#i have to scroll so far to find books of interest because these two clutter everything with their twenty trillion books 😭

[l8tof1]

.

[writingquestionsanswered]

How come I managed to get an outline done for once for the sole purpose of getting me to finish a chapter but I just can't get myself to finish that chapter?

Chapter Outlined, Can't Write Chapter

It happens. Outlines go only so far... you still have to flesh out the scenes as you write them... figure out the dialogue and the blocking. It's sort of like you can plot your trip route on Google Maps, but you still have to actually drive from one point to the other.

So... when you have an outline but are still struggling to actually write:

Problem #1 - You Don't Have a Way In

Having a chapter outline usually just means you know what generally (and importantly) needs to happen in the scene, the general order those things need to happen in, and some things like the scene's purpose, your character's goal, etc. But this is sort of like having a set of instructions that say, "Go to building. Go inside." Okay, great... but how are you specifically getting inside? Are you going through the front door? The back door? Climbing through a window? Landing on the roof in a helicopter? Tunneling in through a basement wall? So, before you can actually start writing, you need to figure out the specific way you're getting your character into the scene. A good way to do this is to go to the first important thing that has to happen in the scene, then rewind from there. What is your character doing in the moments before that? What has to happen in order to put them into that place in that moment? Is there anything unique about the circumstances or location you can focus on? Try opening up some of the books on your shelves and look at the ways different chapters begin. It will start to give you ideas for how you can open your chapter.

Problem #2 - Not Inspired/Excited

Having your chapter outlined doesn’t mean is a good first step, but if you're not feeling motivated to actually write the chapter, it will harder to write it. Try doing some fun exercises to get yourself excited about the chapter. Do a mood board or playlist for the chapter. Save some character and setting inspiration photos on Pinterest. Do an interview with your character that takes place after the scene/chapter to get their take on what happened and what they feel about it.

Problem #3 - Something Isn’t Working

Stories are like a house of cards in that one misplaced “card” can bring the whole thing crashing down. Sometimes you lose interest because an earlier element or event didn’t quite work. You can feel in your gut that something’s not right, so your brain interprets that as losing motivation. It’s not really that you’ve lost interest in the story… it’s that you’ve lost interest in the dead end path it’s on. Go back to the previous chapter or two and look for something that’s not pulling its weight. It could be an unnecessary character dragging the story down, a subplot that is cluttering up the story or drawing attention away from the main plot, or a scene/scenes that don’t add to the story. It could even be a combination of these things. If you can find it and fix it, your motivation may return.

Problem #4 - You’re Distracted by Other Things

If you sit down to write and you’re busy scrolling through facebook, texting with friends, and singing to the radio, you’re probably not going to get much done. Try blocking out thirty minutes (or whatever amount of time you can afford) and dedicate it entirely to writing. Shut down social media and other tempting apps/sites. Turn off the TV. Put your phone on silent. Tell housemates not to bother you. Put on soft music without lyrics, and focus solely on writing. If you find your mind starting to wander toward other things, yank it back and focus on your story.

Problem #5 - You’re Lacking the Physical/Mental Energy to Write

Whether you’re sick, not getting enough sleep, super busy, depressed, or in a bad mood, not having physical or mental energy can make it hard to write. Do what you can to bring your energy up as much as possible, both physically and mentally, and you may have an easier time writing that chapter.

I hope something here will work for you!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[rune-writes]

A Flower Just For You

Fandom: Persona 5

Word Count: 2988

Rating: G

Summary: Ann has been receiving flowers in her shoe locker for the past few weeks and she couldn't help but hope that they're from Ren.

Note: This is a piece I wrote for @thezinearcana, focusing on love confessions and flower languages.

Read on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~

Ann froze at the sight of a single white flower in her shoe locker that afternoon. This was the third time she had received it, and like its predecessors, it had neither name nor note attached to it.

A pair of familiar voices rose above the hum of conversation at the school's entrance hall. They sounded close—too close—and before she could think, Ann slammed her locker shut so hard the people around her jumped in surprise. She hoped they hadn’t noticed. But as her heart thundered in her chest, Ann noticed they’d gone quiet.

The silence was deafening.

“What’s wrong, Ann?” Ryuji asked.

“Nothing—” Ann half-turned, one hand still on her locker. But her voice sounded unnaturally high, and she barely stopped herself from grimacing.

Ryuji broke into a grin. “You’re hiding something,” he said, stalking towards her with hands in his pockets, his grin grew wide at her obvious discomfort. “A love letter?”

A joke. It was a joke. But the thought hit too close that Ann was caught between a stutter and a scoff. She willed her face not to go red even as her pulse picked up its speed. “Are you stupid?”

“Then what’s—”

“Ryuji,” Ren called from the other end of the locker, where he was changing his indoor shoes for his outdoor ones. “Ogikubo.”

A single word. That was all it took to make Ryuji huff and shuffle toward his own locker. “Aren’t you curious?” she heard him say. Ren only shrugged.

Her heart still drummed in her ears when Ren closed his locker and turned around. Ann didn’t realize she was staring until their eyes met. He offered her a smile that pulled at her heartstrings and Ann hoped her face didn’t betray her emotions.

“See you tomorrow,” he said with a wave of his hand before nudging Ryuji on the shoulder and nodded toward the doorway. Ryuji looked back only to give her a small nod of farewell, then joined his friend who had gone out ahead of him.

***

“Maybe it really is from Ren,” Shiho said on the phone later that night. Her friend was the only one who knew about the flowers.

Ann scoffed, turning to her side on her bed. “Haven’t we ruled him out of the potential suspects?”

“Don’t call them suspects,” Shiho said, laughing.

Ann shrugged. “They could be a mistake. Or even a prank.” She could imagine it—Ryuji coming up with such an elaborate joke. Though maybe he wouldn’t have thought of using flowers?

“Then why do you keep bringing them home?”

On instinct, Ann looked up at her desk, where three white flowers stood in a glass vase a little to the corner by the window, where they would get a lot of sunlight in the day. The corners of her lips quirked up. Dark green leaves beneath layers of voluminous white petals. Like a rose, but not exactly a rose. Beautiful.

Why did she bring them home? Because she felt sorry? With no name and no note, Ann couldn’t know for sure they were for her. She couldn’t return them nor could she give them to their true recipients.

“Anyway,” she went on, “It couldn’t be Ren. He wasn’t even interested in it.”

Shiho’s voice seemed to be caught between a sigh and a laugh. “If he’s not the least bit interested, that can mean two things: either he’s not interested in you, or he’s the one who sent it to you.”

“Or he’s just being respectful.”

Shiho sighed. “Ann—” she began, but whatever she was going to say was cut short, because Ann could hear a distant voice calling for her friend and Shiho answered it with a, “Be right there, Mom!” She had to leave. “Don’t think too much about it, Ann,” she said.

The call ended. Ann stared at the blank screen for several silent moments before letting the phone fall onto her bed. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Maybe Shiho was right. It’s not that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind but admitting it could mean her loss. They had only known each other for several months, but they were friends and they were comrades. She knew for sure Ren had never seen her like that.

As though summoned by her thoughts, her phone beeped. She looked to see a text notification from Ren and paused, staring at the name for a few more moments before the realization finally hit her and she sat up straight, her heartbeat skyrocketing.

‘You owe me one.’

Ann stared at the message, then carefully typed, ‘What do you mean?’

His reply came not even a minute later. ‘The love letter.’

Her heart constricted. It was one thing when Ryuji said it, but when those words came from Ren—

‘It’s not a love letter!’

‘Then what is it?’

It’s…

Ann paused, then deleted the word. What could she say? That they were flowers? That was the same as admitting the love letter.

‘What,’ she paused, then braced herself as she added, ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Pfft! Jealous? Me?’

The reply didn’t come as quick as before, but still, her heart stung. See, she wanted to tell Shiho. It couldn’t be from Ren. Ann wanted to laugh at herself for even thinking otherwise.

However, just as Ann was typing her reply, another message came. ‘Do you want me to be?’

Ann’s fingers jerked to a stop. She waited a moment, then another, but Ren didn’t say anything else, and neither did she.

Ann didn’t know what to say. Her brain had stopped working at all the implications his question could have and it made her heart race. She could just picture it—him lying on his bed in the cluttered attic that was his room, holding his phone up above his head, waiting for her reply.

She almost told herself to throw the phone and forget the conversation ever existed. She almost convinced herself that he was joking, that she was thinking too much and she should hurry and say something before he thought she was taking things too seriously and he’d feel bad and she’d be embarrassed and—

Her phone beeped again. Ann looked at the screen. A new message had appeared. ‘Sorry, that was a joke.’

That was a joke. She should have known. But her jaws were tense, and her fingers clutched her phone so tight her knuckles went white. Ann drew a breath and loosened her muscles, gulping air past the lump in her throat.

It was a joke.

But why did her heart clench so painfully?

***

The idea came to her in the middle of the night. If she didn’t know who it’s from, Ann could just catch the culprit in the act. She set out to stake out her locker the next day. She’d hide behind the wall around the corner, with bread on one hand and her phone on the other, scrolling through it while occasionally glancing up to spot if anyone had gotten near her shoe locker at all.

No one appeared during lunch break. She decided she could extend her mission to the hours after school, but even then, no one went anywhere near her locker or lingered long enough to have slipped something inside. They couldn’t have put the flower inside in the early mornings, could they? Ann would have found the flowers when she came to school. But all this while, she had only found them after school was over.

“You’re here early,” Ren said one morning before class started. Outside, clouds that had gathered since early morning had broken and rain was drizzling. With her head on her table, the hum of conversation in the background, complete with a chill in the air and the fact that she had woken up an hour earlier, had lulled her into sleep, woken up only by the sound of Ren’s voice and the scrap of chair against tile.

Ann gave a noncommittal grunt as she sat up straight and stifled a yawn.

“Didn’t get enough sleep?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t get her mind off the flowers that she only fell asleep after midnight. Shiho had said Ann was being too obsessed. “Doesn’t it make your heart flutter, though?” her friend had asked last night.

It did. Her heart fluttered every time she saw them, thinking that someone out there thought of her enough to give her flowers. No one had done that before. Yet that’s exactly why she hated it.

“What happened with the love letter?” Ren suddenly asked.

Her eyes ablaze, Ann whipped her head around and hissed, “It’s not a love letter!”

“Sorry.” Ren raised his hands and backed away, as far as the back of his seat allowed him. “Just that you’ve been hanging around your locker a lot recently—” He paused, his gray eyes narrowing. “Don’t tell me—did you stake out your locker this morning?”

Ann pursed her lips and looked away. She heard a quiet snort and glared up at him. “Sorry,” Ren muttered, averting his gaze, finding purchase at something on his lap.

Ann stared at him for a couple moments before leaning her back against the window.

“It’s not a love letter,” she began, her voice soft. Gaze locked on the cuticles of her nails, she fisted her hands and braced herself. “It’s a flower. That time you saw me was the third.”

She waited for the snort, or the laughter, or any sort of teasing remark or jibe. But none of them came. Only silence. And silence was worse, because it spoke more volume than if he had pestered her like Ryuji.

Ann sneaked a glance from the corner of her eyes and found a perfectly schooled poker face. She scowled. “Forget it—”

“But isn’t that good?” Ren asked just as she turned around to face forward again. Ann’s fingers twitched. That confirmed it, then: Ren wasn’t interested in her at all. The flowers were definitely not from him.

She grabbed her books from her bag. Class would start soon.

“I guess it’s not.” She felt his eyes on the back of her head, but Ann didn’t feel like meeting them.

“You’re not happy with them?” There was a quietness to his voice that made her pause, that made her think twice again and again that maybe she was wrong and Shiho was right, no matter how many times Ann was proven right.

Ann sighed. No more.

“I am,” she quietly said.

“Then…?”

Ann let the question hang. The bell rang not a moment later and everyone took their seats. All throughout class, Ann would feel his eyes on her, a lingering glance when her name was called, or a look when she stood up to get something for lunch. He never said anything. She never gave him the chance to.

***

After school, the dark clouds plaguing the day finally parted. Ann didn’t feel like scouting her locker anymore, so she headed home, without much thought of it. Maybe Shiho was right. She should just be happy for receiving the flowers. But if they weren’t from Ren, Ann saw no point in getting happy over it anymore.

Light glistened on the trees and the puddles on the pavement. On her way to the subway, she noticed a little store just off to the side, with potted flowers and plants at the front. Ann stopped in front of it. The lingering scent of rain made the flowers smell stronger and sweeter, and before she knew it, her feet had already led her past the boxes and through the door at the center.

A bell jingled overhead. A woman in a blue shirt looked up from the cash register counter with a smile. “Can I help you?” the florist asked.

Ann looked around. More flowers lined the walls in pots or vases or stacked on shelves—roses, lilies, and hydrangeas to name a few. The florist came over to her just as Ann’s eyes fell on a vase of white flowers—the same ones she now kept in her room.

“What are those?” she asked.

The florist followed her line of sight and a bright smile spread across her face. “Gardenias,” she said. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” She plucked a few and held them out to Ann. “They’re lovely and elegant, perfect to give someone you love.”

Someone you love.

Ann smelled the flowers. A sweet fragrance filled her nose. Yes, these were the same ones. Gardenias.

“Did you know?” the florist went on. “These flowers also mean secret love.” That took her off guard. The florist met her surprised look with a knowing smile. “Long ago, when people used flowers to convey messages, they would often give gardenias whenever they wanted to express their love but still remain anonymous. Romantic, isn’t it?”

It was. And it was too similar with her own situation that it rendered Ann speechless.

“It’s been gaining popularity, too,” the florist added. No wonder, if she had told that story to every customer who came here.

Then again, maybe Ann shouldn’t have been surprised. Whoever had given her those flowers had probably fallen into the florist’s marketing ploy. She felt sorry for the guy. Not only did she have to turn him down, he would have spent his money in vain.

The store bell jingled again, and the florist looked up. “Ah! Amamiya-kun!”

Ann froze as the florist left her side. “Another gardenia?” she asked her new customer. “Or are you finally getting her a bouquet?”

The laughter that followed was indeed Ren’s. Ann couldn’t bring herself to turn around. All sorts of thoughts occupied her mind, trying to figure out what brought Ren to a small florist like this. But then he said, “Another gardenia, please,” and Ann stopped thinking.

The florist chuckled. “Send her some bouquet some time. She’d love it.” A shuffle of feet—the florist headed towards her, where the gardenias were.

A soft laugh. “Yeah, well…” Ren’s voice trailed off. Ann felt the moment his eyes found her. She could almost hear his intake of breath, caught on a secret she shouldn’t know. The silence seemed to stretch for a lifetime, and when he finally spoke her name, his voice quiet and hesitant, it was as though a spell was lifted.

She really shouldn’t have come here.

Placing the flowers on the nearest surface she could find, Ann kept her head down as she quickly made her way out, thanking the confused florist on her way. She ducked past Ren without looking up, then, once she was outside, sprinted as fast as she could to wherever her feet carried her.

Her face burned. Her heart raced. Blood pumped in her veins as she pushed herself farther and farther away from the flower shop at the side of the road.

“Ann!” came the dreaded voice, strained and out of breath. Ren pulled her to a stop, hand gripping her arm. “Ann, wait, let me explain—”

A glimpse of a scene, in middle school. A boy told her he liked her due to a dare between friends.

“Was it a joke?”

“What?”

She didn’t care what the flowers meant anymore. She only wished they were genuine, and not an effort to mess with her feelings. Because she liked him. She liked Ren.

“Was it a joke to you?”

Ann waited for an answer, but it never came. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was a joke. Who was she kidding? There was no way Ren would—

“Did you think it was a joke?”

She had expected him to scoff, and to smirk, to let go of her arm and said sorry, my friends made me to. But his voice was devoid of any emotions, and it struck her harder than any jeer he could have thrown at her.

His grip around her arm tightened for a fraction of a second, before he let her go, and sighed. Ann finally looked up, and the look on Ren’s face was enough to break her heart.

“I didn’t want you to know,” he began to say. “I didn’t think you needed to. You looked so happy when you first got it, I thought it was okay if I stayed anonymous.” He paused, hand reaching up to scratch the back of his head as he looked away, eyes finding purchase on a tree or a passing cloud.

Ann let his words sink in, feeling the knots slowly unravel in her mind. The tinge of red on his ears and his refusal to meet her eyes spoke loudly enough. Ren was being true.

Ann swallowed past a lump in her throat. “Then, if it’s not a joke, what is it?”

A self-deprecating laugh, a small awkward smile. “Do you really have to ask?”

She didn’t, apparently. Even without the words, Ren’s feelings were loud and clear. From the way he’d smile at her in such a soft and gentle way, to the way he’d look at her as though she was the only girl in the world. He had listened to her and given her his full attention. It would be a lie if Ann hadn’t felt some sort of deeper connection in her time knowing him.

And yet, it was for that precise reason that it had hurt her all the more when she thought he might have been playing with her feelings.

“I’m sorry if they were a burden,” he quietly said. “I didn’t mean to.”

And Ann believed him. Because if there was one thing she knew about Ren was that Ren would never do anything to upset his friends.

“Don’t you know why they made me happy?” she asked. He finally looked at her, and her face broke into a small smile. “The only reason I was happy, Ren, was because I hoped they were from you.” The dumbfounded look on his face was the most endearing thing she had ever seen. “I wanted it to be you.”

~ END ~

[sushiandstarlight]

Lockdown Voicemails

Read this story on AO3

There was an extremely annoying sound blaring outside his cocoon of blankets.  No matter how much he growled and hissed at it, the sound wouldn’t cease.  In fact, it was only getting louder.

Crowley reached out and grasped his phone, swiping the alarm off without even looking.  He drug his now-cold arm with the phone back into the warmth of the blankets and sighed.  Maybe five more minutes.  What was five more minutes after months of sleeping?

He gave up on it two minutes in, an antsiness spreading out into his limbs making them want to move and slither.  He pulled the phone up in front of his face and blinked a few times to clear his vision only to startle and sit up, throwing the blankets back.

There were 24 missed calls, all from Aziraphale.  His heart started racing, thinking something had gone horribly wrong while he slept.  But, really, if it was something so bad surely Aziraphale would have popped over and woke him up, right?  He jabbed the first voicemail:

“Ah, I see I did miss you.  I had hoped, well... I had hoped to catch you before your nap,” and here Aziraphale’s voice waiver and lowered a bit, “It is just a nap, I hope.  I hope you won’t be gone until July.  Just... er, just call me back when you get up, I suppose? Okay.”

Crowley stared at the phone.  So, Aziraphale had been okay on May 2nd.  That was good.  He tapped the second message:

“I guess you were telling the truth about your nap until July.  That’s okay, really.  I mean there’s not much to do, is there?  I was enjoying my baking... The whole process and, of course, the tasting.  I don’t know.  It’s lost a bit of it’s shine, I’m afraid.  I thought about leaving some of my cakes on the neighbor’s stoops.  Not sure how well that would be received.  Is that a thing humans do anymore?  Unprecedented times, they keep saying,” there was a long pause where Crowley could hear him breathing, “I suppose that’s it then.  I hope you’re resting well.”

He scrolled down a few voicemails and tapped the one from the last day of May.

“I spent some time reading human accounts of ‘ancient Rome’ today,” Aziraphale began without preamble; Crowley thought he sounded tired, “not all accurate, but they do a pretty good job for what information they have.  Doesn’t quite capture the feel of the time.  You can’t capture the feeling if you haven’t experienced a culture though, can you?  Do you... do you remember the oysters?  I thought they were divine, but I remember your face when you tried them.” There’s a soft chuckle and then, “I miss our dinners.  Ordering in isn’t the same, even if I can get whatever I want these days.”  There was another pause and then a click.

Crowley’s heart was doing a funny little sideways wobble.  That was the end of May.  He was a little afraid to click the next few messages.  Maybe... maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to leave Aziraphale behind just to skip a few months.  He scrolled past a few more voicemails and tapped one for the middle of June.  There was hardly a sound at first, but an occasional soft sigh or the creak of floorboards gave away that someone was there, pacing.  Crowley held the phone closer.

“... the thing is, as you say... I miss you, Crowley.  I don’t miss our dinners so much.  I can order in what I like.  I don’t miss the plays; I can ‘stream’ those.  A lot of museums are putting so many interesting things on the internet for me to visit.  I can have the majority of the world right here in my bookshop with me.  Imagine, human ingenuity,” Crowley swears he can actually hear Aziraphale swallow hard over the phone, “But you’re over there sleeping and I miss your company.  Which is silly, isn’t it?  We’ve gone longer apart, I know...” there’s another near-silent pause before Aziraphale seems to collect himself, “Do give me a ring when you wake up, dear.”

Crowley rubbed his eyes with his free hand because they were itching from being closed for so long.  It’s the brightness of the phone, that’s all.  Still, his chest is aching solidly now.  There were a couple more messages before the last one and he skips those, opting to listen to the one from two days ago.

“It’s- It’s nearly July now.  I find myself a bit excited to hear from you.  I hope you don’t hit the snooze,” the laugh that follows sounds hollow and a bit forced, “I wouldn’t blame you if you did, though.  Especially if you check the news before your phone.  Things are not...  they’re not as far along as we’d hoped.  I mean, the world is trying to open back up.  Humans treat economies like living things, you know.  Some of the sellers on the street have lost their shops.  And, one of them got sick.  She’s still in hospital.  I would like to visit her... maybe help... but they aren’t allowing visitors due to the infectiousness of the virus...” there’s another one of those long, painful pauses that gnaws at Crowley’s chest before, “When you wake up you’re more than welcome to come here now.  I should have... I should have let you pop over to begin with.  It’s still hard to remember, sometimes... that there aren’t rules for us now.  Not even human rules, really.  You can drive as fast as you like in London.  We can’t get sick.  You can come here.  I wish.  I wish you’d come here.  Call me when you’re up, won’t you?”

Crowley tossed his phone and the blankets aside, sliding to the edge of the bed and rubbing his face with both hands.  Taking a nap had been a mistake.  He should have insisted and tempted the angel into giving in.  That’s what he always had done, wasn’t it?  Spin words differently until something that had sounded impossible started to sound like something allowed.  It was just that, after everything, he had wanted Aziraphale to invite him willingly.  But, what had that stubbornness really accomplished?  With a snap of his fingers he was clean and dressed.  He grabbed a few of his things and a bottle of wine and headed for the Bentley.

Strangely, a knock at the door of the bookshop door yielded no answer.  Crowley had seen plenty of humans out and about on the streets on his way here.  Maybe the angel had gone out at last.  Still, it was being advertised as a bad idea, so he didn’t think that was the case.  He snapped open the door and crept inside, locking it again behind him.  The bookshop was dark and still inside.  He kept walking through the maze of books and the collected clutter of all the angel’s lifetimes.

He found Aziraphale in a pool of light in the back room.  He was curled up at the end of the sofa where they’d spent so many nights talking and drinking.  A blanket was draped over his lap and a book that had been in his hands was now on the floor.  He was sleeping, unbelievably.  Crowley had never seen him sleep before.  But, here he was: asleep with his silly little glasses still on.

Crowley set the wine down on a side table and stooped down to pick up the book, closing it gently and setting in on the sofa beside Aziraphale.  He didn’t stand back up, instead crouching there and observing his friend: his face was lax in sleep, all the fussy lines smoothed out.  Crowley found he would rather have those lines back if it meant he could see his eyes.  He reached out and gently shook the angel’s knee.

Aziraphale startled which made Crowley jump, losing his balance and pitching backwards to sit on the floor.

“Crowley!”

“Yes, it’s me!”

“Oh!” Aziraphale flustered, going about straightening his bow tie and his collar, “How did you... Did you really pop over here?”

“You were asleep.”

“Nonsense, I don’t sleep.”

“You rarely sleep.”

“I don’t sleep at all.  You sleep.  For months.”  There was a hurt edge to his voice that cut where the voicemails had ached.  He had.  He had left him alone here for months.

“Okay, you weren’t asleep.  I just snuck up on you.  Very sneaky, me.”  He was back up on his knees now, unsure what to do with his hands.  He wanted to touch, but that hadn’t seemed so welcomed a moment before.

“That isn’t much better, is it?”  Aziraphale was fiddling with the edges of he blanket in his lap, “Did you have a good nap?”

“Nothing to speak of, really, I was unconscious,” Crowley wanted to rest his hands on Aziraphale’s knees at least, some form of grounding connection, instead he tried to use words, “I’m sorry-”

“I do apologize-”

They shared a long look.

“I’m glad you didn’t oversleep,” Aziraphale swallowed glancing from Crowley’s eyes to his own lap, “It’s been a long couple of months...”

Crowley placed a hand on one knee and when that wasn’t met with more than a cautious gaze he grasped the other and gave it a squeeze.

“I would rather have been here.  I’m glad to be here now, with you.”

“I’m relieved you’re here.  I missed you terribly, Crowley.”  Soft, impossibly warm hands covered his own and Crowley’s heart gave a lurch.

“Next time,” Crowley watched more lines cross the angel’s face, “if there is a next time, I mean.  Next time I’ll set my phone so you can ring through.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Anything, Angel, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Maybe next time- if there is a next time,” Aziraphale pulled back his hands and fussed with them in his lap, “Next time you could just sleep here.  So I... So I know where you are.”

“I could do that, too,” Crowley’s voice sounded rough even to him.  The distance between them, though scant, was still unnerving him.  He stood slowly and sat beside Aziraphale, knee pressed against his thigh, “You sounded so sad on the phone.  I should’ve been there to answer.  I won’t make that mistake again, I promise.”

There was a pause.

“You believe me?”

“I do.  You haven’t lied to me yet.”

Crowley felt his shoulder’s relax for the first time since he’d started listening to the messages on his phone.

“So, tell me: you’ve been here all this time wishing I was here, yeah?  What would you like to do?  I brought some wine!  We could play some board games.  Promise not to cheat... overly much.”  Crowley smiled at him, hoping to draw a smile from the angel.

Aziraphale smiled a little and then a worried shadow crossed over his face.

“Whatever you want, I’m at your disposal: a fully charged demon.”

“I... you don’t have to, you know?  It’s okay if you don’t want to,” Aziraphale was rambling on like Crowley usually did and that was unnerving to say the least, “Could I... well, could I hold you?”

Crowley’s brain fizzled to a stop.

“You can say no,” Aziraphale’s breaths were coming faster now and he was blinking rapidly, “you don’t have to.”

Crowley sat up and threw a knee over Aziraphale’s lap so he could settle into it.

“Oh.”

“Whatever you want.  I meant it.”  Crowley watched for a moment as Aziraphale took him in, drinking him in really.  Then the angel was reaching for him and pulling him into a tight hug.  Crowley snuggled closer to him, burying his face in the angel’s shoulder.

“You’re what I want,” one warm hand was on Crowley’s back while the other was stroking up into his hair, “I missed you and now I only want to know you’re here.”

“m’here,” Crowley murmured into the shoulder he was pressed into, arms looping around Aziraphale’s neck, “Not going anywhere.”

Aziraphale squeezed him again and Crowley felt the tension in the angel’s body drain out, taking his along with it.

[s-creations]

In Sickness, In Health Chapter 5 - Broken Arm

Fandom: DuckTales 2017 / The Three Caballeros             Rating: General Audience             Relationships/Pairings:  José Carioca/Donald Duck/Panchito Pistoles     Additional Tags: getting sick, being cared for, mental health, injury, sore throat, common cold, chicken pox, broken bones, whooping cough, taking care of others.

Part of a Series Called: We’re the Three- Sorry, Six Caballeros!

Author’s Note: This chapter is self titled with what's about to happen. But please keep in mind this contains talk of broken bones. If I need to put further tags/warnings on this story, please let me know!

“Dewey, I’m serious, get down!” Huey frantically called.

 “Sorry, can’t hear you. Too high up and doing amazing!” Dewey called back as he reached for the next level of branches. 

 “Dewey!” 

 “Let it go dude,” Louie commented as he scrolled through his phone. Leaning up against the same tree that Dewey was currently climbing. “You’re not getting him down from there. Just let nature take its course.”

 While Huey glared at Louie, Dewey was continuing his trek up the tall tree. Humming his theme song (version 236) while he reached for another branch. His plan for the day was to reach the top of the tallest tree in the backyard so he could see across the bay. To hopefully see across it, maybe even see the entire world and what it had to offer. Maybe he could even find some place interesting enough to visit! Some place close!

 Ah, he was so eager! He couldn’t wait to find out what the rest of the world looked like. Entire body shaking with eagerness, Dewey moved a bit too quickly...

 He lost his footing first. Webbed foot slipped and Dewey quickly reached out to try and grab something for support. Only for his hand to grab at air. The branch just a bit too far out of reach. 

 It was as if time stood still for a moment. Dewey got a brief thought of ‘Huh...maybe this wasn’t the best idea.’ before he began to properly fall. It was strangely exhilarating to hear the wind rushing around him. Sort of like flying. Except the opposite. Because he was, in fact, falling. So this was worse.

 Dewey hit the ground hard, Huey shrieking while Louie let out a cry of ‘Holy Cow!’ as they rushed over. The triplet dressed in blue sat up slowly. Looking around, dazed, but otherwise felt fine. 

 “What were you thinking! You could have been killed!” Huey huffed. Fear being replaced by anger as he glared down at his brother.

 “I was thinking how cool it would be to see the view from the top of that tree. But I guess it wasn’t meant to be for the moment. Oh well, I’ll try again tomorrow-”

 Dewey let out a yelp of pain when he tried to put weight on his arm. Pain shooting through it, the duckling swearing he was about to pass out from it. Taking a deep breath to keep himself awake, Dewey looked down at said arm. Which was clearly broken. Sticking out at a weird angle, but nothing else seemed ‘wrong’.

 “I broke my arm.”

 “WHAT?”

 “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s broken. Check it.” Dewey casually commented holding up the mentioned limb. Louie looked close to vomiting while Huey turned very pale. 

 “Oh… Okay. Um, Louie, can you get Uncle Donald?” The youngest triplet nodded and dashed back towards the house, happy to not see the arm. Huey, on his part, bent down to examine the damage as best he could. “Ah...so… I don’t think I’m supposed to touch it. But it looks so bad!”

 “Dude, it doesn’t hurt. Just breathe and leave it alone.” Truth be told, Dewey wasn’t really sure why he wasn’t panicking. Maybe it was because everyone else was already freaking out. But, it was probably the fact that, since it didn’t hurt, Dewey wasn’t too worried.

 “Dewey!” 

 Ah, someone else to worry about him.

 “Hi Uncle Donald!” Dewey beamed while being faced with a panicked duck. 

 Donald looked prepared to start pulling out his feathers in panic. “Okay, okay, Dewey, how are you feeling?”

 “Pretty good, all things considered.”

 “Okay, can you walk? We need to get you to the car.” 

 “Sure...I’ll just need help getting up.”

 Dewey was more than patient as the rest of the family rushed around him. Helping him into the car, getting the seatbelt on, making sure he was okay before they set off. A quick trip to the emergency room later and Dewey now had a sweet cast and a story to share with his other two uncles. 

 “This is so cool! Benny had one of his arms in a cast too and he got people to sign it. Do you think I could do that too?” Dewey looked up at Donald, freehand knocking on the hardened plaster. 

 “Of course. You can start carrying some sharpies when you’re at school. Just as long as you don't make everything messy and you don’t distract the class.” Donald commented, finally relaxed now that everything was taken care of.

 At first, Dewey was honestly thrilled to have his cast. It was like getting a fancy new piece of armor in a video game. Wanting to constantly show it off. Happily retelling his adventure with so much gusto to whomever would hear him. It was great. 

 Until it wasn’t.

 The first issue was how uncomfortable the cast was becoming. It was heavy and clunky. He couldn’t sleep because the cast was just dead weight. His arm started becoming both itchy and sweaty. Hot and bothersome with no solution as to how it was supposed to be fixed. 

 The second issue was that there was no one else to tell the story to. All his classmates knew. All his neighbors knew. And, even if his uncles would listen to him, Dewey knew they were becoming bored by the story. The once great armor was now dragging him down. 

 The last issue was that he couldn’t do anything. Uncle Donald made it clear that Dewey wasn’t going to do anything with the cast on. Not that the duckling paid that warning too much attention. Until he realized that the cast was preventing Dewey from, quite literally, doing anything. He couldn’t grab anything. Couldn’t put pressure on it in any way. Hold anything. It was basically a useless arm. 

 “At least you have some time to work on your homework.” Huey offered weakly. Which was only met with an unamused glare. 

 Dewey was becoming so bored. 

 He was currently situated on the sofa during one afternoon. Eyes barely open, barely focused, as he ‘watched’ the television. Dewey wasn’t fully taken in what he was looking at. He was also pretty sure there was a string of drool sliding out from the side of his mouth.

 “Well, don’t you look charming.”

 Dewey merely rolled his head to the side to look over towards Donald. “Hello…”

 “Hello to you too.” The older duck walked over, claiming an empty seat next to the blue dressed triplet. “I see you’ve moved your pity party from the bedroom to the living room.”

 “Not pity.” Dewey weakly argued back.

 “No? Then what are you doing?”

 “Bored?”

 “Ah, I see. Nothing like being sad for yourself.”

 “There’s nothing I can to with my stupid arm is it’s stupid cast.” Dewey huffed weakly. 

 “You’ve done nothing but watch t.v. since you’ve gotten that cast. Why don’t you try doing something new?”

 “Broken arm, can’t do anything.”

 Donald rolled his eyes. “You’re not in a full body cast, you can still move. And your dominant hand is still ‘free’. I don’t mean trying to climb something new. Why not find a new hobby? Read a book, go take a walk, something.”

 “All sounds boring.”

 Letting out a slow breath, Donald took a new approach. “Well, I have something you might be interested in.”

 “Doubt it.” Even with a heavy sigh of boredom, Dewey still followed his uncle.

 They entered a small side room at the back of the house. One filled with mainly boxes and other unneeded odds and ends. They passed the stacked boxes, going towards the sole window. Where an artist easel had been set up. Paints and other tools cluttering a small rolling cart that had been pushed against the wall. 

 “What is this?” Dewey asked as he looked over the pile of paint tubes. 

 “My get away, if you will. When I want a break from everything, I come here and just paint. Just...put on some music and paint.”

 “I’ve never seen you paint before…”

 “Well, I did just start,” Donald commented, taking a seat in front of the easel. “I was told it would help me relax.”

 “So, are you telling me to start painting?” Dewey asked. 

 “Sort of.” Reaching into a large bag that was propped up against the wall as well, Donald pulled out two items. A small sketchbook and a mechanical pencil. “You have an active imagination. Why don’t you try giving your words some pictures?”

 Dewey was skeptical at first. When starting, it was frustrating. Nothing was looking right and it was maddening to try and figure out what something was supposed to look like. Seeing it in his head to transfer it onto paper was difficult. 

 Tio José swooped in to save the day. When Dewey crumpled up another failure. The parrot was more than happy to give his expertise on how to start off a drawing. Getting the basic shapes, proportions, how to look at the whole and the parts of an object, how drawing from real life can help draw from the imagination. After that, there was no stopping him.

 Even with the cast on, it didn’t stop him. If anything Dewey started using it as a weight to keep the loose paper still. The rest of the recovery melted away. The blue cladded duckling happily returned to school with a fully healed arm and a number of handcrafted books to share. 

[ink-and-flame]

Kinktober Day 10: Better than the Day Job

Kinktober Day 10 Prompts: Prostitution (actual) ~ Hairbrush spankings ~ Over the-knee spanking Fandom: Bright Tags: Exophilia, Prostitution, male escort, spankings, first time, bdsm, reader fic Pairing: Orc/Human, Nick/Reader

[Author’s note: Look. I don’t know why I am like this, I just am. I am why we can’t have nice things. It has been a while since I have done a reader fic, so please excuse any issues with tense.]

The world was a strange and scary place sometimes. You lived your life, kept your head down, worked to keep yourself afloat, took freelance jobs where you could just to make some extra cash, and tried to stay out of trouble. The neighborhood you were in wasn’t the best, but it also wasn’t the worst. It was, however, all that you could afford. The best you could do, an apartment above a shop. The noise wasn’t so bad late at night, the weekends were a bit stressful though as it was crowded and sometimes leaving your place made you nervous with all the people hanging around.

After time, you had begun to recognize the jerseys and the jackets. That specific color of orange, it was the local orc clan turned gang. You didn’t really know much about the Fogteeth, you knew enough to know to just leave them be. They really hadn’t been in your area when you moved in, now you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one. Not that you would, you weren’t eager to get shot for throwing rocks, plus it was kind of rude. 

You had never had any issues with orcs in the past, and gang or no gang, you weren’t about to start now. You figured if you left them alone, they would leave you alone, and so far that had worked out beautifully. They still made you nervous, but the reality was that almost any group or crowd kind of did.

It took time to get used to all the staring, hearing them speak their own language, knowing they were probably saying things about you as you walked by. Or maybe you were paranoid, maybe they were just talking about their days, or sharing recipes. Still, when they stared and then spoke to each other, it felt like it was about you and you just had to pretend not to notice. 

Life was weird, but it wasn’t unpleasant. There were still some things missing from your life, and while you could ease some of the loneliness with online chat and meeting up with friends, they couldn’t really help you with all of it. You didn’t have a friend with benefits option to go to, and even if you did, what you were seeking was something you weren’t sure you wanted your friends to even know about. 

Again, you blamed the internet. Reading erotic stories had always been a pleasant way for you to spend some alone time, but the further down that rabbit hole you fell, the more interested you became. The kink stories had slowly, over time, become your favorite and you had been fantasizing for months about strong hands holding you down. Of orders being given and rough sex. Spanking in particular had gotten you to squirming more often than not, even your dreams were filled with it. While you had no practical experience, your mind was happy to try and fill in the gaps, which was how you ended up where you were now.

There were some things in life you had never done before, lots of things actually, but the one thing you thought you would never actually do is hire an escort. Which really was just a fancy word for prostitute, but it still helped the idea go down a little better in your head. This was much easier than cruising down the street, and the website promised discreet sessions with trained professionals. You felt that going through a service was going to be safer than trying to pick up a stranger and hoping they weren’t a murderer in disguise. 

Their website was nice, professional looking, and quite well organized. You could search by a variety of criteria based on what was most important to you. Skipping over gender and race, you looked for anything that would filter by kink. It took a bit to find what you were looking for, mostly because you were still learning the technology. Each profile had a picture, though because your internet was being a bit slow, not every picture was loading or loading fully. At the end of the day, looks didn’t matter, you wanted something specific and that was what was important. 

Scrolling through the options you wavered back and forth between a nice female domme, and a male dom. Both had their advantages. A woman might be a bit more understanding of your first time, but that wasn’t guaranteed. In the end you went with male, because that's where your fantasies had gone. You wanted big strong hands manhandling you. Filtering on just the male profiles you had narrowed it down to two. After removing the sadists, as you just weren’t ready for that much pain. You were stuck between two that listed themselves as sensual dominants with the option for daddy dominant scenes. 

All in all it was a little confusing, you had no idea what all the different types of dominants really meant, and at the end of the day, sensual sounded right to you. You didn’t want someone that was too much into pain, this was your first time after all. After flitting back and forth you flipped a coin, random was better than no choice at all and since neither picture would load you couldn’t use appearance as a tie breaker. 

Jak Blackburn it was, which was a strange way to spell a name but it was probably supposed to be Jack and ended up being misspelled or was just an unusual spelling. It was likely that this wasn’t this guys actual name. Chances were he wanted some privacy. If you were an escort you certainly wouldn’t use your real name. 

Now you just had to book the session and hope you didn’t chicken out and cancel it. Which you almost did the moment after you saw it processing which forced you to step away from your computer. It only took a couple of minutes to receive a notification on your phone confirming that your payment method was valid and offering a list of scheduling options. You were surprised to see a block of time available later this evening. Were you really ready so soon?

Surprisingly, you guessed you were since you clicked it and confirmed it. Your method of payment would not be charged until after the session. You would have to provide confirmation of services received, but they required a valid payment method on file in the event that someone might try to get out of paying. You weren’t too worried, though you hoped the charge showed up as something discreet on your bank statement. You really did not want to have to explain that if anyone should ever see it. 

Feeling nervous you decided to clean up your place, in a mad panicked rush. Not that it was crazy messy, but it was a little cluttered and you were embarrassed by the thought of some stranger judging how you lived your life. After that you decided on a shower to freshen up, that would leave you only a few minutes to get dressed, but you weren’t worried about what to wear as you assumed you wouldn’t be wearing it long. Or that seemed like it would be the plan. 

Settling on an oversized tshirt and some shorts you sat on your couch sipping a drink as you stared at your phone. Part of you hoped he cancelled, part of you were afraid he might. You were excited and nervous, so much so that when the doorbell rang you almost tossed your drink across the room. As it was you only spilled it a little bit. Setting down the glass you got up and went to the door opening it. 

Of all the things you had been expecting, the tall orc in a suit was not it. There was something about him, something unusual but also familiar. It nagged at you, tugging at your mind, but you couldn’t quite place it. Realizing you were just staring you stepped aside and gestured him in. Your face was flush with embarrassment. 

“You seem surprised?” 

His voice was deep, quiet, gentle sounding. Closing the door you turned to him and nodded. “Sorry,  I didn’t mean to stare. I have been having issues with my internet and the pictures on the profiles weren’t loading for most of them.”

He looked surprised and his body language changed. “We can cancel at no charge. You should have informed them of the issue. I fully understand.”

He was so polite but you were a little confused. “I don’t need to cancel. I didn’t go into this with any kind of ideal in mind. Looks really aren’t what is important to me. Would you like to sit down so we can discuss?”

The orc nodded and sat on the chair near the couch. He set his bag on the floor and looked at you, his expression guarded, but gentle. He didn’t look angry, more confused than anything. You smiled awkwardly at him as you sat down and pulled your legs under you. 

“So, um, this is something I have never done before. Uh, hiring an escort I mean. Well I haven’t really done any of it before and this seemed like the most logical course? I know that sounds weird but I felt that going through a website and trying to hire a professional was safer than trying to meet some rando off the internet from some dating app or chat room and hope he actually knew what he was doing, and wasn’t a murderer or something.”

“That makes sense. You chose a good site. Everyone on it has to go through a vetting process. If you are concerned I have some credentials here I can show you.” 

Shaking your head you smiled. “The profiles were pretty thorough and linked to several pieces of documentation. I am certain that you can do what your profile says you can do, or I get my money back.”

Jak nodded and braced his forearms on his knees and leaned forward. “Since you didn’t know I was an orc, I know this isn’t that. So what am I here for? I don’t want to make any assumptions, but I brought enough of a variety of items with me that we should be ok, but I can also improvise.”

“Um, well, see.” Now you were feeling shy and nervous all over again. “I um. I want someone to spank me. I mean I want other things, but I feel like maybe I should start there before I get too crazy you know?” Well it was out. The cat was no longer laying comfortably in the bag. 

Jak smiled, a soft smile. “I see, I can do that. Are you wanting any kind of sexual contact or just the spanking?” 

“Oh.. uh.” Well that was not the question you thought you would struggle with. You looked him over and found that he was attractive to you. Not that you had ever really looked at an orc that way, but you hadn’t exactly not looked either. They tended to be tall, muscular, strong, those were ideal, but with Jak, it was simply his eyes. Despite the situation, his eyes held genuine kindness. Part of you wanted to know him, the real him, and not what you were paying for.  “Do I have to decide right now?”

“It would help. There can be a sexual aspect to spanking and it would help me to know if you want any kind of sexual contact at all, or just the spanking with no other kind of touch.”

“OH. ok, I thought you meant like penetrative sex type sexual contact. Um. I don’t know? I honestly don’t even know if I will like being spanked.” You shrugged looking a little embarrassed. 

Jak rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Ok, we will need to take this very slow and keep it simple. Instead of a safe word we will use color code. Red means full stop, the scene ends and does not continue. Yellow is pause, green is good to go after a pause. I will need to warm you up first. That means clothing stays on, and I will strike you gently through your clothes before we work up to clothes coming  off.” The orc paused. “Would you be willing to tell me the rest of the fantasy, or what made you decide to finally try?”

“Oh, well I guess I just have been having these dreams for the last few months and they have been making me a little crazy. I don’t want to be in control. I want to be held down, to feel strong hands touching me. I want it rough and to feel maybe a little bit helpless.” Your face was bright red now and you were fidgeting a bit while not making eye contact. “I know, it is probably super cliche and silly, but that is what brought me to this decision.”

“I don’t think it is weird, and I am flattered that you chose me, even without seeing me. I hope that I can help you fulfill some of your fantasies and needs.” Jak leaned down and grabbed his bag. “Would you like to move this to the bedroom?”

Standing up you lead Jak to your bedroom and sat on the bed looking up at him. He really was quite tall and built. The suit somehow just made him look more imposing and while you still couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe you knew him, you also weren’t sure you cared. He didn’t seem to recognize you, or if he did he hid it well, so whatever this familiarity was, it wasn’t going to be an issue. 

Sitting on the bed with you he reached out and grasped your hand, rubbing his thumb over the back of it. “Jak is the name I use for this, it isn’t my real name. Normally I don’t give my real name out, but you seem like a trustworthy person and I would actually like to hear you using my real name if you are comfortable with it.”

This was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Somehow you had made him feel comfortable with you and you were now curious what his name could be. Maybe that would give you the clue you needed to know who he was. “Of course, and I will keep it confidential, along with everything else we do tonight.”

“My name is Nick, and I appreciate the discretion.” 

Nick, well that really didn’t narrow anything down. It didn’t really help at all, it only made that feeling that you should know stronger. Deciding to ignore it you squeezed his hand. “Well it is nice to meet you Nick, you can call me anything you want to.” You laughed and blushed covering your face with your free hand. 

“Well then, I suppose I will just have to call you princess.” His voice was soothing as he pulled you closer up into his lap. His large hand rubbing your back in a soothing motion. “Would you like to lay across my lap for this sweetheart?”

You nodded swiftly, not trusting your voice and squeaked a bit when he easily flipped you onto your stomach and draped you across his legs. He hadn’t even strained himself, and you weren’t exactly a waif or light. Your thighs squeezed together at the thought of just how strong he really was. 

When he said he would start slow, he clearly meant it. The strikes were slow and gentle at first. He seemed to know how to control his strength well enough that at first it barely felt like a tap. Soon enough you were feeling warm and squirming in his lap. So far it had been rather pleasant and your mind was running away with possible scenarios on how this night could go from here. 

“I think we are ready to remove some clothing don’t you princess?” 

“Yes sir?” Your voice was hesitant, you weren’t sure how to respond or if it was even right to call him sir. He did make an almost growling sound so you couldn’t gauge off that, but maybe it was a good sound. 

You wiggled off his lap and stripped down to just your shirt and underwear. “Is this ok?”

“If that is where you are comfortable, then yes it is perfect.” Pulling you back across his lap Nick began again with gentle taps.

Now with only your underwear as a barrier you could feel those strikes a little more now. The pain wasn’t  uncomfortable, it didn’t even really hurt. There was more of a warm feeling than a feeling of pain. When his tempo increased you felt the first sting of a real strike and it made you jump a bit. The sound you made surprised you, a moan was not what you expected, but that was what came out. You were beginning to come to terms with how much you actually liked this. 

Nick continued to spank you, slowly, gently, increasing the speed and strength of the strikes as you wiggled and moaned on his lap. The more he hit you, the more you began to like it. The wetness between your thighs was noticeable now, at least you noticed it, and you were certain he did too, how could he not. 

You weren’t the only one aroused. You could feel something hard pressing into you, and there was really only one thing that could be. If what you were feeling was any indication, Nick wasn’t small in that department and that just made you squeeze your legs tighter. This time when he spoke, his voice was more gruff, deeper, husky in a way.

“Are you ready to take off the rest sweetheart?”

Standing up on shaky legs you nodded as he braced you while you tried to remove your clothes. It took a few tries, but you were naked in front of him now. You wanted to be shy, but you were far too aroused to care, and he wasn’t being paid to find you attractive. That alone made things a little easier. Though you had almost forgotten you were paying for this.

“You are quite beautiful. I can tell you are aroused, so I will ask again. Would you like any form of sexual contact?”

Well he was certainly not beating around any bushes and you hesitated before nodding slowly. “Maybe go slow?”

Nick nodded and pulled you back down into his lap. His large rough hands caressed over your bare bottom and you felt a thrill go through you. Again he started with small strikes, but this time he started a little harder than before. It didn’t take you long to get worked up again as his strikes fell faster and harder. The sound of skin hitting skin rang through the bedroom and you felt yourself clenching and throbbing. A desperate noise in your throat somewhere between a moan and a whine. 

“You are so beautiful like this, so very beautiful. Can you handle more? I have a paddle with me, or if you have a hair brush?” His voice had a deep growl to it when he spoke.

“Hairbrush.” You panted and made a tiny sound of distress when he lifted you with one arm and lowered you onto the bed. 

He came back from your bathroom holding your brush. It had an oval shape and was made of wood. You had never looked at it that way before, as an item you could use in a sexual way. After this, you might need to buy a new brush because you weren’t going to be able to see it as anything but a paddle. 

Nick lifted you back onto his lap, again using only one arm, and if you didn’t know better you would think he was trying to show off. Of course any thoughts in your head disappeared the moment the brush impacted your bottom. You cried out, loudly, as he began with slow deliberate strikes. He was more gentle than when he had been using his hand, and that was a blessing as this stung. It hurt a lot more, but it still felt good. 

Your core clenched desperately around nothing as you moaned and begged, you didn’t even know what you were begging for, but you needed something. There was a moment when you felt nothing the brush no longer hitting you when you felt Nicks hand press against your back holding you harder to his lap. His other hand pushed your thighs apart and his thick fingers slid over your clit and folds. Your cries became more desperate as pleasure shot through you. 

Whimpering and whining you continued to beg as you finally felt one of his fingers push into you, his thumb rubbing circles over your clit. It was embarrassing, or it would have been embarrassing if you had two brain cells to rub together, how quickly you came from just that stimulation alone. 

Laying across his lap limp, panting, shaking slightly, Nick lifted you up and cradled you in his lap. You snuggled into him and now that the pleasure was fading could feel just how much your ass hurt. 

“I have some lotion I can rub on you. Just lay here, I will get that and some water for you.” 

Nick laid you gently onto the bed and moved out of the room into the kitchen to get some water from your fridge. He set it on the nightstand and dug through his bag producing the lotion. First he rubbed it on you, making sure it soaked into the skin before helping you sit up and holding the water while you took sips. 

“What about you?” your voice came out in a croak. 

His arousal had been, and still was obvious. How could he make you feel so good and not have the chance to feel good himself. 

“You are sweet, but that isn’t what you are paying me for. This is about you, not me.”

“You are right Nick, I am paying, and I want you to feel good too. Show me how?”

There was something fragile in his eyes as his expression softened. You still couldn’t place who he was, but in that moment, who he was, was someone you wanted desperately to know better. 

“Please?” 

[five-hxrgreeves]

I Won’t Back Down - Five Hargreeves x OC

Word Count: 3,597

You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won't back down I'm gonna stand my ground Won't be turned around And I'll keep this world from dragging me down

1 | 2 |

Pt. 1- 10 Days Until Apocalypse I, 2019

Lola Gimbel was a very peculiar child and it wasn’t because she was one of the forty-three children born on that fateful day in 1989. Instead, she was strange because at the ripe young age of fifteen, she had already started her autobiography. It wasn’t that she was famous and needed her life written down, or that she was planning on dying anytime soon; on the contrary, she planned to live a long and fruitful life.

(One must be careful with what they wish for.)

Instead, her inspiration came from an eleven-year-old girl who’d lived over seventy years ago in a fictional work called The Book Thief. Lola admired Liesel’s perseverance and survival skills during war-torn times and the romantic part of her wanted someone like Rudy to stay by her side. This created the urge to pen down her own life story, first by asking her family members about the early years beyond memory until she could rely on her own.

Then, she spent many, many nights hidden in her basement writing by the aid of flickering candlelight. Of course, she didn’t need to use such old-fashioned ways, but the atmosphere helped set the mood and was a replica of how her book-hero wrote. Unfortunately, Lola didn’t think she had anything interesting to write even in the two and a half notebooks and counting. So far, she had:

My name is Lola Gimbel and I was born August 1, 2004. My family consists of my mother, Diana Gimbel, my father, Edmund Gimbel and my uncle, Edward Gimbel. I go to the local public high school in downtown Toronto, Canada. My father and uncle own a department store downtown called Gimbel’s Brothers. (An original name, I know. Don’t tell them I said that.) This is where I spend most of my free time after school. My mother works long hours as a nurse and apparently, I can’t be trusted enough to stay home alone after burning eggs one morning.

I’m getting ahead of myself; I was born in Toronto General Hospital at 9:15 a.m. According to my birth certificate, I weighed five pounds, five ounces. Tiny, I know! My mother was in labor for almost nine hours and when I finally arrived, she named me Delores. I hate my name because it sounds so old fashioned and it means sadness. I’d like to think I was a gift to my parents, but maybe not? and I know they love me, so instead of telling them that, I call myself Lola, which is better. It’s still a derivative of Delores, after all. As for appearances, I have shoulder-length brown hair with mid-length bangs and blue eyes.

The writing continued on for pages and pages, detailing everything she could- and couldn’t-remember from her life. There was one thing that she did not include, however, as it would give her parents a heart attack: the mansion the next block over, home of the long-forgotten Umbrella Academy, housed the biggest library she’d ever seen, and she stole books from it.

Three Years Ago

It had really been a coincidence that she’d taken any interest in the building at all. While it was the biggest thing in the city practically, the old man who lived there was an eccentric recluse who never left the house. And, despite it’s past grandeur, the once-grand entrance had faded with time and memory. Even those who’d grown up in the golden years of The Umbrella Academy had let their passions for the group of crime-fighting children go by the wayside as they grew up, leaving the large house to sit without audience for years on end.

Still, that didn’t stop some interested passers-by from peering in occasionally and Lola was among them. One night, she’d been passing by on her way home from a late-night walk and had travelled by the house on her way home. She’d passed by the house hundreds of times before, but that night she’d seen something. Or, someone. A slightly stooped figure had lingered in the window until they’d sensed they were being watched and had disappeared.

Since then, curiosity had plagued her to go check it out. Maybe, just maybe, she’d have something interesting to add to her life’s story. Her mother would cluck her tongue and say curiosity killed the cat, but her Uncle Edward would wink at her and chime in with but satisfaction brought it back. So the next night, Lola didn’t hide in the basement. Instead, she donned all-black clothes and crept to the house.

She’d never broken in anywhere but she had an inventive, quick mind and could almost always come up with a solution. The first-floor windows and doors had been locked and secure but after a few, terrifying minutes of climbing- luckily, the old stone had great places to cling on to- she’d reached the second level. Despite the ache in her fingers from grasping the side of the building, Lola had pressed on, hoping for luck, which arrived in the form of a second-story window being unlocked.

The brunette pushed it open carefully and dropped in, keeping low. A young girl would hardly trigger any alarms, but she wanted to be cautious anyway. The room she’d landed in was dark and with only the faint filter of light from the street lamps, she made her way into the hallway. A part of her hoped to find the figure she’d seen, but the other part- the larger part- hoped she wouldn’t meet anyone.

Despite the age of the house, the floorboards were in excellent condition and made no sound as she walked down the hallway. After trying a few doors to find them all barred, Lola hesitated at the back staircase. She should really stay on the floor with the escape, but something was encouraging her exploration upward, so she climbed.

There, at the end of the hallway, stood two large, double doors. Her anticipation heightened and it took everything in her not to sprint towards them. Instead, Lola continued at the same pace and, with bated breath, tried the handle. To her surprise, the door swung open immediately. The room was dark but her eyes had gotten used to the lack of light by now and she could make out towering, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. She gave a squeak of excitement. Books! Now she could really be like Liesel Meminger!

Sure, there were libraries, but this was so much better. Her feet moved quickly, closing the distance between the door and the books. She ran her hands enthusiastically along the spines of the volumes, unable to read their titles due to the dim light. Which one should she take first?

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Someone was outside the door. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but the air suddenly felt… charged.

Quickly, she pulled one volume off the shelf and close to her chest. At the same time, a shadow appeared in the open crack of the door.

Oh no, oh no, oh no- Lola shook her head furiously, clutching the book. Panicking wouldn’t help. The room was dark enough that whoever it was probably hadn’t seen her, so she could still get away. Her eyes darted around the mostly open space.

There was a couch with side tables, a working desk, library nick-nacks and- aha! she thought triumphantly, soundlessly making her way to the window.

The figure in the door entered the room, peering cautiously around before backing out again, closing the door with a sharp click!

Lola, from her hiding place in the curtain, let out a relieved breath. She took this as her queue to leave, exiting with her prize out the same window she’d come in. While she was triumphant in her first heist, her mind was whirring. The figure had been obscured by darkness, but the outline had been clearer than when she’d seen them in the window- that, she was sure of- and it seemed like the person wasn’t actually a person at all, but a- monkey.

9 Days Until Apocalypse I, 2019

After school hours usually found Lola en route to her father’s department store where she would spend time until closing working on homework or hanging out with the staff that was on break. While the back room wasn’t the most ideal place for studying, she’d become used to the constant comings and goings and the noise that came with the workers.

Now, she was sitting at a table in the cluttered space at the back of the store working on her math homework while the daily news played on a small, old-fashioned TV hung up in the corner of the large room. Three of the staff members, Sam, Eric and Brittany were sitting at the table with her. The first of the workers’ attention was fixed on the small TV while the second two where scrolling through an app on their phones looking as bored as Lola felt as she completed her assignment.

With a loud sigh, she looked up at the trio hopefully, “do you guys want to see a magic trick?”

Brittany rolled her dark eyes, “what, are you gonna pull a quarter from my ear?”

Lola grinned, “nope!” she said cheerfully, shifting slightly in her seat to pull out a deck of cards from the back pocket of her jeans.

Sam huffed, “are you going to do the ‘pick a card, any card?’ schtick?”

“You guys have no faith in me,” the brunette complained, pulling the cards from the container and proceeding to shuffle them, “I’ve been practicing.”

Eric sighed, “fine, I’ll bite. Hold ‘em out.”

Discreetly, the brunette flipped the bottom card of the deck over and then fanned them out to the other teen, careful not to let the different card show, “alright, pick a card, any card,” she said this part sarcastically with an eye roll towards Sam.

The blonde boy reached forward and pulled out the card he wanted.

“Show it to everyone but not me,” she commanded, “make sure you remember it.”

“Aye aye, Cap,” Eric said, flipping the card to reveal his choice.

While he did so, she flipped the deck casually in her hands, feigning nonchalance. She took it back from him, placing it carefully in the middle of the deck, “now, I’m going to find your card without looking.”

Lola hid the deck behind her back, flipping the top card over. At this point, even Brittany had put away her phone to watch. She revealed them again showing a face-up deck and carefully shuffled through the cards to reach the only face-down card.

Flipping it over, she showed the eight of hearts, “is this your card?”

Eric let out a low whistle, “well, I’ll be damned. You have been practicing.”

The dark-haired girl beamed happily, pleased that she’d pulled it off. The first time she’d tried this with her uncle, she’d accidentally revealed the workings of the trick as the deck slipped out of her hands.

“That’s definitely better than a quarter,” Brittany said begrudgingly.

Before anyone else could say something though, the jingle of the breaking news broke through the work room.

“This just in! Moments ago, police reported the death of the eccentric billionaire, Reginald Hargreeves. More on this story after the break.”

Sam’s head snapped towards the TV, “Hargreeves- that name sounds familiar.”

“That’s because he ran that Umbrella thing, idiot,” Brittany said with an eye roll, “they were all the rage during the early 2000s. My brother went nuts over them.”

“The Umbrella thing?” Lola questioned, curious.

“Oh yeah,�� the older girl said, “there was this group of crime-fighting children that was run by Hargreeves. They became famous after stopping a bank robbery but they went downhill after one of their members went missing. Tommy was heartbroken.”

“Went missing?” Lola asked, “as in kidnapped?”

Brittany shrugged, “no one knows what happened to him. Hargreeves isn’t exactly an open book, either. There were several unsolved documentaries but they flopped since there’s not a ton of information. You can look it up if you wanna to know more. Personally, I was more of a Disney fan.”

“Of course you were,” Sam said in amusement.

The dark-haired girl glared at him, “what’s that supposed to mean, moron?”

The blue-eyed boy shrugged, “just that it’s a girly thing.”

Lola rolled her eyes as Brittany shot something back at the boy, tuning them out as the attention shifted away from her. She made a mental note to research The Umbrella thing, as the other girl had said. Standing, she stretched and made her way into the main area of the store to take a break.

Despite all the time she spent in here, Lola didn’t think she’d ever tire of looking at the constant rotation of styles and colors. Her favorite thing to do was run her hands along the racks, feeling the shifts between soft, scratchy, wooly and a hundred other different cloths.

Her favorite section was the formal wear for the vast amount of sparkly dresses that her father decided to sell. She particularly liked the sequins because of the shine they gave off and the unique texture that passed under her fingertips. While she wouldn’t necessarily consider herself a girly-girl, she did appreciate a nice dress and the occasional accessory, even owning-and wearing- an assortment of hats and dressy items containing her favorite material.

This was the section she made her way over to now, immediately reaching her hand out to touch the slightly-rough, slightly-smooth fabric of a long, strapless dress covered in a layer of silver-and-gold sequins.

She jumped when a gentle, warm hand came to rest on her shoulder, “hey, Sequins.”

Lola rolled her eyes, “Uncle Ed, I thought I told you I hated that nickname?”

Her uncle smiled goofily at her, “what, I can’t call you something that you love?”

She huffed, “it’s dumb.”

“That’s what your mother said when you wanted to go by Lola but you did it anyway.”

“Ouch, I think I need ointment for that burn.”

The man laughed loudly, attracting some stares from other customers. They both ignored it, Lola being used to her uncle’s easy, hearty laughter, “I thought she was going to have a conniption when you told her.”

Lola’s face warmed, “are you ever going to let me live that down?”

He gave her a bright smile, “no way, Dolores.”

The brunette gave him a half-irritated, half-playful glare, “please, Uncle Ed.”

8 Days Until Apocalypse I, 2019

That evening before dinner, Lola sat herself down at the computer in her room and typed in the first part of a search inquiry: The Umbrella and then Google helpfully suggested the rest: Academy.

Clicking on the first result, her blue eyes widened in shock as an image appeared on the screen. The building she stole books from almost every night was home to heroes. Good god, what if she’d been caught? She would be dead for sure. She thanked her lucky stars that she’d only met the slightly-stooped figure a handful of times and had never spoken to anyone.

She scrolled further down to read about The Umbrella Academy.

On October 1, 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth simultaneously, despite none of them showing any sign of pregnancy until labor began. Seven of the children are adopted by eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves and turned into a superhero team that he calls "The Umbrella Academy." Hargreeves gives the children numbers rather than names, but the public gives them codenames. Spaceboy, Kraken, Rumor, Séance, The Boy and Horror. While putting six of his children to work fighting crime, Reginald keeps the seventh apart from her siblings' activities, as she supposedly demonstrates no powers of her own.

Intrigued, she clicked on a few more links that showed poor-quality pictures of six kids in domino masks and black uniforms after complete missions. Sometimes they’re covered in blood, sometimes they’re not. The group visibly diminishes in number after 2002, a few years before she was born. Then, when they’re in their teens, it shrinks again before all articles about the group cease to exist.

Frowning, Lola then typed in Reginald Hargreeves. There are, unsurprisingly, few articles about the man himself. There were a few about his notable achievements including his knighting and entrepreneurship but most involved The Umbrella Academy. There was even audio recording of one of the few interviews he’d done, showing the man standing outside of a bank as he introduced the group to the world.

“Our world is changing. Has changed. There are some among us gifted with abilities far beyond the ordinary. I have adopted six such children. I give you the inaugural class of The Umbrella Academy!”

Abilities beyond the extraordinary? Lola thought, weren’t they just regular crime-fighting children? She snorted at that. There was no such thing as regular crime-fighting children. She entered her next search: Umbrella Academy superpowers.

Many articles were speculations of the full extent of the powers the children possessed, what-if questions and potential side effects or results of their use. She did learn, though, that the six powers were as followed: super strength, super accuracy, altering reality, ghost summoning, teleportation and time travel and summoning inter-dimensional beings. Lola could barely believe what she was reading. Children like this existed? And here she was, writing down her autobiography like she was someone important!

She shook her head, forcing her jealousy to dissolve. The media tended to sugarcoat everything; these kids probably didn’t have a very fun life if they were constantly on the job. And besides, of course she was important, she had time to do something noteworthy. Still, it felt like she’d entered an alternate universe and couldn’t believe she hadn’t been aware people with super powers even existed.

A part of her wanted to stop searching then and there with how muddled her mind was currently feeling but an almost morbid curiosity forced her to continue. As her final search of the night, she typed in The Boy disappearance.

Here, even less credible evidence popped up and she sifted through what she found until she had enough of a framework for a story. Apparently, he disappeared on November 10th, 2002 and his adoptive father proclaimed him dead. There were several conspiracy theories but nothing concrete, causing her to eventually give up on finding information. There was more to be found on the other siblings, she knew, but her curiosity had been satiated and she had other things to do tonight.

Standing from her desk, she went to her bedside table and opened the drawer, pulling out the two hardcover books she’d hidden in there. Tonight, she’d return them to The Umbrella Academy’s library- that was hard to believe- and get two more. Placing them in her bag, she wondered about the lack of security for such an at-risk family, but she’d seen pictures of Hargreeves; he was old, and despite being incredibly smart, he probably had difficulty with technology like any older person. It wouldn’t matter much now that he was dead, though.

Turning her feet towards the door to head downstairs for dinner, she wondered if the stooped figure she’d seen had been Hargreeves before quickly discarding the thought. While the man had appeared old, he’d always stood straight and proud, never bent with age.

During dinner, she let her parents and uncle talk around her while she puzzled over the mysterious Umbrella Academy. They seemed to have a fairly large fanbase in their youth, but all information on them was practically made up or guessed. Lola had always liked puzzles.

Finally, towards the end of dinner, she broke her silence, “mom?”

Diana turned towards her daughter, pushing back her short, brown hair behind her ear, “yes, Dolores?”

The younger girl winced. Her mother insisted on using her formal name, “do you know anything about The Umbrella Academy?”

Now she had both of her parent’s attention as Edmund cut off the conversation with his brother, “The Umbrella Academy?”

Lola nodded, “the superhero children of Reginald Hargreeves?”

Her mother shook her head, “a bit after my time, dear.”

The brunette girl rolled her eyes, “you’re not that old, Mom.”

Diana shot her a look, “I never said I was old, just that I didn’t know them.”

She grumbled under her breath, crossing her arms and pouting. She’d only been trying to give a compliment. Unfortunately, the dark-haired woman leaned over and gave her daughter a firm smack on the back of her head, “don’t grumble, Dolores. You sound like a caveman.”

There was just no winning with her. Thankfully, her Uncle Edmund came to the rescue by changing the subject, “any progress on your autobiography, Sequins?” he asked with an amused twinkle in his hazel eyes.

The brunette sighed and uncrossed her arms, using one of her hands to push her hair away from her face, “I don’t know what’s even the point anymore,” she complained, “especially with super-powered kids who are more interesting than me.”

Her father gave her a fond look, “you’re just as important as they are, don’t think that you’re not. And besides, this Umbrella talk reminds me- one of the children of the Academy published an autobiography a few years back, you might want to take a look at it.”

She shot him a surprised look, “really? Exposing superhero secrets?”

He shrugged, “I’m not sure of the extent of what’s written, but it’s probably worth taking a look, right?”

She chewed her lip in thought for a moment before nodding, “okay, thanks Dad.”

[eliseandwhale]

an epidemic of messy rooms

scrolling through youtube nowadays seems to always conjure videos of reorganisation! cleaning! and of course a *cough* Mari Kondo *cough*

I doubt there is a single popular lifestyle blogger that has not done either a ‘cleaning my room’ video or a ‘ROOM MAKEOVER!’ video, and given this epidemic, I thought I’d put in my two cents about how to make a room look nice and feel like it's yours, but also how keep it clean, given I spend 99% of my life in m own room, and now I feel as if I am an expert :} 

CLEANING TIPS

You have to want to clean

This one is extremely obvious, but before deciding to throw away your habits for creating a mess and picking up those habits for cleanliness, you need to consider: 1. Why you are messy and 2. Why you are cleaning

Considering the whys and hows can actually help, because who’s going to start something if they don’t know why they’re doing it?

Personally, for me, I stay clean because I like the way my room looks when it's clean, but also I like the way it feels to be in a clean environment.

The ‘touch it once’ method of cleaning

An EXTREMELY SIMPLE method of cleaning up your room (or your house?), wherein you- the mess creator simply must remember that it takes far more energy (and more touches) to 1. throw something you’ve finished with on the floor, 2. then pick it up, 3. then put it away; as opposed to 1. put it away. [this method insinuates that cleaning is the lazier method :) ]

I think we find it easier to create a mess because the option of throwing something on the floor is far better than putting it away, but remembering the inevitability of the need to put that object away may help you to clean in the moment. Even doing something as simple as folding a shirt after you take it off, or throwing it in the wash, can make a huge difference to how your room looks.

Less stuff = Less mess

In an age of Mari Kondo, decluttering is not a new idea, but having less stuff can make it easier to keep a room neat and tidy given there is a. less stuff to create the mess and b. less stuff for you to put away when there is mess

*side note* less stuff does not only mean getting rid of stuff you have, but it means paying attention to your consumeristic intake and being aware of the amount you are buying and bringing into your room. You could even incorporate the “one in one out” rule of keeping a room decluttered.

Everything has its place

In correlation with the last point, having less stuff, or at least being aware of everything you have, should translate into creating a space for everything, (i.e. sort storage areas by type, don’t have any mixed ‘junk’ boxes) which inevitably makes it easier for stuff to be put away.

Make things easy to put away

Cleaning can be made extremely difficult if you make the places where things are stored difficult to access, locate or control. This is partially solved by following the previous point (grouping like-objects), but also by knowing what you use frequently (make them easy to access.) and what you use a little less frequently (you can make these less easy to access.).

MAKING YOUR ROOM LOOK NICE :)

 Don’t buy decor

It sounds counter-intuitive but bought ‘decor items’ are not only slightly pointless but can make your room look cluttered. If you have to buy a decor item though, less is always more.

I suggest using your own personal belongings, or things you already have as decoration, such as items from your memory box, or treasured belongings.

For me personally, I like to display my teacups, flowers I’ve dried, books, plants and things I’ve bought from op shops because they make the room feel more like its mine, but It allows me to display things that make me happy, or remind me of a happy memory

Avoid the trends

Don’t follow something just because the gal next door is doing it, figure out what you like and make your room individual and *gah* unique. Don’t be afraid to show a little bit of your personality, whether that be through artwork, decoration or furniture pieces. After all, it is your room.

Remember it takes time

Personally, I don’t think you can makeover a room in a day. The reason I like my room so much is because it has undergone many changes over time. Even today I’m still making changes to how it looks. Don’t be afraid to switch things up, when you see something you don’t like, change it and make it better. A constantly evolving room keeps things interesting.

It doesn’t have to be something drastic, this might mean changing up artwork or placement of decor every once in a while.

Don't forget the little things

Things like functionality and mood of a room (among other things) are often forgotten in the quest for aesthetics. When changing up your room, don’t forget about the effects of lighting and space, and remember to make your room functional and able to be lived in by YOU, in order to make it feel more like your own.

[everydayanth]

Time is Money or... Identity?

This became something of a thought-experiment paper... I don’t expect many reads here, but I’m working on getting more comfortable sharing thoughts, particularly on the internet, rather than keeping them in my head and getting annoyed when no one wants to talk about them, lol, so here goes....

It started with this image popping up three times while scrolling through the dash:

And then I had some thoughts....Sorry it’s so long. I suppose this post in itself is an experiment.

Things like this, collections of ideas concentrated into a few spectacular people (Renaissance artists, Baroque composers, WWII scientists, etc.), make me wonder about philosophy vs. aesthetic, and if what really sets progress in motion is competition and a group of people who feed off each other’s asking of questions and discovery of answers.

Can we fresco and entire ceiling? Sure, but it will be painful and probably kill you. Can we art better by understanding anatomy? Sure, but you’ll have to snatch some bodies, or let someone else do it first. Can I make music do this instead of that other thing? Sure, but then you’ll be copying that one guy, try this even cooler new idea! Instead of repackaging the same idea into new models or melodies, they pushed the boundaries of known into connections that traversed the unknown, adding bubbles to the collective mind-map of human knowledge and intelligence. That’s what makes them special, right?

I’m currently reading The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf, and I’m doing it slowly on purpose, reading all the materials referenced (Kant, Hume, Goethe, etc.) as a personal exercise in understanding a period of time/culture rather than simply Alexander Von Humboldt the person (also, it’s a good book, but the author is very biased-in-favor, so I’m trying to read it in tandem of others who were more critical). Anyway, I’m going through the part where a group of young men require each other’s thoughts as stimulation and inspiration to new ideas, how they challenge and change what is and feed off these new connections, even as they are being recorded by scientists and artists who would become ultimately more preserved in historical documents and textbooks.

And that seems to be the key, one brain questions and answers, another questions that answer and answers itself, and so on, agreeing on very little outside of context, but pushing each other into new territory. It only takes one four-minute mile to prove it can be done at all. But if we’re caught up in the ethics of how to question and answer, then aesthetics quickly become more desirable. So the cultural understanding, particularly with Millennials, seems to grow weary of argument and become: if I can’t discuss policy (because the nuances are extreme or not understandable/accessible to me, or most often because my voice is denied and change is unattainable), I can at least look good while it slowly chokes me to death.

And while it’s easy to write it off as narcissism and entitlement, perhaps it’s only because what we deem “looking good” is one of very few things we can generally agree upon, everything else is hopeless, creating a cycle of nihilism where hopeful people are considered naive or dumb. Sure, there are different styles of aesthetic, and we label those subgroups with passionate adamance, but I think even the most minimalist among us can appreciate an aesthetic collection of clutter when done well. We share an ideology of quality that makes art and media that was once appreciated by few an aesthetic that is valued by most - Marvel comics vs. the MCU, SF/F shows like Lost or Game of Thrones becoming cultural phenomenons vs. the elusive Geekdom prior to the Star Wars movies. Aesthetic unites us where every other aspect of nationalism and group identity divide us by philosophy - our perceptions and understanding of geography, history, culture, language, or enemy (traits of nationalism, yeah, I’m citing my own article lol) are all based on complex webs of experience, education, world view, etc.

We focus on aesthetics in literature, visual arts, and technology, business branding, business models, and even the application of science to the public. Aesthetics becomes the focus of energy because it is where we find freedom of identity in a world ready to challenge any semblance of diverse thought. We agree on aesthetics, because they fit a model and communicate efficiently if we are something to consider good or bad.

But that false dichotomy is severely flawed because projections of reality and reality itself are two vastly different things. Dichotomous thinking is a way to simplify the world when it becomes too complex too fast, it is a tool used to make choices, like making a pros-cons list or an if-then projection in order to decide to do or not to do, to be or not to be. It is often supported as a tool of control, and becomes extremely dangerous when it begins to dictate our identities and understandings of the world. When there is no us-vs-them, what idea can we rally around?

To start, we have a lot of inclusion to do, because discussions of philosophy, art, and science all start with time, and you know who doesn’t have time? People who need to make money in it. So when we skew our education systems to favor those who have time (and therefore money), we allow economics to dictate progress in philosophy and art and science, we hand over control to those who profit most from dichotomous thinking. And when we do that... well... money will favor some things over others, like product over research, revenue over investment, aesthetic over thought, etc. until deviating outside of that cycle is nearly impossible if not unsurvivable.

We’re in a loop, where making money is the goal, because there is no other option, research needs support, and research’s only support comes from money, and money wants more money, so research is limited to whatever gives us money.

Has that always been the case?

Renaissance artists were successful if they demonstrated the church’s power, gaining the church support through aesthetics, not challenging its philosophy (well... not directly anyway). That church profited (and still does) greatly from the development of dichotomies and used art and emotion to encourage this thinking, often as a way to control the lower classes.

Baroque composers (or Romantic, Classical, and Modern ones for that matter) were successful if they sold shows and inspired attendees to purchase their music, again, often sponsored by those in financial power and following the requested agenda (and again, not always directly, often including illicit subtext). Stepping too far away from what was popular and appropriate meant they lost sponsorship and public interest. Thus, the freedom of the starving artist vs. the conformation of the sell-out dichotomy.

And WWII/post-WWII scientists were successful if their work was supported by government institutions, particularly military or intelligence branches, and advanced the prospect of victory over a consistent manifestation of physical enemy (Nazis, Russians, soldiers, and spies). 

The money comes when the proof is clear, not when it’s being searched for, and then only after decades of scientists and artists have died in poverty after discoveries of curiosity, not agenda. Progress, then, is controlled by public interest... or else private investment, and must, therefore, conform to the expectations of one or the other, often balancing the greater of two evils, it seems.

This is not a disrespect of those genius giants before us. I’m just noticing a pattern in the system of prosperous aesthetic periods and less progressive philosophical ones. We see the results of the philosophers only when they are applied aesthetically, and those aesthetic focal points divide the world into answers instead of questions, so it can seem that large progress has been made, when perhaps it was in-process for quite some time and was completed when a group of people crowded around the concept with the financial support of a capital agenda and the peers to push the boundaries of answering the questions that had been asked before them.

Most of the giants whose shoulders we stand on are invisible, it seems we only recognize the ones who present the answers aesthetically to our culture of origin. The “discoverers” of America are preserved in record because of their historic access in writing, but also because of their royal and religious backing. 

Many scientific theories were proposed prior to our Western heroes by individuals those heroes had access to reading, particularly those outside of our Western vernacular. Darwin had access to tons of theories, but I’m not just talking Lyell and Linnaeus here, but the likes of  Zhuang Zhou, al-Jāḥiẓ, and Ibn Khaldūn, whose names are ignored even in evolutionary biology/anthropology classes. 

We remember Apple’s ipod, not the saturated market of mp3 players before it; we discuss the unveiling of the iphone, not the industry and inventions that already existed. And while the fun of literature is often disassembling its parts, we don’t discuss the mythology or market predecessors to Harry Potter, because it was the new aesthetic of young adult. That’s a bold claim, and much more subjective than the tech/science ones, but I think it’s important that we recognize this across industries and throughout our culture, not simply within the aesthetic streamlining of technology. Our immediate “successful” heroes make money because they provide and aesthetic that applies to many philosophies.

We don’t diversify our education because we admire the end result of science, rarely considering the entirety of work that went into final discovery or product. We try to explain science in chains of linear progression rather than the mind-map of questions and ideas and artistic or political influence that it is.

Progress then, depends a great deal on affluence and we exist in a culture of “who you know” rather than a balance of who AND what you know. Sure, there are always exception, but is it any surprise that we younger generations are obsessed with image? 

Success, it seems, is directly correlated with it, and while we know genius takes more than money, success seems to exist outside of it - in fact, success rarely seems to involve genius itself at all anymore, but pure aesthetic. I’m thinking of the likes of Steve Jobs, who cultivated a following through his personal branding and rhetoric that helped change an entire industry, but often did so through aesthetics, not invention. 

We have grown to idolize the firsts as people who invented something, however, the reality is that those tech giants and big names rarely invented, rather re-modeled and presented something aesthetically compatible to society. We do not celebrate the inventor of the piano, but rather those composers who presented us with an aesthetic style for it. 

But that makes sense, because science’s value is in application. Who cares about dark matter? Well, no one (except sci-fi authors lol), yet, because it has no application to the public. But projects are still funded by institutions and government because our curiosity drives research and the potential outcome (weapons, control, power, money) justifies investment. How much money our government spends on NASA is directly correlated to the expectation of results, in the 60s, that was a way to defeat our perceived enemies, now, for some, it’s useless and should be privately funded.

I’m getting a little off topic, but my point is that what we deem “progress” is often only the part of the iceberg that we see, and rarely the whole of it. So what we see in the initial photo as a culture is a group of genius scientists (yes, again, respectfully, I am not denouncing the discoveries or large amount of work put in by any individuals here), rather than the prosperity of the Industrial Revolution, whose amount of excess-everything funded work that wasn’t considered necessary, until it was. When we fear a limit of resources, we understandably become more controlling over what we spend money on as a society, but even in limited resources, there are those with excess, who can then more easily control what is considered valuable or not. 

So, to be a successful genius, one must have access to funding, and to do this, one’s work must fulfill an agenda of another who has or is access to funds. This often entails being well connected, which includes a performance of image, false confidence, and the crucial understanding of the mind map of philosophy, art, and science in the intended discipline, which is often only accessible to those who fit the desired cultural template of the controlled upper class (read: wealthy, white, male, and upperclass-educated, for historical America anyway). 

Which means that in idolizing the presenters of knowledge, we value the aesthetic of it, the pretty package wrapped around a completed idea, more than we value the process of it. And this is dangerous because we repeat it everywhere, in politics and government (we might value the cheaters who take a shortcut as a symbol of intelligent application, or those who represent an aesthetic we agree with without looking into their application of policy), justice (social justice often values the aesthetic meaning of an outcome of a problem, rather than deconstructing the process by which that outcome was reached), education (we use standardized testing to represent a student’s ability to memorize outcomes - or the aesthetic of looking intelligent, rather than demonstrating an ability to apply knowledge and understanding), business (we herald in those who present us with a desired aesthetic brand - Apple, Starbucks, Google, etc., rather than investigating the potential corruption of human conditions that leads to that aesthetic; or else using a popularity rating of stars as peer-approval of a brand rather than developing our opinions out of experience).

Even in our personal lives, it is more important to be perceived as positive and confident than to investigate and deconstruct what might be making us unhappy. For me, it was health, I didn’t like how I looked or felt, but was obsessively told that I’m great, I shouldn’t feel that way. My negativity was rewarded, victimization was encouraged, and the conclusion seemed to always be leaving everything as-is.

Eventually I had to say fuck it and stop seeking the support and understanding of friends, utilizing spite to rebuild a healthy life, which isn’t the only option, that was my choice, but our obsession with aesthetics became a lose-lose for me. I didn’t want to look like a photo-brushed-whatever model, which seemed to be everyone’s assumption, I just felt unhappy because I was unhealthy and unproductive in my life. 

But that’s a bad aesthetic, or maybe not one at all and that denial of aesthetic might be the worst part. I didn’t fit into a box, not out of any higher intelligence, but because I could never pick one. This story is much more complex (and for the record, Jake was instrumental in helping me develop and maintain a health plan) and could probably be unpacked into an entire book of an extended metaphor, but put simply, I want to be a minimalist some days and a traditionalist other days and my brain is just a clash of ideas. Even my wardrobe reflects this, lit-nerd some days, world-traveler other days, outgoing-athlete, and even the occasional clash of weird accessories that is dancer-chic, lol. 

I was feeling stuck by a body that was in endless rehabilitation and recovery (long story, broken bones), and I didn’t like it, so I wanted to change it. But that proactive idea was met with passionate defenses of body-positivity (which does have a place in society as a whole) and a focus on aesthetic (”you look fine”) rather than philosophy (well I don’t fucking feel fine). And I can’t help but think it’s because aesthetics are things we can agree on, or because they are safe, and to change aesthetics or to request a focus on philosophy, makes people scared about the burden of change.

So I have a revision to my own idea of what curates success:

Successful genius exists in a place supported financially, often by an agenda that is commonly more afforded to those who already fit a familiar cultural aesthetic of money or power, armed with an understanding of connection and access to un-biased and diverse knowledge and education (again, often most commonly afforded to those already in the upperclass), surrounded by a group of similar individuals who provide competition as well as resources and connections that progress the understanding of concepts in non-linear objectivity, and present finalized ideas to the public in a consumable and digestible aesthetic package of understanding that does not require extensive negative change on behalf of the consumer.

If that is true, I think it answers the cycles of science in ages of philosophy and reason vs. aesthetics and image that creates the popular science vs. art false dichotomy. STEM is more easily objective, and objective is more easily packaged and sold, therefore we create an art vs. science dichotomy and science wins - but only if it’s presenter understands enough about art to package it aesthetically. Social sciences are doomed by their own use of inductive arguments, complex layers of pattern and observation that don’t have a single objective Truth, rather a layered perception of potential truth, which is not easily distributed - it’s not a pamphlet, it’s a book. 

Ain’t nobody got time for books.

It explains the Millennial obsession with image outside of an individual psychology of narcissism, by looking to cultural understandings of success and value. And while deviating from traditional models of progress - looking at thought as a mind map of connection rather than linear funnel of detail (while still applicable and useful), it illustrates the time lapse between discovery and progress. There is a gap between the actual discovery of knowledge and the generalized application of that knowledge, and that gap is filled by whomever presents the information most effectively or efficiently, sometimes accurately, to the public. That presenter is then considered successful, valuable, important. That importance leads to respect, time, and freedom.

So Millennials are emulating what they need to look like to be considered successful (fake it ‘till you make it and all), while science emulates linear thought in the same way. Linear thought can be more easily objective and packaged for public access, taught in schools and accepted by society. We create a dichotomy of linear and non-linear thought and say they have pros and cons or specific uses and applications, but I think in the same way our predecessors argued about Empiricism vs. Rationalism (read: art vs. science) until we understood them in tandem, we are at the point of having to understand linear and non-linear thinking not as opposites, but as extremes on a spectrum, most useful when balanced. 

It’s complex and complex things take time to understand. And time is money. And money is freedom. And freedom is happiness.

Perhaps this explains why dichotomies are so popular - they fit an aesthetic, and they remove the exhausting layers of philosophy that exist inside our own identities. Dichotomies limit the complexity of an idea into two extremes, and  when we define ourselves by an image rather than our modes of thought, much of our decisions can be made by whatever aligns with the image. We can feel free by the illusions of power or choice, while minimizing the effort it takes to get to that freedom, and maybe it makes us feel happy for a minute. 

However, while we spend much of our decision quota in a given day on deciding which aesthetics to consume or conform to, those choices are still influenced by those whose agendas are funding our understanding of the world through science and art. Is it any wonder we’ve created a dichotomy of disconnect in every way. What I mean is that it is easy to make irrational choices based on feelings of aesthetics (easier, not always easy), and when our culture divides aesthetics into categories, they are predictable, marketable, and controllable, so we must separate the world into understandable groups.

If this is true, then maybe it’s not the internet or social media or Millennial entitlement that is separating us. Maybe it’s the control of wealth being recycled into similar agendas to produce work that conforms to or provides evidence supporting already existing biases in science. Keep us too busy making money to have time to understand it and too loyal to brands to investigate the money, and too exhausted of choices to discover ourselves. So the freedom of choice that we find in aesthetic dichotomies - the ease of making decisions and lowered exhaustion of not analyzing those experiences, is actually a sacrifice of identity and agency to those funding our research and creating the requirements of aesthetic conformation . 

This is getting a bit conspiracy-theory-esque, but dichotomies are good for reducing choices and controlling groups, however, they do not inherently exist outside of a few basic dualities (like light and the absence of light, or dark), they extend out of a focus on aesthetic and a disapproval of thought, voice, and criticism. Or, to simplify, they are social constructs to organize information.

So if this all related in some way, if science and progress is inhibited by the agendas of the elite, and we are very aware of our elite, how do we trust it? How do we step out of the aesthetic-obsessed cycle and into forgiveness and understanding and patience and... time?

And perhaps more importantly, how do we develop a way to support science AND diversify it? How do we make the next photo like this include races and genders across a spectrum of ideologies? How do we create a collective group of genius that exists outside of a capital agenda, is it even possible? How can we encourage investment over revenue when so many Americans (and people around the world) feel they don’t have enough time to make money to survive, or choices to spend thinking about philosophy, policy, and what they believe in vs. agreeing with something that seems to vaguely align with their desired aesthetic identity? It’s not laziness, I don’t think, but over-work, we’ve reached our daily capacity and the sacrifice of demanding more is...less.

I struggle to pick an aesthetic and it has helped me break that easy black-and-white view of the world, but that is a fight I am exhausted by every day. It would be so simple to pick an aesthetic and run with it, to define myself by a collective idea and make choices based on what matches it, but that swings with my emotions, and maybe that’s closer to the problem? 

We have done some weird shit with emotion, from disregarding it as feminine or “weak,” to writing it out of strength and art and science. We have created a dichotomy between emotion and logic and then mapped it into our brains as hemispheres of thought. We made a taboo-aesthetic of sadness (I mean, look at Inside Out’s character development of Sadness, but they did a good job using balance as the answer) and disregarded most emotions beyond contentment or positive excitement as bad, which is, surprise, starting to look like a mistake. We’ve branded empathy as weakness; we are simultaneously admiring, and for many worshiping, empathetic individuals while funneling our money into heartless heroes who we deem successful. Maybe it’s our emotions that have faded, beaten out of us or encouraged into silence, leaving us lonely and dependent on our chosen aesthetic to find any pieces of identity that might lead to authentic happiness. Maybe emotion is what keeps us in just-enough chaos to challenge the agendas that control our choices by keeping us unpredictable? Or perhaps they are what unite us beyond aesthetic.

Maybe staring at that shelf of shampoos and conditioners, over half of which are produced by the exact same factory and owned by the same company but branded with different versions of you in mind and with how you will feel looking at them taken into account, is extremely overwhelming. And some days you feel lazy and tired and you just grab that same ol’ thing. But occasionally you feel rebellious or responsible, and you investigate and make a completely different choice because maybe you are made of a layer of realities held together by your collective experience of life that creates a unique worldview, that thing that we conform to an aesthetic or maybe an emotion, or philosophy, or a conviction of values, and maybe that thing cannot be predicted. Maybe our models predict an aesthetic, not a person, and maybe that’s a duh, but it’s not a logical concept I consider on a daily basis of rhetoric hailing technology and AI as all-knowing and capable of perfect reason.

Maybe it’s our chaos that is trying to be organized into compartmental identities of aesthetic ideologies: minimal, vintage, grunge, professional, bad-ass, athletic, urban, feminine, boho, whatever it is. And those who challenge it are in for a much more difficult life of choices, each of which must be broken down into action-and-consequence, current emotion vs. future potential, the history and creation of a product, etc. We don’t have time to ask our coffee if children were kidnapped to harvest it, we have an image and this specific coffee or product fits it; we are too busy trying to be successful so that we can eventually have the freedom to fully identify ourselves and be happy, and we see by cultural example that our desired success comes from aesthetic.

Capitalism creates a need for money, and that excess capital is often syphoned into the remnants of pre-constructed systems. I don’t have the expertise to divide that into its logical components yet, but maybe our adoration of monarchy as seen in our popular media, art, and entertainment, has us assuming the elite among us deserve their position, romanticizing the trials of poverty as obstacles to be overcome, and forcing racial stereotypes into equally damaging aesthetics - the white female, incapable damsel in distress, vs. the black female, independent queen who can survive everything on her own. This is not a real dichotomy, it’s a shitty stereotype, but you probably wouldn’t know it from the outside looking in, or perhaps from the inside itself, if you felt the need to align with a specific aesthetic, or even to invert that pressure into the opposite aesthetic. Businesses thrive by utilizing those dichotomies, and sometimes by creating a solution to them. So if they are useful to some, perhaps that’s enough reason to be suspicious of the agendas that tell us how to think or make our lives easier. 

I feel like I’m saying a lot of stupid things while feeling my own brain nodding along and going like oh, here’s a dichotomy and there’s another dichotomy and all dichotomies are false dichotomies, and I know all this in formal educated argument, but when it comes to daily application, I want to just be a cool millennial who has health insurance and can grab takeout without humming about the cost and what I might be able to pull together from the fridge. That doesn’t mean brands or aesthetics, despite the market’s attempts to the contrary, just the means to survive financially with a bit of excess time for myself to think and be bored and contemplate the world with other people so we’re all a bit less lonely and more emotionally adjusted.  

Diversity, money, research, science, art, aesthetic, it all seems to come back to identity and time. Time to make choices, time to reflect and think about identity and emotion, time to deconstruct and criticize reality, time to investigate corruption, time to gather knowledge and resources, time to exist along other humans rather than floating away, isolated and ungrounded from the world. Therefore, successful geniuses also have time to exist outside of a singular aesthetic and enhance our understanding of the world in order to develop positive changes that we often label “progress.”

How do we give people more time so that they don’t have to divide the world into aesthetics and dichotomies in order to keep up or attempt to be successful? Does giving someone time allow them to feel successful? If that perseverance of success was in order to gain the time, would we then use the time to curate individual identities that we feel comfortable and confident in? Is time what it takes to be happy? Is time what separates the classes in America?

How do we un-do “time is money,” particularly in a capitalist economy and remember that time is also thought and connection and values and friendships and more than obligations?

How do we remember that time is identity?

Is time a renewable resource? Or are we. 

[hockeyytrash]

Alaska - Chapter Twenty

-2540 words-

I left Steph's shortly after Mitch and Auston left for practice because Steph had classes. In fact, she's had classes all week. However, I'm not too upset about it because I've been enjoying my alone time. It's good to take a break from the people you just spent five days with.

Now there's about a week of winter break left. In some ways, I wish we had more time off, but then again, I find out if I'm able to graduate early as soon as we go back to school, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm actually extremely excited to start applying to colleges and start taking classes, although I'm not sure if I'll be able to enroll anywhere when it's this far into the school year. But I'm not one to take no for an answer so I will be doing a bit of persuading and negotiating in order to take classes somewhere.

The only other thing coming up is my birthday this Saturday. I'm finally turning nineteen! I would be going back home (as in Pittsburgh) to visit my dad, but he's away on business. That means my birthday plans are up in the air. I haven't really told anyone that it's my birthday because I hate drawing attention to myself. So hopefully the day will pass without any fuss.

The Leafs have a game tonight, but I've decided to opt out of going because like I said before, I'm just not feeling the whole 'interacting with other humans' type of thing. In fact, the only thing I have planned on this lovely Thursday night is grabbing a bite to eat at my new favorite coffee shop and doing a bit of college prep.

My mom and Tom went are out on date night, which means they probably won't be back for a while. However, it's almost eight o'clock and I haven't eaten since breakfast, so I might as well get a move on if I'm planning on getting to the cafe before the odd late night rush gets there.

I swing my legs over the edge of my bed until I can feel the cool hardwood beneath my feet with. On tingly feet, I stand up and stretch as I pad over to my closet. Changing out of my ratty pajamas I still have on from last night, I slip on yoga pants and a crewneck sweatshirt. I pull my hair up into a high ponytail with a scrunchy before slipping my laptop into my backpack and throwing on a pair of sneakers.

I make sure I grab my wallet and keys on the way out the door, along with my phone. I jog over to my car, getting in quickly due to the cold weather. Once I'm inside, I turn the key in the ignition and then shift my beloved Jeep into reverse, backing out of my spot. Another gear shift brings me to drive, allowing me to round my driveway and accelerate onto the main street.

Humming along to some pop song on the radio, I focus on the road ahead of me which is filled with the usual downtown Toronto traffic. Luckily, the traffic moves along fluidly and I arrive at the small coffee shop just before 8:40.

The strong smell of black coffee and fresh pastries suffocates my senses as I walk over to an empty table by the large windows that cover the front of the shop. I set my bag down, claiming my seat before getting in line with my wallet and phone in hand.

My eyes scan over the menu board, written in different colored chalk, for something to eat and drink. After a minute's debate between a sandwich and a soup, I decide on the tomato soup with bread and a plain black coffee. The line creeps along, but soon enough it's my turn to order.

The worker, whose name tag reads Anthony, smiles and asks what I would like. I rattle off my order that I had been practicing saying in my head. Anthony happily enters everything into the computer before giving me a grand total. I hand over the appropriate amount of money and take my receipt.

Satisfied with my choice of meal, I make my way back over to my seat and plop down in the wooden chair. I then pull my laptop and notebook out of my bag, placing both items on the small table with care. I quickly log into my laptop and open up a new window in Safari while opening my notebook to the section I designated to the ever so complicated college search. Lists of different majors, colleges, books to read, places to visit, and things to do take up the hefty, yet organized section.

I start with the first college on the list, entering its name into Google to get an overview of what it's like before visiting its website to see it more in-depth. As I'm clicking through the list of majors, a worker places my soup and coffee on the table, avoiding my cluttered notebook. I bid her a small thank you and immediately delve into the soup while I resume my clicking. I continue this process of clicking, scrolling, slurping, and sipping for a while, making notes and crossing out or circling names of universities in my notebook as I go.

In fact, I'm so wrapped up in my frantic search, that I barely notice my empty bowl and mug being cleared by another barista or the chair across from me skid across the floor before becoming occupied. Only when the occupant clears its throat do I pull my attention away from the screen and set down my pencil.

There in the wooden chair opposite mine, sits number 34 with an amused expression plastering his tanned face. With arms crossed over his suit-clad chest, he grins at me like he knows something that I don't.

"Can I help you?" I ask, breaking the ice between us when I realize I was just staring at him. His grin widens before he opens his mouth to reply.

"I was just dropping by for a coffee like I always do when we lose. You come here often?" he replies, smile faltering a bit when he alludes to them losing. I shrug my shoulders and shift in my seat.

"Every once in a while when I need to get work done," I say, nodding to my laptop and oversized notebook, overflowing with words and papers. He quirks a brow at the sight of the jumble of writing sprawled on the top page.

"What are you working on?" he asks, sounding genuinely interested in the issue.

"Just some random stuff," I say vaguely, not wanting to go into detail. I actually hate telling people about my plan of graduating early and going to college because I feel like they will think I'm bragging. Plus, like my birthday, it draws attention to myself.

"Like...," he says, letting his statement trail off.

"College searches and applications," I answer, hoping it will suffice. His brows furrow and a look of confusion settles on his face.

"College? Don't you have like half of your senior year left?" he asks. I shake my head and mentally prepare myself for the explaining that is about to occur.

"I applied to graduate early since I've already taken enough credits and all the required classes. That way I can get an early start at college, which is why I'm sitting here doing research and applications. I'm trying to find a university that I like and that will accept me this far into the year," I explain, looking into his deep brown eyes.

"Wow. That's really impressive. Have you found any colleges you like enough to apply to?" he asks, continuing the conversation.

"So far, I've started applying to NYU, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Toronto, but I can't actually send anything in yet because my early graduation hasn't been approved," I say, noticing that the cafè is pretty empty now with only a few stragglers finishing their coffee or late night snack.

The good thing about this place is that it's open until one in the morning. That gives me plenty of time to complete whatever work I have without having to worry about packing everything up and finishing it at home.

"Those are all great schools, but if you aren't even able to turn anything in yet, why are you here busting your ass at 11:45 pm to do them?" he asks, resting his elbows on the table, causing his suit to tighten around his muscular arms.

"Well the administration at my school is supposed to get back to me right after break and since my mom is going to want to do something with me for my birthday this weekend, I don't really have any other time to do them if I want to turn them in as soon as possible," I explain, crossing my left leg over my right.

"Makes sense," he says, nodding slightly. I copy his actions, allowing my eyes to roam around the dimly lit room as I notice the soft music playing from speakers in the ceiling.

"Do you usually come here just to talk to random people or do you actually order something?" I ask, trying my best not to sound like my usual snarky self. He chuckles at my question, leaning back in his chair.

"Usually I get a coffee and sit at this table, so I can people watch, but tonight is different. For one, you're in my spot. And two, I don't really feel like staying up half the night, hopped up on caffeine," he says, making me a laugh a bit.

"My apologies for taking 'your' table. However, you can have it now. I think I'm gonna head home," I say, sliding my laptop and notebook into my backpack.

"I didn't mean to make you leave. I couldn't care less that you took 'my' table," he says, standing abruptly. I stand up as well, slinging my bag over my shoulders in the process.

"No really, it's okay. I need to get some sleep anyway. The timezone difference from California is still getting to me," I say, having to look up in order to make eye contact with him because of his height.

"Yeah, that isn't one of the pleasant parts of the trip," he says, guiding us both out the door. He swings it open and then promptly holds it for me like a gentleman. Weird.

"I agree," I say simply, stepping out into the breezy Toronto air. Auston falls in line with me and we walk towards the small parking lot together in comfortable silence. For some reason, this, right now, feels right. I know that I'm supposed to hate this pompous, egotistic asshole, but in this moment, I can't. Whatever conversation that just occurred back in that little coffee shop seemed genuine and felt... nice?

I realize after wrestling with my own thoughts that we had arrived at my car. Auston stops and turns to face me. A small grin is still evident on his face as I open my mouth to bid him good night.

"Well, I can imagine I'll see you around here sometime soon," I say, gazing up at the tall brown-haired boy. A lopsided smile appears on his face as he nods in agreement.

"Somehow we just always wind up together, don't we," he says through a toothy grin. A smile plays on my lips because I know he's right. Somehow, no matter how hard we try to avoid each other, something ends up bringing us together.

"Seems that way," I say in agreement, inching my way closer to the driver's side of my car.

"See you around, Laska," Auston says, nodding his head towards me in acknowledgment.

"Adios, Matthews," I reply with a small wave and smile before hopping into my car and heading back home.

Like most teenagers on an extensive break, I did absolutely nothing yesterday. Even though it was a Friday, I still did nothing except lay in bed, watching romantic comedies from the nineties while stuffing my face with various food. The only slightly productive thing I did was do my makeup for no apparent reason other than to waste the overpriced stuff.

@alaskamay: I promise I got out of bed at least once today

4,421 likes | 38 comments

@stephlachancee: when she's hot and motivated!

@marner_93: I can't even lie and say you look like trash

@43kadri: you look like trash

@alaskamay: @43kadri thanks!

@carlyyvalentine: girly bad

@sydneyesiason: DAMN MAMÍ

@williamnylander: dem brows holy shiz

@stephlachancee: this is my new phone background

@marner_93: ^mine too, as well as @austonmatthews

@austonmatthews: no, mine is of you Mitchy :)

@alaskamay: @marner_93 @austonmatthews cute

@carlyyvalentine: can you do my makeup for prom pls

@alaskamay: @carlyyvalentine $50

@carlyyvalentine: $30?

@alaskamay: @carlyyvalentine $60

@carlyyvalentine: I hate u

Now that it's Saturday afternoon, I only have two more days until winter break is over. This also means that I'm officially nineteen! Cue the fireworks!

Speaking of my birthday, my mom has made the surprising decision not to suffocate me in family time for my "big day." Instead, she made me my favorite breakfast and gave me the present she got me: a necklace with my zodiac sign and birthstone. I actually really love it and I'm glad she didn't go overboard with a bunch of meaningless junk.

As for the rest of the day, I plan on continuing what I'm doing right now. Napping on and off, while watching Netflix and eating random shit. How productive and health-conscious of me!

Unfortunately, right before I'm able to drift back to sleep for what seems like the fiftieth time today, my phone starts buzzing on the table next to my bed. Groaning, I roll over and snatch the device off the table, glancing at the screen to find a text from Steph.

Conversation With: Steph

hey there! are you doing anything tonight?

heyyy. no, why?

Carly, Syd, and I were going to go out for dinner tonight and we were wondering if you want to tag along

idk... I kinda just want to stay home

oh come on! it'll be fun! at least try to pretend like you're on break for Christ's sake

okay, fine

yay!! I knew you'd cave :)

yeah, yeah. when and where

it's a little Italian place downtown, I'll send you the address

7:00!

okay, what should I wear? is it fancy?

cute casual should be good

gotcha

I think that's it! see you at 7!

Hopefully this is a low-key dinner and not one of Steph's bar hopping adventures because I'd love to be in bed by 9:30. Jesus, I'm antisocial.

[inkofamethyst]

October 27, 2018

One of my favorite things to do is scroll through fantasy concept art on Pinterest.  They’re all so unique, and they’re snapshots into a world that was completely made-up.  A lot of my writing inspiration comes from images like those, though I haven’t written in quite a while.  I want to get back into writing.  It’s a shame that my life has become so cluttered that I feel like I don’t have the time to read or write or sew.  There are so many books that I want to read.  I bought a stack of cheap, secondhand books while I was away last summer, and they just sit on my shelf, unread.

Speaking of clutter, my room is messy.  I haven’t done laundry in far too long; I probably have a solid three loads to put in.  And there is so much litter on my bed, and on my dresser, and I still look into my closet some days without a clue of what to wear, so my closet isn’t even perfect.  I love the idea of a minimalist, capsule wardrobe, but I also love clothes.  I feel like I might need another purge, or just a time to reorganize, but that can’t be right now, with five days left until my Early Action applications being due.  And my Common/Coalition Essay being terrible.  I’m applying to two places this round where that essay will be the only impression that the admissions officers get of me.  They are my third and fourth choices (out of ten) and I love them to bits.  (I found out last night (at my last Marching Band game ever!!) that one of the drum majors from my freshman year actually attends my fourth choice school... so, uh, that’s interesting.)  

Yo I’m such a bad student, by the way.  I’ve had knowledge of a Spanish essay for about two weeks, and, well, I, uh, wrote it all last night before midnight.  It’s not terrible, but the stress of procrastination really made my head hurt, and I couldn’t go out last night with all of my senior friends due to the headache and the essay.  (Thanks to my flute buddy who happened to give me orange soda last night, your gift fueled my essay-writing and unhealthy procrastination.)  I wish I could’ve gone out, but also, I’ll party after all of my essays are done for November 1.  

I need to clean my room.  I need to do laundry.  I need to write college essays.  I need to chill out.  I need to hang out with friends.  My senior friends.  Because soon, we won’t be seeing each other all the time, and I don’t want to take this year for granted.  What I need is probably another game of DnD.  I just feel bad because my schedule is SUPER restricting and everyone else’s--  

Also, I would like to make one thing clear: I do not want to die.  While some of my entries may lead you to believe that life is too hard for me to carry on, I want to stop you right there.  My life an’t all that hard, okay?  I’m super privileged.  What I want is to change myself so that I’m no longer a garbage person.  And change is hard.  Am I stressed?  Yes.  But I put it all on myself.  I know that I am capable of change, but I just need to do it.  

My last Marching Band game was last night, and it was a bit of a screw-up.  It was raining outside so we performed inside, but we couldn’t do the field show for the last time.  My freshman year drum majors were all there, but I didn’t know them well then and I’m too shy to engage with them now so I just... sort of... didn’t.  However!  I did find my senior quote, something I said last night, actually: “I love being 5′ 2″ and incredibly passive.”  Thank you to my friend who pointed out to me that it should be my senior quote.  If you ever happen to read this (first of all, why are you here?), I appreciate you so much and I’m sorry for getting your birthday wrong.

Today I’m thankful for that specific friend.  She’s... uh... the one I sang High School Musical songs with while we were in DC and strolling down the sidewalk with our other friend, the guy who likes Beyonce.  She’s my Chicago friend.  My “I’ll literally sing Cell Block Tango with you at any time, just say the word ‘pop’ and I’m there” friend.  I hope we start talking more again soon, during the spring musical, maybe?  Either way, last year was awesome because we became really good friends, I think.  At least, it seemed that way on my side.  No, I will not let my insecurity ruin my friendships.  She’s fun to be around, and I feel like she’s waaay more mature than I am.  I know I’m comparing my inside to her outside, but she seems like she has it all together.  Incredibly intelligent, likely very self-confident (she’s a dancer, that’s kind of in their definition), and she can sing too.  I hope she gets a singing role in the musical because she’s never had one before and her voice is too amazing to not be showcased at least once in her high school theatre run.  I know that they cast her last year as a dancer because she has so much dance experience, but I maintain that she would’ve done my role, literally the lead female in a show that only contains singing, better than me.  But that’s not why I’m thankful!  I’m thankful to have met such a fun, down-to-earth person who appears to balance critical thinking with the ability to be silly with great amounts of grace.  Brava!

[cm-sheridan-writes]

Chat Window

However it happens, it starts with putting yourself out there and hitting the Enter key. Leading up, there are several little moments on the forum, and out of the sea of usernames, a few start to stick in your memory. Eventually, you begin to keep track of their posts.

It takes months, but you realize that you’re forming a picture of a few of the users. One usually shows up in the middle of the night, active for a few hours before disappearing again. You wonder if they have insomnia, or if they live out of the country. Curious one night, you search for other posts they’ve made, digging for clues, cultural references, anything that could give you an answer. It occurs to you that someone could be researching you at that very moment, and your fingers pause above the keys. Is this creepy? Are you crossing a line? You’re ten pages deep in their old posts, though, so any wisdom from this realization is too little, too late.

You start edging into the conversation around them. It’s a fine line that you’re completely anxious of: you want them to notice you, but you don’t want to be a bother. You play with the idea of a direct message, but without any sort of context or post to reference, it feels way too vulnerable. Better not. Besides, what if they turn out to be a completely obnoxious person, or a bigot, or they reveal that they love Ayn Rand, like, on a deep and cellular level? Can you deal with that? (Memories of reading The Fountainhead for a lit class in high school may scar you a little more than you want to admit. Your instructor clearly had some sort of expectation about that book when he assigned it, but whatever it was, you cannot imagine.)

(You post something about this lit class, and Ayn Rand, and spend a few hours commiserating with most of the replies. One Rand supporter sneaks in and questions if you really absorbed the piece, and you find yourself disabling comments because the ensuing brawl is cluttering up your inbox.)

A few weeks pass, and suddenly there’s a note in your inbox, and that familiar username is behind it:

One new message from snaplolcat01:

    saw ur post on ayn rand.. the comments were a trip and i read every single one. really glad no one made ME read anything by her

There’s a little flutter of validation in your chest, and you eagerly type back a response:

    Haha, yeah, the comments got way out of hand, I should have known what I was doing when I posted that. Yah, your lucky. There are a couple scenes I just CANNOT unread. If you want my advice, stay FAR AWAY from those books.     *you’re (ugh, first impressions, and that happens)

A few minutes pass without a response, and you shrug it off and click away from your inbox. As you scroll and tap and read and respond, you have a little, vague smile on your face. Being noticed is always nice. Communication is slow but constant over the next few days, whenever you find yourself near your computer and with some free time. They never seem to be on at the same time you are, but usually, you find a new response from them. You tiptoe around each other, keeping the talk to whatever latest drama is happening in some section of the forums, but you carefully reveal small pieces of yourself, and the conversation branches to news and politics, movies, and one day, when your schedules seem suddenly to overlap, favorite childhood cereals.

It’s been months, you realize, since that first introduction, and your talks would fill several dozens of pages at this point. For the most part, they still respond while you’re asleep, and one day, you say, “You’re always up so late, you must be on a different timezone than me.”

You’re up late that night, working on an essay, when one of your open tabs chimes at you. You glance up and click through, and in your inbox find:

    haha, well idk what ur schedule is but im only able to get on after school and work     i usually read stuff here til i fall asleep

The essay can wait.

    Oh, gotcha     What are you studying

The picture in your head starts to flesh out just a bit more. You find out that you two have a mutual interest in biology, though you’re in a pre-med track and intending to go into law school, while they’re doubling with computer science and interested in how this all ties in with genetics. They’re balancing a few restaurant jobs as well as a position grading for one of the professors in their department. You can sympathize with the lack of available time; you’re supposed to be writing an essay right now, after all.

    oh dude i dont wanna distract u!!!

    No, you’re fine!     I need a break anyway, my brain feels like cement

The process of sharing is natural, sometimes abundant and sometimes halts, but never feels forced. The person behind the pixels seems as flesh and blood as anyone you know “in real life”, though you’re forced to confront your growing disillusionment with that phrase. You’d scoffed at a friend in high school who had had an internet girlfriend, asking how the relationship could be real if you’d never seen them in person. The internet had been a barrier back then, and while intellectually it made sense that there was a human being on the other end of the Ethernet cord, it was like watching shadow theater play out behind a scrim. It had never made sense that someone could fall in love with what you only saw as black and white pixels on a screen.

More and more, however, you’re forced to accept that you know more about this person than you do about many of the people you see on a day to day basis.

****

    This might be a bit weird but go with me on this

    yeah?

    SO I’ve never ever seen you in real life, but it’s so weird that I know more about you than the girl in my cell bio class that I’ve been crushing on and I see her for actual hours a day     And I don’t know a damn thing about her     We braethe the same air     *breathe

    it’s wild dude     i know whatu mea n     (sorry long day, typing sucks haha)     one of my tas was talking bout th is at a party (she was hella stoned, fukin wild XD)     going on about global societies an d how we as like a people could connect so mjuch faster to somenoe acoss the globe     easier than th people we see evry day     somthing about a keyboard makes it easier     ^^^her exact words

    Whoa

    i know rt?     maybs if bio girl gave u her fb u two wopuld talk     fuck dude i gott slep     i kno my typing sucks but this is embararasing     *embasrasing     FUCK

    HAhahahaha, no worries     I should get going too (though I wanna hear more about this TA)     (I never run into any of my profs or anything at parties)

    haha highly recomend, its an EXPIERENCE     cya dude

This idea of global society sticks with you, and their TA’s comment about keyboards. A keyboard offers a backspace key, and a way to edit yourself. You’ve said plenty of dumb shit on the internet before without necessarily stopping to think through the consequences, but then it occurs to you that at the start of this whole friendship, you’d sometimes gone through ten variations of the same two-sentence message before finally deciding to send it. It was a series of self-edits and careful selection of which parts of yourself you’d wanted seen. Just like real life.

There was comfort in the distance, though. Without a person in front of you, and with the limitless communication offered by a message sitting in your inbox, you couldn’t see reactions -- or judgment. This correspondence held more personal information about yourself than some of your in-person friends knew.

****

    So I got Maya’s facebook page     We’ve been talking, and we’re going to get drinks this weekend, maybe see a movie if there’s anything good out

    YAY!     thats awesome1!!

    Thanks! :)     If we hadn’t talked about global societies and stuff a few nights ago I dunno if I would’ve gotten up the courage to talk to her. Your advice for talking via computer made it soooo much easier.

    so ur saying im resopnsible for this new relationship?     *responsible     ur welcome ;)

Drinks go fantastically, and you and Maya decide to forgo the movie and head back to her place. When you finally make it back to your computer, there are a few frantic, nosy messages.

    HOWZ THE DATE     cmon dude im dying to kno

    i can only assume ur havn massive amounts of sex rn     and im v happy for u     but i need to know

    r u alive????

You can’t keep the smile from your face, and you start to type out a response. Maya hadn’t thought it strange at all that you had an internet friend who had pushed you to finally ask her out. She’d even teased you, “Make sure to brag about me to your buddy.” The memory of that, her lips grazing your skin and her breath tickling your ear, raises goosebumps, and you shiver just a little bit. Some things just can’t be replicated over the internet, you decide, but friendship doesn’t seem to lack.

[ciathyzareposts]

Ultima VII

From the time that Richard and Robert Garriott first founded Origin Systems in order to publish Ultima III, the completion of one Ultima game was followed almost immediately by the beginning of work on the next. Ultima VI in early 1990 was no exception; there was time only for a wrap party and a couple of weeks of decompression before work started on Ultima VII. The latter project continued even as separate teams made the two rather delightful Worlds of Ultima spinoffs using the old Ultima VI engine, and even as another Origin game called Wing Commander sold far more copies than any previous Ultima, spawning an extremely lucrative new franchise that for the first time ever made Origin into something other than The House That Ultima Built.

But whatever the source, money was always welcome. The new rival for the affections of Origin’s fans and investors gave Richard Garriott more of it to play with than ever before, and his ambitions for his latest Ultima were elevated to match. One of the series’s core ethos had always been that of continual technological improvement. Garriott had long considered it a point of pride to never use the same engine twice (a position he had budged from only reluctantly when he allowed the Worlds of Ultima spinoffs to be made). Thus it came as no surprise that he wanted to push things forward yet again with Ultima VII. Even in light of the series’s tradition, however, this was soon shaping up to be an unusually ambitious installment — indeed, by far the most ambitious technological leap that the series had made to date.

As I noted in my article on that game, the Ultima VI engine was, at least when seen retrospectively, a not entirely comfortable halfway point between the old “alphabet soup” keyboard-based interface of the first five games and a new approach which fully embraced the mouse and other modern computing affordances. Traces of the old were still to be found scattered everywhere amidst the new, and using the interface effectively meant constantly switching between keyboard-centric and mouse-centric paradigms for different tasks. Ultima VII would end such equivocation, shedding all traces of the interfaces of yore.

These screenshots from a Computer Gaming World preview of the game provide an interesting snapshot of Ultima VII in a formative state. The graphics are less refined than the final version, but the pop-up interface and the graphical containment model — more on that fraught subject later — are in place.

For the first time since Richard Garriott had discovered the magic of tile graphics in his dorm room at the University of Texas, the world of this latest Ultima was not to be built using that technique; Origin opted instead for a free-scrolling world shown from an overhead perspective, canted just slightly to convey the impression of depth. Gone along with the discrete tiles were the discrete turns of the previous Ultima games, replaced by true real-time gameplay. The world model included height — 16 possible levels of it! — as well as the other dimensions; characters could climb stairs to other floors in a building or walk up a hillside outdoors while remaining in the same contiguous space. In a move that must strike anyone familiar with the games of today as almost eerily prescient, Origin excised any trace of static onscreen interface elements. Instead the entire screen was given over to a glorious view of Britannia, with the interface popping up over this backdrop as needed. The whole production was designed with the mouse in mind first and foremost. Do you want your character to pick up a sword? Click on him to bring up his paper-doll inventory display, then drag the sword with the mouse right out of the world and into his hand. All of the things that the Ultima VI engine seemed like it ought to be able to do, but which proved far more awkward than anticipated, the Ultima VII engine did elegantly and effortlessly.

Looking for a way to reduce onscreen clutter and to show as much of the world of Britannia as possible at one time, Origin realized they could pop up interface elements only when needed. This innovation, seldom seen before, has become ubiquitous in the games — and, indeed, in the software in general — of today.

Origin had now fully embraced a Hollywood-style approach to game production, marked by specialists working within strictly defined roles, and the team which built Ultima VII reflected this. Even the artists were specialized. Glen Johnson, a former comic-book illustrator, was responsible for the characters and monsters as they appeared in the world. Michael Pierce was the resident portrait artist, responsible for the closeups of faces that appeared whenever the player talked to someone. The most specialized artistic role of all belonged to Bob Cook, a landscape artist hired to keep the multi-level environment coherent and proportional.

Of course, there were plenty of programmers as well, and they had their work cut out for them. Bringing Garriott’s latest Ultima to life would require pushing the latest hardware right to the edge and, in some situations, beyond it. Perhaps the best example of the programmers’ determination to find a way at all costs is their Voodoo memory manager. Frustrated with MS-DOS’s 640 K memory barrier and unhappy with all of the solutions for getting around it, the programming team rolled up their sleeves and coded a solution of their own from scratch. It would force virtually everyone who played the game at its release to boot their machines from a custom floppy, and would give later users even more headaches; in fact, it would render the game unplayable on many post-early-1990s machines, until the advent of software emulation layers like DOSBox. Yet it was the only way the programming team could make the game work at all in 1992.

As usual for an Ultima, the story and structure of play evolved only slowly, after the strengths and limitations of the technology that would need to enable them were becoming clear. Richard Garriott began with one overriding determination: he wanted a real bad guy this time, not just someone who was misguided or misunderstood: “We wanted a bad guy who was really evil, truly, truly evil.” He envisioned an antagonist for the Avatar cut from the classic cloth of novelistic and cinematic villains, one who could stick around for at least the next few games. Thus was born the disembodied spirit of evil known as the Guardian, who would indeed proceed to dog the Avatar’s footsteps all the way through Ultima IX. One might be tempted to view this seeming return to a black-versus-white conception of morality as a step back for the series thematically. But, as Garriott was apparently aware, the moral plot twists of the previous two games risked becoming a cliché in themselves if perpetuated indefinitely.

Then too, while Ultima VII would present a story carrying less obvious thematic baggage than the last games, that story would be executed far more capably than any of those others. For, as the most welcome byproduct of the new focus on specialization, Origin finally hired a real writing team.

Raymond Benson and Richard Garriott take the stage together for an Austin theatrical fundraiser with a Valentines Day theme. Benson played his “love theme” from Ultima VII while Garriott recited “The Song of Solomon” — with tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course.

The new head writer, destined to make a profound impact on the game, was an intriguingly multi-talented fellow named Raymond Benson. Born in 1955, he was a native of Origin’s hometown of Austin, Texas, but had spent the last decade or so in New York City, writing, directing, and composing music for stage productions. As a sort of sideline, he’d also dabbled in games, writing an adventure for the James Bond 007 tabletop RPG and writing three text-adventure adaptations of popular novels during the brief mid-1980s heyday of bookware: The Mist, A View to a Kill, and Goldfinger. Now, he and his wife had recently started a family, and were tired of their cramped Manhattan flat and the cutthroat New York theater scene. When they saw an advertisement from Origin in an Austin newspaper, seeking “artists, musicians, and programmers,” Benson decided to apply. He was hired to be none of those things — although he would contribute some of his original music to Ultima VII — but rather to be a writer.

When he crossed paths with the rest of Origin Systems, Benson was both coming from and going to very different places than the majority of the staff there, and his year-long sojourn with them proved just a little uncomfortable. Benson:

It was like working in the boys’ dormitory. I was older than most of the employees, who were 95 percent male. In fact, I believe less than ten out of fifty or sixty employees were over thirty, and I was one of them. So, I kind of felt like the old fart a lot of times. Most of the employees were young single guys, and it didn’t matter to them if they stayed at the office all night, had barbecues at midnight, and slept in a sleeping bag until noon. Because I had a family, I needed to keep fairly regular 8-to-5 hours, which is pretty impossible at a games company.

A snapshot of the cultural gulf between Benson and the average Origin employee is provided by an article in the company’s in-house newsletter entitled “What Influences Us?” Amidst lists of “favorite fantasy/science fiction films” and “favorite action/adventure films,” Benson chooses his “ten favorite novels,” unspooling an eclectic list that ranges from Dracula to The Catcher in the Rye, Lucky Jim to Maia — no J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert Heinlein in sight!

Some of the references in Ultima VII feel like they just had to have come directly from the slightly older, more culturally sophisticated diversified mind of Raymond Benson. Here, for instance, is a riff on Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin’s landmark work of first-person journalism about racial prejudice in the United States.

It’s precisely because of his different background and interests that Benson’s contribution to Ultima VII became so important. Most of the writing in the game was actually dialog, and deft characterization through dialog was something his theatrical background had left him well-prepared to tackle. Working with and gently coaching a team consisting of four other, less experienced writers, he turned Richard Garriott’s vague story outline, about the evil Guardian and his attempt to seize control of Britannia through a seemingly benign religious movement known as the Fellowship, into the best-written Ultima ever. The indelible Ultima tradition of flagrantly misused “thees” and “thous” aside, the writing in Ultima VII never grates, and frequently sparkles. Few games since the heyday of Infocom could equal it. Considering that Ultima VII alone quite possibly has as much text as every Infocom game combined, that’s a major achievement.

The huge contributions made by Raymond Benson and the rest of the writing team — not to mention so many other artists, programmers, and environment designers — do raise the philosophical question of how much Ultima VII can still be considered a Richard Garriott game, full stop. From the time that his brother Robert convinced him that he simply couldn’t create Ultima V all by himself, as he had all of his games up to that point, Richard’s involvement with the nitty-gritty details of their development had become steadily less. By the early 1990s, we can perhaps already begin to see some signs of the checkered post-Origin career in game development that awaited him — the career of a basically good-natured guy with heaps of money, an awful lot of extracurricular interests, and a resultant short attention span. He was happy to throw out Big Ideas to set the direction of development, and he clearly still relished demonstrating Origin’s latest products and playing Lord British, but his days of fussing too much over the details were, it seems, already behind him by the time of Ultima VII. Given a choice between sitting down to make a computer game or throwing one of his signature birthday bashes or Halloween spook houses — or, for that matter, merely playing the wealthy young gentleman-about-town in Austin high society more generally — one suspects that Garriott would opt for one of the latter every time.

Which isn’t to say that his softer skill set wasn’t welcome in a company in transition, in which tensions between the creative staff and management were starting to become noticeable. For the people on the front line actually making Ultima VII, working ridiculous hours under intense pressure for shockingly little pay, Garriott’s talents meant much indeed. He would swoop in from time to time to have lunch catered in from one of Austin’s most expensive restaurants. Or he would tell everyone to take the afternoon off because they were all going out to the park to eat barbecue and toss Frisbees around. And of course they were always all invited to those big parties he loved to throw.

Still, the tensions remained, and shouldn’t be overlooked. Lurking around the edges of management’s attitude toward their employees was the knowledge that Origin was the only significant game developer in Austin, a fast-growing, prosperous city with a lot of eager young talent. Indeed, prior to the rise of id Software up in Dallas, they had no real rival in all of Texas. Brian Martin, a scripter on Ultima VII, remembers being told that “people were standing in line for our jobs, and if we didn’t like the way things were, we could just leave.” Artist Glen Johnson had lived in Austin at the time Origin hired him to work in their New Hampshire office, only to move him back to Austin once again when that office was closed; he liked to joke that the company had spent more money on his plane fare during his first year than on his salary.

The yin to Richard Garriott’s yang inside Origin was Dallas Snell, the company’s hard-driving production manager, who was definitely not the touchy-feely type. An Origin employee named Sheri Graner Ray recounts her first encounter with him:

My interviews at Origin Systems culminated with an interview with Dallas Snell. He didn’t turn away from his computer, but sort of waved a hand in the general direction of a chair. I hesitantly took a seat. Dallas continued to type for what seemed to me to be two or three hours. Finally, he stopped, swung around in his desk chair, leaned forward, put one hand on his knee and the other on his hip, narrowed his eyes at me, and said, “You’re here for me to decide if I LIKE you.” I was TERRIFIED. Well, I guess he did, cuz I got the job, but I spent the next year ducking and avoiding him, as I figured if he ever decided he DIDN’T like me, I was in trouble!

Snell’s talk could make Origin’s games sound like something dismayingly close to sausages rolling down a production line. He was most proud of Wing Commander and Savage Empire, he said, because “these projects were done in twelve calendar months or less, as compared to the twenty-to-thirty-month time frame that previous projects were developed in!” Martian Dreams filled six megabytes on disk, yet was done in “seven calendar months!!! Totally unprecedented!!” Wing Commander II filled 15 megabytes, yet “the entire project will have been developed in eight calendar months!!!” He concluded that “no one, absolutely no one, has done what we have, or what we are yet still capable of!!! Not Lucasfilm, not Sierra, not MicroProse, not Electronic Arts, not anyone!” The unspoken question was, at what cost to Origin’s staff?

It would be unfair to label Origin Systems, much less Dallas Snell alone, the inventor of the games industry’s crunch-time culture and its unattractive byproduct and enabler, the reliance on an endless churn of cheap young labor willing to let themselves be exploited for the privilege of making games. Certainly similar situations were beginning to arise at other major studios in the early 1990s. And it’s also true that the employees of Origin and those other studios were hardly the first ones to work long hours for little pay making games. Yet there was, I think, a qualitative difference at play. The games of the 1980s had mostly been made by very small teams with little hierarchy, where everyone could play a big creative role and feel a degree of creative ownership of the end product. By the early 1990s, though, the teams were growing in size; over the course of 1991 alone, Origin’s total technical and creative staff grew from 40 to 120 people. Thus companies like Origin were instituting — necessarily, given the number of people involved — more rigid tiers of roles and specialties. In time, this would lead to the cliché of the young 3D modeller working 100-hour weeks making trees, with no idea of where they would go in the finished game and no way to even find out, much less influence the creative direction of the final product in any more holistic sense. For such cogs in the machine, getting to actually make games (!) would prove rather less magical than expected.

Origin was still a long way from that point, but I fancy that the roots of the oft-dehumanizing culture of modern AAA game production can be seen here. Management’s occasional attempts to address the issue also ring eerily familiar. In the midst of Ultima VII, Dallas Snell announced that “the 24-hour work cycle has outlived its productivity”: “All employees are required to start the day by 10:00 AM and call it a day by midnight. The lounge is being returned to its former glory (as a lounge, that is, without beds).” Needless to say, the initiative didn’t last, conflicting as it did with the pressing financial need to get the game done and on the market.

Simply put, Ultima VII was expensive — undoubtedly the most expensive game Origin had ever made, and quite possibly the most expensive computer game anyone had yet made. Just after its release, Richard Garriott claimed that it had cost $1 million to make, the first time to my knowledge that that milestone figure was associated with any game. Of course, the number is comically low by modern standards, even when adjusted for inflation — but this was a time when a major hit might only sell 100,000 units rather than the 10 million or so of today.

Origin had first planned to release Ultima VII in time for the Christmas of 1991, an impossibly optimistic time frame (impossibly optimistic time frames being another trait which the Origin of the early 1990s shares with many game studios of today). When it became clear that no amount of crunch would allow the team to meet that deadline, the pressure to get it out as soon as possible after Christmas only increased. Looking over their accounts at year’s end, Origin realized that 90 percent of their revenue in 1991 had come through the Wing Commander franchise; had Wing Commander II not become as huge a hit as the first installment, they would have been bankrupt. This subsidizing of Ultima with Wing Commander was an uncomfortable place to be, and not just for the impact it might have had on Lord British’s (alter) ego. It meant that, with no major Wing Commander releases due in 1992, an under-performing Ultima VII could take down the whole company. Many at Origin were surprisingly clear-eyed about the dangers which beset them. Mike McShaffry, a programmer and unusually diligent student of the company’s financial situation among the rank and file — unsurprisingly, he would later become an entrepreneur himself — expressed his concern: “The road ahead for us is a bumpy one. Many companies do not survive the ‘boom town’ growth phase that we have just experienced.”

Thus when Ultima VII: The Black Gate — the subtitle was an unusually important one, given that Origin had already authorized a confusingly titled Ultima VII Part Two using the same game engine — shipped on April 16, 1992, the whole company’s future was riding on it.

Classic games, it seems to me, can be plotted on a continuum between two archetypes. At one pole are the games which do everything right — those whose designers, faced with a multitude of small and large choices, have made the right choice every time. Ultima Underworld, the spinoff game which Origin released just two weeks before Ultima VII, is one of these.

The other archetypal classic game is much rarer: the game whose designers have made a lot of really problematic choices, to the point that certain parts of it may be flat-out broken, but which nevertheless charms and delights due to some ineffable spirit that overshadows everything else. Ultima VII is the finest example of this type that I can think of. Its list of trouble spots is longer than that of many genuinely bad games, and yet its special qualities are so special that I can only recommend that you play it.

Inventory management in Ultima VII. It’s really, really hard to find anything, especially in the dark. Of course, I could fire up a torch… but wait! My torches are buried somewhere under all that mess in my pack.

Any list of that which is confusing, infuriating, or just plain boring in Ultima VII must start with the inventory-management system. The drag-and-drop approach to same is brilliant in conception, but profoundly flawed in execution. You need to cart a lot of stuff around in this game — not just weapons and armor and quest items and money and loot, but also dozens of pieces of food to keep your insatiable characters fed on their journeys and dozens or hundreds of magic reagents to let you cast spells. All of this is lumped together in your characters’ packs as an indeterminate splodge of overlapping icons. Unless you formulate a detailed scheme of exactly what should go where and stick to it with the rigidity of a pedant, you’ll sometimes find it impossible to figure out what you actually have and where it is on your characters’ persons. When that happens, you’ll have to resort to finding a clear spot of ground and laying out the contents of each pack on it one by one, looking for that special little whatsit.

Keys belong to their own unique circle of Inventory Hell. Just a few pixels big, they have a particular tendency to get hopelessly lost at the bottom of your pack along with those leftover leeks you picked up for some reason in the bar last night. Further, keys are distinguished only by their style and color — the game does nothing so friendly as tell you what door a given key opens, even after you’ve successfully used it — and there are a lot of them. So, you never feel quite confident when you can’t open a door that you haven’t just overlooked the key somewhere in the swirling chaos vortex that is your inventory. If you really love packing your suitcase before a big trip, you might enjoy Ultima VII‘s inventory management. Otherwise, you’ll find it to be a nightmare.

The combat system is almost as bad. Clearly Origin, to put it as kindly as possible, struggled to adapt combat to the real-time paradigm. While you can assemble a party of up to eight people, you can only directly control the Avatar himself in combat, and that only under a fairly generous definition of “control.” You click a button telling your people to start fighting, whereupon everyone, friend and foe alike, converges upon the same pixel as occasional words — “Aargh!,” “To arms!,” “Vultures will pick thy bones!” — float out of the scrum. The effect is a bit like those old Warner Bros. cartoons where Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner disappear into a cloud of arms and legs until one of them pops out victorious a few seconds later.

The one way to change this dynamic also happens to be the worst possible thing you can do: equipping your characters with ranged weapons. This will cause them to open fire indiscriminately in the vague direction of the aforementioned pixel of convergence, happily riddling any foes and friends alike who happen to be in the way full of arrows. In light of this, one can only be happy that the Avatar is the only one allowed to use magic; the thought of this lot of nincompoops armed with fireballs and magic missiles is downright terrifying. Theoretically, it’s possible to control combat to some degree by choosing from several abstract strategies for each character, and to directly intervene with the Avatar by clicking specific targets, but in practice none of it makes much difference. By the time some of your characters start deciding to throw down all their weapons and hide in a corner for no apparent reason, you just shrug and accept it; it’s as explicable as anything else here.

You’ll learn to dread your party’s constant mewling for food, not least because it forces you to engage with the dreadful inventory system. (No, they can’t feed themselves. You have to hand-feed each one of them like a little birdie.)

Thankfully, nothing else in the game is quite as bad as these two aspects, but there are other niggling annoyances. The need to manually feed your characters is prominent among them. There’s no interest or challenge to collecting food. Even if you aren’t willing to blatantly steal it from every building you visit — something for which, unlike in Ultima IV, there are no consequences — there are lots of infallible but tedious means of collecting money to buy it. (Determined to be a good Avatar, I spent literally hours when I played the game marching back and forth from one end of the town of Britain to the other, buying meat cheap and selling it expensive, all so as to buy yet more meat to feet my hungry lot.) The need for food serves only to extend the length of a game that doesn’t need to be extended, and to do it in the most boring way possible.

But then, this sort of thing had always been par for the course with any Ultima, a series that always tended to leaven its inspired elements with a solid helping of tedium. And then too, Ultima had always been a little wonky when it came to its mechanics; Richard Garriott ceded that ground to Wizardry back in the days of Ultima I, and never really tried to regain it. Still, it’s amazing how poorly Ultima VII, a game frequently praised as one of the best CRPGs ever made, does as a CRPG, at least as most people thought of the genre circa 1992. Because there’s no interest or pleasure in combat, there’s no thrill to leveling up or collecting new weapons and armor. You have little opportunity to shape your characters’ development in any way, and those sops to character management that are present, such as the food system, merely annoy. Dungeons — many or most of them optional — are scattered around, but they’re fairly small while still managing to be confusing; the free-scrolling movement makes them almost impossible to map accurately on paper, yet the game lacks an auto-map. If you see a CRPG as a game in the most traditional sense of the word — as an intricate system of rules to learn and to manipulate to your advantage — you’ll hate, hate, hate Ultima VII for its careless mechanics. One might say that it’s at its worst when it actively tries to be a CRPG, at its best when it’s content to be a sort of Britannian walking simulator.

And yet I don’t dislike the game as much as all of the above might imply. In fact, Ultima VII is my third favorite game to bear the Ultima name, behind only Martian Dreams and the first Ultima Underworld. The reason comes down to how compelling the aforementioned walking simulator actually manages to be.

I’ve never cared much one way or the other about Britannia as a setting, but darned if Ultima VII doesn’t shed a whole new light on the place. At its best, playing this game is… pleasant, a word not used much in regard to ludic aesthetics, but one that perhaps ought to crop up more frequently. The graphics are colorful, the music lovely, the company you keep more often than not charming. It’s disarmingly engaging just to wander around and talk to people.

Underneath the pleasantness, not so much undercutting it is as giving it more texture, is a note of melancholy. This adventure in Britannia takes place many years after the Avatar’s previous ones, and the old companions in adventure who make up his party are as enthusiastic as ever, but also a little grayer, a little more stooped. Meanwhile other old friends (and enemies) from the previous games are forever waiting in the wings for one last cameo. If a Britannia scoffer like me can feel a certain poignancy, it must be that much more pronounced for those who are more invested in the setting. Today, the valedictory feel to Ultima VII is that much affecting because we know for sure that this is indeed the end of the line for the classic incarnation of Britannia. The single-player series wouldn’t return there until Ultima IX, and that unloved game would alter the place’s personality almost beyond recognition. Ah, well… it’s hard to imagine a lovelier, more affectionate sendoff for old-school Britannia than the one it gets here.

The writing team loves to flirt with the fourth wall. Fortunately, they never quite take it to the point of undermining the rest of the fiction.

Yet even as the game pays loving tribute to the Britannia of yore, there’s an aesthetic sophistication about it that belies the series’s teenage-dungeonmaster roots. It starts with the box, which, apart from the title, is a foreboding solid black. The very simplicity screams major statement, like the Beatles’ White Album or Prince’s Black Album. Certainly it’s a long way from the heaving bosoms and fire-breathing dragons of the typical CRPG cover art.

When you start the game, you’re first greeted with a title screen that evokes the iconic opening sequence to Ultima IV, all bright spring colors and music that smacks of Vivaldi. But then, in the first of many toyings with the fourth wall, the scene dissolves into static, to be replaced by the figure of the Guardian speaking directly to you.

https://www.filfre.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/intro-1.mp4

As you wander through Britannia in the game proper, the Guardian will continue to speak to you from time to time — the only voice acting in the game. His ominous presence is constantly jarring you when you least expect it.

The video snippet below of a play within the play, as it were, that you encounter early in the game illustrates some more of the depth and nuance of Ultima VII‘s writing. (Needless to say, this scene in particular owes much to Raymond Benson’s theatrical background.)

https://www.filfre.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/U7.mp4

This sequences offers a rather extraordinary layer cake of meanings, making it the equal of a sophisticated stage or film production. We have the deliberately, banally bad play put on by the Fellowship actors, with its “moon, June, spoon” rhyme sequences. Yet peaking through the banality, making it feel sinister rather than just inept, is a hint of cult-like menace. Meanwhile the asides of our companions tell us not only that the writers know the play is bad, but that said companions are smart enough to recognize it as well. We have Iolo’s witty near-breaking of the fourth wall with his comment about “visual effects.” And then we have Spark’s final verdict on the passion play, delivered as only a teenager can: “This is terrible!” (For some reason, that line makes me laugh every time.) No other game of 1992, with the possible exception only of the text adventure Shades of Gray, wove so many variegated threads of understanding into its writing. Nor is the scene above singular. The writing frequently displays the same wit and sophistication as what you see above. This is writing by and for adults.

The description of Ultima VII‘s writing as more adult than the norm also applies in the way in which the videogame industry typically uses that adjective. There’s a great extended riff on the old myths of unicorns and virgins. The conversation with a horny unicorn devolves into speculation about whether the Avatar himself is, shall we say, fit to ride the beast…

For all of the cutting-edge programming that went into the game, it really is the writing that does the bulk of the heavy lifting in Ultima VII. And it’s here that this first million-dollar computer game stands out most from the many big-budget productions that would follow it. Origin poured a huge percentage of that budget not into graphics or sound but into content in its purest form. If not the broadest world yet created for a computer at the time of the game’s release, this incarnation of Britannia must be the deepest and most varied. Nothing here is rote; every character has a personality, every character has something all her own to say. The sheer scale of the project which Raymond Benson’s team tackled — this game definitely has more words in it than any computer game before it — is well-nigh flabbergasting.

Further, the writers have more on their minds than escapist fantasy. They use the setting of Britannia to ponder the allure of religious cults, the social divide between rich and poor, and even the representation of women in fantasy art, along with tax policy, environmental issues, and racism. The game is never preachy about such matters, but seamlessly works its little nuggets for thought into the high-fantasy setting. Ultima VII may lack the overriding moral message that had defined its three predecessors, but that doesn’t mean it has nothing to say. Indeed, given the newfound nuance and depth of the writing, the series suddenly has more to say here than ever before.

Because of how much else there is to see and do, the main plot about the Guardian sometimes threatens to get forgotten entirely. But it’s enjoyable enough as such things go, even if its main purpose often does seem to be simply to give you a reason to wander around talking to people. In the second half of the game, the plot picks up steam, and there are a fair number of traditional CRPG-style quests to complete. (There are also more personal “quests” among the populaces of the towns you visit, but they’re largely optional and hardly earth-shattering. They are, however, often disarmingly sweet-natured: getting the shy lovelorn fellow together with the girl he worships from afar… that sort of thing.) The game as a whole is very soluble as long as you take notes when you’re given important information; there’s no trace of a quest log here.

While a vocal minority of Ultima fandom decries this seventh installment for the perfectly justifiable reasons I mentioned earlier in this article, the majority laud it as — forgive the inevitable pun! — the ultimate incarnation of what Richard Garriott began working toward in the late 1970s. Even with all of its annoying aspects, it’s undoubtedly the most accessible Ultima for the modern player, what with its fairly intuitive mouse-driven interface, its reasonably attractive graphics and sound, and its relatively straightforward and fair main quest. Meanwhile its nuanced writing and general aesthetic sophistication are unrivaled by any earlier game in the series. If it’s not the most historically important of the main-line Ultima games — that honor must still go to the thematically groundbreaking Ultima IV — it’s undoubtedly the one most likely to be enjoyed by a player today.

Indeed, it’s been called the blueprint for many of the most popular epic CRPGs of today — games where you also spend much of your time just walking around and talking to a host of more or less interesting characters. That influence can easily be overstated, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something to the claim. No other CRPG in 1992, or for some thereafter, played quite like this one, and Ultima VII really does have at least as much in common with the CRPGs of today as it does with its contemporaries. On the whole, then, its hallowed modern reputation is well-earned.

Richard Garriott (far left) and the rest of the Ultima VII team toast the game’s release at Britannia Manor, the former’s Austin mansion.

Its reception in 1992, on the other hand, was far more mixed than that reputation might suggest. Questbusters magazine, deploying an unusually erudite literary comparison of the type of which Raymond Benson might have approved, called it “the Finnegans Wake of computer gaming — a flawed masterpiece,” referring to its lumpy mixture of the compelling and the tedious. Computer Gaming World‘s longtime adventure reviewer Scorpia had little good at all to say about it. Perhaps in response to her negativity, the same magazine ran a second, much more positive review from Charles Ardai in the next issue. Nevertheless, he began by summing up the sense of ennui that was starting to surround the whole series for many gamers: “Many who were delighted when Ultima VI was released can’t be bothered to boot up Ultima VII, as though it goes without saying that the seventh of anything can’t possibly be any good. The market suddenly seems saturated; weary gamers, sure that they have played enough Ultima to last a lifetime, eye the new Ultima with suspicion that it is just More Of The Same.” Even at the end of his own positive review, written with the self-stated goal of debunking that judgment, Ardai deployed a counter-intuitive closing sentiment: “After seven Ultimas, it might be time for Lord British to turn his sights elsewhere.”

Not helping the game’s reception were all of the technical problems. It’s all too easy to forget today just how expensive it was to be a computer gamer in the early 1990s, when the rapid advancement of technology meant that you had to buy a whole new computer every couple of years — or less! — just to be able to play the latest releases. More so even that its contemporaries, Ultima VII pushed the state of the art in hardware to its limit, meaning that anyone lagging even slightly behind the bleeding edge got to enjoy constant disk access, intermittent freezes of seconds at a time, and the occasional outright crash.

And then there were the bugs, which were colorful and plentiful. Chunks of the scenery seemed to randomly disappear — including the walls around the starting town of Trinsic, thus bypassing the manual-lookup scheme Origin had implemented for copy protection. A plot-critical murder scene in another town simply never appeared for some players. Even worse, a door in the very last dungeon refused to open for some; Origin resorted to asking those affected to send their save file on floppy disk to their offices, to be manually edited in order to correct the problem and sent back to them. But by far the most insidious bug — one from which even the current edition of the game on digital-download services may not be entirely free — were the keys that disappeared from player’s inventories for no apparent reason. Given what a nightmare keeping track of keys was already, this felt like the perfect capstone to a tower of terribleness. (One can imagine the calls to Origin’s customer support: “Now, did you take all of the stuff out of all of your packs and sort it out carefully on the ground to make sure your key is really missing? What about those weeks-old leeks down there at the bottom of your pack? Did you look under them?”) Gamers had good cause to be annoyed at a product so obviously released before its time, especially in light of its astronomical $80 suggested retail price.

A Computer Gaming World readers’ poll published in the March 1993 issue — i.e., exactly one year after Ultima VII‘s release — saw it ranked as the respondents’ 30th favorite current game, not exactly a spectacular showing for such a major title. Wing Commander II, by way of comparison, was still in position six, Ultima Underworld — which was now outselling Ultima VII by a considerable margin — in a tie for third. It would be incorrect to call Ultima VII a flop, or to imply that it wasn’t thoroughly enjoyed by many of those who played it back in the day. But for Origin the facts remained when all was said and done that it had sold less well than either of the aforementioned two games after costing at least twice as much to make. These hard facts contributed to the feeling inside the company that, if it wasn’t time to follow Charles Ardai’s advice and let sleeping Ultimas lie for a while, it was time to change up the formula in a major way. After all, Ultima Underworld had done just that, and look how well that had worked out.

But that discussion, of course, belongs to history. In our own times, Ultima VII remains an inspiring if occasionally infuriating experience well worth having, even if you don’t normally play CRPGs or couldn’t care less about the lore of Britannia. I can only encourage all of you who haven’t played it before to remedy that while you wait for my next (and last) article about the game, which will look more closely at the Fellowship, a Britannian cult with an obvious Earthly analogue.

(Sources: the book Ultima: The Avatar Adventures by Rusel DeMaria and Caroline Spector; Origin Systems’s internal newsletter Point of Origin dated August 7 1991, October 25 1991, December 20 1991, February 14 1992, February 28 1992, March 13 1992, April 20 1992, and May 22 1992; Questbusters of July 1991 and August 1992; Computer Gaming World of April 1991, October 1991, August 1992, September 1992, and March 1993; Compute! of January 1992; online sources include The Ultima Codex interviews with Raymond Benson and Brian Martin, a vintage Usenet interview with Richard Garriott, and Sheri Graner Ray’s recollections of her time at Origin on her blog.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate is available for purchase on GOG.com. You may wish to play it using Exult instead of the original executable. The former is a free re-implementation of the Ultima VII engine which fixes some of its worst annoyances and is friendly with modern computers.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/ultima-vii/

[thebookrat]

Happy Tuesday, Janeites! Today we dive back into the world of Jane Austen’s Dragons with sneak peek #3 of Maria Grace’s A Proper Introduction to Dragons! Maria is sharing a series of excerpts with us every Tuesday morning, and if you missed any of the story so far, you can find parts one and two here! So grab yourself some breakfast, pour yourself a cuppa tea and continue the story right here, right now! And don’t forget, you can enter to win one of two copies of the book!

Excerpt 3; A Proper Introduction to Dragons by Maria Grace

The summer months passed quickly. Rumblkins’ rat hunting prowess had quickly made him a favorite among the shepherds. Her provision for his safety from Scarred made her a favorite of his. So, every morning that she walked out among the fields—a daily habit by the end of the summer—he joined her for a chat and the occasional treat she managed to pilfer from the kitchens for him. It was easy to see why tatzelwurms were regarded as addlepated and stupid. Conversations with Rumblkins tended to wander and ramble, often never concluding on the point that had been first set out upon. That aside though, if one was patient, he offered some truly interesting, and often amusing insights into the life of small minor dragons—something sorely missing from Papa’s books of dragon lore. Not that he considered the oversight significant, but she did.

It seemed Rumblkins knew all the local forest, rock, and river wyrms and the leading fairy dragons of the harem. According to him, it was well-known in the region that he was a confirmed ratter and not fond of eating smaller dragons. Though it was the way of the world, he said, he much preferred a dinner with whom he could not share a conversation with first. Made it much faster to get to the eating when your meal did not argue with you. Yes, it was an odd sentiment, but it did facilitate his making a wide circle of acquaintances and friends. And a wide circle he did have. He introduced her to all that would make her acquaintance. Not all wild-hatched dragons, it seemed, were accepting of warm-blooded acquaintances. But, with an introduction from Rumblkins, a surprising amount were, so she spent a great many summer hours amongst the wyrms and fairy dragons of the estate. The rest of her hours, it seemed, were spent studying the books Papa continued to push on her. Learning what they contained was a necessary step, he said, in readying herself to meet dragons in general and Longbourn in specific. Somehow, it did not seem to be a wise thing to mention the number of dragons she had already met without the benefit of his books. That was not the sort of thing Papa was likely to deal well with. He did not like the unexpected, and her new circle of acquaintances would definitely qualify as unexpected. He also did not like it when she asked too many questions, especially those which appeared to contradict dragon lore. Like when the books talked about dragons, all dragons—except for fairy dragons who were just too stupid to know any better—being solitary creatures. This was so, according to the texts, because bigger dragons were predatory upon other smaller dragons, and it was unnatural for predator and prey to form any sort of relationship. Moreover, by disposition, dragons tended to be rather stubborn, self-focused, and demanding, additional traits that did not make them companionable to others of their kind. Rumblkins though, seemed to defy all of those descriptions, being friendly, gregarious, and—what did one call a personable dragon? Dragonable? He loved to be scratched and petted and regularly sought her out for such delights. Was it possible that he was just a single exception to the entire canon of dragon lore? Or was it conceivable that dragon lore might not be entirely correct? She winced just thinking about it. Papa would not react well to hearing that sort of thing. No, not at all.  Near the beginning of September, Papa called her into his study, a new pile of papers on his desk. It was rather surprising that she could tell that it was a new pile, considering the number of papers and journals and books that were already there. Though Mama insisted the house be kept tidy and everything put in its place, Papa’s study remained the notable exception to that rule. Ever unkempt, piles of books that he was reading, maps and scrolls he was studying, and journals he was writing in—or at least trying to write in—always seemed to cover every horizontal surface in the room, and part of the floor. One day Elizabeth had made the mistake of trying to tidy up and Papa—well, there was no other way to describe it—he became rather unhinged. There was, at least in his mind, a method to the clutter and woe to any who disturbed it. Lesson learned—she never moved another item in his study thereafter. Learning to gingerly sidestep the clutter took some doing, but it was well worthwhile. “Have you finished your studies of the last volume I gave you?” He did not look up from the pages he was studying at his desk. “The Habits and Habitats of Rock-Dwelling Dragons with a Most Helpful Index to the Major Dragons of Those Types and Their Genealogies Since Pendragon’s Time?” It was hard not to giggle at the length and pretentiousness of the titles writers of dragon lore used. Papa glanced up at her. His stern gaze suggested he did not see the same humor in them. “Yes, sir, I have finished.” He tapped the new pile of papers on his desk. “I have been corresponding with a member of the Blue Order who believes he might be in possession of some heretofore unknown genealogies.” “Which ones? Oh, that is very exciting news!” Truthfully, it was probably more exciting to him than it was to her, but it was interesting nonetheless. Though they did tend to be awfully dry and dull, there were times one could wheedle out some quite fascinating tidbits from genealogies. Like how long it took for different species to hatch, which types seemed apt to hibernate and for what sort of provocation, any number of things Papa did not find proper to glean from reading genealogies—all inference and no substance, he said. “I need to travel to Loxdale Green to meet with a Mr. Garland, an apothecary with a shop by the name of Bedlow’s. The Blue Order has asked that I examine the documents to determine their authenticity.” Gracious, if Papa would be traveling to see them, they must be very important documents, maybe tracing the lines of high-ranking or even royal dragon lines. He did not like to travel. Detested was the word he most often used to describe the activity. “Mr. Garland has already made it clear that he will not allow them out of his possession. So if they are, as the Order believes, genuine, then they must be copied.” Copied? Elizabeth bit her lip. These would clearly be important documents, and she never wrote important things for him. Did that mean— “I fear I must have help to transcribe them if necessary.” “Will the Order be sending someone to assist you?” She held her breath. “If I ask, I am sure they would do so. But young scribes are, in general, a noxious bunch: noisy, talkative, and intrusive. I would rather not have one if it can be avoided.” She clasped her hands tightly and bit her lip. “It seems questionable, at best, to bring someone so young. But you know not to talk too much, and I need not adjust my schedule for your convenience.” A tiny squeal escaped her lips before she could contain it. “But, I am not yet convinced. I know you are able to conduct yourself appropriately. Your mother has seen to that. But while there, we will come into contact with a very young dragon, a minor drake just six weeks from the shell. I must be certain that you will conduct yourself appropriately in his company.” “A baby dragon? I might meet a baby dragon.” She whispered the words very softly and very slowly lest she sound too pleased or excited by the prospect. But a baby dragon! Her insides bounced like Rumblkins through the fields. “I am glad you are showing appropriate respect for the situation, but that is not enough. Prove to me that you have adequately learned what I set you to these last months, and I shall consider bringing you along.” “How shall I do that, Papa? Do you wish me to write something?” “No, that will take far too long and require me to read it. My eyes are tired, and I would just as soon rest them for the trip.” He set his glasses aside and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “I will test you as the Blue Order does when a potential member is presented. That will be good practice for you.” She would be a member of the Blue Order someday, or at least have the chance of it? She grabbed the edge of his desk. That was a pleasure she had never really considered. Of course, it made sense as she heard dragons and was the daughter of a Keeper, but still, it felt rather surprising to hear it spoken aloud. Pray he had no more surprises for her. Any more might render her fully unable to speak. “So then, Lizzy, tell me how dragons are ranked.” She swallowed hard. It was a tricky question. “Dragons are ranked first by their size and power. All the major dragons, those bigger than a large horse—” That was an odd designation, but, especially now, it seemed better to keep that opinion to her commonplace book. “—outrank all the minor dragons and major dragons smaller than themselves. The major dragons are like our upper class and the minor dragons like the lower ones. Among the major dragons, the most powerful species are above the weaker ones.” Hmmm, in a number of dragon species the females were as large and powerful as the males, sometimes even more so. Perhaps that was why dragons were so easily accepting of human females—they were after all, not usually that different in size than males, not by dragon standards in any case, and thus not assumed to be of lower rank. What an interesting thought. Papa nodded, just a little. Clearly, he was not going to comment on the success of her answers in the midst of the “test.” By the way he held his shoulders, though, he seemed pleased. “How and why were dragons’ ranks established?” “The Pendragon Accords established the ranks for the major dragons so they would no longer fight for precedence. Before the Accords, they battled for position and territory. In those days, dragon wars were almost constant. The damage to both man and dragon was unimaginable.” Papa grunted. Surely that meant she answered correctly. “Who is the highest-ranked dragon in England?” “The dragons of England are led by their Brenin, Buckingham. He is like our king. A firedrake, he administers dragon law and the Pendragon Accords across England and deals with necessary matters with dragons of other lands.” While this was probably good to know, what did it have to do with meeting a young minor drake?  “What ranks make up the dragon equivalent of our peerage and what are their responsibilities?” “The Dugs and Duges, who are the females, sit on the Council and lead the Dragon Conclave with their Keepers.  They administer the different counties and decide matters of dragon law. Cownts and Cowntesses serve under the Dugs. They are responsible for regions in their counties, managing the major dragons and their keepers there. And so it goes down through the Vikonts and Vicontes, the Barwins and Barwines, Marchogs and Marchoes down to the lowly Lairds and Lairdas who are the lowest of the major dragons. They are the gentlemen and ladies among the dragons and are responsible for managing the minor dragons of their Keeps.” His brows creased, but the lines around his eyes remained soft. Why did he try to appear so severe if she was actually doing quite well? Why did he have to be so perplexing? She held her breath not to sigh. He did not like it when she sighed. “What type of dragon has wings?” He avoided meeting her gaze. “That is a trick question, sir. Dragons are typed by the shape of their heads, not their appendages. Amphitheres are a snake-type dragon with wings. All the bird types, all species of cockatrice and fairy dragons, have wings. Firedrakes and wyverns, who are dragon types, also have wings.” “What snake-type dragon has both major and minor species?” “The basilisk. They are also the only snake-type to have four legs.” The way his eyes narrowed—maybe it was not a good idea to offer more information than he asked. So mentioning that wyrms and drakes also had major and minor species was out of the question. “What are the weakest type of dragon and the strongest?” “Wyrm-types are on the whole the weakest and dragon-types the strongest, even though the wyvern is one of the weakest species.” Papa grumbled under his breath. Perhaps he did not like being reminded that their estate dragon was among the least powerful and lowest ranking in the kingdom. “Tell me about lizard types.” “Some have argued that dragon types should really be called lizard types for the shape of their heads—and often the rest of them as well—resemble large lizards. But it is a very great insult to suggest a dragon resembles a lizard and an even greater insult to call a dragon a big lizard. Such an insult was once considered a breach of the Pendragon Treaty and sufficient provocation to acquit the offended drake of assault against the man who said it.” He did not even blink. “Which dragon type has no major dragon species?” “Bird types, or so it is believed, however—” A sharp, staccato knock rang out from the door. Mama’s. Papa squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his temples. “Come in.” Mama bustled in, fluffed like the top hen in the henhouse looking for someone to peck. That did not bode well at all. “So this is where you have been hiding, Lizzy.” Papa sat up very straight and rapped his desk with his knuckles. “She has not been hiding. I have called her here myself.” “Well, it is time for her to go to practice her pianoforte. My sister Phillips will be by tomorrow to hear her play. I want Lizzy’s piece to be perfect for her.” “I did practice earlier, Mama, before breakfast.” Jane had even commented about how much improved her playing was. “I did not hear you.” Elizabeth bit her lip. Reminding her that she slept very soundly when she had taken the draught the apothecary had left her was not a politic thing to bring up. “Go, go now. I have something I wish to speak to your father about.” “Wait, Lizzy. I want you to go upstairs right now and pack your carpetbag.” Papa pushed up from his desk. “Pack her bag? Whatever for?” Mama stood between her and the door. “I have business that will take me from Longbourn for a few days.” “What has that to do with our daughter?” “The business will entail no small amount of writing.” He waved Elizabeth toward the door. Mama blocked her way again. “It is not proper that you should have Lizzy involved in your business dealings. It is not proper for a young lady. Surely, you can see that.” “What would you suggest instead?” “Hire a man, a steward, a secretary, someone. It would be far more proper than your daughter.” “Mrs. Bennet.” He spoke her name in a certain particular way which said so much more than he could speak in simple words, especially in front of Elizabeth. “I have shown you the estate books. You know precisely why that is not an option.” “It is always about numbers to you, cold, unfeeling man.” She pressed a handkerchief to her nose. Pray she did not try to cry now. It was always an unseemly show. “Numbers do not have feelings. They represent facts, and the fact is that you have made the choice that I shall not have a secretary. If you wish to change that, then it is well within your power to do so.” Mama snorted. “Oh, very well then, when you put it in those terms! At least you should take Jane with you, not Lizzy. If you need something written, Jane is a much better choice. Her hand is prettier than Lizzy’s.” Elizabeth bit her lip. Mama was right on that point. Clearly, that was an excellent reason to improve her penmanship, one that until this moment had never occurred to her. “I need legible writing, not pretty.” Papa waved her away. “Go to your room now, Lizzy.” She scurried out and closed the door behind her. Unfortunately, her room was directly above the study. The preternatural hearing that allowed her to perceive dragon speech could be a disadvantage at times, especially when there were things one did not want to hear. “You know I am a very capable writer. My hand is very neat,” Mama said in her best wheedling tone. “I should like very much to travel and meet new people.” No doubt Papa was rolling his eyes. “Perhaps if there were money for a governess—” “Hill is quite capable of caring for the girls for a few days.” “My trip is one of business, not pleasure. There will be little opportunity to socialize. You would not appreciate being confined to a library all day, transcribing the records that I need.” “How do you know that?” “Just last week, you became impatient copying a receipt from the book Lady Lucas lent you. How could you tolerate pages and pages of copying?” “You underestimate me. You do not appreciate me.” Mama sniffled to punctuate the accusation. “I know you very well and copying, especially accurate copying, is not your forte. You would be miserable in minutes. I must get this business done without interruption.” Mama grumbled, but she could hardly argue Papa’s point. “At least bring Jane. She would appreciate the experience. She is older and more deserving of it than Lizzy.” “Jane’s hand may be very neat, but she is very much like you. I have found her writing to be inaccurate. Moreover, she is distracted too easily.” “How can you find fault with her sweet disposition? Everyone likes her, for she is the dearest girl.” Everyone but dragons. They did not seem to care very much about her one way or the other. Papa brought his foot down sharply. “I do not need a dear girl to chaperone. I need someone who can copy and write for me exactly as I need them to without wanting to run off for amusements. The only person in this house capable of that is Lizzy.” “I do not understand why you must play such favorites among our girls.” Now Mama was crying. When would she realize that would never move Papa to a favorable opinion? Perhaps if she dragged her table to the far side of the room and wrote in her commonplace book, she could distract herself from the conversation heating up below her. Rumblkins had introduced her to a new pair of rock wyrms recently—little wyrms always seemed to travel in mated pairs. That was not something she had seen in dragon lore, at least not yet. That was worth writing about, especially the funny way their pairs interacted, finishing each other’s sentences as they twined around each other. Often it resulted in utter nonsense, but even that was an interesting observation. An hour later, the door of her room creaked open, and Papa peeked in, weary and shoulders stooped. “Pack your carpetbag, Lizzy. I want to leave on the hour.” “Yes, Papa!” She jumped up and ran for the closet, her heart beating faster than it ever had before. She would be going on her first journey, and a dragon would be at the end of it! What more could she ever have wished for?

About A Proper Introduction to Dragons by Maria Grace Buy it from Amazon  |  Add it to Goodreads

Most people were blissfully unaware that England was overrun by dragons. Only those born with preternatural hearing could hear and converse with dragonkind, and even those rarely came into their hearing before they were fifteen. It was not Elizabeth’s fault that she discovered the truth about dragons when she was only four years-old. It was also not Elizabeth’s fault that the old tatzelwurm, Rumblkins, who lived in the woods near Longbourn House befriended her. Really, he would have attached himself to anyone who fed him dried cod and scratched behind his ears. So clearly, it could not be her fault when Rumblkins led her to a nest of endangered fairy dragon eggs that the Pendragon Treaty compelled her to save. Unfortunately her father does not agree. Thomas Bennet, dragon-lore expert, faithful member of the dragon-hearing society, the Blue Order, and Keeper of the local wyvern, Longbourn, has a dragon-sized problem on his hands. At eleven years-old, his second-oldest daughter is hopelessly fascinated with all things dragon-related. But his wife and other daughters lack the ability to hear dragons, so the world of the Blue Order must remain hidden from them. Now faced with an abandoned clutch of fairy dragon eggs to care for, the careful balance he walks between the needs of his jealous estate dragon, Elizabeth’s incorrigible draw toward dragons and continued secrecy from the rest of the family hangs in jeopardy. If only Elizabeth would be a more conventional child! But how can a girl who shuns traditional ladylike pursuits to play with dragons ever be conventional? Does dragon-hearing society have a place for such an oddity as her?

about the author:

Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful. After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate in Educational Psychology. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing. She has one husband and one grandson, two graduate degrees and two black belts, three sons, four undergraduate majors, five nieces, is starting her sixth year blogging on Random Bits of Fascination, has built seven websites, attended eight English country dance balls, sewn nine Regency era costumes, and shared her life with ten cats.

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