shanties and you take your first steps along the banks of Tyr’s Tear. You cannot remember a time when you didn’t know how to swim. Your mother, for some hidden reason, knows how to fight and she is the one to teach you how to use a sword. ‘A cutlass’ she clarifies the first time you call it something else. ‘There’s language used correctly and then there’s language used beautifully.’

Meanwhile, your father is hopelessly bound to the land. More specifically, he is hopelessly bound to his books. He is an academic that is fortunate enough to be born into nobility. His father lived a long life as a trusted advisor to Octavius Valmont. A former educator at the Bard’s College, the birth of you brings about a new chapter to your father's life causing him to leave the college and spend most of his days in Tyrholm writing, reading, and discussing matters of political science. How he wooed your mother you’ll never know, but because of them you’ll never doubt what love is. If you had to guess though, your father enchanted your mother because no one used language more beautifully than him.

Your father has a secret though. When you are four years old, you learn that you’ve inherited it. The two of you are Inferi magi.

The fastest way to someone’s heart is through conspiracy and you and your father are bound by this secret you share. He’s spent his whole life hiding this, and he teaches you to do the same. You hate being anything other than outspoken, anything other than untruthful about what you think and who you are, and the only anchor is you know how much he hates it too. The two of you hold tight to something the world hates and work to make it a gift more than a curse. This is what connects you to your father. Inferi magic is destructive, but your father shows you that sometimes that is the way of life. He tells you about the pine-trees that depend on heat to crack open their seeds. He talks about entire forests that are born from the ash of forest fires. Sometimes, in order to make something stronger, you must burn it down; sometimes, in order to make something last forever, you must destroy it. You know the story of the wolves and the snakes, he’s told you it over and over again to lull you to sleep, but he tells you it again now. Political structures - you are five so you say ‘what’ and he replaces the phrase ‘political structures’ with the words ‘Kingdoms, like Tyrholm’ and you say ‘oh, okay’ - Kingdoms, like Tyrholm, get better, continue surviving, by being torn down and rebuilt. Just like the wolves and the snakes.

‘Let me teach you little one, how revolutions begin.’ He tells you instead of bedtime stories.

Your father believes in revolution, in a way that is before his time. He wants to dismantle the monarchy and in its stead assemble a republic government. His political ideology stands stark amongst the beliefs of this world and you are young enough to be enraptured by the optimism of it. Your mother, far better at playing society’s game than your father is, tells him not to speak so loudly about such things when you are not in your home.

And it is a nice home. For all of your father’s gripes against King, it seems the current system has given you and your family everything you need. You have all the flourishes that come with wealth: a respectable reputation, a lavish upbringing, a thorough education. You’re a lady and the dresses and the etiquette and the social gatherings don’t let you forget it. In many ways you are like your father, you debate and you discuss and think deeply on things with little regard to how that reflects on your station in life. Your mother is the opposite. She teaches you how to lie and survive within the status quo.

You are ten when your father begins writing pamphlets - ‘purely educational,’ he defends - about what a republic is. At least once a month he meets with a handful of like-minded people who are interested in discussing such things and their conversations often go late into the night. They sit tucked away and hidden in the back of a low-lit tavern - and you know these things because you are wily enough to try and follow him one night. Your father catches you and drags you back to the manor by the scruff of your neck like some stray kitten. Your mother is furious - at the both of you.

You are sent to bed without any supper and your father sleeps in the library that evening.

So goes your life. You become your mother’s apprentice as the Keeper of Coins and she makes it worth your while by teaching you to spar in the evenings. Your footwork improves more quickly than your mathematics, but you’re not too bad at either. Your life as a lady blooms. More lessons, more competitions. You find love, a first love, so you don’t understand that there can be different kinds, and even sour kinds. All you’ve ever witnessed is the warmth between your parents, even in their bickering, and so the most naive parts of you believe this to be true of all love.

This routine is almost enough to make you forget about the plights of the kingdom and that you live in a gilded cage.

Your father gets bolder in his commitment to a radical political movement. You’re 15 when you start staying up late to help him proofread the pamphlet he writes. The two of you start taking camping trips to the Volkun Forest, so that you may discuss such things freely amongst the trees. Out here, if the wrong word slips out or if a little bit of magic pushes through your fingertips, there is no one to pass judgment. Out here is freedom.

You take these trips and your father returns, only to lock himself in his study for the next three days. Sometimes you’ll press your ear to the door when the house is quiet and hear nothing more than the quick and furious scratching of a quill across parchment. Not too long after there will be fresh sheets of radical ideas floating through the city.

When you are 17, the fabric of your world is ripped apart at the seams. Your father’s ideas are labeled as treason and the King’s Guard ambushes you in the middle of the Volkun forest. They run your father through with a broadsword more times than necessary to kill him and he is left in a bloody, bloody heap. You manage to survive by playing dead. It’s a decision you replay over and over and over again. The anger over it lingers for years. You should have leaped to your feet and fought, and instead - you chose a coward’s route.

You dig a grave for your father using only your hands and still, somehow, you manage the return home.

The rage in your mother’s eyes when you tell her complements your deep sorrow. She dries your tears and you dry hers, but both of you agree that no one else will see you cry. Your magic burns in you that night, so hot and unknown that you throw yourself into the river to temper the flames that lick your blood. Your lack of training has never been more apparent than now. At such times you’d ask your father what was happening to you and even if he told you that he didn’t know, the shared loneliness made it bearable. He is not here now, and you must weather this alone.

Your mother doesn’t speak for 13 days. At first you think she will never speak again, you have heard of those that die of heartbreak, but you soon realize that she is scheming.

“I know what we will do.” She says on the thirteenth day and you nearly drop the sword you are polishing.

A plan forms. Together, the two of you plot. How do you kill the men that struck down your father? How do you kill a king? It’s decided that you will join the guard. You abandon your engagement. Like that, you abandon your life. Your reputation is ruined and your mother barely scrapes by.

You move out of the familial manor, out of safety for your mother. She’ll still write you letters and you will still visit to sleep in your childhood bedroom, but the two of you agree to keep these instances to once in a blue moon. You move to Lowtown. You know that one of the men you want six-feet under is the Captain of the Guard.

When you first ask to enlist, they think you are pranking them, trying to pull the wool over their eyes because some noble has dared you. When you don’t leave though, that’s when they grow from disbelief to skepticism. ‘Why?’ You are asked. ‘Because I dream of a better world.’ Of course you’re met with laughter. You, however, refuse to lie. You stay steadfast in your plot. You wait for their amusement to die down before challenging the man nearest to you to a spar - if he wins you’ll leave and never bother them again.

That evening, you bring your cutlass and you win your way into the Guard.

After all is said and done you hear a stray spectating guard say to another, ‘She fights like a pirate.’

No one can stop you once you are a woman decided. You spend the next few years putting your head down and doing the work. You become the youngest lieutenant the Guard has ever seen. You are not intimidated by this, you swallow it easily with the knowledge that you are here with a higher calling. The truth has a tendency to make things harsh and unwelcoming, and yet it is the very thing that makes the men here listen to you. They look at you and see someone unwavering in their honesty, merciless with their virtue. It earns you a level of respect that most lieutenants spend their whole lives scrounging for. The world may not be fair, but you intend to make it so. That is seen and that is respected. They listen to you, but more importantly, they trust you. You make it clear that you’ll take an arrow for any of them, parry whatever blow comes their way. When a man is struck down in the field, you’re one of the first to volunteer to tell their family. They start letting you do this by default, your stoic demeanor and steady nature prove to be the exact temperament needed to weather a storm of their family’s sadness. Every time you do this - every time you confront a freshly widowed bride, a newly motherless son - you promise to take care of them. You won’t let their death be in vain, you say. You find yourself caring for all these families as much as you care for your mother. In this way your family grows, and it no longer feels like you are last of your name.

All of this goes without mention of the elephant in the room. Your job puts you in painful proximity to the Fool, one of the men that killed your father. However, these days it seems you’re on the same team in more ways than one. Together you lead the Guard, together you declare you’ll fight in the same revolution. You seek forgiveness within yourself, but your heart finds it hard to go back on a judgment once it has passed. You know that striking him down would be a poor move on your part tactically, that it would scatter the men, that it would lead to a different kind of revolt. You don’t want to tear your new household in two just. So you take his name to that list of names you intend to make your way through and shift it to the bottom. That night you begin a new list, one of additional grievances to call upon that specifically the Fool is responsible for and you decide that you will savor and remember these grievances when the day of his death finally comes.

You’re intense, you ache for revenge, you age for revolution. Those that would think less of you for the latter are nowhere nearby; they’re far off in some ivory tower. Those that surround you are bolstered by it. Each breath is spent on the growing rebellion, each action is dedicated to felling an empire and an unjust king. You are a flame that keeps your friends warm, you are a fire that chases your foes into action.

Living amongst the Guard has taken you out of luxury, out of a life of nobility, and placed you in the thick of a growing revolt. Each citizen of Lowtown comes with their own history, of a life earned through hard work and skill, and you realize that a monarchy is bullshit. Power to the people, you think.

It’s difficult to remember the girl who existed before your father died. But try and you remember. You’ve still got your family crest, it reminds you of the sea. A mutt wanders onto your path one patrol of the Volkun forest and you swear it looks part wolf. You take him in. Two weeks from now he’ll chase after a snake on your hunting trail and even you will say “Oh come on” at the heavy handed metaphor life has thrown your way. In these ways, the world continues to remind you of who you are.

And then, only on quiet lonely nights do you let your mind wander, galloping through the memories back to the day your father was butchered before you. You clawed your way back to the city, clawed your way back to your mother. You’ve defied death once and so hell nor heaven scares you anymore. Buried deep within all your noble intentions is an undeniable truth: you have your revolution, you have your decided aims for a republic, but you would put it all on the line, just to get back at the men who killed your father. You pray to the wolves and snakes you will become a better person.

You are not a revolter, you tell yourself, you are a revolutionary.

PLOT IDEAS:

Marceline doesn’t believe in kings. As the revolution grows, there are plenty that want to replace this king with a new one. Who will take Septimus’ place? The Emperor, the Chariot, the World? None. Marceline thinks that’s just trading out one cage for another. As mentioned: down with the monarchy, up with a republic! Marceline believes in the ideals of a republic, the same ideals her father believed in, and she wants to work to stoke that fire in the same way he did. It might be a moment before she returns to distributing pamphlets or standing on soapboxes, but natural rights and equality for all citizens of Tyrholm is something that she is determined to fight for. She will try to convince every revolter she comes by of her radical ideas and even when they turn her away, she’ll find a way to stay. She’s always been a woman bad at understanding the word no. I’d like her to try and convince as many people as she can and I think this has the potential to be an interesting plot. Not everyone is going to agree with her and I’m sure it’ll cook up a new batch of allies and enemies. Her father wrote and distributed pamphlets against the king and in favor of a whole new political structure, and Marceline would like to get this radical political movement going again through these handouts. However, Marceline is not the same wordsmith her father was. She’ll do it, if she has to, but I would love for her to find that person to help her write a new round of Enlightenment principles with. In general though, Marceline will be at the forefront for a push for a republic. It’s an ideology that she’s willing to die for. In the long run maybe this even causes a schism in the revolution between those that want another king and those who want something else entirely. TEMPERANCE: Marceline breaks off the engagement, returns the ring that is given to her, leaves without a word. Marceline knows she loves the revolution more, but still her love for Temperance lingers. From where she’s standing, it seems as if her former fiancee has had no trouble moving on and so Marceline is doing her best to drown herself in work and other people. If she could pick one person to convert in favor of her ideal vision for the future, it would be her. But the more Marceline stays with the Guard, the more she sees that Temperance is blind to her own privilege. She wishes Temperance could see things her way. If Marceline ever had to pick between the revolution or Temperance, she would do her best to try and save both. Marceline has left the life of nobility behind, but I would love to see the life of nobility try and drag her back in through her undeniable love for this for this woman. THE FOOL: Until a new republic is built, Marceline still has to live in this monarchy, and there is plenty to do here. There’s her own vendetta, for Marceline will do anything that’s necessary to track down and kill the men that killed her father. Fool kills Dad. Hermit kills Fool. That easy, right? Wrong! Things are already messy as is because both she and the Fool are revolters and thus technically on the same side in more ways than one. Because of this, Marceline needs to find cleverer ways to retaliate against him. Their relationship is a complex one as she is always quick to undermine him, but still sees him as her co-partner in leading the Guard. For a girl who believes in keeping a judgement once it is passed, I want to push the boundaries of her decided vendetta. As she lies in wait, I imagine Marceline trying to be close to anyone that the Fool knows. I’d also love her feelings for him to grow and for her to have to wake up every morning and have to conscientiously decide that she wants to kill this man. I want the Fool to make her change as a person so that by the end of this she’s either consumed by hate for this man or consumed by love - no in between. THE MOON: The Moon is possibly the only friend Marceline has outside of the Guard. Every time Marceline ventures Volkun forest, she brings back something new for her botanist friend. There’s a comfort she feels with this one - one she hasn’t felt since her father was around. Something tells her it’s magic, but Marceline knows the dangers of asking about such things. Still, she will do everything to maintain a friendship with the Moon, as she is one of the few people around whom she is utterly at peace. I see them growing close because of the revolution, and I can see them growing even closer if they ever choose to tell each other about their magic. Ever since the death of her father, Marceline has completely turned away from the magical side of herself, but that does not mean the magical side of her does not exist. I see her magic being a grab bag of abilities that she has absolutely no control over. (And per admin discussion, I have some ideas on this.) She feels utterly lost, but Marceline does everything she can to avoid letting anyone know about this side of her. (She always tells the truth, except in this instance.) There’s probably less than a handful of people that know and while I would like this number to slowly grow, I imagine the Moon would be the first. Ultimately, I would like Marceline to come to terms with her magic and see how it influences her thoughts on the war and the revolution. Eventually she’s going to come to understand that her magic might be able to help her take down the king. She might even like to try and travel to Hypatos sometime to seek out mentors. Maybe this is somewhere she and the Moon journey together. Marceline is willing to train up anyone who wants to learn how to fight, be they part of the Guard or not. If you’re part of the revolution, or even if you take no particular side, she thinks you have a right to be able to defend yourself. Just expect to eventually get an earful about some radical political ideologies. Marceline hates pirates and bandits. She cannot stand either of them, especially when they terrorize her Guard. She wants to make a statement to show that the Guard won’t turn a blind eye to being messed with. She’s willing to offer both groups a shot at joining them against the king, but if they refuse, she won’t hesitate to go against them for the men they’ve harmed. In the meantime, any pirates or bandits should steer clear of her as she won’t go easy on them. Marceline sees every single guard as a member of her family and when a guard dies she makes a commitment to look out for that guard’s family. I don’t want this to be easy for her. I’d love to try and throw her up against her own moral compass while trying to stay true to a promise she’s made.

CHARACTER DEATH: Totally cool with you killing my character. My character’s dog however, needs to live forever.

WRITING SAMPLE

There are those that shared his beliefs that come knocking at their door to share their condolences. Marceline and her mother had vowed not to show their tears to the public so Marceline’s mother greets the guests with solemn eyes and a quiet nod of thanks. Marceline doesn’t even make it out of her room. Her father’s death is still too fresh, too heavy on her heart and it’s difficult to be confronted with the fact that someone the world keeps turning.

Marceline is coming up on three days without sleep. Her throat is sore, her eyes are raw, and they are both nothing compared to the dead thing in her chest. She tries to sleep, but etched onto the underside of her eyelids are the faces of four men that she will never forget. She knows grief is nonlinear, but she wishes it would leave for a while and return later when she feels a little stronger. Finally, utterly exhausted, her body gives up on her and she falls into a restless sleep.

There’s a full tangerine moon in the sky and Marceline wakes up in delirious pain. She finds herself on the floor, covers still tangled around her legs. She’s rolled off her own bed. She is still herself though - and that’s what matters. She can see through the haze of pain her hands, her fingernails, the bits of dirt underneath them.

What is this pain? It’s her magic, she thinks, or maybe it’s her grief. She’s buried this part of herself so often, that she forgets about it until it makes itself known. It pulses in her blood with such unpleasantness that she cries out for her father before remembering he is too far to hear her.

She doesn’t want to do any of this without him.

The pain licks up and down her spine. She can feel this Inferi magic coursing through her blood, taking her immense sadness and twisting it. This is in no ways normal, but each time she’s had to face it she’s always had her father.

Marceline kicks with trembling legs at the covers still wrapped like mummy bandages around her body. She crawls to the chair at her desk and grips at the chair leg with her sweaty hand. The wood begins to glow red - at least she thinks it does - and she knows she is going to set it on fire if she doesn’t move it. She grabs higher, pulls herself up, grabs the curved back of the chair until her feet are flat against the wood floor.

Marceline takes a shaky step, then another, and then she stumbles with the inertia of pain out the door of her bedroom. She nearly collapses as soon as she reaches the bannister of the stair. Her torso hits the wood and the impact blows another wave of fire all through her, knees crippling - she catches herself before she hits the ground but the world spins around her.

She is going to die. She is going to die. She is going to die.

And whatever it is inside her is going to kill and destroy everything in this house. How did she ever think she was going to survive in this word three days without her father?

She must though, she must.

Another wave of pain throws her to the floor. She curls into herself; her sadness magnifies and triples tenfold. Like a wave it washes over her, and then recedes. Here, she will die here -

And then Marceline gets up.

Only this time, it is her magic rising from inside her. It surges through her, hardening the muscles in her legs. She slaps a bloody hand on the counter and straightens up. She breathes hard: in and out, in and out, in and out. As her eyes close, she hears - she swears - the steady beating of wings, as it reminds her swelling heart to keep beating.

She crunches her way out of the hallway, down the stairs, and then out into the garden where the moon hangs low. It is watching her, she feels it. Its light pours over her bloody form with every step she takes. At first she steps slowly, she eases her toes into the cool grass. But then faster, steps more steady, and then even faster, until she is running away from her family’s manor, towards the river, as though she could flee from her sadness.

But she is fleeing towards the moon.

Her magic gives her strength and gives her pain. It roars in her chest now, harmonizing with her grief. She hates it, she hates it so much, hates how it makes her hide, hates how it’s always been a mirror of her emotions.

She remembers her father and how he could look at a burning thing and see the growth that will come after. She’s never going to see him again and there are precisely four men to blame. She can’t stop her tears as she splashes to the banks of the river and falls to her knees inside the reflection of the full moon, which dances on the surface of the water. Her hands press into the sand. She fists the rocks and shells. She is probably going to die. And she should fight it still, but her magic is the only part of her father that is still left.

She doesn’t want him to be gone, and it’s the last thought she has before it feels like she goes up in flames.

Marceline falls forward into the river.

The next morning, she wakes to the sound of the water, as it kisses at her toes and her ankles. Slowly, Marceline blinks her eyes open to the sunlight appearing over the river. The pain is over. Her body felt peaceful and brand new. Three days of mourning and now - rebirth. She feels like she’s just shed her own exoskeleton. She’s done it all on her own too.

A raven picks at the hem of her blouse and forces her to sit up to shoo it away. Tyrholm is still here. She is still here. She breathes in like she needs to remember what it is like to have her lungs expand. Both her magic and her grief, she thinks, are strange, strange things.

EXTRA

A few extra headcanons: While growing up Marcline’s mother would temporarily stay in Noble quarters at Castle Tyrholm. Marceline and her father lived in the Pelagius manor in Hightown. After her husband’s death, Marceline’s mother moved out of the Noble quarters and returned to the manor. Her mother is still Keeper of Coin for the king. Marceline lives in Lowtown but makes sure to visit her mother in Hightown at least once a month. She writes letters often. One does not simply become the youngest lieutenant of the Guard without being a skilled swordsman. Thanks to her noble upbringing, she’s had access to top tier mentors and tutors. What Marceline lacks in size and sheer strength, she makes up in swiftness and cunning. In fact, Marceline’s noble upbringing has left her with a handful of random skills that she is never sure she will use again. She’ll spend most of her evenings these days in the Barracks playing cards or drinking with the Guard. They are her pack. Marceline is slowly starting to pick up where her father left off with his pamphlets. Marceline has a mutt that is probably part wolf... no one really knows. But his name is Little Wolf. He’s her hunting dog (and possibly her best friend.) He follows her around plenty while she is on patrol. He loves members of the Guard and hates the aristocracy.

A few stray musings: Look, I’m not saying she wants to inspire the French Revolution of this world. But... yes okay that’s exactly what she wants. Big Enjorlas from ‘Les Mis’ vibes. Mixed in with some Hamilton. There’s a touch of Isabella from Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’ thrown in there as well. “So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane.” Most likely to yell “Wake Up Sheeple!!” in the middle of a crowded ball. Bisexual AF.

#accepted #accepted: the hermit

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b4civility · 4 years ago

Text

August,7

fanfic based on the “teenage love triangle” on Folklore, “Betty”, “August” and “Cardigan”. Still releasing new chapters, stay tooned!

[NO WARNINGS]

summary: Betty doesn’t realize she is touching James the first time she does so. James doesn’t realize she is everything he wants the first time he paints her sink red. Alisson doesn’t realize she wasn’t part of the plan. August slipped away like a bottle of wine, as quick as it could,staining everything it reaches.

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Chapter 1: Betty

Whenever I have to pack, my head gets cloudy. Always seems like I got everything I need, except that the Object That I Take For Granted But Actually Use Everyday stays behind, like a bath sponge or a coffee pot. I know this will happen, but get a bit of a headache every time trying to fight it. All the boxes in mu checklist are checked, but this anxious feeling still buzzes inside my head.

‘Check under the bed to see if there’s something there’, mom says.

I check. There is, but nothing that belongs to me.

I am moving from a house of girls to another house of girls, but at least I get to have the unspoken individuality of my belongings, the entitlement to my schedule and to have “ I would rather not talk about it” or “I want to keep it to myself” as a legitimate answer this time around. My sisters are pretty sad about it- Skyler says she will miss my closet the most. “ So I am supposed to buy my own earrings now? How much do they cost? Do you try them on at the store? Is it ok if I get them wet by accident or will they be totally ruined?” she shoots at me as I finish packing my jewelry. “ Did you not care to not spill water on my earrings when you wore them?”, I ask, but she just looks away and plays with the ones that are in her ear, that are, too, mine. They are the silver with some dark green balls at the end. I stole them from a fancy boutique when I was 14, igniting my addiction to this accessory. I stole a couple more until the guilt finally kicked in,and then became an expert on finding cheap and not that bad ones at Aliexpress. I’ll just let her have it, looks better with her short hair than with my long one. Even though we have the same kind of curls, mine weren’t as defined as hers when I had short hair. A little bit shorter than the earrings, makes her look so edgy. She loves it.

Eliza, in the other hand, despites my wardrobe, but worships my baking skills. One Sunday or the other we bake together, she makes sour doo biscuits and I bake a cake. This is our stack for the week, and then we try a different recipe for the dessert that day. We have a nice dynamic in the kitchen by now-she hates making cake but loves eating mine and I feel the same way about her biscuits, ans since both of us have a sweet tooth, baking is taken very seriously under this roof.

The four of us get in the car, I get the backseat since Eliza is our official DJ (not that we gave her the title, rather she took it),plus, mom likes her by her side. Never have I ever sat behind the wheels when the entire family was in the car, for some reason mom would always get cautious about it when I asked if I could drive in these situations, even though I have been each and everyone’s chauffeur at some point.

Tomorrow, at this very hour, I would be waking up to none of them. The closest thing to not being a sister I ever had was before I was seven, when Skyler wasn’t born yet, the bedroom was all mine and dad only had one volleyball player in our backyard. The closest thing I ever got to not being a daughter when he left. I was 12, Skyler was 5 and mom was in no condition to deal with her and our loss at the same time. Grandma was around a lot for the next 2 years. I couldn’t say the same about our mother, even up to this date.

So I was reading her body expression, her smile at what my sister was saying about the music she chose, her thin neck, blurred by some hair strands that got out of her pony tale and eventually felt on her shoulders covered by her green cardigan, and how easily breakable her peacefulness appeared. Not because of my departure,no, she has been looking like this everyday since that last day. I don’t believe the other two ever notices that, not when they got their hands full with the colossal mess they make to get their older sister’s attention. It does work, I’m even moving houses because of it;college is just a social-acceptable excuse.

Three hours later we have completed our journey from Mendax to Verum, the college town just 20 minutes away from campus. Five other girls were to live with me, none that I have met yet, but their facebook page tells me I got another Political Science major in the house, two English majors, a biology southmore and soon-to-be-graduated journalist. I sort of hoped I was going to be the first one to arrive so I could get my stuff in place first, not have all the stubbornness that run through my family’s DNA thrown at them as a first impression and possibly bake a Homecoming/Welcome/If My Words Fail Me At Least I Have This Going For Me cake. Plus, I own Eliza this last/ first moment, so I’d ask for her help.

The house was unapologetically pink. The pastel tone suited the wood-revested building very well, so much it felt like Barbie Dream House: College edition. The family house energy of it, the immense porch space, the spacious interior corridors,two livingrooms and the hugh gress space in the backyard were the opposite of what you would expect of a college girls’ residency, yet everything you wish they all looked like. Besides, this was a very prospect location for an off campus party, so I think I got the upper hand with this one.

“ You are in a Barbie movie scenario for your entire graduation. I’m so jealous I can’t barely put it into words” Skyler said, staring at it, blinking as if she was waiting for it to disappear the next time she opened her eyes. “ Yeah,I will be sitting at the porch waiting to see if Ken shows up anytime soon,too.” I answered as I stood next to her, holding boxes. “Yeah, be sure to look very carefully for him at the massive Homecoming barbecue you guys are going to be having in this abnormous big backyard of yours”.So it was that obvious.” But don’t get attached to the first cutie you see, ok? Someone better could be just around the corner... ”. I don’t even want to imagine how her college years are going to be like. Probably a little cooler than mine; she always knows how to make a fun moment even funnier. Is it legal to bring your underaged sibling to a uni party?

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you in mind whenever I get more-than-two-dates invested in someone here”

Did Skyler really thought that my next romance would just fall into my backyard, like that?

Chapter 2: James

The sound of the wheels rolling on the concrete always get people looking, even when you are far from them. Anyone in top of a skateboard becomes a model in a suburban street, whose streets turn into a red carpet filled with paparazzi. I try to say something like “good morning” or “hello” to whoever I am passing by in an attempt to make my politeness overcome the annoyance of the loud noise, and convince myself that it works. Somehow, I often end up in a situation where it would be better not to be seen: whether is when I am riding my board and I get loud or in places I shouldn’t be attempting to land a trick at, or when I am pointing my camera at someone, trying to get a picture without them noticing. As if it isn’t happening for the hundredth time, I awkwardly pause, try to wave at them so I don’t come out as a stalker and gesticulating an apology all at once. People generally frown and move some place else, as a anyone in their right mind would. But only my headphones come with me for the ride when I know I will be taking The Pink House road. Two years ago I was riding by for the fourth time in the same week - ok, that was pretty stalker-y - getting shots of the house, the thing that struck me at first, and then the feature that actually grabbed my attention: the girls. There were four college girls living there, all who seemed so bubbly,so full of life, so enjoyable to the eye, so hot. By that time I had the count in my head, and one of them was missing. Didn’t mind much, got some rather good photos of Claire, the only one that I(oddly,but actually) knew. We made out at a uni party that I had sneaked in to the year before. As soon as I looked forward, A bloody face jumped in front of me,screaming, scaring me enough so that I felt in the concrete, scratched an elbow and hurting my feet.

“THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T WEAR PROTECTION PADS!!!!! AND ALSO WHEN YOU ACT LIKE A CREEP FUCK,BASTARD!”

As I pointed my head to the sky, the bloody shadow took away the mask, to reveal the fourth girl missing. “I-I-I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to.. I was just… The house, I-”

“Oh God ,it’s a creepy kid”, she said, throwing a hand to help me get up. “ So just because you are a cute teenager you think you can spy on stranger’s house like that?!?”- she said I was cute- “Yo, it’s no stalker”- kinda was- “just a random kid with a camera. Partially broken camera, you might wanna pick that piece up”. That was the day I met Inez. We got quite acquainted since that day, and photographing a place that you are allowed in got boring after the first two times so we just became friends.

I searched for her, but instead saw a brown girl istead. A new girl. Someone I was not ready to see. I stopped breathing the second she raised her head and I could see her almond eyes better, the spark on her cheeks reflecting the sun. The next thing I knew I had my face on the concrete, with the same elbow scratched, again.

“Shit, are you ok? You're bleeding” she (yes, she!) said to me.

“I-I’m cool, I’m cool… you know,just...whatever, happens all the time and shit...” . My mouth doesn’t know how to work when my brain is in complete shock with the view, apparently.

“You should at least wash it, your elbow could get infected, come on inside” she said, as she held my hand and arm very softly. You could see she was trying not to touch the injury much, but I swear I wasn’t feeling my entire body.

Chapter 3: Betty

“I suppose we should have a first aid kit here, somewhere…”- he’s painting my sink in red as the water runs in the wound. What a way to start. “Eliza, Skyler, help me; you go look if you find anything in the bathroom and you, keep at the kitchen cabinets”.

“It’s on the upper shelf, actually”, he answers.

It was.What the fuck?

“So you live here now?!?!” I hear a voice from behind that isn’t my mother’s. It’s the biology major,even though she is blonder than her facebook pictures.

“I-I-I just… arrived…. I’m sorry he… I was just...” Was I ever going to come up with the right sequence of words to explain that I, a girl she never met, had got into her house with a bleeding,also strange boy and two teenagers running wild looking through her stuff? The chances are beyond unlikely,at its best.

“Not you, I was expecting you- I mean him”, she arched her eyebrows.

“Inez ! long time no see, girl!”, he replies with a sort of laughing, trying to lighten up the mood. I wasn't understanding one bit of what was going on.

“ You couldn’t wait for the party so you just brought it right in yourself, huh? Look at the mess you made in my kitchen! You know, I am leaving here next year so you better make a good impression of yourself for the other girls if you want to keep falling in our doorstep and getting aid”

“I don’t think I’m their first option but I can make it work, never smile at someone and didn’t get a smile back” he says softly, kind of taking advantage of it, as he smiles at Inez, and she tries to hold it, but smiles back. I smile a little bit too, but still- what the fuck is happening?!?!

“ You believe that your white teeth will get you anywhere, don’t you?”

“It got me aid the first time I ever felt in your doorstep. Also got you letting me teach you how to skateboard,which was super cool” he started sounding a little bit more teenager-y. How old was he?

“ I always wanted to skate, you just happened to have a skateboard”. The air in the room was decrisealing chaotic. What he did worked.

“Oh, like we were the only two people here, I am so sorry; hi, I’m Inez, welcome home,Beatrice!” she turns to me, shaking my hand, with a relaxed smile on.

“Thank you, you can call me Betty” He really softened the mood, the words even came out of my mouth normally.

“Ok, sure. I was meant to be here earlier but I had a salon appointment. But you met the house mascot already,so that’s one thing out of the list”- she points at this skater, sitting on the sink- “ This is James, he’s around more than he should. Do you need help? with the boxes?” And then I remembered of my sisters, running loose around the house and my mom, probably on the car outside.

“ My sisters and I got everything by the porch already, there aren’t many”

“Fine, I will just wrap up this skater’s arm in a band-Aid and then I’ll show you your room. Clem is your roommate. You are enrolled in political science too, right?”

“Yeah”

“Nice, I think you two will be quite a match then. James, get your board rolling outta here, you are done, you can stop scarring my new roomate.

“ Thanks, ‘Nez” he hopped out of the sink. “ It was never my intention to scare you. Nice meeting you, Betty” he gives me a quiet smile, looking into my eyes just for a second before looking at the ground. He ran a little bit down the hallway, got on the skateboard and went out of sight. He had this boyish posture, stubborn, unaware of his own size. His broad shoulders moved along with his waist as he strolled away. It was nice meeting you,too,James.

#folklore #taylorstans #taylor swift #original story #betty #august #cardigan #folklorefic august7

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kumeko · 4 years ago

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A/N: For the Furuba zine. This is uh, a little old, and I’m not sure how I feel about it anymore, but I love writing these three together. And I want them to all live together post-series, even if only for a little bit.

…

“Arrrrgghhhhh,” Uotani moaned, pillowing her head in her arms. She leaned on the low wooden table, shoving the textbooks aside to make room. Pressing her skin to the cool surface, she asked, “It’s summer, isn’t it? The time when we’re supposed to be at the beach or in a pool or outside?”

“I think so,” Tohru confirmed eagerly. Uotani could almost hear the cogs in her head churning, a mental checklist run through. Something like: it was sunny, check. It was hot, check. The skies were clear, check. Her head turned every which way, from the window to the door to Uotani to their clothes. Finished, she announced triumphantly with a fist pump, “It’s definitely summer!”

Hopefully somewhere on that list was a fan. Uotani was practically dying, her shirt drenched with sweat, because a certain, stupid red-head had broken the AC. As fun as it was watching Kyo and Yuki go at it, she wished it didn’t have any consequences for her. She was a bystander! Let her bystand in peace!

“I am feeling some heat,” Hanajima concurred demurely, her voice soft and low.

At that, Uotani peeked out her interlaced arms. Dressed in a pitch-black dress with a pitch black shawl, Hanajima looked like the embodiment of winter, rather than summer. No, to be frank, she looked like the embodiment of death. As usual. Her delicate fingernails, coated in black nail polish, gently nudged Tohru’s face to one side so she could finish her latest masterpiece. Half of Tohru’s hair was a series mini braids and Uotani wasn’t sure what the end result would be. Dryly, she asked, “Really?”

“Really,” Hanajima confirmed, not a trace of irony in her voice. Her left hand tugged the shawl slightly, baring her neck. She fanned it lightly. “Truly, it is summer.”

“I have no idea how you do that. Or can even say that with a straight face.” Not sure if she should be awed or worried, Uotani shrugged. It wasn’t worth debating over. She had long ago learned there was no point in questioning Hanajima and her ways. The supernatural was the easiest explanation and she stuck with it. Unfolding an arm, she rested her cheek on the other one as she eyed the table. Two textbooks were open, math diagrams taking up the majority of the pages. Several papers were scattered on the table. She gingerly picked up her work sheet, pinching it between two fingers as she stared at it disdainfully. A whole morning of homework and all she’d really got accomplished was a doodle of a bowl of ramen. God she was hungry. “We need to shred these. Or maybe we can have a dog eat it. There’s one here, right?”

“N-n-n-no,” Tohru shook her head so fast, it looked like it would spin off her head. “No dogs. Not a single one. No animals either. Nope. Not at all.”

“Burn them,” Hanajima suggested, her lips curving up into a slight smile.

“The animals?” Tohru yelped fearfully, her hands covering her cheeks. “Y-you can’t do that!”

“I thought there were no animals?” Uotani rolled her eyes. It was like this every time they came for a visit. She wasn’t exactly sure what secret the Sohmas’ were keeping, but it seemed to involve owning an illegal menagerie. Or maybe Tohru was; she was soft-hearted like that. Maybe she was hiding stray pets in her closet, feeding them when no one was looking.

“That’s right!” Tohru slammed her fist into her open hand, looking like she’d just realized something. “There are no animals. So you can’t burn them.”

“Not the cat, dog, or rat,” Hanajima smiled sweetly, ignoring Tohru’s quiet gasp at each word on the list. “Burn our homework.” Her eyes and voice remained at a deadpan, making it hard to tell how serious she was. “You can start with mine.”

Knowing laziness, she was probably dead serious. Horrified, Tohru tried to turn to Hanajima, stuttering, “F-f-fire?”

Hanajima sternly wrapped her hands around her face, turning her back to the front. “I’m not done,” she admonished, selecting the next strands to weave into a braid.

This did little to assuage Tohru’s concern and she stared at Uotani fearfully. “Uo-chan?”

“It sounds like a good idea.” Curious, Uotani picked up Hanajima’s sheet. Her name was written beautifully on the top, elegant strokes to make the kanji of her name. The rest of the sheet was left a pristine white, not a single pencil mark on a single question. Not even the easy ones, the ones that Uotani herself managed to scrounge up an answer for. “You didn’t even try.”

“It makes it easier to burn.” Hanajima smiled serenely. “And I didn’t waste a single pencil.”

“I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.” Uotani sighed, glancing at her friend. How she made it into high school was a mystery. Did she study the precise minimal amount required? Use her waves to sense the right answer? Or something else entirely? Still, a fire sounded fun. “Maybe we can have smores later, use this to make a big bonfire.”

“We c-c-can’t burn it!” Flustered, Tohru waved her hands rapidly in front of her. Her eyes darted around the room in a panic, her face flushed red. “We have to do our homework! The teacher’ll be sad!”

Breaking into a laugh, Uotani dropped the paper. Sometimes it was too easy to tease Tohru. Cradling her chin her hands, she grinned mischievously at her friend. “Don’t worry, I promise to leave yours alone.”

“That’s good…” Tohru sighed with relief for a moment before realizing the implication. In a moment of desperation, she tumbled out of her seat, yanking her hair out of Hanajima’s hands. Crawling quickly to Uotani, she grabbed the paper out of her hand. “No, you can’t burn yours either!”

Uotani covered her mouth as she snorted. Maybe she was a little too mean. “Alright, alright, we won’t do that either.”

“Promise?” Tohru asked doubtfully, no longer trusting her.

Hands up, Uotani nodded her defeat. “Promise.”

Tohru’s eyes narrowed. Scrutinizing her friend for a long minute, she sank to her knees with a smile. “Phew. That’s good.”

As Tohru started organizing the papers, gathering them into one large pile, Hanajima got up. “I didn’t make a promise.”

The papers fell out of Tohru’s hands. Slack-jawed, she stared at her. “What?”

“But I won’t burn it as well.” Hanajima sat down next to Tohru, folding her legs neatly beneath her. Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she added, “Not this time.”

“Oh. Good.” Worn out, Tohru’s shoulders slumped and she rested her head on Hanajima’s shoulders. She closed her eyes, leaning into Hanajima’s touch as she tenderly patted Tohru’s head. “I’ll help you.”

“…I think you missed an important line there.” Uotani raised a brow at Tohru’s content face, not sure how she missed the not this time part. Rolling her eyes, she moved on. What homework did they have left to finish? The closest sheet was math and Uotani scowled as she scanned it. “This is so frickin’ useless. I’m never going to need this.”

“Maybe in university?” Tohru suggested, sitting straight now. Picking up a different homework assignment, she stared determinedly at the sheet. Uotani could make out a few chemistry symbols on the back—H20 was water, right? “I think Yuki said that it would be useful there.”

“With my brains?” Uotani snorted at the idea, at the improbability of it all. She could just picture it, a yankee girl in a room full of straight-laced honour students. Maybe she’d make it in, but lasting longer than that? “Not gonna happen. Can you just imagine it? I’d get thrown out after a day.”

“You can’t think that way, Uo-chan!” Tohru refuted, her expression cross. She glared at Uotani, her fingers crinkling the paper. “You’d last more than a day! A week even!”

Uotani blinked. Processing it, she shook her head wryly. “So I’ll get kicked out either way?” Taking the paper out of Tohru’s grip, she smoothened it out on the table. “All that staring is just going to burn a hole in the thing.”

“If I look long enough, the answers might appear,” Tohru suggested hopefully, her hands clasped in front of her chest as though she were praying to a science god. Or maybe just a homework god. Uotani would take a math god, if she could.

“You’ve been spending too much time with the Sohmas’. At least, the idiotic ones.” Uotani flopped on the ground, staring at the ceiling. Man, she couldn’t wait to graduate. At least then there’d be no homework. Lowering her eyes to Tohru, she asked, “You’re going to university?”

For a moment, Tohru sat straight, her hand pumped up and ready for whatever speech she was about to give. Her mouth dropped open, she took a deep breath, and then she sighed and slumped forward. “I’ll just get a job.”

Uotani winced. Yep. That sounded about right. “Gotcha. We’re a trio of idiots. Maybe we can find a job together.”

“Oh, that sounds great!” Tohru perked up, her eyes shining at the thought. “We can work together and have lunch together.” She started counting on her fingers, excited. “And walk home together and—”

“We can do almost everything together,” Hanajima agreed, grasping Tohru’s hands gently. She squeezed once before dropping them. “Except for the work part. I will go to university.”

If Uotani had a drink, she would have choked. Actually, even breathing air, she choked. Hanajima. In university. No matter what angle she looked at it, it was impossible. “You’re going to university? What would you even do there?”

“Get my M.R.S.” Crossing her arms, Hanajima nodded seriously. “While it would be ideal to be Kyo’s mother, I want to check my options.”

“Kyo’s m-m-mother?” Tohru’s jaw dropped, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.

“Step-mother,” Hanajima corrected.

“You, stop that.” Reaching over, Uotani chopped Hanajima on the head. “Save it for when Kyo’s around.” The joke was less funny when he wasn’t there to react. At least, she hoped it was a joke. “You can barely study for a test, how’ll you pass the entrance exams?”

“That’s easy.” Hanajima picked up a pencil, one with the letters ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ at the end, and rolled it. “I just have to choose the right multiple choice answers.”

“There’s more to tests than multiple choice answers!” Uotani growled, facepalming. Still, either way, she wasn’t really too concerned about Hanajima’s future. No matter what she ended up doing, she’d probably be fine. That just left her and Tohru and whatever workplace would take in a delinquent and a saint.

“Do you think I could do that?” Tohru asked seriously, gripping the pencil tightly.

Uotani stared at her blankly. There were a few times when she wondered if she was the only one that had any common sense. “That wasn’t even a real thing.”

There was no point to her advice. Not listening, Tohru rolled the pencil herself. It rolled over the table, falling off to the side, and landing on the plush carpet. The ‘B’ landed up and she stared at it for a long minute before looking at Hanajima helplessly. “I don’t know what that means.”

“No one does,” Hanajima sympathised, patting her on the back.

“Guys! Seriously!” Uotani resisted the urge to bang her head on the wall. Judging by the clumsy plaster marks on it, someone else had already beat her to it. And to breaking the doors and windows. Actually, now that she thought about it, there were a lot of patches in the building. Sure, Kyo and Yuki fought a lot, but clearly they were worse at home than she thought. Was that a hole on the roof too? Maybe she shouldn’t let Tohru stay here after all.

“They’re like wild animals,” Hanajima muttered, reading her mind. Probably reading her mind. Uotani had never really gotten a clear answer on that one.

Tohru froze at the words. Stiffly, she stammered, “W-w-what do you mean?”

“The Sohma family.” Hanajima sighed, pointing at the patches. “They fight like wild animals.”

“Oh.” Tohru blinked once. Twice. Third time, she smiled with relief and patted her chest with an open hand. “Kyo isn’t good at fixing—you should see Yuki’s. I can barely tell there was a hole sometimes.”

“And the roof doesn’t like when it rains or anything like that?” Uotani asked, incredulous. No matter how skilled the Sohma boys were, they were still teenagers. And how the hell did a pair of teenagers break a roof? Even in her days in the gangs, she’d never heard of such a thing.

“After the first week, my room was declared a safe zone.” Tohru smiled proudly, pointing up. “They’ve always broken somewhere else.” After a moment’s thought, she stared at her door worriedly. “You don’t think they’re getting leaks?”

“A safe zone…are you in a war?” Uotani was 80% certain that this was because it was Tohru’s room, more than anything else. 20% was the fact that they were terrified Hanajima would curse them if Tohru even mentioned it once. “Nah, they’ll be fine. But…you know…since it is worrying, maybe we should just live with you.”

“Huh?” Tohru stared owlishly at her, not comprehending this sudden twist.

“If we’re going to do everything together anyways—” Uotani explained, brightening at the thought.

“I’m going to university,” Hanajima reminded, returning to Tohru’s hair.

“If we’re going to do everything together anyways,” Uotani continued as though she hadn’t heard a thing. “Why not just live together too?”

“It’d be economical,” Hanajima pointed out, perhaps her only good idea of the day.

“Ohhhh!” Stars filled Tohru’s eyes and she clapped her hands together at the thought. “All of us. Living together.”

“There’s enough space here for all of us.” Uotani counted on her fingers the number of rooms she’d seen. The living room. The four bedrooms. The kitchen. The building definitely had a few rooms that weren’t used, it was fricking big. With a little bit of cleaning, they could make them livable. “We could get the boys to help clean. Kyo has to be useful at something.”

“He’s really good at moving things!” Tohru chirped, almost vibrating in her seat with excitement.

“If he complains, I’ll pummel him,” Utonai grinned. “And that perverted author would definitely be happy to have more girls here.”

“He’s very nice!” Tohru defended, though she didn’t argue about the ‘perverted’ part. “I’m sure he’ll let you stay.”

“Right. If you say so.” Uotani was pretty sure Tohru didn’t have a firm grasp on the reality of her housemates. She probably saw their fighting as nothing more than a petty squabble either. “Anyways, it’d be nice. Remember that time I stayed with you and Kyoko for a week? It’d be like that times a hundred.”

“Oh that was great!” Clapping her hands together, Tohru nodded eagerly. “You and Mom made…” Tohru’s eyes darkened, and she lowered her lids. Her hands clutched her skirt tightly. Her voice softened. “Do you think she’d be happy?”

“Happy?” Uotani asked, straining to hear her friend. She leaned closer. Already Hanajima was hugging her from behind, her arms loosely folded around Tohru’s neck as she rested her head on Tohru’s shoulder.

“That I’m not going to university?” Tohru bit her lip. Her fingers started to dig to dig into her thighs. “That I’m getting a job like her.”

“Tohru…” Not wasting a minute, Uotani grabbed Tohru’s hands and squeezed them tight. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against Tohru’s. “She’s definitely happy. Like, the most fricking happy mom there is. You’re graduating high school! She didn’t even get to do that.”

“I know she’s smiling at you,” Hanajima comforted her. There was something reassuring about her saying it, as though she was looking at her ghost right now and translating from the other side. “She’s proud.”

“Really?” Tohru looked up now, staring at Uotani. “Do you really think so?”

“I know so.” Uotani chuckled, remembering the crazy, ex-gang-member-turned-doting-mother. There was not a single parent who loved their child like Kyoko loved Tohru. Hell, there was not a person alive who loved anyone as much as Kyoko loved Tohru. “As long as you’re happy, she’d be happy.”

“I am. I am really, really happy.” Tohru turned her hands over, clasping Uotani back.

“And I’m happy and even Hanajima is happy, if not somehow surviving a heat stroke.” Uotani grinned, before slowly untangling herself from Tohru. Reaching back to the table, she grabbed the math sheet once more. “Though we ain’t graduating without actually finishing this.”

“Right…” Tohru’s smiled dropped as she stared at the paper. “I don’t know how to do that.”

Releasing Tohru after a last squeeze, Hanajima flopped backwards onto the ground. She stared at the ceiling blankly. “We could just take an extra year to graduate. Your mom would understand.”

“No, we…” Tohru stared at the paper once more, biting her lip. Reluctantly, she looked away and mumbled, “It still counts, right? A delayed graduation is still graduating.”

“Guys, no. We’re not letting that orange-haired bastard graduate before us,” Uotani vehemently bit out, already picturing Kyo’s smirk. Reaching down, she yanked Hanajima back up into a sitting position. “We just need a little help. And what better help than the resident prince?”

“Yuki!” Tohru brightened immediately and sprang to her feet. “He’s downstairs.”

“Good.” Uotani paused, realizing that they hadn’t heard any earthquakes, mass destruction, or even plain old arguing for the past hour. Mount Kyo-Yuki was set to explode. They’d get nothing done if that happened. “Don’t invite Kyo.”

“Huh?” Already skipping to the door, Tohru immediately halted. Her head cocked one way and then the other before she finally turned around and looked at Uotani in confusion. “Why?”

“Yuki. Kyo. In a room,” Uotani explained slowly, enunciating each word clearly. When it was clear Tohru didn’t get it, she spelled it out. “They’ll fight and we’ll fail a year.” Not to mention. Tohru’s room would probably get destroyed. Cursed by Hanajima or not, Tohru’s room or not, there was no way the pair would be able to handle tutoring each other for a few hours. Not with Kyo’s pride—he’d take offense at the smallest thing.

“Kyo could fail too!” Apparently the only word Tohru heard was failure and she ran out of the room in a panic. “Shigure! Kyo! Yuki!”

“Wait that wasn’t—” It was too late, Uotani could hear Tohru’s shouts as she raced downstairs. Well. There went any hope of a peaceful study session. Uotani glanced at the table once more, at their pile of papers. To be honest, they weren’t getting anything done today anyways. They’d been studying in this room for at least two hours and the only thing they had to show for it was Tohru’s new hairstyle.

“He’ll fail with us,” Hanajima consoled, with such certainty it felt more like a prophecy.

“I don’t know if I should be happy about that or not.” Uotani winced as she heard an angry stomping up the stairs. Turning to Hanajima, she raised a brow. “It’s not too late to burn them all, is it?”

#fruits basket #furuba #tohru honda #saki hanajima #arisa uotani #fanfic

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wilstudies · 5 years ago

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Get a grade 9 in a language GCSE!

Please note:

1. These tips are almost entirely applicable to any AQA language at GCSE. 2. Modern Foreign Languages at GCSE Level is anywhere from A2 to B1 (dependant on the tier and grade) on the CEFR scale, but, there is no official equivalent.

In November 2018, whilst in Year 10, my teacher saw that I was excelling in French, with my extensive knowledge of tenses and idioms. So, she proposed that I’d do the January mocks, alongside Year 11, despite not knowing more than half of the subject content. Then we’d see where I’d go from there.

I followed the AQA exam board, higher paper. Specification. You can find the Kerboodle textbook I used, here.

Here’s what I did:

Throughout the year, I was also studying the Year 10 content (Theme 1 - Identity and culture) in class.

In my own time, each month I’d cover one or two units, completing the more challenging activities on each page of the textbook. Luckily, each unit was only 4 double-page spreads long.

In January I completed my mocks. This was the first time I had ever sat in an exam hall, so it was really daunting to be doing it with a bunch of kids who were older than me, even though I knew I had enough knowledge. Overall, I got a secure grade 8, in my mocks, despite not knowing half of the course content.

I also did “pre-exam mocks”, two weeks before each exam. These consisted of specimen papers which are notoriously harder, so my results looked almost exactly the same as past papers, which was upsetting as I couldn’t see that I’d actually improved. But practice is practice!

MY ACTUAL GCSE RESULT:

With a lot of work. I managed to achieve a grade 9 (the top mark, higher than an A*), which was insane. I’m so, so proud of myself, and grateful for all of the teachers that supported me!!!

^Edit from 25/08/2019.

LISTENING

In my opinion, listening is based purely on practice and knowing the exam technique that works for you.

To practice:

frenchpod101 intermediate listening comprehension

Going through every specimen track and listening activity I could find - pausing it after each sentence, saying it once in French, then translating it into English. I’d do this in the shower, on the way to school, wherever.

Know your vocab!

My exam technique:

In the 5 minutes reading time: underline keywords and themes in the questions. This time goes very quickly, but I’d also try to jot down a few synonyms in the French section too.

Multiple choice questions: the process of elimination; key vocab; negative and positive tonality and opinion words - watch out for negative structures!

Completing the sentences: note down words said in French or translate each sentence into English in your head, then remember it when it comes to writing it down.

French section: fill each sentence with key French words that you hear. Don’t worry about accents, unless it helps you determine the word.

Remember each track plays twice.

READING

The January Mock: I didn’t know much of the course content, so I struggled with the translation. I also circled and placed a question mark near any words I didn’t know, as it was a mock and my teacher would be able to note down any translations for me. I think what boosted my grade, to a 9 for this paper, was knowledge of grammar.

T/F/NM questions are usually a gamble. Just look for explicit information and know your negative formations.

Texts change their minds often: look out for counter-arguments and opposing exclamations

Use the method of elimination for multiple choice: rule out if there’s no mention. Be wary that a text can mention an option, but say it wasn’t that.

Texts often refer to things mentioned prior.

If you know a certain type of texts are your kryptonite (it was the classical stories with dialogue, for me), then download as many of that genre as you can. Understand the way speech and dialogue works, and the structure, before you tackle the vocab.

Many say skim read and don’t read the whole thing, but I found it easier to translate big chunks in my head as I went along and lightly annotate each text, which just comes with practice.

WRITING

Top tip: don’t go any more than 10% over word limits!!!!!!! Teachers say they have to mark all of it - no they don’t. If you do double the word limit, your last few bullet points could come after the cut-off point, cutting off access to half of the marks!!!

90 WORD - 99 words maximum! About 20-25 words per bullet point.

150 WORD - 165 words maximum! About 75 words per bullet point.

Which brings me to mention, that you must cover every bullet point: those are your content marks, which cover about half the marks of each question.

90 WORD Question (16 marks)

Content - 10 marks: Making sure your writing covers each bullet point enough.

Quality of Language - 6 marks: Using interesting vocabulary, such as “malheureusement”.

Stick to about one page.

If you’re giving an opinion, great, just stop there. If you explain it too much, you risk going over your word limit.

150 WORD Question (32 marks)

Content - 15 marks: Every. Bullet. Point. Detailed.

Range of Language - 12 marks: get in those adjectives, idioms and grammatical structures!

Accuracy - 5 marks: correct basic tense conjugations (present, past, future simple/future proche)

In order to hit all of these I came up with a mnemonic checklist, and it scored me full marks in a specimen paper I did for my teacher! And I made it into a cute phone background, so I’d start to remember it, I still can now, hehe! You can find it here. If that doesn’t work, then download it here.

SPEAKING

Know your question words! (x)

For the roleplay and photocard, my teacher printed off me a load of practice cards in bulk and annotated two or three every day, using the planning techniques mentioned below.

Roleplay - 2 minutes; can be any theme.

When planning, try to avoid writing out answers, but just keywords and gaps for you to fill in with pronouns or articles etc.

Keep it brief, one sentence per bullet point, but cover each part of each bullet point.

Photo card - 3 minutes (aim to speak for at least 2).

Plan with a small spider-diagram of nouns, opinions, anecdotes etc. for each known question.

Use one or two prepped anecdotes for the prepared questions - e.g. where you went last year, who with, what you did.

For the unknown questions, keep it short and sweet and fill up any time with opinions and reasoning.

General conversation - 5-7 minutes.

Lie and make up stories! Be creative and use the words and structures you know.

I was a little extra and I prepared every theme as flashcards. You can’t get away with only revising your chosen theme!

I made flashcards that could cover several types of questions: I had bullet points of topics and keywords on one side and a sample paragraph on the other.

Pretty sure I made about 80 flashcards oops.

I also went through the mark scheme and see which areas I could secure marks in and which areas I needed to improve.

VOCAB

Learning vocab is SO important!

I started by making spreadsheets of jumbled word lists from the specification and doing a colour-coded match up.

You can access a pdf of all of the vocab grids here. There might be the odd word missing due to copy-pasting errors, but if so, don’t stress, just look it up in a dictionary and note it down - sorry in advance!!!

Then with the vocab that I had to look up in a dictionary, I added to a Quizlet and wrestled it into my noggin.

You can find the Quizlet here.

Remember that:

sauf - except

puisque - since

presque - almost

GRAMMAR

To me, learning tenses was like learning formulae for maths. So find a way to learn rules like that, if it’s easier for you.

e.g. Conditional Tense = subject + (future/conditional stem + imperfect ending)*

*note that future stems are the same as conditional stems.

Know your DRMRSPVANDERTRAMP verbs, and their past participles. These verbs go with ÊTRE and always agree with the subject.

Know your auxiliary and irregular verbs.

MUST KNOW: avoir, être, aller, faire, vouloir

HELPFUL: devoir, pouvoir, vivre, boire, voir, dire, savoir

OTHERS: mettre, prendre, venir, écrire, lire, recevoir

I learnt these by making flashcards, and then brain dumping them on paper over and over again until they stuck - my teacher thought I was insane, madly scribbling away.

Memorise some key structures that can be used in writing and speaking.

If you want 7+ structures, find them here.

MISC TIPS

Always write notes about improvements and errors in practice papers and mocks.

Find a native french internet friend.

In my opinion, music, movies and TV shows aren’t great for revision. However, if you begin to understand them, they are a great confidence boost.

I highly recommend the Skam France series, which you can find with and without les sous-titres (subtitles) here.

And here’s my french music playlist on Spotify.

MORE ASSISTANCE

I’m happy to offer my assistance to anybody who needs it, pop me a dm or an ask if you think others will find it useful too.

Here’s some ways I could help:

Finding some resources about a certain topic (videos, worksheets, mindmaps) - I have them all backed up hehe

Sending you some of my past answers

Sending you pdf of my general conversation/irregular verb table flashcards

Marking practice answers

Talking to you in french

Etc. etc.

Thank you for reading! Please reblog to help any others that might find this useful. If any of the links are faulty, please pop me a dm, and I’ll get them sorted asap!! 🥐

-Wil x

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achievement-bender · 5 years ago

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To Save the Gods

Summary: They have a saying around these parts: to help a stranger is to save the gods. The thing is, Trevor’s not really a fan of the gods. So when strangers start showing up beat and battered at his door, he helps them not because he’s trying to save the gods, but just because he can. Somehow, he ends up saving the gods anyway.

AN: Vaguely based on this post. Basically, I try to connect sky factory, galacticraft, the 103, sky factory 4 and my love of trevor collins all in one story. Chapter 1 of probably 4.

Ao3 link

The first one he finds half-dead in the woods, slumped against a rotten tree trunk, silkworms crawling through his hair. Trevor, without a second thought, heaves the guy by his shoulders and helps him limp towards the house. He’s short and stocky, bald, clothes singed at the edges and bags marring his eyes.

His name is Jeremy and he’s, “Fine. Just fine.”

“The fuck you’re not,” Trevor says back.

Then he drags him into one of the spare rooms of his lonely farmhouse and Jeremy’s out like a light the second his head hits the bed.

Fine, my ass.

The next one shows up in his garden, towering over Trevor as he tries to revive a withered tomato vine, to no avail. He’s tall, with an orange beard and kind eyes, clothes a mess of patches and mended rips. Jack, he says his name is. A friend of Jeremy’s.

Trevor believes it. There’s a strangeness in him he’s seen in Jeremy, the uncomfortable yet proud way he holds himself, the halting way he speaks, the intensity in his gaze. And then there’s the tiredness. How the blackened edge of his clothes and the shadows under his eyes speak of a tragedy.

Later, he’ll ask about it. For now, he offers Jack a bed and goes back to the garden to work with a vengeance. Because Trevor’s land is a ring of rotten trees, fields of withered crops, a stream empty of life, and he would never turn someone away if he didn’t have to. But he’s had to before. And if there’s not enough food, the simple fact of the matter is that he’ll have to do it again.

Someone up there must take pity on him, though, because a few of his seedlings sprout green. He hopes it lasts, though if history tells, the gods have never liked him. So he hopes instead that at least one of the strangers in his home have the gods favour.

One show up in his chicken coop. Not that the pen has any chickens now, just the two hogs who have free range of the place. Still, the man sitting cross-legged in the door of the coop is a strange sight to behold.

His beard and clothes are scruffy, eyes drooped half-asleep. The pigs are snuffling at him, for once ignoring the bag of feed Trevor has slung over his shoulder. Trevor asks if he’s a friend of Jeremy’s, already knowing the answer before the man nods his head.

Geoff is his name and he wanders the barn and farm without an aim most days, a cloak of tiredness dragging his shoulders, heavier than even Jack or Jeremy’s. Trevor thinks to ask why and he does, but none of them offer answers, just avert their eyes and tell him not to worry. There’s nothing he can do for them anyway.

That stings a bit if he’s being honest, and plainly wrong seeing that he is doing something for them, he’s letting them stay in his home for gods’ sake. But he backs off, lets them have their privacy, gives them time to heal from… whatever it is they’re healing from.

Still, he can’t help but listen to the voices leaking through his open window as Jack and Geoff pass by, taking a walk together as they often do. Their words are worn by wind and distance, but there’s a sadness in their tone. They speak of regrets and worries and missing home. Trevor closes the window, but the voices linger.

The next two come in a pair. Trevor is foraging through his silkworm riddled trees, looking for fruits or herbs or anything not infected really, when one barrels straight for him with a blade in his hands. Thieves, or raiders, Trevor assumes, not a wholly unexpected thing. There’s a sword strapped at his waist for that reason, though his land’s been such an unappealing mass for so long he’s surprised someone is willing to fight him for it.

Well, fight is the objective term. Really, their blades meet once with a sharp clang and Trevor is thrown to the ground with just that. The man all but growls down at him, the bear skin pelt wrapped around his shoulders seemingly freshly killed. That’s when the second one runs up to them, winded. He’s slighter than the first and looks down at Trevor with a curious eye.

The second entertains for a moment that perhaps they don’t have to kill everyone they meet. The first one says why not. The second one shrugs, and ends his short bid for Trevor’s life. The first one’s blade catches the sun as it swings upwards.

Then, he sees it — torn fabric and the dark edge of burned clothes.

“Wait!” Trevor shouts, “I know Jeremy!”

They freeze. They stare. They grill him for details. And they don’t stick a sword in his chest which is the real icing on the cake.

Michael and Gavin, they say their names are, as they follow him to the house. Trevor’s tailbone is still sore and his heart is still pumping too hard in his chest, and he should really be angry about that, the almost getting killed thing, but Trevor can’t muster the energy. He’s naturally cheerful enough on his own and Gavin has such a sunny smile and Michael stops to look at every wildflower they pass, and they laugh and joke and try to rope Trevor into harebrained schemes along the way, and he just can’t stay angry.

They aren’t hushed or dejected or agonizingly tired like the others, and Trevor finds it odd, for a moment. It’s only later that he notices the dark edge still there. Notices something desperate in their antics. How they balk at silence, at being alone, at any question Trevor asks that doesn’t land firmly as convivial. The pair are fun-lovers, adrenaline-chasers, but more than that they are distraction-seekers. Looking for any way to fill their minds and ignore whatever tragedy lies in their wake.

The last one comes at night. He knocks at the door and stands there with a tired, tired air and a book clutched in his scraped, bloody hands.

“Excuse me,” he says, then breezes past Trevor and into the house as if he owns the place.

The only other one in the room is Jeremy, sitting at the dining table and staring at the man who’d just entered. The stranger lays the book gingerly on the table. It’s inky black and leather bound and stamped on the front are the numbers 1-0-3.

The stranger looks to Jeremy and says, “I found it.”

Slowly, Jeremy nods.

“Rest, Ryan,” he says, and the man, Ryan, nods as well. Ryan’s gaze flickers around the room, lost, and Trevor tells him to take the room up the stairs, Trevor’s own room, because they’ve long since run out of space and he isn’t sure who’s willing to share with who yet.

When he’s gone from sight, Trevor looks back to Jeremy. His eyes are soulless as he stares at the book, unmoving, and Trevor pushes down the need to ask what in the world that was all about. Instead, he asks Jeremy if he’s alright.

“Fine,” he says, still not looking up. “Just fine.”

Fine, my ass.

Trevor doesn’t say that though, just accepts the non-answer and makes to leave, only to remember that his room is occupied for the night. So instead, he heads outside, climbs up the ivy running down the side of the house, lies down on the roof and watches the stars till the sun chases them away.

Days pass and they’re living in some modicum of peace. There’s food, just enough. Jack helps in the fields, Geoff tends to the hogs, Michael wanders the forest and somehow always returns with something worthwhile. Jeremy lucks out, finds a new vein in the mine close by, which Trevor had always assumed was picked dry. Gavin… helps, where he can. Mostly just drifts through the fields, trying with some success to get the others to converse, or sometimes taking a bow and joining Michael in the woods.

Settled, almost. Almost. But Trevor notices all the little cracks in their peace, the wistful stares to the sky, the hushed whispers of home. How Ryan, the last one to show, still flits at the edges, avoiding them all, sleeping by day and only rising at night. And the inky black book, still sitting on Trevor’s dining table.

Some of them avoid it like the plague. A few of them flick through the pages and leave more morose then they’d come. They argue about it, not in front of Trevor, but he can hear them through the walls.

We can’t. There’s no way. We’ll never make it. Why try?

Once, someone throws it at the wall — he hears the bang and finds it on the floor the next morning. And Trevor is willing to give them the time and space to figure out whatever it is they need, but he’s a curious little shit and can’t help but thumb through the pages as he picks up the book to put it away.

Trevor has never been an enchanter or alchemist or any of that sort, but even he can feel the magic in the pages. The words are written in stately lines, ink as dark as night, lettering inhumanly tidy. It looks like a checklist of sorts, every page a column of tasks with six blank spots beside them. Some are already marked by a pitch black checkmark — chop down a tree, smelt an iron bar, shoot a monster with a bow and arrow. Most are blank. He sets it back down on its usual spot, face-up on the table.

Trevor doesn’t know what to make of that. Then, one day, it clicks.

“You need to finish this book, don’t you?” he asks, black cover under his fingertips, eyes flicking upwards. “To go home.”

Jeremy, the only one in the room, stares from across the dining table. When he turns away, he looks tired, so tired, like the day Trevor had found him mulching under the trees.

Jeremy never fully explains and Trevor never fully understands, but he knows he’s hit some grain of truth, and he chases that down with all his might. Drags out an old fishing rod, some mining tools, spares a bit of money for flour and eggs and has them help him bake bread. He leafs the book without telling them and, like magic, inky black check marks stare back at him.

They catch on pretty quick.

“Why?” Jeremy asks, “Why are you doing this?”

Trevor shrugs. Same reason he let them into his home and let them stay — because he can. Because they've grown on him in the short time he’s known them, despite their strangeness. Because he wants to see them succeed, achieve everything they’re capable of and do everything they want to do. Trevor knows what it’s like when there’s nothing that can be done, when you’re completely and utterly at the mercy of the gods, and knows that isn’t now.

This time, there are still things that can be done, things that need to be done — one-hundred and three of them, actually. And if they want to finish them anytime in the next century, they really should get started now.

#ragehappy #minecraft au #sky factory au #what the hell do i even tag this #my writing

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brooke-schafer3 · 5 years ago

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Top SEO Practices For 2020 | Search Recon

Why SEO Is Important For 2020?

The hardest part about managing your SEO is the new developments that come with advancing technology. Social media, Google updates, website tool development, user platforms all change and develop over time. This requires all website development teams to keep a sharp eye on their SERPs and what they need to do to stay relevant, reliable, trusted, and popular.

It isn’t just about keyword density or meta tags anymore. Yes, all of the prior tools are still relevant. However, you need to look beyond your current practices and adopt new skills. Going from page one to the sand box or from the sand box to page one can mean all the difference in the world. If you are serious about how your potential clients find you via a search engine then you must be serious about your SEO every year and after every major development.

What Is On-Page SEO?

On-page or on-site SEO has become much easier to optimize, particularly with the number of tools on the web available. This article won’t dive into them too much as the assumption is that you have them under control. However, there is movement in the use of websites as a whole. Current on-page SEO isn’t just focused on tags and meta data. Google ranks based on what it perceives as a high-quality site as a whole.

This means you need to take a holistic approach to web development for maximum on-page SEO potential. Low click through rates and high bounce rates will kill your rankings. No matter how easy a key word is to rank, how you utilize your information is key. Classic on-page SEO practices will unlock the door but a high quality experience and adaptive structure will get your site through the door.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Similarly, off-page or off-site SEO is built on a solid foundational idea that back

linking can raise your trust factor and worthiness to rank higher in Google. But what does that mean when how people use digital platforms change? It means that you need to evolve with the times and change your strategies as society changes how it interacts with the digital world.

The most significant example is social media. Profile links are trash in 2020. Some social media sites are worthless for as the sites themselves are no longer popular to draw an audience or click through rates. Google knows this and knows where people get their information. Thinking about Facebook? Start a Facebook Group on your niche. Thinking about Instagram? Get influencers to grow your traffic. Thinking about TikTok? Again, it is all about the influencers.

What SEO Practices Should I Be Focusing On?

There are probably 10s if not 100s of things that you could be doing to maximize your SEO potential. But that doesn’t really mean anything if you don’t have content and authority to back it up. If you are ready to SEO optimize your website the best thing you can do is plan, plan, and plan again.

Write out your strategy from large groupings to individual actions. Make multiple checklists and an accounting of all of the costs for those actions. Make sure that each of your actions is either: 1) common and basic SEO necessity like meta tags and meta data; or 2) industry specific to your nice like influencer marketing for fashion dropshippers. Below are the items you will need to think about.

BERT And Optimized Experience

Is there a running tally for the number of Google updates? There have been too many to count. The BERT update was a major update. It knocked the breath out of a lot of people that use spun articles. Why? BERT affected most spun articles because BERT uses natural language algorithms to score the quality of your articles.

Regardless of the keyword density or the keyword stuffing or the quality of the spun article, BERT can weed out the ruffians based on the context of the conversation. So, you don’t have to use the same keyword over and over. You can talk natural, and must talk naturally. Instead of using “car accident attorney in Chicago” 10 times in a 1000 word article you can use any type of synonym for attorney and talk about accidents in general. BERT can recognize this.

Google made this change because it recognized that the reader wants engaging text. The reader doesn’t want a list of facts in sentence form repeated 50 times. The reader wants a narrative that supplies useful and diverse information from word 1 to word 1000.

High Quality Content

Content is king. Content will always be king. If you want to dominate your niche, you need to dominate your content. This isn’t particularly new. However, the trend for Google is to continually focus on the ability of your site to deliver content that is useful and authoritative to the world. Wikipedia ranks because it is useful and authoritative. Make your site the Wikipedia of your niche. Give the reader something unique and important. Google will reward your effort.

Google EAT Criteria

For Google, your web reputation comes down to 3 things, E-A-T. You can E-A-T the bear, or the bear can E-A-T you. (Hint: Google is the bear) E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. If you can promote these three qualities on your website then you will be light-years ahead of your competition. Start to increase the length of your articles. Start to use proper English and subdivisions.

Start to answer questions in your articles. For example say you are writing on widgets. The article body could be divided up into subcategories that all started with a question: 1) What type of widget should I use for X application? 2) What size widget yields the best results? 3) Where can I get the best and cheapest widgets? It is completely industry and niche dependent. However, the point is to show Google that your articles answer important questions and provide the expertise and authoritativeness to be very trustworthy (E-A-T).

Mobile First Development

How many people still use there desktop at home? A lot, sure. But how many people use their phone to brose? Literally everyone! Google is quickly moving to a mobile first indexing pattern. This means you need to develop your site as if the mobile experience is the only worthwhile experience. Soon it might be, at least as far as Google thinks.

Desktop or laptop browser optimization is secondary to the experience of the mobile user. This means that you need to focus on the utility of a smaller screen, no mouse, and near instantaneous load times. Super easy, right? Don’t worry, everyone is in the same boat.

Secured Websites

If your website isn’t protected by a SSL then you don’t need to worry about much else, you won’t be ranked soon anyway. SSL is the standard of the industry. Accept it, own it, and use it. Not only has Google started to enforce this standard but the users are becoming more aware of their own privacy concerns and navigating away from sites that aren’t secure.

Diversified Knowledge Portfolio

This is a fancy word for the fact that your off-site SEO needs to focus on your social media profiles. This includes YouTube. Your digital content is no longer just articles. Google will start to rank videos as the first listing for certain searches. Why? First, it does because it owns YouTube. Second, people use YouTube as a search engine. They don’t necessarily want to read something. Sometimes they want to be told something and shown it in motion. Think about all of the platforms your service or product could be on, not as an advertisement, but as useful content.

Keyword Search Importance

Website Voice Search

As mentioned earlier, your content needs to answer questions. This is growing in importance due to smart home devices. Sure, people still physically type into Google things like: “how do I hot wire my car.” However, if they can just get Siri, Alexa, or Google’s Assistant to tell them how to do something, they will just verbally ask. “Hey, Siri, what is the weather out today?”

Start optimizing your content to make it friendly for voice searches. Start to answer the Who, What, When, Where, and Why questions related to your niche. For example, for SEO you could ask: Who provides the best SEO help? What is SEO? Where on my website is on-page SEO? When was the last Google update? Why is SEO important?

Final Takeaway

SEO may seem daunting. There are countless ways to either screw up or forget and miss something important. However, don’t forget that each item you do to maximize your SEO the better you are making your website. SEO is all about the long game, not the short game. Go into it with a plan, execute that plan, and then add or modify as the digital world evolves and changes.

Need help with SEO or marketing? Contact us or use a Free SEO Analysis button.

Free SEO Audit

The post Top SEO Practices For 2020 | Search Recon appeared first on Search Recon.

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homenum-revelio-hq · 5 years ago

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Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Amy!

You have been accepted for the role of LILY EVANS! I really enjoyed reading your application for Lily! I think you did a wonderful job at showing both her beautiful strengths and her deep weaknesses. I felt that you totally understood her sense of despair in this world right now! I am so excited to have you as part of this roleplay!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Amy

AGE: 20

TIMEZONE: aest

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I would say fairly active! I am a student and I do have a casual part-time job, but I almost always have my phone on hand and I’m pretty good about separating studying + fun, so time management shouldn’t be an issue. Of course I’m not going to be on 24/7, but hopefully this rp won’t require a crazy fast dash!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Lily Jane Evans

AGE: 21

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cisfemale, she/her, bisexual

BLOOD STATUS: muggleborn

HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Lily is charming. She is vivacious, valiant, she loves until her last breath and she has, notably, a very nice smile. I could write you a book on Lily Evans’ positive attributes, and you might leave falling half in love with her.

But if you turned the page, you’d see a side much more interesting, and much more complex. Lily Evans is not a perfect person, and at heart, like any other, she is deeply flawed. She’s dramatic, over-pragmatic, unreasonable when she’s upset and uncontrollable when she’s angry. Sometimes she overthinks things to the point where she ends up overcomplicating it. She believes in second and third chances, and often she is irrational when considering something that she cares intensely about. The Dissendium Task Force is so vital to her because it gives her purpose, it sets her path in life, and sometimes (often) her vision narrows down to a pinpoint and everything else fades away; James, her family, the Order. Lily struggles a lot with keeping her lives separate. She spends a lot of time compartmentalising: these are the things I can talk about with Mary, I can share this part of my life with Mum, here are the things I have to keep from James. As a result, it makes Lily seem more secretive than she really is - because she splits herself so many ways.

But Lily is very humane. It’s perhaps her most redeemable quality. At the end of the day, she cares about the welfare of others, and she has an extremely fixed idea of what is right and wrong. She struggles to let her attachments with others go; it’s why she still wonders over Sev after all this time. Always. It’s an important word in relation to Lily. She will always be temperamental, she will always be emotional, she will always pick a fight over what she believes in. But she will always care, and she will always pick herself back up and find something or someone to believe in, and at the end of the day, that’s all Lily really is. A believer.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

Contrary to belief, Lily and Petunia weren’t always at odds. In fact, sometimes, if you caught them at just the right time, they could get along quite well. After all, in the end, they were still sisters. Growing up, they still had to share a room, and Christmases, and family portraits. The thing was, they were just too different - or at least, that was how Lily liked to think of it. Petunia would always like to gossip, she would always like to keep her half of the room obsessively tidy, she would always like to keep house and marry an abhorrent, but rich, man (oh, how Lily begged her not to marry him), but most of all (and this was the point that Lily hated herself for making most), Petunia would always, unquestionably, be extremely Muggle. They could never live on the same plane, Petunia and her. On occasion, sometimes, they found a wormhole that allowed them to get along. But most of the time, they existed on different planets - Petunia resided with the Muggles, and Lily ran about on a planet of freaks. Lily had attended Petunia’s wedding. But she was not a bridesmaid, and she didn’t get to sit at the bride and grooms table during the reception. Lily was old enough now, and tired enough of having the same recycled argument, that she knew not to fight it anymore. Lily and Petunia were sisters, not friends. And she would be loathe to forget it.

But aside from Petunia, home was good. Home was a haven. Lily fought long and hard at Hogwarts year round, and sometimes the promise of returning home for the summer was the only thing that stopped her from giving up. Edith and Henry Evans were thoroughly middle to lower class kind of Muggles, and though their home was small, Lily never wanted for anything - not affection, or clothes, or acceptance. Her parents, bewildered by magic as they were, carried on as the British were wont to do: quite normally. Petunia went off to private school, Lily left for Hogwarts, and they told all their neighbours it was because Lily had received a scholarship - something that made Petunia’s face look very sour, indeed.

The Evans’ were as normal as any other family in Cokeworth (exempting only the Snapes), and they were private. When Lily was home, she was a Muggle. She didn’t much talk about the Wizarding World, and they never really asked. Lily liked to keep her worlds separated. It was easier that way.

Henry died in Lily’s third year. Lung cancer was the culprit. She left during the middle of the year and did not come back until the next, when Petunia and her were positive that Mum would be alright without them. Now, Lily still tries to stop in for a visit, but they are few and far between. Mum is getting frail, and it is getting harder and harder to hide the war from her - and she doesn’t visit as much as she should. Lily thinks Petunia might resent her for it.

OCCUPATION:

N/A - Lily focuses full-time on the Order and the DTF, and she is lucky enough to be covered by James’ fortune. However, because of the way she was raised, she often feels antsy about not working, and on occasion will write cheery pieces for any Muggle papers that will take her, submitted under a pseudonym. It provides her an escape from the bleakness of her own world.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

At first, the Order was everything. The boys never understood the graveness of it all, Lily thought. They thought it was a game; they never realised that the war they found so exciting was the reality for Lily, for other Muggleborns. The Order was good. It was dangerous, but it was good. It was doing something. But it wasn’t enough. Lily found her real calling with the Dissendium Task Force, and it was so easy to get lost in it, to spend late nights scouring over new information, neglecting her other duties, her other obligations. The Order was slipping from her fingers, she could feel it. But the problem with the Order was that it was destructive. They didn’t feel like heroes, or policemen, or enforcers of justice. They felt like an army. Lily had never, would never, care for that.

But the Order was the only option, and she did care for it, however much it appeared she didn’t. However much she doubted it. She had sacrificed for it, and no doubt would continue to do so - she’d stayed away from her mother and sister in order to protect them. Lily’d heard that her sister was pregnant, but she hadn’t seen her. A few weeks back, Lily’d had a pregnancy scare of her own, and she’d spent countless nights sick to her stomach over it. Who could bring a child into this? Who could bring a baby into this? She’d snuck out to the pharmacy and taken a test, the Muggle way, and she’d cried when it came up negative. She hadn’t told James, hadn’t told anyone. After all… who could bring a child into this? War was about saving lives, not creating them. And there would be time… there would be time for happiness later. After.

SURVIVAL:

As much as she hates it, Lily gets a lot of her protection from James. She champions the idea that she “doesn’t need protection, James,” but she lives in his home, she uses his money. Perhaps that makes her more of a target to some, but she has always been charming, and selective about her friends. It is the people around Lily that ultimately protect her: James’ blood status, Slughorn’s admiration of her potions ability - it could even be argued that Lily’s relationship with Sev is what has prevented her from meeting an unkind fate. But reliance on the people around you can only last so long, and ultimately, it is only a matter of time… The truth is, they’re losing this war, and Lily’s very survival depends on the fate of the outcome. She walks a razor-thin edge, indeed…

RELATIONSHIPS:

Lily was charming in school. She was the sort of girl who was nice to everyone, she couldn’t help it. There was a part of her who still clung to that now; she liked to play the role of mediator. But for the most part, her connections with others were slipping from her grasp, she was sinking into depths where no one could dare to follow. Her work was her life now, and it showed in the roots of her relationships - one would only have to glance at her relationship with Marlene to determine that. They had been friends, once upon a time, hadn’t they? It was getting so hard to remember anything before the war now…

And the boys: Lily loved her boys. In school she’d always found them annoying, save for Remus, but they’d snuck up on her in their own ways: Remus’ easy company, Sirius’ camaraderie, Peter’s dependency, and James, of course, had always been the biggest handful. It wasn’t the romantic affair Jane Austen-type affair she’d always dreamed about, and they say war changes relationships. But Lily did not ever imagine that she’d look at James and not be able to discern what he was thinking, to see a stranger in him, even as they shared the same bed. She missed him - but it felt stupid to say it, and she had bigger things to worry about. And Sev, oh, Sev. Not a day goes by she doesn’t think of him. Somewhere out there he’s fighting, and she’s worrying about him, always, consistently, in the back of her mind.

Lily liked Alice and Frank well enough, but the real controversies laid in the younger crew. Lily could feel the tension in the room every time she spoke to Mary. She thought she’d understand, thought she, of all people, would feel some semblance of sympathy. And Dorcas’s little gang… they were reckless, and they seemed so young, though they were barely years apart… but at least they had each other. Lily was always, consistently surrounded by people… yet she had never quite felt so alone.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

Lily/Chemistry, Lily/James. Lily has an all encompassing kind of love, so theoretically, anything is possible! I do have a soft spot for angst, I will admit, but it’s important to note that I value platonic relationships just as much as romantic ones, if not more!

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

She was a muggleborn. Lily saw it as a privilege: she got to have a foot planted in each world, she got the best of what each side had to give. But she also got the worst of each world, too. That was a little harder to put a positive spin on. She was also a woman - it was the 80s, now, and Lily thought things might be getting brighter (in the Muggle world, at least) but old-fashionedness and propriety still ran this world⁠—Petunia Evans was living proof of that⁠—and it was not always sunshine and daisies. Hogwarts was not the safe haven that Dumbledore might have you believe, and Lily learned quite quickly to pick her battles. Sometimes she had to let a derisive comment slide. Sometimes she had to be the bigger person. But most of the time, especially when others (muggleborns) were concerned, she never could quite let it go, no matter how many talking tos from her idol (McGonagall), and she never could resist self-righteousness. The day she l3ft Hogwarts was the day she realised that from then on, she wouldn’t be just choosing her battles - everyday would be a fight. Still, comparably, she was lucky, incredibly so. There were those out there far more disadvantaged than her, and if she were to die in the midst of this war, than at least she would die for something she believed in. Not everybody had that privilege.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

This roleplay gives me really great vibes! A lot of groups die out really quickly these days but I have the strong sense that this is one that could actually go on for a long, long while. Also, some of your game mechanics are super, super cool - I love the idea of characters continuing interactions or being kidnapped for hiatuses etc. It just makes this world seem so much more real and exciting.

ANYTHING ELSE? Pinterest board here!

#homenumaccepted #lily evans rp #marauders era roleplay #harry potter roleplay #hp rpg

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scifrey · 6 years ago

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From Signing to Signing

Congratulations! You’ve signed with your first literary agent, and they love your manuscript! Huzzah! Bravo! Cheers! Mazel Tov!

… now what?

What happens next?

Working with your Agent

After you’ve had “The Talk” with your agent, and agreed to sign on as a client, one of the first things you will likely discuss with them will be what revisions they would like to see done on your existing manuscript (unless you already revised the book as a condition of offer).

You will likely also have a conversation about what other manuscripts you currently either have already complete, or what ideas you may have for future books or - if the book you signed on has series potential - where to go with the next books.

Remember, your agent is your ally for your future career, and they are the ones with their eyes on the market.

Shopping your Manuscript

Once your manuscript edits are complete and your book is ready to be sent out to publishers and editors for consideration, your agent will work with your to build a Shopping or Pitch package. This is where those Back Cover Copy, 1-3-5 Page synopsis, Market Comparisons, Series Potential, etc. documents that you ought to have been writing while you were sending the books out to agents to consider come in.

When you’re both happy with what you have, your agent will start sending out letters of interest (these days, more like emails of interest) to the industry connections they have. Editors, publishers, etc. They’ll talk it up at conferences and list it in their available properties if that’s something they do. They’ll work with the agency’s foreign rights partners and dramatic adaptations partners to pitch the manuscript around those parts as well.

You’ll likely get some nos, some partial or full reads and a pass, or some interest. The ideal is to have several editors at multiple houses wanting to acquire the book, which would result in a bidding war.

Once you have an offer, you and your agent will discuss the terms of the offer (it may include a book tour, it may not; it may include an advance, it may not; it may include an audio book, it may not, etc.), request any desired changes to the phrasing or clauses, and then sign it.

At this point, the work of turning your manuscript into a book passes out of your agent’s hands and into your acquiring editor’s.

Working with your Publishing House

Editing

Once all the paperwork is signed with your publisher, your acquiring agent will reach out to you with a formal Editing Letter. You will likely have been in contact with them already, talking about the book and what they loved about it, and where they see it fitting in their hourse’s roster and marketing plants. But this will be the first real notice that it’s Go Time.

The letter will outline the strengths of the manuscript, and discuss any changes they propose. You can always talk with your editor if something is unclear, doesn’t seem to sit right, or would impede future narrative plans. Always make sure you guys have a through understanding of what you’re each talking about and are completely on the same page before diving back into revisions.

Sometimes these revisions are substantial and include complete burn-and-rewrites, and sometimes they’re like, four little notes. It all depends on what serves the manuscript best to make it a strong book product.

Once you and your editor are satisfied with the rewrites, a timeline for publication will likely be set, and the great spinning wheel of turning this manuscript into a Book starts cranking into motion.

Copyediting

Next, your manuscript will be handed off to a proofreader and copyeditor. Their job is to hunt down and destroy all those typos, comma splices, and mistaken homonyms.

Depending on the size of the publishing house, this might be the same person as your acquiring editor, or a freelancer they hire, or an in-house copyeditor. Either way, these edits should all serve to strengthen your manuscript, so if at some point you’re reviewing them and something is clashing, or they’re stripping out the voice, talk to your acquiring editor about it.

You may have a few back and forths, depending on what you want to accept or reject in their proposed changes.

Cover

Likely, you’ll have already been discussing your ideas for the cover with your acquiring editor. Remember, you as the writer don’t actually have the power to dictate or veto the cover ideas, but of course as the person who knows the story best you will be asked your opinion. Different publishers include authors to different extents in this discussion process.

Usually a cover is completed far enough in advance of the book that it can be used as the jumping off point for the Buzz Building that will take place in the 3 -12 months prior to the book’s release date.

Discuss with your editor what their marketing department has planned for the cover release, and loop your agent into this discussion so all three of you can strategize together.

Interior Design & Galleys

The next time you see you manuscript, it will be book shaped! After everyone’s signed off on the edits, your manuscript is forwarded on to a typesetter/interior designer, who will lay it out in book format. This is the time when they’ll add things like illustrations, if your book comes with them, or specific fanciful scene separators, or the title page.

Any specific imagery or layout choices will have likely already been discussed with your acquiring editor before this time, so now is the moment to review the book and make sure that it was translated onto the page correctly.

A “galley” is basically a dress-rehearsal for your book. You’ll be asked to review it (and hopefully with at least a few weeks lead time so you’re not rushed), and make sure that not only are major mistakes (like two chapter 4s and no chapter 5 ) or small weird formatting concerns (like cut off lines, or things that are italic which should not be or vice versa), or something else is wonky.

Where I’m given the lead time, I prefer to be able to print this out and see it “book shaped” to get a sense of the whole product, not just the story.

You’ll be asked to send back your fixes and then, for really reals, the book will be out of your hands forever. That’s it! No more changes! All done!

Marketing and ARCs

A lot of this work will probably actually take place alongside your work on what was requested of you in your Editing Letter.

Once you have your cover (and it’s been released), you can start using it in your own marketing initiatives. Authors are usually the ones who must design and pay for the little in-hand things like lapel pins, bookmarks, postcards, library posters, and of course whatever graphics you use for your own social media and website.

Your publisher will work to get the book out to review sites, awards, industry publications, and if they have the pull and the money, premium placement on a shelf, or book tours or appearances. You may or may not be paired up with a publicist in the house to help with this.

You may have very little marketing support, if they’re a very small house with a very small budget, so in this case you may want to consider hiring a publicist yourself, or a social media advertiser, or a virtual assistant, or paying a friend in wine to put out a newsletter every month for you (thank you, Karen!). Or you may wanna just buckle down and do it yourself.

Either way, do some research and make yourself a plan. I have lots of advice on marketing your work in my other Words for Writers articles.

When the book is done-done-done, the publisher will make ARCs - Advance Reader Copies. Basically, pre-publication books. This should be the final book in every way except that they are available before the book’s actual release date.

These are sometimes paper, sometimes e-only. Reviewing the ARC will be the Final Chance Ever to find mistakes, but should be pretty clean.

ARCs are then sent out by either you or your publisher’s marketing team, or both, to reviewers, media outlets, contests, and industry publications. This helps to generate the vitally important pre-publication buzz for the novel.

The Big Wait

(Sometimes I think this stage is added simply so you can take a breather from your book and stop despising it after having reread and rewritten it about seventy million times. I’m always grateful for it though because it’s nice to have the time to refill your well with excitement and joy for your story.)

This is where the marketing plans start whirring into motion and you’ll start sending the ARCs out for reviews. They’ll start coming in so you can use them to support your marketing, and add them to your website.

This is the perfect down time to do all those little To Do list things you’ve been missing - update your website, write thank-you notes, get your social media queued up, arrange your book launch party, etc.

Time to go have another chat with your agent! Get them up to speed with the marketing plans that your publishing house is enacting, and talk through what you think you can add on your end, and from the agency, to support or augment that push. Makes some checklists, start some buzz going, and then…

Step back.

Do nothing.

RELAX. Catch up on sleep. Do your taxes. Spend time with your kids. Meal prep. Whatever sparks your joy.

And, eventually, when you’re ready to jump back into the creative well, start the next project you and your agent earmarked as your follow up. This might be book #2 in your series, or something else entirely. Check in with your agent, and then have fun!

Release Day

Time to get back at it!

On the day your book is released, it will likely be All Hands On Deck. You, your publisher, your editor, and your agent will be working in tandem to execute all of your social media blasts and marketing pushes. Try to set up as much of it as possible to be automated on the day-of.

Some people have their book launch party coincide with the release date, some choose to do it after, and some choose not to have a party at all. Research what works best for you, and make sure you have enough lead time for you/the bookstore to actually receive your box of books in the mail!

The Aftermath

The book is out, the party is over, the cake is eaten and your hand is cramped from all the autographs you signed. Bravi!

Don’t forget to keep your social media and website up to date with any changes that might come with the book - new fantastic reviews worth sharing, the announcement of a foreign language edition acquisition, an audiobook adaptation, etc. etc.

At the same time. take some time to refresh, recharge, and revel in what you accomplished before jumping back to the other project you’re working on.

You deserve it! You published a book!

Still have questions? Read more WORDS FOR WRITERS here or ASK ME HERE.

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