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lovelylogans · 3 years ago

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honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)

prologue: (re)birth

see next chapters, notes, and warnings here!

“We all experience many births and deaths in a life.” —Jonas Maliki, Sense8

EMILE

Emile Picani has always loved children, but, as a cis man, he had generally contented himself with the fact that a woman would eventually bear them (as he pieced together the whole oops, all gay! thing in his mid-to-late teens, he mentally altered that to through surrogacy) or that he would adopt children with a loving partner someday.

He had really been very, very content with the idea of never giving birth. He had been perfectly fine with the idea of never giving birth. He would really, really love it if he were not giving birth right now. But as it is—

“Does psychic birth count as birth?” Linda asks, tilting her head; she’d chopped off her hair in her kitchen a month ago, so now it swishes along her jaw. The loss of a foot of hair doesn’t mean her hair is any more tamed than it was when it was waist-length, back when they’d first seen each other face-to-face.

Emile moans in pain, rolling face-down onto the couch to press his face into the cushions, blocking out all light; the pressure and ache behind his eyes that’s been mounting for days is almost as bad as it had been when he’d been born. Reborn.

Sensate birth is so confusing.

The weight of another member of his cluster dips the couch cushion near his feet.

“I would be this close to leaving if the call to visit wasn’t so strong,” Andy groans, and then the sound of someone hitting him; Missy, he’s sure.

“He is having our weird psychic niblings,” she scolds from where she sits beside Andy. “We need to be here and support him while he’s in the birthing bed, as moral support!”

“Not actual birth,” Emile groans into his couch cushion.

“Hey, Emi,” she continues, ignoring him, “you can’t tell if one of them is in Greece yet, can you? Try and aim for one in Heraklion, I never get to go to Crete and I want to go sightseeing!”

“Or Manila!” Linda calls. “But that’s more for my convenience than a vacation.”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t pick where you’ve got your psycellium-connection children, but if you do, aim for Brazil for me so I can meet one,” Nate says, with a hand still awkwardly on Emile’s back in an attempt to comfort him, and Emile is so grateful to him for being with him through the whole of this psychic labor he could cry.

Well. He’s pretty sure he’s already crying from the pain, but.

“Do they count as children?” Andy says, then, “well, I guess you don’t know how old they are yet, do you. It could be a super early activation, so you could end up with a bunch of kids. Or, wait, hey, how funny would it be if you ended up just plucking late activations from retirement homes?”

Emile reaches blindly for the nearest cushion to block his ears. He can tell through feeling that it’s the Mickey Mouse one, but even as he places it over his head the texture skitters under his fingers—a pen, a soft blanket, thick paper, a cold glass sweating with condensation, back to a cushion—and he goes about blocking out Linda and Missy’s chattering about hoping one of them is in their respective countries, so they can be the weird psychic aunties they’d always been meant to be.

Another voice that manages to actually startles him this time, and blurrily, barely comprehensible beyond the pain, he thinks that should probably be how he knows the birth is close: ever since they’d all gained some form of equilibrium, after their own birth nearly ten years ago now, he’s never, ever been startled by the appearance of one of his cluster, ever.

“Ditto on telling me if you end up getting a Canadian,” Brian says, and Emile manages to peek out from his cushion to see Brian crouched on the floor in front of him, beside Nate, smiling at him as if nothing’s wrong, even though he can feel Brian’s nerves roiling alongside his own. “B'ezras Hashem, they won’t end up with only Missy as an auntie, eh?”

He lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob and he has to squeeze his eyes shut against the pain, then, the pressure behind his eyes unbearable, like all the water of a dam pressing unerringly against the littlest crack, waiting for it to burst.

“Where the hell are you, Remy,” he can hear Toby snarl—when did Toby get here?—and Nate’s hand rubs soothingly up and down his back, shushing Toby.

“Of all the days to take a blocker off-schedule,” Andy tsks. “You should all listen to me, we knew that could be a worst-case scenario—”

“Not his fault,” Emile chokes out—if this could be equitable to normal, human baby birth, Emile might think that the stress of Remy catching sight of someone entering his café and immediately blocking them all out before anyone else could notice might have been what triggered this labor to come on so sudden and so strong.

“No, ‘course not,” Linda says in a soft, soothing voice, nearly drowned out by the sound of fabric smacking against skin; he’s pretty sure that Missy’s hit Andy upside the head with one of his couch cushions, and that’s confirmed when he hears Missy hiss “that is his boyfriend what is wrong with you for bringing that up right now” “well he did!” “oh my God, Emile is literally giving birth right now, this is not the time—”

A particularly strong surge of pressure and Emile clenches his teeth against a scream of pain—sunlight in his eyes flowers in his nose rocks scraping his hands—and his bickering cluster falls immediately silent, and still, and scared, a moment of silence before their thoughts come rushing in—what if this goes why didn’t harley tell us it could be like where is he it’s his damn boyfriend need to help them is he going how is this going to work harley where are you

“It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay,” Nate chants, rubbing a hand up down his back, and Emile actually sobs, this time, because it hurts, it hurts so much, he feels like his brain is exploding.

There are so many flickers of sensation, all the time, flickering from his own couch to the floor of Nate’s office to Linda’s kitchen table to a fancy apartment to Andy’s balcony to a dark silent bed to a grassy field to sprinting along the sidewalk past a patisserie to ears popping on an airplane on wait go back go back that was Remy Remy—

But it’s snatched away on a brisk wind on a blast of air conditioning on a cocoon of warmth under blankets on on on on on

it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay, his cluster says as one, it’s okay it’s okayit’sokayit’sokay—

Nate squeezes his shoulder, and Emile sucks in a desperate breath of air, distantly aware of his own body, the fact he’s writing on his back, now, the heels of his hands digging into his eyes, his throat aching like he’s been screaming, Nate’s hand on his shoulder Missy’s fingers twining with his Linda touching his wrist Andy holding his ankle Brian’s hand on his knee. And he feels anchored.

And then Remy bursts into the apartment, and Emile bawls at the sight of him, the force of it making all of the cluster reach for Remy as one.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Remy pants, skidding to a stop at his couch, “fuck, I’m so sorry, baby—”

“Hurts,” is all Emile can say, and suddenly his body and the entire cluster has shifted—Remy lying behind him, his arms wrapped around Emile’s chest to keep him upright, his cluster touching his arms, his legs, his chest.

“I’m here,” Remy whispers, carding back Emile’s sweaty hair. “I’m right here, babe, I’m so sorry, I’m here now. I’m here.”

“It hurts,” Emile whimpers. “Rem, it hurts so much.”

“I know, I know, I can feel it,” Remy whispers into his ear, rocking him back and forth. “Em, you’re so close, baby, you’re almost done, you’re amazing.”

Emile, blindly, reaches out to clutch his hand and Remy is always, always there to take it, letting Emile crush his hand.

There’s a pull, now. He can feel it, a full-body pull, and—

“You got this,” Remy whispers. “Emile, honey, you’ve got this. We’re right here with you.”

You’re right here with me, Emile thinks, dizzy with the relief of it, finally, all of them, EmileRemyLinnyBrianTobyNateMissyAndy, you’re right here with me, and he lets himself be pulled.

And his brain expands.

“Remy, I see them,” he whispers. “I see them…”

The lights are off here, the only lighting from the moon, illuminated the massive apartment furnished in sleek black lines and bright golds, a man tossing and turning, facing Emile.

The man glances at him, rolls away, pauses, then rolls back abruptly; in the low light, Emile can see the scar slashed across his cheek, bisecting a birthmark.

“Oh,” Emile whispers, his throat clogged suddenly at the sight of this man—he already knows that his name is Janus, and he is brilliant and cut-throat and lonely and dangerous and Emile loves him already. “Oh, they’re beautiful. You’re beautiful, my dear. My darling.”

Emile reaches for him, and Janus opens his mouth, brow furrowed, about to ask, but Emile is pulled away before he can.

He is suddenly drenched with sweat under hot lights, a conglomeration of cameras in the distance, and he squints to where the boom microphones are held directly aloft—this is Roman, who has his head tilted toward a man in a baseball cap, deep in conversation. Emile glances back over his shoulder and sees a city skyline—old, and beautiful, and familiar because Emile’s been here. Or one of his cluster had been, anyway.

For all that Roman looks so involved in the conversation, Emile can feel the exhaustion of a long day’s shoot, the weight on his shoulders, the constant itch to reach for his phone, to scan the news. Roman’s brow furrows and he looks up, directly meeting Emile’s eyes.

“Are you lost?” Roman says uncertainly, and Emile smiles at him.

“No,” he says. “I was looking for you.”

“Who are you talking to?” The man in the cap asks, and Emile is pulled away.

He’s on a plane and his ears are refusing to pop. Emile grimaces in sympathy, even as he’s glancing over to the man sitting beside him on the plane. Well, slumped, to be more accurate, trying to get some sleep and failing miserably. Emile’s eyes ache with commiseration.

“Sorry,” Emile says sympathetically, remembering his own sleepless days after rebirth.

The man squints out at him, tugging off his purple headphones. “‘Scuse me?” He says, his voice accented—African?

“You’re probably not going to be able to sleep for a few days. Or, um. Not sleep well, I should say.”

“...I’ve had jet lag before,” Virgil says, and yes, he has, hasn’t he?

“Congratulations,” Emile says hastily, already feeling the pull. “A doctorate’s a very big achievement, you should be proud of yourself.”

Virgil’s eyes go wide, and he shrinks back a little in his seat.

“How did you—?”

And Emile is not trapped in a plane anymore, but he almost wishes he was.

“Jiminy crickets, it’s cold,” Emile says aloud, wrapping his arms around himself, because jeez louise it is cold!

Logan freezes from where he is examining a telescope to ensure it’s in working order.

“The supply ship isn’t due until next week,” he says. His voice is very even and measured. “That is the only opportunity for strangers to get onto the island.”

“Supply…” Emile repeats, before he learns—remembers? “Oh. My goodness, you’re researching in Antarctica?!”

He is! He is researching in Antarctica! He’s a space researcher who is so good at what he does he got to go to Antarctica to study even more in-depth! Gosh, Emile has birthed a smart cluster, there are at least two doctors here!

“...Am I hallucinating?” Logan asks himself very quietly.

“No!” Emile says hastily. “No no no no, goodness, no!”

Logan’s eyes narrow. “That is… precisely what one would think an induced hallucination would say.”

Emile’s about to explain, but he’s pulled before he can; he has a feeling that Logan’s going to need the most in-depth scientific explanation the Archipelago has accrued over the years.

And he is in a brightly decorated room, with soft toys and lots of colors and the letters of the alphabet winding around the room; a big, tall man is kneeling on the ground, carefully easing a backpack onto a child who couldn’t be more than five.

“All right, Livvy-Lou, we got it all figured out now, don’t we?” the man says brightly—his name is Patton, and he is soft and loving and beautiful and so very sad.

A grin bursts out on the child’s face. “Thank you, Mr. T!”

Patton smiles, flicking one of her braided pigtails into place so that it doesn’t get tugged by her backpack straps, and gently nudges her along her way before he glances up.

“Hello!” Patton says to Emile brightly. “Are you a—?”

And then he falters.

“...you’re not a parent,” Patton says slowly. “Are you?”

“Well,” Emile says. “I suppose it depends on how you define ‘parent,’ and also, whose parent you think I am.”

Patton’s eyes crinkle with a smile. “What an odd way to answer that question.”

“You’re about to have a lot of odd days ahead of you,” Emile says, “I mean, a lot,” and—

A man sitting hunched under a tree is cussing to himself, even as he eats food he’s gotten from the trash, and his eyes widen at the sight of Emile, already rising to a half-crouch, ready to run.

“Oh,” Emile says. “Oh, goodness. You’ve gotten yourself into quite a situation, haven’t you?”

Remus snarls at him wordlessly.

Emile frowns a little, his heart aching with terrible concern, not all of it his own. “Is that all you have to eat?”

“Fuck off,” Remus spits, and—

Emile gasps, back in Remy’s arms, back in his apartment, his cluster all staring at him, wide-eyed.

“So?” Missy urges. “Greeks? Tell me you got a Greek.”

He looks at her, and he thinks of the cluster he has just brought into the world, and he feels such a surge of overwhelming joy that he can do nothing but laugh.

His cluster laughs with him, and Remy lets out a huffing breath, hugging him close and kissing his temple, and Emile sighs, closing his eyes, exhausted but still smiling, smiling, smiling.

In London, in Mexico City, in the air between Baltimore and Pretoria, in Antarctica, in Monterrey—

He hopes they all hear it.

Welcome to being sensate, my loves.

#my fic #my fanfic

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bonaintan · 4 years ago

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A Journey to KGSP/GKS: Study Plan

After a very long while, I finally managed to post this! This, I guess is my final post on A Journey to KGSP/GKS Series. I’m still considering whether or not to make a post about the interview. I’m not sure I can cover this topic well since my experience is limited to the interview session in the Korean Embassy. Even I heard that each Embassy has its own way of conducting the interview, including the questions given. Anyways, on this post, I’ll be sharing on my experience in writing a study plan (or statement of purpose for the Graduate degrees) for the GKS Application. If you just started preparing the GKS Application, you may want to check my previous posts on the guideline to the application forms and personal statement essay or read my experience in applying for the 2016 KGSP/GKS-G.

So, as we’ve known, a study plan is another important stage to showcase the applicant’s ability in planning his study in Korea. One needs to explain his/her plans before coming to Korea when doing the study in Korea, and after graduating from the Korean university.

Study Plan template (2021 GKS-Undergraduate Application)

Statement of Purpose template (2021 GKS-Graduate Application)

When preparing for the application back in 2016, I tried to find as many resources as possible. I joined the KGSP Global Applicant Facebook group, searched awardees from Indonesia and other countries online through Facebook and Instagram, and contacted them to discuss their experience and ask for some advice. I then found Mas Nasikun’s blog, a KGSP awardee from Indonesia who did his Master’s degree program at Seoul National University. I was especially very grateful for his posts on how to write a study plan. His posts on KGSP Application are still there and anyone interested in applying for this scholarship will surely find it very useful.

Here I’m making a kind of brief guideline in writing a study plan. I divide them into plans before, during, and after studying in Korea.

Plans before going to Korea. Here, you need to write down things you have been doing and will be doing before going to Korea. This mostly covers Korean language preparation. I believe that ‘taking Korean language courses’ shouldn’t be necessarily on the list. There’s a bunch of fun ways to learn a language, especially the Korean language. What is better than watching Korean TV shows and being whipped by the actors and actresses? (Not watching one?) Okay, if you still doubt whether you should start learning the language by now, I urge you to do so unless you just apply for fun and ‘luckily’ see yourself get a seat at the end. Especially for those who never got anything related to Korea, get yourself used to how Korean language sounds is an important first step that will take you further lightheartedly. I met people who hardly heard the Korean language until they reach the country, and they struggled within one-year language training which I believe could have been less tormenting and fun instead. One year is short if not to say insufficient, trust me.

I was far from fluent when applying for this scholarship program (well, I still am), but I wasn’t unfamiliar with the language either. If there was only one effort in learning the language that I invested the most, it was listening to Korean songs. I wasn’t into K-dramas before coming to Korea, and I could barely make any time to go to a language center. I started learning Hangeul (Korean alphabet) while preparing for the application but just started self-teaching on basic grammars around 2 months before my departure in August. I wasn’t confident in mastering the language in one year, plus my over-anxiety told me to do something to lessen my stress in the future. Still, I knew I should’ve started earlier.

So, you need to explain that any plans during this time are to prepare you for life in Korea and of course the degree program. Here, you also need to mention your goals during the language training program. You may divide it into two semesters; what things you will do and the level of Korean proficiency you aim in the first and second half. There are many programs you can participate in during language training, such as the Buddy program, voluntary work at Korean schools, cultural festivals, etc. You may do your research and mention what you’re mostly expecting to do to improve your Korean skills.

Plans during your study in Korea. This section is a little bit different for GKS-U and GKS-G applicants AND applicants via Embassy and University Track. GKS-U applicants are provided a separate section for this part whereas, for GKS-G applicants, this part is combined with the plan before coming to Korea. Regardless, the best way to deliver this part is by setting a timeline for your plan, either per semester or per academic year.

For GKS-U applicants, I personally think that you can simply mention the number of credits in total to graduate and the average number of credits every semester. As for the course, you can mention some courses you’re particularly interested in and the reason (for example, those courses are in line with the topic interest of your final project/thesis, or they will be beneficial for your future career). These are basic information, so make sure you check the curriculum and graduation requirements! Other things to include are plans on taking short-term courses during summer/winter break and organizations/clubs/other student activities you will want to join (check on the university/department website for reference). Don’t forget to elaborate on why you need these activities (project it to your future goal).

For GKS-G applicants, I recommend writing down your study plan per semester since dividing into two academic years may limit the details. Depending on the major, you may set different goals each semester. Generally, I believe, the first semester would be the time to strengthen your fundamental knowledge regarding your field of study while adapting to the Korean education system. Some may have chances to start consulting with their academic advisor/professor even working in a lab. In the second semester, you may need to start working on your research plans. Here, you may briefly explain the thesis research you want to do. Most Master’s degree programs in Korea require a thesis for graduation so make sure you prepare one. Unless you’re applying for the Research Program, no need to go very detail on this. Three important points to include when explaining your research plan: what the research topic is, why you want to work on it, and why Korea and/or your university choice is the best place to carry out this research. In the third semester, you will probably need to sit for a comprehensive exam and start conducting your research. For social science and humanity students, you should prepare the ethical clearance application by the end of this semester or during the semester break so that you can start conducting your research, especially, collecting the research data, as the new semester begins. Finally, you may wrap up your final semester by completing the thesis and publishing or submitting a research article to a journal (some departments have it as part of graduation requirements).

For Embassy track applicants, I don’t think you need to elaborate on your 3 university and major choices and the reasons behind every choice. You likely apply for similar if not the same major. Despite different names, the focus study should be the same and that’s what you need to elaborate on. What I did back then is briefing the reason I applied for that major (I already mention it in the Personal Statement so I just briefly explain it here) and what topic of study I will focus on my thesis research. For university track applicants, you may explain the reasons for applying to the major and the university of your choice and your study plan followed by the plan each semester.

Plans after graduating from a Korean university. The keyword for this part, I believe, is future career. And the best way to show the reviewer your enthusiasm and your visionary side (regardless of how vague the future life is yet), is to name your future goal. I think telling what kind of job you aspire and some motivations behind it would work. Another important point to include is whether you will return to your home country or stay in Korea after graduation, accompanied by things you will do afterward. Again, this part may seem vague for some, especially for GKS-U applicants. Still, you need to make it as detail as possible, regardless of whether you’ll change it someday in the future or whether it seems unattainable for now. Dream big! If you plan on going directly to a graduate school, briefly explain what motivates you to continue your study and what field of study you’re going for. For GKS-G applicants, I guess their work for this part shouldn’t be too difficult as some are likely to already have a job and/or know where they’ll go after receiving the degree.

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I hope you find this post helpful and may as well be a reference for writing your study plan. Best of luck with your GKS application and your study in Korea.

#korean government scholarship program #KGSP #global korea scholarship #GKS #studyinkorea #Korean Scholarship #scholarship for graduate programs #scholarship for undergraduate programs #student life #university life in korea #SouthKorea #studyplan

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jwminssi · 5 years ago

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one breath to eternity (jikook)

After another argument with his father, Jungkook can't take it anymore and runs to the woods behind his house ready to end it all. There, he meets Jimin, a sweet boy with a way of seeing the world that will make Jungkook wonder how someone like him can be real as they talk through the night. In the morning, Jungkook can't bring himself to say goodbye.

6K | warnings: implied/referenced suicide, light angst with a happy ending

Jungkook takes a deep breath when he sees the light coming from his father’s office window while still outside.

Walking around the house to the backyard, he secures his bike and goes inside through the back door, taking his shoes off and trying to make the less amount of noise possible.

Not that he’s doing anything wrong, but Jungkook learned since he was really young that it’s best to do everything he can not to cross paths with his father, because any minimum thing can be fuel too a big fight.

Jungkook’s mother died at birth and, since then, he was raised by a babysitter until he didn’t need her anymore. The thought that if he hadn’t been born she would still be alive has crossed his mind hundreds of times, and Jungkook is sure that his father thinks the same – suspects that is the reason why he seems to hate him so much, too.

Since the babysitter left, Jungkook had to learn to live on his own and to take care of his own needs, only being able to count on his father to keep his bank account full enough so that he doesn’t have to ask him for anything else.

At school, Jungkook has a few friends – even a boyfriend at one point, before it all went downhill for good – but he can’t bring them home because his father said so and he really doesn’t need any more problems with him.

It’s a constant game of being careful, living in that house with a man that can’t even look at him without finding something bad to comment on. Most of the time, Jungkook can avoid him and all the hateful words that come out of his mouth when he locks himself inside his room and comes out only when absolutely necessary.

But of course that doesn’t always work.

“Where were you?” Jungkook freezes when he walks past the kitchen and hears his father’s voice calling out to him.

A big block of hesitation seems to land over Jungkook’s head before he answers the question. He can’t lie, because the other man already knows exactly where he was, but he’s aware that the truth won’t bring him anything good.

Still, he tries.

“Dance class.”

It’s impressive to Jungkook how much anger his father can carry only in his gaze. He’s always been a man with a hard posture, extremely serious and apparently without the smallest place in his heart for any emotion that’s not bad.

And ever since Jungkook started enjoying dance, it all got ever worse.

Maybe that reminds the man of his late wife, who was also a very talented dancer. That’s what Jungkook thinks, even though his father uses any other reason to hurt him and try to make him quit the classes.

Deep down, somewhere hidden in his mind, there is the comprehension that the words shouted at him aren’t really what his father means. Everything he does and says is caused by the pain and trauma of losing the woman he loves so quickly and early in life, leaving him to raise a child without even knowing where to begin.

That doesn’t mean that this treatment doesn’t hurt Jungkook, because it does even more than he can explain; but there is space in him for forgiveness if the older is willing to change.

The problem is that Jungkook knows that’s never going to happen.

“How many times did I tell you I don’t want you taking those classes?” He’s furious, which is nothing too different from ordinary, but Jungkook still takes a step back.

“But I like dancing.”

It’s a useless argument, because he’s never going to change his mind to accept one of his son’s passions. In fact, with each passing day, it seems like he’s more and more willing to force Jungkook to do everything he hates only to make him unhappy.

“I don’t care.” There it is, that’s the truth. Jungkook feels his chest tighten with the harshness of those words. “You’re already a freak just by liking men, I won’t allow you to ruin my reputation even more by being a fucking dancer.”

Something breaks in an irreparable way inside Jungkook when he hears that.

It’s not too far from what he’s used to, but for some reason on that day the insult hits him harder, like the knife was sharpened right before being thrown at him.

And he stands there at the kitchen door, eyes on the floor while his heart seems to want to come out of his body and his mind decides it’s time to go. He doesn’t know if his father expects him to fight, make up an argument or raise his voice so he can humiliate him even more or if he’s waiting for a positive answer, but all he can say is,

“Okay.”

So Jungkook goes up the stairs to his room, closing the door behind him before marching to his desk in search of a notebook and a pen, all while working on automatic.

It would be a lie saying that Jungkook never thought about giving up on himself before; in fact, that idea has crossed his mind way more times than he can even count.

However, he always had a dash of hope that his father could change someday and accept him as he is, without yelling hateful comments at him every day. Besides, when he was old enough to understand his mother died while giving him his own life, he unconsciously decided he would do everything in his power to make her last wish worth it.

Except he can’t do it anymore.

He knows he can ask for help, find a way to make all that pain stop without going for the last resources but he doesn’t think that anything anyone can do for him is enough to erase all the damage his father causes on him.

In this moment, this seems like the only way out.

Jungkook doesn’t cry while he writes the letter he’s going to leave behind. For some reason, he feels too empty to even shed a tear.

All he does is say his goodbyes and apologize for being such a disappointment in his twenty years of age. He tells his father that he never meant for it to be this way, he really wanted to make him proud, but he was never good enough to do it; he apologizes for that, too.

He takes the bottle with his sleep medicine from the bathroom cabinet and carefully places the envelope over his pillow on his well-made bed for his father to find the next morning when he goes in to wake him up and remind him of their daily schedule.

Jungkook climbs through his bedroom window, landing on the grass in front of the house easily in the same way he’s done so many times before. Once again he goes around his home, moving on towards the small forest that’s right behind the place he lives.

There’s a special tree there, where his babysitter placed a small wooden swing on one of the branches so that they could spend their afternoons when the weather was nice. When Jungkook reaches it, that’s when he starts crying.

His body starts feeling heavy and he needs to support himself on the wood that scratches his hand that’s not holding the bottle – which, on the other hand, feels different to the touch; maybe he got the wrong one.

Jungkook sits on the wet ground as he sobs alone in the woods. He cries so much that breathing gets harder as he goes on, oxygen more and more absent from his lungs, until he needs to close his eyes to try getting himself back to normal.

It feels like a small eternity until he opens them again, not because his breathing has returned but because there’s someone talking to him.

“You okay?” It’s another boy, they might share their age, and he seems genuinely worried, though he’s smiling. “Clearly not the best thing to ask but… I didn’t know where to start.” He eyes the medicine in Jungkook’s hands wearily before focusing back on his face.

“Who are you?” Jungkook asks, voice hoarse from the recent crying fit.

“Ah.” The boy smiles widely again and crouches next to him, putting them at eye-level. “Jimin.”

Jimin, whoever he may be, has something in him that Jungkook can’t quite identify. In the forest that grows darker by the second, he didn’t hesitate before stopping to ask a random stranger if he’s feeling okay; that’s not something everyone would do.

“Jungkook.” He introduces himself as well when he realizes that’s what the other is waiting from him and then has no idea what else he’s supposed to say.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to think too hard.

“Does this tree mean a lot to you?” Jimin asks, hugging his knees so that he’s more comfortable in that position.

Jungkook shrugs, still not feeling strong enough to do any more than that. “I guess.”

“You came to it in a crucial moment, I’d say that looks like a big deal.”

Jungkook nods, more focused on the way Jimin talks than in the words themselves; in that moment he decides that, if velvet could talk, that’s what it would sound like.

“Is it the swing?” Jimin keeps trying to prolong the conversation and, while Jungkook has no idea why he’s doing that, there’s no denying the fact that it does help him feel better.

“Yes.” He’s finally able to get up and goes towards the wooden toy, the paint that used to cover it now ruined because of the time exposed to the weather. “It’s mine.”

Jimin makes a sound of understanding and stops next to him, pushing the small swing with his delicate fingers.

“I walk around here all the time… Always wondered what’s the story behind it.” He faces him with a world of expectations in his eyes, as if knowing why that swing is there could that his whole universe.

“My babysitter and her boyfriend put it there when I was a baby.” Jungkook starts. There’s really nothing too special about that, but he finds that talking about it makes him see how much that gesture meant to him, a kid without both his parents. “As I grew up, they made the necessary adjustments until it reached a point where they didn’t have to anymore.”

Jimin seems more than satisfied to hear that, even if the story doesn’t sound that interesting to the ears of the person telling it.

“And have you been back here recently?”

Jungkook doesn’t really get what Jimin means with that question until he realizes the other is cleaning the seat’s surface.

“I’m too old for that, Jimin.”

Jimin laughs and rolls his eyes. “There’s no age limit to appreciate the small things, Jungkook. Come on, sit.”

A second of hesitation still goes by while Jungkook questions whether or not he’s really about to sit on a swing that’s been untouched in the woods for years, with the risk of it falling under his weight if it’s rotten on the inside.

Still, Jimin’s eyes convince him to do what he tells him, and his happiness doesn’t go unnoticed with the way he claps animatedly.

Jungkook holds on to the ropes slightly and slowly lowers his body over the seat, surprised in the best way possible when it supports him even after going so long without use.

He doesn’t feel like a kid again, but he can see clearly all the moments he lived there, being pushed by the babysitter to whom he was so attached to and feeling all the love he never received inside his own house.

For the first time that night, Jungkook smiles. A good feeling invades his chest and, when Jimin pushes him carefully on the back so that the swing moves, it overflows in the shape of laughter.

A cold breeze blows against him as he sways back and forth, his skin coming up with goosebumps in a way that reminds him of how special the little things really can be.

“And you didn’t want to sit on it...” Jimin shakes his head as he walks back into Jungkook’s sight, both smiling. “You know, me and my friends make a bonfire here every night… Want to come?”

This time around, Jungkook doesn’t think twice before agreeing.

It doesn’t take long for them to start getting deeper into the woods, the trees making an impressive roof above their heads.

Right as it starts to get too dark Jungkook sees a dot of light a few meters ahead, and he soon realizes that’s the bonfire Jimin mentioned.

The light comes accompanied with voices and laughter that rise gradually in volume as they come closer. Jungkook unconsciously allows himself to fall back behind Jimin, nervous about what the others will think of him being there without being invited.

“Jimin’s back!” One of them announces to the rest before his gaze lands on Jungkook.

“Found someone.” Jimin explains to the group, that seems more than satisfied with just those two words. “Jungkook, these are Seokjin, Hoseok e Taehyung.”

There isn’t even a flicker of distrust in their eyes when seeing a complete stranger being introduced to their space. On the contrary, they all look beyond excited that Jungkook is joining them, as if they were only waiting for him to arrive.

“You know, you won’t need that anymore. I didn’t after I ended up here.” It’s Hoseok who says that, talking to him for the first time and pointing to the bottle of medicine that Jungkook didn’t even remember still carrying with him. “Be our guest.” He opens a big smile and motions for the bonfire, his intentions clear.

Jungkook goes closer and sits next to him, studying the thing in his hands carefully and noticing it full, though he clearly remembers it being only halfway there earlier.

It’s a weird feeling, looking at those pills and seeing all the bad things they represent in his life in each of them. For that reason, Jungkook raises his arms above the fire and throws them out, getting rid of it while the rest of the group cheers around him.

When his eyes meet Jimin’s, they smile.

After the initial anxiety of being with people he just met goes away, Jungkook gets even more comfortable than he expected and finds his place in the conversation, fitting in perfectly. He laughs like he hasn’t done in a long time, feeling completely accepted and loved in that group that found him only a few hours ago.

He notices Jimin’s gaze on himself a few times and even risks looking back at him, thinking that he other looks happy that he settled in so well between his friends without trying too hard.

When conversation starts to die down, Jimin pokes him on the thigh and gets up.

“There’s a place I want you to see.”

Jungkook joins him through the trail between the trees, not saying goodbye to the other three because he knows he’ll see them again soon.

It got even darker in the forest during the time they spent around the bonfire and Jungkook can’t see anything ahead of him, has no idea how Jimin knows where he’s going either.

He stops walking when a scream so loud it’s deafening comes from right behind him, his body freezing up in place with the sheer terror of the sound. He hears it a second time, a bit closer, and covers his ears with every drop of strength he can muster through the fear.

“Hey, Jungkook.” Jimin calls out, holding his wrists with his hands and pulling them away from his face. “It’s okay, just ignore it.”

His voice sounds so close that, even though he can’t see him, Jungkook can tell exactly where he’s standing. His calming tone, still the same velvet from before, certainly helps Jungkook get back the beats his heart skipped.

“I got you.” Jimin tells him and then interlaces their fingers so that they can finish the path to wherever it is they’re headed.

Jungkook can’t take that scream out of his head, but does everything he can to focus on the fact that he didn’t hear it again and on the warmth of Jimin’s hand against his as he guides them through the tree maze.

“Seokjin was scared of the dark when he got here.” Jimin comments, his voice echoing in the silence of the woods while he holds firmly onto Jungkook’s hand, helping him ground himself and keep calm despite still being frightened.

“Must have been hard for him...”

Jungkook can only see Jimin tilt his head in thought because they reach a clearing and the moonlight finally shines on them. It really is too dark there; the trees cover most of the luminosity that the sky can offer and drown them in pitch black darkness that seems to swallow them whole.

“Getting here is the easiest part.” Jimin says as he sits down on the wet ground and surrounds himself of the small yellow flowers that grew in that field. “It’s the before that seems endless.”

“Did he say why he was scared?” Jungkook asks while joining him.

There is something extremely comforting about sitting there in the low light with Jimin, feeling the petals of the flowers tickle the skin of his naked arms and watching the dark middle of the night sky while a few dots of light adorn it.

All his life, Jungkook can’t remember ever feeling so welcome like this. Not even with the people he considered close has he experimented such a good and freeing sensation like the one he does right now.

Even Jimin’s silence is meaningful, his sighs a tight hug on Jungkook’s tired body.

“I suppose it’s not really easy for anyone but...” Jimin finally answers, eyes fixated on the tree line ahead. “He was taken from home once. Locked up in a cabin a few meters from here, because his parents were important people in the city. It was too much for him.”

Jungkook has no idea how to answer to that.

It was never a surprise to him what human beings are capable of doing for their own benefit, whether it be emotional, physical or financial. The world is moved by selfishness, after all.

But he saw Seokjin when they gathered around the fire, smiling and telling jokes, and there was nothing wrong of minimally out of place with him.

“He seems fine now.”

Jimin smiles.

“There’s freedom in the woods.”

Jungkook nods, gaze back to the sky where the moon looks down at him. He agrees completely with what Jimin just said, more than anything because he felt on his own skin the hug of the trees and the whirl of emotions that it brought to him.

“You feel it too, right?” Jimin asks him and when Jungkook turns to face him, he finds that his eyes are already on him, analyzing him closer than before.

Jungkook nods one more time, staying quiet while Jimin picks one of the small flowers and places it on his grown out hair.

They both smile with the gesture, sharing that moment that’s so intimate and only theirs. Jungkook loves the way Jimin caresses his cheek, his touch light as a feather, and can’t help but to lean into it.

Jimin looks at him like he’s the most precious thing in the entire world and, indeed, that’s how Jungkook feels, at least there in that moment.

So much so that he doesn’t feel even slightly insecure as he moves even closer, their faces mere centimeters apart. When their noses bump into each other, Jungkook notices that Jimin has closed his eyes so he does the same, letting himself go until their mouths meet in a chaste peck.

Jungkook pulls away minimally, but doesn’t take long before he’s kissing him again, this time deepening it as he pulls Jimin’s bottom lip between his before tracing it carefully with the tip of his tongue.

It’s a terrible cliche but Jungkook is sure no other kiss in his life was ever like this one; nothing came close to the utter euphoria that Jimin’s lips pull him into while they move against his. It feels like they both have a silent connection since the second they met, that perfect synchrony that turns everything they have together into something more than extraordinary.

It’s Jimin who pulls away first, slowly as if to not break the bubble they’re in. His eyes remain closed for a moment but he smiles when he touches their foreheads before putting some more space between them.

“You’re a special one, Jungkook.” It’s only a whisper, but it has the same effect on Jungkook’s heart than if those words were yelled into a microphone.

They exchange a meaningful look and then Jimin lies down on the grass, one arm under his head and the other stretched out next to him. Jungkook can’t help but to stare at him, the way he contrasts beautifully with the flowers on the ground, their light petals a total opposite from his black hair and clothes.

“Will you join me or not?” Jimin asks, amused after staring back at Jungkook for a while, raising his arm so that he understands he’s supposed to lie down over it.

The comfort that Jungkook gets when he scoots closer to Jimin’s body is indescribable. He feels the other’s warmth floating to him until it touches his own skin while one of Jimin’s hands finds the back of his neck, caressing him softly there.

They don’t say anything, but they also don’t need to.

A loud noise catches Jungkook’s attention and he sits up quickly, heart racing without knowing why, only that it sounded exactly like someone calling for help. He turns his head to the direction where it came from, not sure what he’s looking for but finding only the trees that surround the clearing.

“Did you hear that?” He asks Jimin, who has also sat up again.

The other only nods, also looking at the edge of where they are. There’s something else in his face, as if he’s contemplating what to do next; and that makes zero sense to Jungkook, because he has no idea what’s on the other side of those trees.

“Happens sometimes.” Jimin answers, his voice oddly distant.

“What’s in there?” He’s not absolutely sure he wants that question to be answered but the words come out of his mouth before he can hold them in.

“The lake.”

Jimin’s answer doesn’t tell him much, nor was it what he expected to hear. A heavy feeling fills his chest and he can’t even find an explanation for that, but it might have something to do with the fact that Jimin seems to be in the same place mentally and he can’t bear to see people he cares about down.

“Want to go over there?” Jimin looks at him suddenly and he seems to have gotten a hold of himself and of whatever was clouding his brain earlier.

Jungkook hesitates. “Everything okay?”

“There’s no one there.” Jimin assures him, already getting up and ready to go but Jungkook holds him back by the arm.

“I mean with you. Is everything okay?”

The look on Jimin’s face softens and he smiles the same way he’s been doing since the beginning of the night and only that is enough to make Jungkook start believing that there’s nothing wrong with going to the lake.

But Jimin doesn’t answer his question, only takes his hand and pulls him out of the clearing.

They’re immersed in darkness for a short amount of time until they reach the margin of a small lake that extends itself not too far ahead of them. The moon shows up in the sky again, not as strong as before but still enough for them to be able to see each other.

Jungkook can’t deny he feels weird standing there, as if that lake isn’t really a good place to be, but Jimin seems like he’s back to being calm so he chooses to ignore his mind for now.

A soft breeze blows against Jungkook’s hair and he remembers the small flower still sitting there, taking it carefully so that it doesn’t fly away and keeping it safe on the pocket of his sweatpants.

“Here.” Jimin comes up to him with rocks in his hands, that he shares with Jungkook to pass the time. “Try it.”

They each take turns with skipping the rocks, laughing with each other when an attempt fails or making bets as to who can send them farther away.

“You look close to the others.” Jungkook comments while he tosses another rock on the lake, counting as it skips four times before sinking.

“Actually, I only knew Taehyung before I got here.” Jimin answers, getting ready for his turn; he can’t mask the sadness in his voice. “He died with me.”

Jungkook’s brain doesn’t register the words completely at first, but when it does, he finds that it’s not really a surprise.

Just because Jimin hadn’t said that exact phrase before, with all the letters in a way that it couldn’t be misinterpreted, doesn’t mean Jungkook didn’t know. In fact, he’s sure that since the first moment his mind had already established what was going on.

Meeting Jimin in woods didn’t happen on accident, Jungkook is aware of that. All the circumstances that surround them, everything the other boy told him throughout the night… It was always very clear.

And that’s why he doesn’t get scared, only accepts what fate has brought him and, even more than that, holds on to it as tightly as he can.

“You’re too young...” Jungkook knows he’s speaking in the present, but he can’t simply bring their existence down to a verb tense.

“So are you.”

There’s something Jungkook can’t identify in the way Jimin says that. His voice sounds like it holds a mix of different emotions and for that reason he can’t pull them apart; all he knows, deep down, is that none of those feelings are happy.

“Sometimes we trust people and they hurt us.” Jimin speaks out his thoughts, gaze still on the lake.

Jungkook isn’t sure if he’s about to tell him what happened to him and Taehyung, but he listens carefully anyways, holding on to the little rocks he still has in his hands.

“I don’t know if it’s more frustrating to get out of it hurt or… the fact that I deposited something so precious in someone who didn’t deserve it.” Jimin goes on; as usual, there’s nothing bad in his voice, only a perpetual wave of calmness. “My stepfather was never a good person. I knew that, Tae did too, but it wasn’t enough for us to be able to stay away from him.”

The knowledge that they’re siblings comes as a hard hit for Jungkook.

During the time they spent together around the fire, he noticed how close the two of them seemed to be so that in itself doesn’t surprise him. What really leaves Jungkook in a state of disbelief is the fact that they both had the same fate and that Jimin had to watch his own brother die at such a young age.

“But did you trust him?” Jungkook asks, trying to connect that part of the story to what Jimin was just saying.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I trusted our mother.”

Once again, Jungkook has no idea what to say to that. He lived a whole life of disappointment with a person that was supposed to care for him and love him unconditionally, it’s not like he really has anything useful to add.

But just like before, he doesn’t need to worry about picking the right words.

“I don’t resent her, neither does Taehyung.” Jimin says with the certainty of someone who has spent a good amount of time pondering over a subject. “I think she’s free from him now, at least that’s what I hope… Silver linings and all that.” He smiles, one more time impressing Jungkook with his way to see the world. “But I wish I didn’t have to drown.”

The cogs move inside Jungkook’s brain until he reaches a conclusion, also understanding why he felt so bad.

“It was you that I head back at the clearing.”

Still smiling, Jimin nods and comes closer, leaning his head on Jungkook’s shoulder. The lake looks like a painting from where they stand, reflecting the moon that has moved through the sky already.

“Taehyung can’t come here.”

Jungkook can understand that perfectly. It’s not a crazy thought to think he’s scared of going to the place where his last breath was taken from him so traumatically.

“Are you okay with it?” He asks, afraid that being there is bad for him somehow.

“I come by every once in a while...” Jimin answers before facing Jungkook. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“It’s almost dawn, want to go back to your swing?”

Jimin’s eyes tell him he’s going to be there whether he chooses to go or not and that makes it even easier for Jungkook to make that decision.

In the end, they do end up making their way back to the place where they first met, next to the big tree that had such an impact on Jungkook’s childhood. Standing there after everything and the night he had, Jungkook feels small to the world, but for the same time believes he can be the whole world himself.

It’s in the details, this feeling.

In the way Jungkook understands that he’s nothing more than a cog in the big machine that is the universe, but at the same time can feel the galaxy pulsate under his fingertips when he places them over that tree.

Jimin only watches him for a while, giving him the space he needs to go back to the first hour of the night and take in everything that happened since he left his house.

“To be honest, I never thought I’d get this far.” Jungkook announces, eyes glued to something in front of him.

“Are you proud of yourself?” Jimin asks.

Jungkook isn’t sure proud is the right word for it, maybe that’s not what he’s feeling at all. Either way, when it all comes down to what really matters, he supposes he’s happy with his choices.

He doesn’t have time to give Jimin a proper answer, though, because something interrupts him.

At first, he thinks it’s thunder, because his body shakes with the force of it and his heart tightens in an all too familiar way.

But then it happens again and this time Jungkook knows what’s happening.

His father’s deep voice echoes through the trees, their branches breaking under his feet while he runs, faster and faster, towards the heart of the small forest.

Jungkook doesn’t remember ever hearing him call out to him like that, so desperately; he doesn’t remember ever feeling important to his father like this.

“He’s fast...” Jimin says, a quick comment to break the silence.

“It’s late.” Is what Jungkook answers, both facing the direction from which the voice comes from, each second closer.

“It’s quite early, actually.” Jimin looks around them, sees the forest getting brighter slowly as the sun rises through the blue sky that covers them. Jungkook smiles, because that’s just such a Jimin thing to say.

“He’ll find me soon.”

Jungkook is the one to say those words, and for a moment he doesn’t really know what to do with them. Inside his chest, he can’t feel the weight that used to be there, the anguish that stopped him from breathing normally; still, it’s not all that easy to understand what he’s done to himself, even though he already knows.

“And do you want to be here when that happens?” Jimin asks, always careful, soothing voice and gentle eyes.

Jungkook’s answer isn’t verbal – in fact, he doesn’t do anything at all – but Jimin understands and stays by his side either way.

It doesn’t take long.

The entire forest falls silent when Jungkook’s father finally stops in front of him, as if even the birds knew that they shouldn’t sing in a moment like this. He looks chocked with what he sees, unwanted tears falling from his eyes when he finds his boy.

Jungkook watches him get closer and pull his body against his own, hugging him tightly as if he’s trying to give him life through that touch. Watches him cry like he’s never done before, sobbing against the cold skin of his only son.

“He never hugged me like that.”

For a reason that’s unknown to him, realizing that doesn’t hurt as much as he would have previously imagined it would. Of course Jungkook’s relationship with his father has always been fuel for a lot of bad feelings, but now he’s oddly incapable of feeling anything other than pity; for him, for the man kneeling on the ground in front of him, for both of them.

“It’s a big cliche.” Jimin says next to him, eyes also focused on the scene ahead of them.

“What is?”

“Life.” When Jungkook turns to look at him, Jimin doesn’t face him back for a while, until he smiles and their gazes meet. “Death, too.”

Jungkook looks back to his father, still crying while he holds him in his arms. He supposes Jimin is right, because he always thought he would end up like this, the same way as many more before him.

“I never liked cliches.” He mutters, facing the other when he feels him coming closer.

“Sometimes they’re good.” Jimin’s eyes travel around Jungkook’s face, now free from all the pain he still saw at the beginning of the night when they first met. One of his hands brushes the hair away from his hands to then rest on his cheek. “Comforting.”

There is so much in Jimin’s eyes, an entire ocean of deep thoughts and mystery, but Jungkook thinks he knows him perfectly well when they connect like this.

He holds Jimin’s wrist and pulls it away from his face softly so that he can press a feathery kiss to the inside of his palm, both of them smiling with the gesture.

“He’ll be fine, you know...” Jimin assures him as he looks back to Jungkook’s father, who is now getting ready to carry his son’s body back home. “They always do.”

Jungkook nods, also watching what happens next. It’s weird watching himself go away like this while he stays, but it’s even more strange feeling like he doesn’t belong to that moment in the past anymore.

The truth is that there is no place for resentment in Jungkook’s heart and he never wished anything bad upon his father, not even with all the awful things he yelled at him through the years. But he can’t help the wave of relief that washes over him at knowing that he will never have to go back to that house and to living with the man under the same roof anymore.

Jungkook hopes his father moves on soon, but he can’t feel bad for choosing to leave.

When neither of them can see Jungkook’s father’s silhouette in the distance, Jimin pulls him by the hand back to the place they had the bonfire, where the others wait animatedly for them. Not even a drop of regret fills Jungkook; on the contrary, he feels light when he joins the group he meet at the beginning of the night.

The birds resume their singing, announcing definitely the beginning of another day, and Jungkook thinks that yes, there is freedom in the woods but, even more than that, there’s freedom in Jimin’s eyes.

And that’s where he pretends to spend the rest of eternity.

#jikook #kookmin #jimin #jungkook #jikook fic #kookmin fic #nat writes

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fearfearer · 5 years ago

Text

i have caught up with the magnus archives.

when i started listening, i started a text file to note down any thoughts/confusion/analysis/jokes i had as i listened. i isolated a few bits of it into standalone text posts that i already posted, but here is the whole thing, my long-form liveblog

thoughts on the magnus archive as i listen

jonny sims gives an impassioned performance of someone's statement-- a diegetic impassioned performance, as we witness it being interrupted and resuming-- and follows it up with his own judgement of merciless doubt. classic. why the impassioned performance? he's just a nerd. i dearly hope this is the fandom consensus

every episode ends at the perfect volume to which i have adjusted it, and then i start the next episode and it blares in my ears. i think the volume of the intro must be like 1.75x the volume of the rest

*makes a serious effort to listen to and remember the name and date at the beginning of the statement recording* *forgets completely within 2 minutes*

i saw a fanart of gerard keay and learned [1] that he must be a good guy after all, since they drew him lookin cute, and [2] that his name is not, in fact, jared key. what, am i supposed to be looking at the transcripts? understanding names properly? in my defense, jonny sims clearly articulates "Jared" when he says it. maybe i'm not as good at decoding british accents as i thought. [footnote added in later: ok good i'm not the only one who hears "Jared" and thinks "Jared" instead of "Gerard"]

when gerard keay was described as having numerous eye tattoos on his joints, obviously my first thought was, "including the ankle? so he's count olaf?" because that's definitely a way count olaf would disguise his eye tattoo: by tattooing eyes everywhere else too and becoming The Eye Tattoo Guy. anyway this is part of why i was not at first inclined to think favorably of gerard keay

"The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic." if you know shit fuck you

it has come to my attention that there are ships. makes sense... after all, everyone in every fandom is horny af*. i'm not in deep enough to ship yet but naturally i'm keeping an eye on it

*horny af for depictions of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, but mostly sexual

definitely feel like i need to be writing down every name i hear because they're never not cropping back up but for now i'll just let it all wash over me

so sasha has been replaced with not-sasha, huh? pretty sure. though i'm not good at distinguishing voices. but that sounded pretty different, and my listening comprehension wrt that table isn't that bad. <<as time passes i doubt myself more and more on this point but not enough to go back and listen again

"You believe me?" "Yes, I think I do." (smashes button labeled "CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT" and a loud buzzer sounds)

IT'S MICHAEL!!! i hope michael is a long-term good guy... he's not seeming like a good guy right now... he says he's mostly neutral. vaguely recall seeing a tumblr post about michael in the recent past but that didn't give me any hints and i don't remember it well anyway. michael's voice is good though. good laugh

i'm not good at visualizing characters based on descriptions, let alone based merely on their voices, so the only image i have in my head of jonathan is a furrowed brow

i'm on episode 49 and i don't like jonathan's distrust of his colleagues... i don't understand why his immediate suspicion was that gertrude's murder was an inside job. hasn't he just learned firsthand that the institute is not impenetrable? it's not inconceivable that someone could enter and shoot her and leave. especially when it took place in underground tunnels connected to unknown locations.

there's a good Old Lady Voice Combo on episode 62

so agnes montague was heavily cursed... that's my conclusion after episode 67

elias seems to tell jonathan to "get some sleep" a lot. though it IS generally good advice

episode 70, 9 minutes, 41 seconds: jonny sims's cell phone goes off in the background

small brain: ghost ship medium brain: ghost train galaxy brain: dirt train

i wanted to see if there was fanart of michael so i looked it up... i might as well have googled "blonde slenderman"

sweeney todd mentions tally: II

for some reason, hearing michael described this time as "a tall man with curly blonde hair and an unnerving laugh" puts an image in my head without my consent, and that image is chris fleming. now, he's not quite blonde, is he? but that doesn't change my casting decision, which is now set in stone. hope he does a good british accent

"YES i know what a meme is."

why is melanie the first/only one to notice that sasha is now not-sasha? is it because she is experienced in firsthand paranormal encounters (whereas the archivists are experienced in decidedly SECONDhand paranormal encounters, save for the worm debacle)? oh, my question was answered handily in the next episode. ok.

the replacer definitely limits its glamour to everyone except one person just so that it can be amused by the distress and confusion of the one person who can see the truth. that must also be the reason it chooses a completely different appearance. it surely COULD replace a person with their exact likeness; it just uses another face for fun, and to be satisfied that it can get away with it.

this table has appeared in like 10 episodes... Guess It's Crucial

jonny sims yelling while swinging an axe. jonny sims goes through michael's door (eyes emoji)

the idea of the replacer killing jonathan and not even replacing him brings to mind "AT LEAST RIDE IT YOU ASSHOLE"

wasn't expecting to hear from leitner at this point... he's dropping tons of lore here. too much lore. so much is happening. i have to say i kinda like it better when the stakes are not quite so high as this.

so at the end of season 2, tim and martin believe that jonny sims killed this guy, who they probably don't know is leitner... and we the audience believe that elias, now almost certainly a double murderer, has very quietly stabbed leitner to death. do i the audience believe it? i'll keep an open mind for now. things are not always as they seem. except when sasha was replaced with not-sasha, which was exactly as it seemed. [footnote added in later: looks like elias being a double murderer was exactly as it seemed.]

so jonathan sims is the name of the actual guy voicing jonathan sims. it's a cecil situation. so are they someday going to go back and retcon every episode to change his name, like with palmer/baldwin? or does jonathan sims just not mind being a character as well? as long as it doesn't devolve into RPS i guess it's fine. if there's fanart of jonmartin i hope it doesn't depict them as their actors bc that's too close for comfort to RPS

there's been a truly hellish c*ndy cr*sh ad that has played like 40 times between episodes and i'm pretty well convinced to never ever play that curséd game

elias has some serious blackmail for daisy, huh? that's heavy, having police characters in fiction who do extrajudicial killings. life imitates art imitates life

"i'm not on drugs or anything. ...what? i could be on drugs!"

he said "ample opportunity" but like "amplopportunity" with emphasis on the "plop"

it was obviously elias who delivered the statement to jonathan in hiding, because he knew he would record it despite not being at work... bc he's a nerd

so if gerard keay has eye tattoos, does that mean he also serves the uhh the observing or whatever? [verdict arrived at later: no he just has those because he's cool. or because his mom tattooed him. ok almost certainly the latter.]

"what do i feed it?" obviously you feed it filled up cassette tapes, jon... nothing has ever been more obvious

it's okay that jon very stupidly burned his hand to a crisp. you don't need even one hand to turn on a cassette recorder. you can do that with your nose

so if these people who are wax figures serve the desolation, and not-sasha was spending time at the wax museum, does that mean there is a connection between the replacer and desolation? i think that would make sense, since both seem to enjoy making people feel bad feelings. also i'm starting to think that agnes was not actually cursed, but that would mean she burned that guy on purpose after being nice to him... was she just really selfish in that way? using him to experience Dating and mutilating him when he crossed the line, so she punished him as a cruel goodbye? or just building up his hopes so they will be even more fun to burn down when the time comes?

"perhaps doing a bit of mindless filing will help distract you." honestly that is something i would like to do in real life... i do enjoy a good mindless task. though doing mostly mindless tasks 40 hours a week is not a fun time for me lately. but it would be better if i didn't have to listen to bad radio at the same time

what?! the friendly midnight acrobat described in episode 90 sounds totally non-threatening and i hope there's fanart of it. was that gym just jared the bone turner helping people live their twisted athletic fetishes?! [footnote added in later: YES! god i hope people draw these turn-boned creatures optimized for their gymnastic of choice. show me a person who remade their body specifically for the balance beam]

so the power endowed in the archivist by the viewening is that when you sit them down across from someone they want to interview, that someone will invariably spill SOME beans and think it was their idea. maybe? [footnote added in later: yes.]

ok so Michael "The Distortion" Michael, of fractals and golden ringlets, has specifically tormented this other michael, lichtenberg michael?

jon is clearly moved to ask questions by an external force because he's a sensible guy who would not try to ask questions when daisy is holding a gun on him

i think basira has precisely the same accent as estelle... or maybe just a similarly staccato way of speaking (or of line-reading)

[episode 93] elias: (holding jon's face between two pieces of bread) what are you? jon: (sigh) the archivist...

well, they did something i didn't expect them to do with this show: create a compelling in-universe reason for jon to read statements aloud. because obviously until now there was none.

jon did the cockney accents. (insert emoji for indescribable feeling)

here's the purpose of the pit: if we all climb in the muddy pit together at night, the earthquake will only jiggle us gently and no one will be inside collapsing buildings to be crushed. it's only logical

ok i was gonna say this before but why is jon still at georgie's house??? he's not on the run for murder anymore, right? he has an apartment with all his stuff in it, right? [footnote added in later: i still don't understand why it was like this.]

i will confess that usually once the credits start to roll i zip to the next episode, but this time i zoned out a bit and it's really funny that jonny sims reads out "Rate and Review Us Online" in his archivist voice

a third michael. this one is probably already dead though. unless distortion michael takes over this guy's body or something. oh, jon came in at the end of the episode to say precisely this.

was episode 100 mostly improvised? if so, that would be appropriate. but i wouldn't put it past them to write every stuttering bit of those four statements

MARTIN...................................................................................................................................................... (typed this as martin gave some of his own money to the lady who expected payment for a statement)

i'm skipping 100.1 through 100.5 for now... just for now.

ok so michael is michael but not lightning mike michael, and two of these michaels are dead, but one is something that has never been alive nor dead. got it

everyone's morality is much more gray than i at first anticipated. the only people who seem to be solidly and earnestly on the side of good, as much as possible, are jonathan and martin and basira and georgie and maybe tim?

so michael just died and was overtaken by pseudo-helen? neo-helen? ok. that's kinda too bad, as i enjoyed michael's terrible laugh and unpredictability. but the feeling of michael being revealed as having been michael shelley feels somewhat similarly disappointing (but a bit less staggeringly groan-inducing) to when the mysterious koro-sensei in assassination classroom was revealed to have been a twink in his past. because of course he was. (that's when i stopped reading that manga. too precipitously dumb to sustain my suspension of disbelief.) it's like, ok, you had an interestingly mysterious character going on, but having solved the mystery, what interestingness is left? not much. fortunately this was resolved by promptly ending the existence of this michael and instead introducing new and improved helen

ooh martin has the asky ability too huh? nice [footnote added in later: he only used it this one time, and i'm wondering if they did that and then forgot and decided that jon is actually the only one with asky ability.] [[another footnote added in much later: How did i manage to mistake jon’s voice for martin’s voice? How?]]

the way martin said "kumo ga tabeteiru" in episode 110... alexander j newall does not watch anime

"I'm a book." ~Gerard Keay, 2017

it was a few episodes ago now but i noticed that when jon clearly articulated "Jared" referring to gerard, elias was like "Jared? you mean Gerard Keay?" (pronouncing it like "Gerard.") there is definitely a disagreement between these two (actors) about how to pronounce that name

the eye, the spiral, the end, the stranger, the lonely, the desolation, the slaughter, the vast, the buried, the dark, the corruption, the web, the flesh, the hunt.

Q: why would anyone want one of these rituals to succeed? A: it's their fetish. it's their sexual fetish

ok time to make up names for each possible apocalypse. these are the real and true names according to me, who knows such things: the eye - the viewening the spiral - down the drain the end - the really end end the stranger - oh wait we know this one. it's the unknowing. the lonely - the alonening the desolation - Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Lightless Flame the slaughter - world war all the vast - the expansion the buried - the grand lahar (or the Smothering) the dark - the extinguishment the corruption - the Great Rot the web - the spidening the flesh - the smorgasbord (or the Eatening) the hunt - come and get it

gerry said there was no dark god of indigestion, but i can tell you from personal experience that there is. though it's true that there is also fear involved, so maybe no separate pantheon is necessary

i sense that there is a battle between people who say it like "gotta get myself oriented" and "i feel disoriented" (as feels correct/natural to me) and people who say "gotta get myself orienTATed" and "i feel disorienTATed," and this podcast falls SQUARELY on the latter team. they've said it like 20 times

idk why he has to be such a dick to helen. jeez

the guy who coded his mind into a computer, which of the 14 was that? the corruption? the stranger? gotta be the corruption, but that doesn't fit perfectly with its rot/bugs aesthetic...

speed -> speeding -> sped. heed -> heeding -> hed. thus i decree

in my dream i listened to a whole episode of this show, narrated by gertrude, and i was like "whoa this is cool" and i went to write it down but i was still in the dream and writing doesn't work in dreams :( also any successful writing in dreams doesn't transfer to real life paper :( the only snippet i remember: “...in his white mouth, which had known only bread...”

"I, uh..." Jonathan Sims, a thousand times, 20XX

martin's job is PLAINLY to distract elias and elias barges in like "martin. i see you're trying to distract me." and martin's like "maybe i am!"

o, jonny took a breath. that's good

he wasn't hooked up to an EKG or anything? you spend long enough with no heartbeat that they're just like "i guess we can turn this off"

this episode about philosophical zombies sounds a lot like that NPC meme from a year or two ago... and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, the way this person inspects others to determine whether they are True Minds or Impostors based on their emotional expressions, their eyes... because i don't always do the correct or appropriate expressions, and would someone judge me as being a non-person who is trying and failing to imitate human emotions?

i generally don't enjoy ships that have more-or-less explicit canon support, but i can't say jon/martin isn't good

melanie blaming jon isn't right... no one had a better plan to stop the unknowing, did they? (they didn't!) didn't all of them agree on the plan and understand that they might die? (they did!) she's just imposing survivor's guilt upon him because he survived for supernatural reasons. but it's not like he eagerly embraced his new supernaturalness, or even asked for it outright! i think she's being unreasonable. i didn't like her insistence on trying to kill elias either, even though elias is a huge dick. what's with her?

wait, peter lukas is the lonely? (meme where calculations and equations whiz past me)

jonathan baa'd

oh, see. the bullet is making melanie act without reason. i get it now. can't say i think they had the best approach to getting the bullet out, but all's well that ends well (???)

martin is being prohibited from talking to jon >:I martin is on a first-name basis with peter lukas >:I...

martin grumbles, "i don't like being manipulated..." while obviously and continuously allowing himself to be manipulated

jon is afraid of and uncomfortable with what he's becoming, at least to a degree, right? but he seems to be going about his duties (i.e. feeding the eye) with vigor and without reluctance. is he really that motivated by his own desire to know and understand? who is he doing this for? is the eye's influence on him so strong that "doing what the eye wants" seems to manifest as what HE wants to do?

"He'd place it over the one he wore already, and he would larf and larf and larf" (from breacon’s statement... just heard it like this for some reason)

deep water could be the domain of both the buried and the vast, because you could lose yourself in the vast ocean, but experience the physical effects of being buried under thousands of feet of water...

so tom han was an avatar of the flesh but he ultimately died after being tortured by the spiral... right?

"we're not people, though, are we? not anymore." close enough, i'd say.

jonathan has deployed THREE "I, uh..."s in episode 131 alone and i want to smack him in real life. FOUR NOW. JON. JONATHAN SIMS THE REAL ACTOR. LISTEN... quit falling back on your "I, uh..."s. and if they're written into the script i'll punch whoever did that too. total of five in a single episode. never utter "I, uh..." again

i hope whoever's throat is okay after doing bone turner voice for a whole statement.

jonny sure needs saving quite often, doesn't he.

peter lukas being a slightly chipper advocate for becoming a follower of the lonely is very strange

neil lagorio and his whole cinematographic history is made up but they namedropped kevin costner, who is real

VERY, VERY GOOD laugh at 23:44 of episode 136

melanie getting her session recorded... i was doing audio transcription for a while and you'd definitely come across bits of therapy-type sessions that very much seemed like they should have been confidential.

i wonder if the eye ultimately turned its back on gertrude and allowed her to be killed. if jon could survive a collapsing building, could gertrude not have survived a couple of bullets? wouldn't the difference be the protection of the eye? [footnote added in later: of course now i see who turned their back on whom.]

i'm somewhat heartened to learn that agnes montague was, in fact, a heavily cursed individual, though she seemed to have embraced it to a degree... and she wasn't made of wax.

i like that jon now includes helen in his office politics briefing

basira's like "Edmund Halley" and jon's like "Halley's comet?" (like “Hale-ey”) and two minutes later jon's like "Edmund Hally" (not "Hale-y")

"What's this?" "OH... That's, uh... that's... my rib..." "Right." (tiny clunk of rib being set down)

so giving a statement puts a curse on you... or is it "having a statement extracted / being compelled" that puts a curse on you? and the resulting curse, the fear it reawakens, is that good for the eye, or is that good for the powers that initially caused the fear?

well, i heard a homestuck reference in one of the patreon names at the beginning of an episode, and who is surprised? of course, i'm not one to talk

episode 144- the english think their summer is bad... as a professional "hot weather is bad" person, i feel doubtful, because if the sky is grey, it is not as hot as it Could Be, and therefore one should quit one's bitching

first statement about the extinction... interesting. but hearing martin be a jerk to daisy makes me sad :(

the powers never tell avatars exactly what they need to be doing, but that's just concerning the means. the ends are always clear: the power gets fed. and all of the powers feed on fear. also jonny is horny for statements. i hope, but also doubt, that his harmful behavior is at least partially the spider's doing. oh, i see now that it's not. yeah.

jon wants to eat fresh and delicious statements produced just for him, instead of reconstituting the dusty old statements already in the archive

episode 148 - samson stiller gets a crush. but in all seriousness, is he becoming an avatar of the eye but like, not institute-related? is that a thing? i guess that would make sense, but still seems weird

episode 149 - considering ring -> rang -> rung, we seem to have stumbled upon spin -> span -> spun, and the compasses gently span around (9:40)

does martin have loneliness powers now? it's sad that he is getting lonely... as a lonely person, i know.

the lady on TV in episode 150 was just speaking simlish.

i really want jon to overcome his urge to forcefully take statements because i want to be able to root for him still

british podcasts really have a leg up over american podcasts, at least among american audiences, purely based on their interesting and varied accents

i can't say the gravedigger's envy doesn't make me myself feel like going to sleep in the cold dirt forever. but bad depression lately is also a factor, so

jonathan having to settle for reading already archived statements instead of harvesting fresh ones is exactly like a vampire (not the kind detailed in this series) who has to choose between hunting people to suck their blood or drinking bags of donated blood from a (near-endless) stockpile. there's an ethical choice with a clear right answer, but the urge is also understandable

jon following up gertrude's tape with just "fuck" was really good. now he's like "ok martin. let's run away together"

spent all day at work thinking about how i can't fuckin believe the first thing jon did when he heard how to escape the institute was to go tell martin like "there will be a great cost, but... we can elope now"

also if tim was still around jon would tell him the way out and he would do it right then and there, i'm 100% sure. like before jon was finished explaining tim would be like "the eyes? (grabs scissors) got it. (does the deed)"

earlier today i was just thinking that we would almost certainly hear gertrude's death on tape, especially given that we now understand tape recorders are wont to turn on autonomously whenever something important is happening. anyway then i came home and heard gertrude's death on tape

peter, as an avatar of the lonely, is easy to play like a cheap whistle because as someone who clearly hates spending time around other people, he is not keen to the symptoms of being played.

elias is like "you'll have to go into the lonely to get him" and jon's probably thinking "but then at least we'll be in the lonely... ~*~*~together~*~*~"

i think martin's whole thing for most of the series has been that he sounds a little doofy, for lack of a better word, and people constantly underestimate his intelligence. and now he has played peter lukas like a cheap whistle and forced me to realize that by taking for granted that he was being successfully manipulated by peter lukas, i too was underestimating martin... and his pure love for jon <:3c no but seriously i even remember explicitly making a mental note to remember that martin is smartin but it fell by the wayside as my emotions (of sadness that jon and martin seemed to be growing further apart) took precedent

i work a non-verbal job just doing mundane tasks and that gives me all the time in the world to think about things like "if they were to have jon and martin reunite in a tearful embrace, how would you convey the physical contact in an audio format? like, whap? soft thud?"

jon enters the lonely and voiceover peter comes in to try and factcheck the ship

i guess it makes sense that peter would try to do the ritual for the lonely all by himself

did he kill peter by asking him to death? or did peter just self-destruct rather than be forced to answer?

the way jon snapped martin out of the loneliness just by making him look at his face... that's powerful. as a lonely person, i know that the most cry-making thing you can realize when you feel alone is that another person is, in fact, there with you

martin went for a walk and now it's thunderstorming. i wonder if he came back as soon as it started raining and now he's standing nearby invisibly as jon reads the intimidating magnus statement. ...I GUESS NOT

i plan to read through the transcripts of all the episodes (as it’s faster than re-listening, though i might selectively re-listen) so that i may better understand some things and answer some questions in this post that i didn’t ultimately resolve. i can’t say i was paying 101% attention all the way through. also april is very far away

#the magnus archives

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danganronpasenariosuwu · 5 years ago

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Some Danganronpa babes confessing to their long-time crushes

Holy shit, I've been very inactive! I'm super-duper sorry! I've been very, very busy, and now that summer is finally here I'll be more active, yay! So, as an apology, I'm going to post my second scenario, and I hope that at least one person actually reads through it! Hopefully, the Danganronpa community isn't dead yet!

Makoto Naegi-

♣Although he had planned for this for weeks, he was still anxiety-filled.

♣This could go two ways, assuming his luck didn't play into it as well. A simple yes or no, it wouldn't hurt him too much, right?

♣Wrong. He wasn't sure what he'd do if you said no, nor if you said yes.

♣He wanted to do it the classic way- confessing to you after school behind a cherry-tree. It had worked for all of those anime characters, why not him?

♣He was observing the tree when you arrived, so his back was to you. He turned around-

♣He tripped, abort mission

♣After a bit of laughing, you helped him back up, and asked him why he wanted to talk, although you thought you knew already.

♣After a bit of stuttering, he managed to get it out.

♣”Y/N, you've been one of my best friends for a long time. No matter what my luck manages to do, you're always there with me to help me up, quite literally! I've liked you for such a long time, and I was wondering if you'd like to go out?” He said, in a very fast pace. You could barely understand him.

♣Whether or not you said yes was up to you, but he hoped that his luck would finally work it's magic.

Byakuya Togami-

♕Honestly, he wasn't too concerned. He figured that his money could help buy you over, since his wealth was clearly one of his best attributes.

♕But, he was too aloof to just ask you in person. And, since he clearly couldn't write his feelings for himself, he asked for help.

♕Specifically, he asked Naegi for help, which in retrospect wasn't the best choice for him.

♕After successfully obtaining the note from Naegi, he sealed it up and signed his name on it.

♕The next day at school, just before class started, he slipped it into your locker, which was convieniently close to his.

♕During class, he was a bit quieter than usual, not bothering to shoo Touko, as his mind was completely focused on you, and how you'd respond.

♕Of course, he hoped you would accept, but he did also realize that he could easily replace you if you said no, though it would pain him a bit.

♕After class was over, you went to your locker to grab your books. A letter fell out.

♕You opened it, and read it through.

♕It read- ‘Dear Y/N. My heart has found its way to you with all my love. I want you and no one else because you mean everything to me. I think we should try and make this work. I hope you know you're the one and only one that I want. You're the perfect friend, and I hope we can and will grow to be more. I could never ask for better than what we already have. I hope you're feeling the same way because my heart is set on you and only you.’

♕You already knew it wasn't in his own words, but you were touched nonetheless. It took you awhile to think about it, but you soon had your answer.

Kyouko Kirigiri-

♢You two had been close for a while, and you had managed to be one of the few lucky people to get to know her.

♢She adored everything about you for quite a while, though it never showed. ♢Since she had recently found out that you both enjoyed the same book series, she figured she could confess through that. ♢You were on the second book, almost done and ready to go onto the third. ♢She had checked it out before you, though, and paid the librarian for the damages she would cause, although small.

♢She flipped through the pages until she found the last one, in which the main character confessed to the love-interest. She underlined the words the character had said, and opened to an empty page which was right after the end. She grabbed a purple ballpoint pen. ♢’Y/N, I’d greatly enjoy it if the two of us could be as close as protagonists in this book. I'm hoping you already know who I am, so you can come and speak with me.’ ♢She closed the book and went back to return it. ♢A few days later, you went to go check out that exact book, and in a week you managed to finish it.

♢However, what caught your attention was the bold underline on the confession. You flipped to the last page and read the note, which was addressed to you, surprisingly.

♢Knowing fully well who it was, you decided to go confront it about her, your answer completely clear to you now.

Hajime Hinata-

☞He was a bit afraid to tell you how he felt. What if you didn't like him back because he was too plain? What if he messed up? ☞So, he asked Chiaki to help him, and she delivered, like any good friend would. ☞After a while of her rambling about a hard dating sim she had heard about, she tried giving him advice. ☞”Well, in dating sims they usually ask them out on a date to their favorite place. Do you know Y/N’s favorite place?”

☞”Their house?” He asked. As if that was a good place to go on a first date. ☞”No, like a restaurant or something.” Chiaki sighed, already getting too tired to deal with this love-retarded boy. ☞”I mean, they like to go to that one park with all the cherry blossom trees..” He thought. ☞After talking to Chiaki for a while, he agreed on asking you out to said park. ☞So, after school one day, he pulled you aside. You looked confused. Your best friend, Mahiru, was waiting for you, since you always walked home together. ☞”Hey, Y/N, I like you a lot, and I was wondering if you'd like to go to the park with me tomorrow?” He silently prayed you said yes. ☞Though it was short, your heart warmed a bit after hearing the confession. You had to give him your decision quick, or Mahiru would get angry, so you thought for a second and spoke.

Nagito Komaeda-

♧He knew you'd say no, it's just that some kids from his class had been pressuring him into telling you. ♧He liked you a lot, and hoped you could be more, but he knew it wouldn't happen because who would love trash like him? ♧Nekomaru had given him a pep talk before he went to tell you, hilariously enough. It mainly consisted of him making Komaeda yell his (and your) name. It embarrassed him even further, his face already tinted red. ♧So, after class one day, he tapped your shoulder in an attempt to get your attention. ♧However, his luck had decided to strike, and once you turned around someone pushed you into his chest, officially making the both of you red faced.

♧He pulled back quickly, and apologized profusely. ♧”Bro, it's okay, it wasn't your fault anyways.” You giggled.

♧”Anyways, there's something I'd like to tell you.” he began, nervously fiddling with his thumbs.

♧”Y/N, I've found myself liking you with a passion that friends shouldn’t have. I know you'll say no, since it's impossible for someone to like trash, but I'd like to ask if you want to go out?” ♧You didn't hesitate to respond, since you've already been thinking about how you'd respond to something like this, and because your second class was about to start. Hopefully you don't put this boy into despair.

Chiaki Nanami-

(Some clarification in this- You're the ultimate game designer in Chiaki’s scenarios) 🎮Sure, Chiaki was good at video games. But there's one genre that's hard for her.

🎮Dating sims. And, because of this, she wasn't too sure about how well she’d be able to confess.

🎮Taking it upon herself to study a bit more, she downloaded a dating sim labeled as ‘Mildly easy’.

🎮After a day or two of attempting to beat it, she stumbled upon a character that eerily resembled you. It's name was (Your name but with some letters swapped). She decided that she had to go that route, since she figured it would help her confess.

🎮It took her about fourteen hours to finish, but the confession at the end made it all worthwhile..

🎮It read, ‘(Your name but with some letters swapped), Ever since I met you I've been endeared to you. From your looks to your personality, I like it all. You're all that I want, and I hope you feel that way too?’ 🎮And, from the way the character responded, Chiaki supposed that the exact same confession should work for you.

🎮So, Chiaki decided to tell you immediately at school tomorrow.

🎮You were walking through the halls until Chiaki walked up to you, looking determined as ever. 🎮She recited the confession, using your name instead of the character’s, and your response was a short, simple giggle. 🎮”Nanami, did you find my dating sim? I knew you'd play it someday!” You smiled, although the girl in front of you was very, very confused. 🎮After having a short laugh, you gave Chiaki your answer, either letting her down immensely or making her day even better.

Shuichi Saihara-

🔎He may or may not have cried while thinking about how you'd respond.

🔎He was obviously too shy to tell you in person, even after Kaede’s inspiring pep-talk. 🔎So, he wrote a letter that conveyed all of his emotions, though it might be a bit long.

🔎It read, ‘Dear Y/N. Every word you confide in me, every wonderful and terrible moment you share with me, melts me inside.

You let yourself be vulnerable with me and trust me beyond my comprehension. I never imagined I would truly find another who I would want to spend so much time with, who could truly touch my life the way you have, even without trying. I look forward to many more special moments together. When I see you, I see my future. This is not just talk. It truly comes from the heart. I am consumed by the desire to be with you, to talk to you and to feel you near me. I want to hold you, talk to you, laugh with you, cry with you. I want to play, walk, dance and just be one with you. I think you could become my everything. I know I want to be everything to you. I love you, Y/N L/N.’ And he signed it at the bottom. 🔎But, last second, he chickened out, leading to Kokichi stealing the letter, reading it and laughing. And Shuichi’s ego deflated even more, if possible. 🔎Kokichi ran up to your locker and put it in for the other boy. 🔎Y’see, Kokichi was a hardcore shipper of you two, and wanted to help- 🔎And so, after class you opened your locker and read it. It made your heartbeat pick up its pace, and your face turn red. 🔎You confronted Shuichi immediately. 🔎If you say yes, he’ll probably cry. If you say no, he’ll probably cry AND become depressed. Good luck. Kokichi Ouma- ♖He isn’t nervous at all. He was SURE you'd like him back. ♖But that's a lie, of course. He was scared. There's a small chance of you liking an asshole like him, so he only had a small amount of certainty. ♖He's not necessarily shy, so he decided to do it in person, since that's the most head-on way to do it. ♖So, like most of the others, he chose to tell you after class. ♖You were walking out of class when you were caught off-guard by him jumping on you. ♖And you fell over, as a result, and you ended up in a weird position in which he was straddling you, and his hands were on your stomach. ♖At this point, there's absolutely NO going back. So, in a state of rushed panic, he suddenly yells out- ♖”Y/N, I LIKE YOU A LOT” ♖And now you're both blushing a deep red. ♖Before you could answer, he gets up and runs away, which surprised you immensely. ♖Now you need to go find a flustered boy and tell him if you like him or not. Good luck with that, and don't die. Kaede Akamatsu- ♬She was DETERMINED. ��Nothing could stop her now. She was literally on her way to your house right now to go and confess to you. ♬At 2 AM. ♬On a Sunday. ♬But she didn't even care. True love was worth it, right? ♬So, when she burst through your window, effectively breaking the glass and ripping the curtains, you were surprised, to say the least. ♬”Kaede what the FUCK are you doing in my house at 2 AM?” ♬”Y/N I’M HERE TO PROCLAIM MY LOVE FOR YOU” ♬On comes a long, and passion-filled confession. It was so early that you weren't thinking when you responded. You either made a decision that would literally keep you bound to her for life, or make her day horrible and make her gross sob to Shuichi. It all depends on how your dreary form at 2 AM responded.

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what-eats-owls · 6 years ago

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Hi! I just saw the news about your book; congratulations!!! That's so amazing!!! I was hoping I could ask you what your querying/publishing process was like? My dream is to get published by a big name kind of publisher like Tor, and it would be wonderful to hear if and how you got an agent, what the process was like, etc. Thank you, and congrats again!! I'll definitely be keeping a lookout for the book

Hey there!

(Sidebar: if anyone’s curious and/or wants to preorder my book, which I, in my unbiased opinion, highly recommend, here’s everything you need to know)

I can tell you about not one, but two querying processes, because they’re both equally important in how I made it this far.

The first querying process was for a book that I still love and would like to resuscitate someday.

Here’s how it went down:

I drafted the manuscript from February - October 2013.

I revised November-January 2014

I began querying literary agents toward the end of Jan 2014 and revised based on the feedback I got

I submitted the manuscript to Pitch Wars in 2014, and then again in 2015, and made it in for 2015, revising September-October, and pitching in November

Around mid-March 2016, I sent the last query for that novel, and focused my undivided attention on another WIP.

And here is a comprehensive list of every mistake I made:

I drafted the manuscript from February - October 2013.

It was a difficult-to-classify genre. Science Fantasy? Future Fantasy? If a bookseller doesn’t know where to put your book, they won’t make a whole new shelf just for you. (Note: this seems to be on the verge of shifting, but I wouldn’t bank on it for your debut.)

It was 152,000 words long. The industry standard for YA SFF (SciFi+Fantasy) is 100,000 words or less. Exceptions are rare and usually extended to established authors who have proven their marketability.

I revised November-January 2014

I had no critique partners. Sure, you can be your own worst critic, but you absolutely need another perspective.

I made no substantial changes. Removing an apostrophe didn’t fix a sloppy plot.

I began querying literary agents toward the end of Jan 2014 and revised based on the feedback I got

I queried without doing much research into industry standards, comp titles, etc. I just googled “how to sell a book” and went to town.

I submitted the manuscript to Pitch Wars in 2014, and then again in 2015, and made it in for 2015, revising September-October, and pitching in November.

Pitch Wars was actually great! I made a lot of friends who I still speak to today. That said, it was a big risk to enter a story that hadn’t made it in the previous year, because most of the mentors had passed on it a year earlier.

Around mid-March 2016, I sent the last query for that novel, and focused my undivided attention on another WIP.

CUE SIRENS, AIRHORNS, SKYWRITERS THAT SPELL OUT “THIS WAS THE SMART CHOICE”

At this point, I had spent two years trying to query a manuscript that wasn’t gonna make it. It was hard, and heartbreaking, because at that point I had poured everything I had into that story, and because it wasn’t enough, I didn’t feel like I was enough. I felt like Sisyphus pushing a big lousy rock up a hill, telling myself it was my fault it kept rolling to the bottom. But I loved that lousy rock! I didn’t want to walk away and find a different rock I could push up a hill, I wanted that rock. It took two years of pushing before I finally realized: it’s a rock. Without me, it’s not going anywhere. And I could come back when I was ready.

(I was also dealing with some major life events at the time - my mother had just been diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer, and my miserable job was in a downward spiral. IT WAS A GREAT MENTAL SPACE ALL AROUND. But my mom is cancer-free now, and I write for a living, so suck it cancer! Suck it, shitty job!)

What I didn’t realize until much later is that when you spend two years pushing a boulder uphill? You get shredded like Kylo Ren.

All those failures, all those mistakes I’d learned from, had made me a better writer. (It also made me a slower drafter because I was waaaay more critical of my own writing, but eh. I could draft slower because the end product needed less revision.)

So here’s how things went down with my second manuscript:

I drafted the manuscript off-and-on from January - July 2015, then exclusively from March - December 2016

I revised January and February 2017 (when I wasn’t, y’know, wallowing in existential horror in the orange mold infestation in the White House)

I was accepted into Pitch Madness, a contest which asked for a VERY short pitch (35 words or less) and the first 250 words of the manuscript; this was in early March 2017.

The response from agents in the contest was positive enough that I sent queries out to the rest of the agents on my priority list

I signed with my fabulous agent in mid-April 2017

My book sold in late June 2017

Said book will be released in just over four months from now. :)

So let’s review:

Manuscript one: eight months drafting, two years querying, no agent, no deal

Manuscript two: ~1.5 year drafting, one month querying, sold two months after signing with my agent

Yeah, I’d say I learned a thing or two.

As far as things go once you’ve sold to a publisher, everyone’s timeline is SUPER different:

Sometimes your editor has minimal notes, but you don’t get them for months.

Sometimes you get a ton of notes even BEFORE you sign your contract.

Sometimes your book may be in pristine shape, but the release schedule is super crowded, so it won’t be out until there’s an opening in a year; or the reverse, your book is super buzzy and gets fast-tracked and has to be ready on a SUPER FAST schedule.

Sometimes your editor moves to a different publisher, and you get assigned to a new editor.

All of these have happened for authors I know. It’s basically Calvinball, there is no norm. (Fun fact: this is also part of why every author yells “DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB FOR THE LOVE OF GOD” but that’s another post.)

One other note for this: if you’re interested in publishing with a mid-to-major publisher, you need an agent. Publishing contracts are notoriously full of potential pitfalls - for example, I can think of at least one major publisher that has language in their default contract that says the contract can be terminated if the author “flauts public convention.” And there are other, less flagrantly terrible parts of the contract that can still screw you over if they aren’t caught, and things that can still get weird outside of contracts that your agent can help you navigate, and basically your agent is there to make sure you’re all getting the best deal possible.

Anyway, that’s my publishing journey thus far! If anyone has any questions, hit up my inbox.

#not draws #my books #querying #publishing #ya fantasy #listen y'all it turns out failure makes you buff as hell #Anonymous

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cbcdiversity · 5 years ago

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Author Spotlight: Aida Salazar

What are your literary influences?

My literary influences come from disparate sources. I studied a wide variety of theory in college and graduate school — everyone from Roland Barthes to Judith Butler to Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga to Bell Hooks to Mikail Baktin to Subcomandante Marcos. I also read poetry voraciously including everyone from Waslowa Simbroska to Lorna Dee Cervantes, Audre Lorde, Rumi, Wole Soyinka, Juan Felipe Herrera. I was marveled by the fiction of Milan Kundera, Arundati Roy, Elena Poniatowska and all of the Latin American magical realists – Asturias, Garcia Marquez, Allende, Esquivel. But also, American writers such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Helena Maria Viramontes, Ana Castillo, Julia Alvarez and Christina Garcia. I was drawn to authors from the margin almost exclusively. In a sense, I created my own canon in this way.

It wasn’t until I became a mother that I truly started reading children’s literature. My children and I found an oasis in our weekly visits to the library. In Oakland, we are fortunate to have a comprehensive Spanish language collection at the Cesar Chavez Library and we often checked out the forty-book limit! However, many of the books were authored by non Latinx writers and were translated into Spanish. While these books served to reinforce the Spanish language in our family, I saw the huge lack of writings from Latinx creators. I wanted to be a part of filling that gap. I wanted for my children to not only see their language reflected in books but their cultures and their sensibilities. That is why I always praise the work of those Latinx authors who forged the way so that new Latinx kidlit authors could have a seat at the table. We stand on the shoulders of giants and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their work. Authors such as Pura Belpre, Gary Soto, Sandra Cisneros, Alma Flor Ada, Pat Mora, Carmen Lomas Garza, Francisco X. Alarcon, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Victor Martinez really set the stage for us to be able to tell our stories to young audiences too.

What was the first book you read where you identified with one of the characters?

As a young child, I didn’t understand that I was missing in the narratives of books that I read. I loved Judy Blume. I loved Shell Silverstein. I loved Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure books. I connected to those books by default, in a similar way that I connected to mass media that also didn’t include me in their blond-haired blue-eyed middle-class, English-only narratives. There was no other option. It wasn’t until I was eighteen and in college that I enrolled in a Latino (we called it that back then) literature course that I saw myself reflected in a book. I remember reading the short story “My Lucy Friend That Smells Like Corn,” in Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and feeling a moment that I can only describe as grace. I realized that I had been missing in almost everything I had read up until that point. My experiences were alive and validated in that story. It was exhilarating.

Did that experience lead you to want to write books for readers with diverse backgrounds?

I was so inspired by reading all of the books in that Latino literature class. It was an awakening not only to the world of Latinx literature but to the possibility that I too could be a writer. I had been writing poetry and stories since I was a young teenager but those writings remained in my notebooks and journals. After reading their work, I began to take myself seriously and began to understand the writing that lived in my heart could be something I could aspire to do as a living someday. However, my awakening is one that should have not taken eighteen years and I want to be part of making sure that doesn’t happen to other children.

Your characters in The Moon Within have interesting intersections. Could you speak to why this was important to build into your book?

I did this intentionally. My children are multi-racial and bi-cultural like two of the characters, Celi and Iván. It is not uncommon to see many different mixed children in the San Francisco Bay Area where we live. I find it beautiful how they navigate multiple cultures – sometimes with a sense of wonder and pride and sometimes with neglect or shame and every feeling in between. It’s complicated and certainly isn’t always seamless given so much discussion over racial and cultural purity that is happening today. Through those characters, I wanted to show this negotiation, how they deal with these fusions. I wanted to show readers what it might look like for someone to celebrate and embrace all of who they are. Similarly, I wanted to show with the gender fluid character, Marco, the intersectionality of his identity as a gender fluid Mexican that happens to be in love with playing bomba (a Afro-Puertorican form of music). It was important to show readers that we could be queer and Mexican, Black Puerto Rican Mexican, and Black and Mexican. The range of identities are part of the beauty of who they are, and serve to strengthen and not weaken them.

Music infuses the whole world of The Moon Within …can you speak a little on that, a little on what role music plays in your own life?

Ironically, I am not a musician though I have a good ear and I love to dance. I am married to a musician and there has not been one day in the eighteen years since we’ve been together when we did not engage in some way with music – listening, playing, singing, dancing or just being in a house filled with instruments and an extraordinary recorded music collection. Our children were naturally born into this environment and took to music right away. I realized that this was a unique experience and that it could be a wonderful world to explore in this book. I wanted to normalize music and the arts as a way of life but also, wanted to inspire readers to seek out the arts as a way to find agency as the children in the book did through traditional music and dance. These are superpowers that unfortunately, with the cutting of the arts for decades now, we don’t have access to as much.

I made a playlist on Spotify that includes all of the styles of music that inspired The Moon Within – bomba, indigenous Mexican music, Caribbean music, and lots of moon related songs in Spanish and in English. It can be found here: https://spoti.fi/2FSnZgM . I hope that you enjoy it!

This Author Spotlight appeared in the April 2019 issue of the CBC Diversity Newsletter. To sign up for our monthly Diversity newsletter click here.

Aida Salazar is a writer, arts advocate, and home-schooling mother who grew up in South East LA. She received an MFA in Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, and her writings have appeared in publications such as the Huffington Post, Women and Performance: Journal of Feminist Theory, and Huizache Magazine. Her short story, By the Light of the Moon, was adapted into a ballet by the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history. Aida lives with her family of artists in a teal house in Oakland, CA.

#Aida Salazar #the moon within #Scholastic #kitlit #CBC Diversity #Diverse Children's Books #author illustrator spotlight

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hoodoo12 · 6 years ago

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Patience head canons

A few things came to me regarding my favorite of @dorklyevil‘s Virtue Ricks: Patience. I combined them with my favorite writing challenge, which is a list of random words you need to use in a sentence. I’m tagging @porkchop-ao3 too because she is stellar at brainstorming.

Be forewarned that these aren’t worth much. Some do have further explanations, and need further exploration. Some are dumb. Some are nothing. But character building is like that . . .

SFW. Patience Rick/reader. Snippets of thoughts, which means not everything is explicitly explained (although if you’re curious, please ask!).

⁂

Veganism “A double cheeseburger, please.”

You did a double-take, which he took in stride.

“You eat meat?”

“Yes. Is that a problem? Are you a vegan?”

“No, no--I thought you were!”

Patience shook his head. “No. I like steak and char sui bao and cedar-grilled salmon. I’m not a vegan. Never have been.”

You filed that away under things that surprised you about him.

Stuttering “Most Ricks,” he explained quietly, “allow their minds to shatter with thought, speeding in a hundred different directions all at the same time. I, however, try to focus and be more deliberate, which is why I rarely stutter or trip over my words. Not that it can’t happen, to be sure, in the heat of a moment . . .”

What does he wear under those robes? You laughed in surprised delight one night, early in your relationship, when you discovered Patience wearing nothing under his yukata. You made a joke about him “being ready for action!” and didn’t think anything more about it because other, more physical things demanded your attention.

It wasn’t until the next time, and the time after that, and again, that you realized he routinely didn’t wear undergarments.

He laughed at your shocked reaction to this revelation.

Scar “Are you ever going to tell me what happened? How you got that scar?”

Patience smiled down at you. “Maybe someday . . .” he teased.

“Come on!” you needled and he laughed, then said,

“You should’ve seen the other guy.”

Your insistent teasing faltered as the meaning of his answer seeped into your comprehension. He sounded like he was joking, what he said was what guys typically said, but you couldn’t help but ask, “You . . . you got it fighting?”

“Finishing a fight,” he corrected.

You tried to wrap your head around this information. This was Patience. He was calm and composed and more likely to wait until the oceans dried up before resorting to physical violence--

He lifted an eyebrow at the expression on your face. “That surprises you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does!”

“Just because I strive to live life slowly doesn’t mean that everyone else is kind and gentle with me, or that I am incapable of defending myself. Or . . .”

He paused and his brow furrowed. His hand went to the very scar you were talking about; the one that when it happened must have split open his forehead and left him blinded by the blood that poured from it. More quietly, more ruefully, he added,

“It doesn’t mean I haven’t made mistakes or gone against my nature. Or that I’ve always been as you see me now.”

It was still difficult for you to fit this information into the puzzle of his life. He saw your continued confusion and gave you a smile. “Is it so odd that occasionally we aren’t ourselves? Wrath’s volatile nature has been tempered somewhat, when he is accompanied by Kindness. No one thinks that is a bad thing. My only fault is that my lapse . . . ended like this.”

He briefly touched his scar again. His smile was melancholy, you realized, because what he called his ‘misstep’ would be considered a grievous mistake, while Wrath’s would be lauded.

Tea “I drink all flavors tea. Black, green, oolong, white, pu-erh. I like kombucha as well. There is a delightful milk oolong that I purchase sometimes, and a cream Earl Grey that is a special treat. I will also occasionally imbibe with what they call herbal teas--”

Boring “--which are not technically teas at all! They should more correctly be called tisanes. Only one plant, Camelia sinesis, produces all the aforementioned flavors of tea; what differs and creates the varying flavors is the processing after the tea leaf is harvested. Black is the most heavily oxidized. White teas are the least, and everything else is in between. To get the highly prized bright green color and intense flavor of matcha, the leaves are shaded so their chorophyll is concentrated, and once collected and dried, they are ground to a powder. Gyokuro are those same leaves, unground, and they are delicious to eat, after the tea they’ve made has been consumed.

“Regarding the herbal tisanes, most any plant can be used, but depending on which part of the plant--leaves versus roots, for example--perhaps an infusion would be a better descriptor for the process. I am partial to a chamomile tisane sweetened with lavender honey before I retire for the evening. Herbals don’t have the caffeine like tea does, and yerba mate is an excellent choice if you wish to avoid the stimulant.

“I have several books on the subject and have taken classes with fellow tea aficionados. I also have a wide variety of loose leaf teas; would you like to try them? I can set up a tasting and explain each one, including the process by which it is made, the correct temperature at which the water should be to brew it correctly . . . I could even set up different types of the same tea--green, for example, and we could explore Japanese versus Chinese, single estate versus something more commercially produced.

“And did you know that some teas are better after their second or third brewing? There is a specific oolong that is best brewed five or six times! There is so much to explore regarding teas and tisanes and I could go on for a very long time about it--”

Feet Patience’s feet weren’t ticklish. He rarely wore shoes, and his soles were calloused and less sensitive than someone who did. Even through the streets of the Citadel, he went barefoot.

“I would rather walk,” he replied with a shrug, when you suggested a portal gun would get the two of you to your destination more quickly. “Portalling is convenient, but then we miss out on so much along the way.”

Fog It made you nervous, so you clutched at his hand and tried to match his long strides. He, sensing your unease, slowed his steps for you. He also shook his hand out of your grip and slipped his arm around your waist. You’d have a hard time explaining your fear, walking in this fog--you’d be loathe to admit it was because you had played too many survival horror video games!--but luckily, he simply understood and didn’t question it or mock you.

Believe “Believe me, he would put my vow to the test ,” Patience chuckled quietly, with a nod to the Wrath, who was simultaneously ranting about something and brushing Kindness’s locks. “‘Ness has some special power, I think.”

Tradition “I may prefer to wear a yukata or kimono, and it may be tradition, but I am not wearing a fundoshi!”

Snow “Look at the snow! It’s really coming down out there.”

“It’s up to your knees out there . . .”

“I guess I should start getting home.”

“Baby, it’s cold outside . . .”

“ . . . you do know those aren’t the lyrics to that song, right?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe just a half a drink more?”

You snorted your laughter at him as you nodded your head.

Adorable He had several thousand hair ties. On very rare occasions he wore one with a tiny bell attached to it, which you found ridiculously adorable.

Pattern “Walk with me?” he asked, so you did.

It was a winding path, with sharp cut backs and turns. It looped around and around on itself; if you closed your eyes and let him lead you by holding your hand, you grew dizzy. Sometimes he made an observation, sometimes you did. At one point it felt right to go up on your tiptoes and walk with your arms stretched outward, like you were balancing on a tightrope.

There were no walls on this path. It was marked by bricks in the ground, and at the very center of it was a small bench. Anyone who didn’t know the path was there would have thought you looked like fools traipsing back and forth, instead of just walking to the bench and sitting down.

But labyrinths were made with twists and turns in a very specific pattern, Patience explained as he sat next to you. They lead into a center, and then back out again. They were a mediation tool, and he hoped you liked it.

Sun You’d walked a labyrinth with him, and let the sun warm you gently while he continued to explain, “Mazes are for getting lost. Labyrinths are for finding.”

Red Patience had several, and of course he had some that he preferred over others, but your favorite yukata that he owned was monochromatic in red, with a very subtle dragon and phoenix motif woven into it.

White His robes may have been different colors, but his belt was always white.

Watch “You never wear a watch.”

“And you always do,” he countered.

Walk Your paces were different—yours brisk and businesslike, his deliberate by habit—but eventually walking together felt natural.

Run “—go! Put your head down and just go!” The deadly serious tone in Patience’s voice scared you more than anything yet tonight, until you looked in his face and saw the same severe, alarming expression there too. It was a look more at home on Wrath’s face, not Patience’s. He grabbed your upper arms in a grip that was so tight it pinched and gave you a push. “Run! Don’t stop, don’t look back—just run!”

Formal The fact that Patience kept a formal, neatly attended miniature Zen garden in his room did not surprise you.

Short Patience was tall and you were short, but the height difference never seemed to be a concern or a hindrance.

Horizon Habitually he was up before the dawn, and habitually you wanted to sleep late. But occasionally, Patience would gather you up—swaddled in blankets and all—and carry you out to the porch steps so you could watch the sun creep above the horizon together.

War Those who knew him bought him books on feudal Japan and war; those who really knew him bought him books on Japanese art.

Sarcasm He didn’t use it often—he thought it was rude and he should be above it—but when Patience resorted to sarcasm, it was worth it.

Speed “Nope, never tried anything—not pot or speed or coke.”

Coffee You never saw him drink it, although it didn’t surprise you he had the talent for making some of the best French press coffee you’d ever had.

Oil A sharp, astringent odor assaulted your nose. It took a second, but when you untangled your fingers from his and raised your hand to your face, the smell wafted more strongly to you.

Patience saw the disgusted and perplexed expression on your face and he immediately got up and left the room to go to the kitchen. Over the sounds of running of water in the sink and hands being scrubbed he called out an apology.

“I’m sorry, dearest. I neglected to wash my hands of the gun oil.”

You had gotten up to follow him, to wash your hands too, but stopped short at his explanation. Gun oil? Gun oil? You knew what it was, but couldn’t make it stick anywhere with anything; those two words and Patience didn’t match. Your heart was suddenly in your throat, and you were chilled out of the blue by a cold spike of fear.

Hands His fingers were long. He kept his nails neatly trimmed, and his fingertips were very lightly calloused. He had a faded scar at the base of the third finger on his left hand. The mark was very small, running perpendicular to his digit. He never told you what it was from, but your suspicion was it made by a ring that had cut him when it had been pushed too far back on his finger. He didn’t wear a ring now, and you weren’t sure how to ask about it. So you didn’t, but you wondered a lot.

Laugh Patience’s laugh was full and deep, and unlike some men, he wasn’t shy about it.

#fanfic #head canon #Patience Rick #Virtue Rick #fic based on awesome art

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see-me-blackhearted · 2 years ago

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00:50am

When I was in fifth grade, I failed in my Reading Comprehension subject. I was never the cream of the crop. I didn't have any awards or recognitions. I was one of those kids who are proof that someone else is better because we weren't. I sucked at English and I didn't care.

In my whole elementary school, I was obese. People thought I was going to be like my half-sister who grew up plus sized. People thought it was wise to buy me XXL clothes with the expectation that as years go by, I would gain more.

But they were wrong. I proved all of them wrong. I became a class valedictorian and now I'm toned. I got into one of the top universities in the country with honors.

All my life, I thought I would live the narrative of what other people made. But a huge part of me felt about deviating from it. It is an instinct. To deviate from the norm. To become something else other than what is expected of me.

I don't want to be like anyone else. Because I know I'm different in my own way. And I think that's the most beautiful about me. That I get to decide my own narrative and I'm not afraid.

I'm not afraid of what I want to become and what I can become. Because I trust myself. I trust what I want. I don't need to deny myself of anything because I know the value of things. I know how to value myself.

I have learned to value myself because of what I have lost.

And I'm writing this because I don't need anyone else telling me of what kind of a woman I becoming to be with mere assumptions of partial situations. I am the sum of my parts. And my parts are made up of various realities I had to conquer.

I am a survivor.

And despite being judged and belittled upon, I have loved myself even stronger than before. More reason of me not betraying myself for love, for wealth, for fame, or for any form of greed.

I love myself. Despite of the times that I doubt myself. I still love that part of me. It humbles me. It makes me assess everything and then change.

Because I believe in the social transformation of each individual. People can change. People can choose not to stay the same.

And this belief is what leads me to think that despite the good and bad days I encounter, I am still growing in my own way. There is always something that I lack. I will always be not good enough in someone's eyes.

But I can always choose to be enough in my own.

No more hiding.

No more denying of what I want in life.

The future is never certain. And we choose what to do with the moment we have in present. And that's what I'm doing.

I am choosing to live in the moments I have right now.

I hope someday someone can appreciate that, too.

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finding--cat · 7 years ago

Photo

I really can’t release this to the world without paying homage to a few people who are absolutely crucial to the reason I’m able to share The Longest Sky today.

To Marisa/@marisa-writes for being my writer-friend for 8 full years, for talking me through the trials and tribulations of writing and sharing, and for always believing in me;

To Nadia/@justnadia for reading an earlier draft and lifting my spirits about this piece, for talking me through my reservations, and for sending me photos and quotes that reminded her of the story;

To Rachel/@ramblingrachell for becoming my instant friend and volunteering so heartily to look over this huge chunk of work, for being so enthusiastic and for warming my heart every time we speak;

To Kari/@justcloseyoureyesandseee who offered me, by far, the most comprehensive constructive criticism I’ve ever received and who continues to blow me away with her thoughtfulness and intelligence;

And to Steph/@ilivemydaydreamsinmusik, in small part for teaching me weed vocabulary and fixing all my little mistakes, and in much larger part for her unending support: the encouraging cartoons reminding me to write, the music that helped to inspire the story, offering to read it again, and her general aura of coolness and kickass-ness that I aspire to embody in my own writing someday--

Thank you all so much. I hope you know how much you’ve done for me and how grateful I am to have had you be a part of this. I dedicate this to all five of you.

There are so many more of you who spoke words of encouragement to me and/or who expressed interest in what I was working on, and I am forever grateful to you for that. I hope you enjoy the product of your kindness to me!

Part I: The List

I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.

Emily Brontë, from ‘Wuthering Heights’

1.1

No amount of fidgeting with the lever or pushing at the ledge with her hands will open the window. It’s only a little opening; a dated semicircular pane no bigger than the surface of her nightstand, but it’s the only way to let in fresh air. And it won’t budge.

“Just use the ceiling fan for air circulation,” Rosen suggests from the doorway. She’s armed with a box of childhood personal items curated by Mom. Ari carried the box in her second suitcase – it put her over the weight limit for the flight as it housed a stack of books from Rosen’s bookshelf, two high school yearbooks, and Polaroid pictures that once hung on a laundry line across Rosen’s bedroom wall arranged into an album. Rosen balances the heavy box on one raised knee as she wipes her sweaty brow and pushes a damp strand of chestnut hair from her face. “That’s what Jacks and I do.”

“I want to open the window,” says Ari, leaning her body weight against the pane without success. “I won’t be able to sleep without it.”

Rosen raises a brow. “Air outside’s no cooler than the air in here.”

August in West Virginia is muggy and damp, but the air conditioning in the house is on the fritz – has been since June, according to Jackson – and Ari doesn’t think she can sleep without fresh air, no matter the humidity. It would be like sleeping in a coffin. Suffocating in a stale box.

It took her an hour in the morning to fix the broken blinds in order to let the light in. She has to let the air in, too.

Rosen sighs. “We can look at it tomorrow. Jackson’s dad repainted the trim outdoors when we moved in; window’s probably painted shut now.”

Ari tries one more time to shift the pane. Without success, she slumps against the wall.

Rosen pauses, still bracing the box on her knee as she peers into the room. “When are you gonna unpack?”

Perhaps she’s confused by the suitcase on the floor that doesn’t fit in the closet or under the tiny twin bed. But the luggage is empty, all the clothes stored snugly into a small chest of drawers and personal products tucked into the drawers of the nightstand.

Ari looks up. “I already did.”

“Oh.” Rosen raises her brows. “I just thought…”

“What?”

She shrugs. “I thought you’d bring your photos, like mine. Or your textbooks – Mom says you’re trying to get into U of R for your master’s. Hell, I even thought you’d bring that ratty old lamb you used to sleep with.”

Ari blinks. For some reason, it surprises her that Mom didn’t tell Rosen about the time Ari threw Lamby away like a candy bar wrapper. It was last winter, right after Louis left and Ari moved back home to Massapequa. Mom cried when she went to take out the garbage and saw Lamby sitting amongst the refuse, his buttoned eyes staring up at her beneath a banana peel and coffee grinds.

“No,” Ari says. Her voice takes on a high and unnatural pitch in her attempt to sound sympathetic, but she has to try. Dr. Sodhi made her see how it frightened her loved ones when she acted too blasé. “I have everything I need.”

Rosen nods, though her lips purse together in a tight smile. “Okay. Just looks a little bland, that’s all.”

It does look bland, Ari notes. The room is cozy, only big enough to house a bed, a dresser, and a nightstand. The wall above the bed features a framed landscape photo of Sutton Lake, West Virginia, snapped in 1987 according to the print. All in all, it’s not unlike a motel room. And a motel room is not unlike Ari: impersonal and vacant, nightstand varnish peeling and wallpaper fading.

Rosen takes her box down the hallway and wishes Ari goodnight – Ari’s first of many in Tillson City, West Virginia. She’s called her parents to let them know she arrived safely. She’s made her bed with linens Rosen brought in, fresh from the laundry. She’s unpacked her scant few belongings.

This is it. The start of something new in a different state. No parents, no friends, no former flames, no therapists. Just Ari. It’s been Just Ari for a while, but now there are no pretences. Nobody to burden or inconvenience. Nobody to cast her sad smiles or give her pity hugs.

Except for Rosen.

With a gulp of stale air, Ari smoothes her palm over her shorts, feeling the list crinkle in her pocket.

Come one in the morning, Ari’s still not asleep. She tosses and turns on the unfamiliar mattress, a little bit too soft for her liking, with a sheen of sweat dusted across her upper lip. The sweltering temperature of the room isn’t lessened at all by the ceiling fan, which rocks back and forth as it spins and squeaks like it’s on its last legs.

She needs air. She needs it to breathe.

Ari cringes when the hardwood creaks on her way down the stairs, freezing in place in fear of waking Rosen and Jackson. After several seconds, when no sign of movement or change in breath comes from their bedroom down the hall, Ari steels herself and continues down the stairs in a flurry, with stealthy, cat-like steps.

She hasn’t had a chance yet to peer in the garage, though Jackson proudly told her that’s where he intends to store his Harley once he gets his license. She uses the light of her phone to guide her out the front door and across the driveway to the garage. The garage door is new and slides up easily with a quick twist of the latch, though the rest of the structure is so old it seems tilted to its side.

Her light comes in handy again while searching the garage. Rosen and Jackson use it for storage rather than parking space, as is apparent by the couch and dining room table covered in a tarp, all its chairs hanging upside down from the table’s surface. They dragged a U-Haul behind their little Honda from New York full of furniture from their apartment, but the Hawleys had even more to give when they arrived and the garage is where most of it ended up.

Ari climbs over a microwave stand and nearly knocks a floor lamp to the ground, but she makes it to the ladder leaning up against the wall. With a great deal of struggle but very little noise, Ari drags the full ladder out of the garage and onto the driveway. Then she stands it on its feet, rung by rung, and leans it against the side of the house.

She shines the light of her cell phone toward the second storey window. It’s a long way up to the sky, and probably not advised to ascend to the second floor in total darkness. But Ari has to feel the fresh air sweep past her in order to sleep. And what’s more, she can do this.

After steadying the ladder against the house and testing its sturdiness, Ari begins to climb. On the third rung, her foot slips – just for a moment – but it’s enough to encourage her to tuck her phone back into the drawstring of her pajama shorts, using only the light of the moon to guide her.

It’s so dark here. Even on Long Island, city lights brighten the streets at night, casting the sky grey instead of black. In the middle of West Virginia, Ari can look up to the sky and see stars.

Stars, motherfucker, she thinks triumphantly to herself, which nearly causes another ladder accident. With regained footing, she blinks to adjust her eyes to the darkness and continues to climb.

Mom and Dad registered Ari and Rosen for ballet classes when they were young. The instructor staged five-year-old Rosen front row, centre for the final performance, and Rosen pirouetted to perfection even with a wicker basket prop in her hands. Meanwhile, seven-year-old Ari was nestled somewhere on the outskirts of the back row, fumbling with the basket caught on her tutu and ultimately spinning herself into a heap on the floor. There was no ballet class for Ari the next year.

Needless to say, Ari’s lack of balance was never quite rectified, and standing on the tenth rung of a ladder in the darkest part of the night while using her cell phone as a flashlight with one hand and her other hand digging in her pajama pocket for an Exact-o knife puts her well outside the boundaries of her comfort zone.

Then again, Dr. Sodhi suggested more than once that venturing outside her comfort zone could offer opportunity and renewal. That’s what the temporary move to Tillson City is about, after all – separation from the comfort zone. At least, that’s what it means to Ari – to Rosen, it means a helping hand to assist with wedding preparations.

Using the Exact-o knife, Ari applies pressure to the trim, cutting around the ledge where it’s been painted over. The navy-coloured trim doesn’t help with visibility, and she may accidentally cause a few scratches and scrapes during the process, but she figures neither Rosen nor Jackson is likely to haul themselves up here anytime soon to get a close look at the damage.

Her knees shake only once, and she retracts the knife before slowly bending down to grab hold of the ladder to steady her balance. Whoever needed ballet?

With the window trim carved to her liking, Ari slides the blade of the knife underneath the bottom of the window and tries to pry it open using leverage. She’s able to wiggle it around, and with a small crack, she feels it budge. Once she slowly maneuvers the window toward her, she can slide a finger underneath and pull it open the rest of the way, though not without nearly knocking herself in the face first.

And that’s it. She did it.

She climbs down the ladder with more enthusiasm than she had when climbing up. She skips the last rung and hops to the ground, blowing upward to get the hair out of her eyes as she fixes her hands on her hips and stares up at progress. An open window: a doorway to the summer breeze and the song of the birds.

She did that.

Back in her new bedroom, Ari picks up her denim shorts, folded carefully across the top of the dresser, and digs into the front pocket. She removes a crumped piece of paper and unfolds it slowly, wary of tearing the edges. The paper flattens when it’s pressed against the wall, though its creases have been fixtures for weeks now. She uses Scotch tape to adhere it above the light switch. A central location, one she’ll be forced to look at every day.

Mom and Dad knew about the list. They thought it was advice from Dr. Sodhi that Ari was taking to heart.

But it’s not. It’s Ari’s idea. All the ideas on the list are hers. And she is the one who abides by it diligently, her own code to living, because if she doesn’t – if she strays from that self-imposed path – she could go back to Before.

Tillson City is not the place for Before. Tillson City is not the place for After, either. No, Tillson City is very specifically a place for Now.

In the morning, Ari wakes to the sun shining through the small window. The room is still hot, but at least it’s not a stale, muggy heat. She could bask in it for hours if she wanted to. But after a few blinks when her vision comes into focus, she eyes the list taped to the wall.

And she gets up.

She joins Rosen in the kitchen while throwing her uncombed hair into a ponytail, the laces of her gym shoes untied. As Rosen whirls around with a smile, Ari takes a seat at the kitchen table and leans over to take care of her shoes.

“How many eggs? Two or three?” Rosen asks. “Jacks always asks for bacon and eggs on Sundays. Pancakes are on Saturdays – sorry, you missed that one yesterday.”

“Oh.” Ari straightens. “I was just going to eat something small. Maybe a banana. I’m thinking of exploring the area a bit.”

“A banana? What are you, a monkey? That’s not enough,” Rosen counters.

Ari tries to hide her smile. “You sound like Grandma.”

“Well, she’s right. At least have one pancake.”

Ari sighs.

“And I was gonna take you around today. I’ll show you all the local digs – well, the ones that matter, anyway – and we can check out a couple of vendors for the wedding. If we have time, maybe we can go to Charleston so I can stock up the freezer.”

“Charleston? Isn’t that an hour away?”

Rosen shrugs. “Forty minutes or so. Drive’s not too bad.”

“You drive forty minutes to do your grocery shopping? There’s nowhere close by?”

“There’s the Piggly Wiggly in town, but it’s small. Kroger’s in Charleston’s much better, I think. Don’t tell Jacks, though; he’s sensitive about that kind of stuff. Wants to inject into the Tillson City economy as much as we can. But I feel like I’ve been pretty generous to the local economy in planning the wedding so far, so I don’t mind taking my business elsewhere once in a while.” Rosen finishes whisking the eggs and turns back to the stove, where a pan sizzles with meat and grease. Over her shoulder, she asks, “How many strips of bacon did you say you wanted?”

“None,” Ari replies. More hesitantly, she adds, “I don’t eat meat anymore.”

If there was a record player in the room, now would be when the music came to a grinding halt. Rosen stops stirring and freezes, only her pupils moving as they dart toward Ari. “You don’t eat meat anymore? Like, all meat?”

“All meat.”

From Rosen’s throat bursts a laugh Ari’s never heard from her before: it’s short, harsh, guttural. “Since when?”

“Since three months ago.”

“What?”

A beat passes, and Ari calmly repeats, “Since three months ago.”

“So, like… not for that long.”

Ari shrugs. “I guess not.”

“So…” Rosen struggles to reason, “it’s not like it’s a long term thing.”

“I plan for it to be,” Ari says slowly, “if it goes well. So far, I like how I feel. I’d prefer not to eat meat.”

Once chatting eagerly about her plans for the day, Rosen now regards Ari across the kitchen with an arched brow of skepticism. Then she returns her gaze to the stove, using tongs to flip strips of bacon in the pan, as she mutters, “You didn’t tell us you didn’t eat meat.”

Jackson enters the kitchen in a pair of pajama pants and a rumpled white t-shirt, stopping mid-yawn to observe the exchange between the sisters. His dark hair sticks up in almost every direction, curling well past his ears and down the back of his neck, and Ari half expects Rosen to go after him again about cutting his hair to a reasonable length for the wedding.

But she doesn’t – her stare is fixed on Ari.

“Sorry.” Ari avoids Jackson’s gaze as she finishes tying the knot on her shoe and lets it fall from the chair to the floor. “I didn’t think it would come up too often. I thought I’d mostly be making my own food.”

“You thought I’d make meals for me and Jacks, but not think about you?” Rosen’s face scrunches in disbelief.

“No, I just… you don’t cook,” Ari admits. Rosen exhales sharply, blinking as if she misheard, and Ari quickly adds, “At least as far as I remember. I thought I’d be doing my own thing most of the time.”

“Uh… okay.” Clearly upset, Rosen gestures to the bacon and eggs heating on the stove. “You’re right, I guess I don’t cook.”

“I didn’t know,” Ari says with a shrug. Her last memory of Rosen attempting to cook in their family home in Long Island, she burned the rice, confused hoisin with soy sauce, and severely undercooked the chicken. It was a miserable stir-fry to swallow and resulted in the Pate family fighting each other for access to the house’s two bathrooms to be sick with food poisoning throughout the night. After that, Rosen declared she was no good at cooking and would rather spend her time outside of the kitchen. “If you’re cooking more now, that’s great.”

“Well, if you won’t eat what I cook, then I guess I don’t cook so much anymore.” Rosen waves a hand through the air.

“I don’t mean for you to have to change anything,” Ari stresses with a huff. “Eat what you want. I’ll fend for myself.”

“We have a tiny enough kitchen as it is without three of us trying to make two separate meals.”

“I’ll wait until you’re done, obviously,” Ari fires back. “I’m not doing this to inconvenience you, Rosen, I—”

“It’s fine.” Jackson inserts himself into the discussion with a nod to Ari. He has a hand on Rosen’s forearm before she can raise it to point a finger. “Rosie. Hey. It’ll be fine, all right? We can all eat together; Ari just won’t eat the meat. We can cook everything separate. Not a big deal.”

Rosen fixes her stare on Ari for another couple of seconds before Jackson’s touch reminds her he’s there. She glances at him and dons a soft smile of gratitude. “Fine. Not a big deal.” Before she returns to the eggs and bacon, she mumbles under her breath with arched brows, “Just wish you’d told us, that’s all.”

Dear Ms. Ariana Pate, We regret to inform you that we are not able to offer you admission to the Master’s program in Biology at the University of Rochester. Each year, we receive a large number of applications for this program from highly qualified candidates. Based on a composite of information including your academic performance record, comments from referees, relevant professional activities, and proposed research statements, your application, considered as a whole, was not as strong as others we received. Though we regret delivering you an unfavorable response, we wish you—

“I said, do you want me to take you around the Hawley house? Ari!”

“What? Whoa!” Ari looks up from her phone to a churning flip in her stomach as Rosen takes a quick turn around the winding West Virginia road. She grabs onto the handle, abandoning the phone in her lap.

“It’s beautiful there – they’ve got a wraparound porch with white pillars, wooden boxes of impatiens on window ledges and everything. True Southern charm. We’re actually thinking of having the rehearsal dinner there. Well, we’re about ninety percent certain, it just seems a bit much to have the wedding reception next door in the barn, too.”

Ari gulps, her head rushing as the car whips around another curve. “What?”

“Jackson,” Rosen declares, ripping her eyes from the road to spare Ari a harsh look. “His family home here in Tillson City. I said: do you want to go?”

Ari shuts her eyes. The world keeps spinning. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Do you want to see it or not?”

“Uh… if you want me to, I guess.”

At her sister’s sigh of annoyance, Ari knows Rosen’s lost her patience with her. Ari’s been distant all day, ever since that final email came in from U of R. It was her last hope – and a long shot, at that – but the deflation she feels is proof that somewhere within her, perhaps just beneath her skin and ready to escape, there still existed some form of hope. Now that it’s gone, the numbness remains.

Everyone promised Ari the lush, rolling hills of West Virginia were the most breathtaking sight her eyes would ever behold. Breathe in the clean air, they said. Open your eyes to nature, they said. You’ll feel your mind and body heal instantly. Old gaping wounds will stitch back together. Aches and pains will dissolve like morning dew in the sun. You’ll stand taller. Raise your chin higher. Feel like a real, human person again. That’s what they said.

Well, they were fucking wrong. As Ari hunches over in her seat and bile rises in her throat, she bitterly thinks that no one bothered to mention the sharp, winding roads and the constant uphill-downhill travel. Rosen’s pointed out the quaint details of Tillson City as they’ve passed by during the day: a charming red farmhouse over here, hunter green woodlands over there, yellow deer crossing signs because they graze everywhere in the winter – but Ari couldn’t follow her gestures, and now she’s on the precipice of very real vomit spilling from her throat all over Rosen’s beige, ancient Honda she lovingly calls Old Man Earl.

“You don’t have an opinion?” says Rosen, unimpressed. “If you want to stop hanging out with me so badly, might as well just say it.”

After a full day of tagging along on Rosen’s errands, passively accompanying her to pick up Jackson’s blazers from the dry cleaner’s and meet a woman from Craigslist one county over to purchase secondhand lanterns to create do-it-yourself centerpieces for the wedding, Ari feels the kind of heaviness that only follows unproductivity; an exhaustion born from listlessness. The kind that sinks into her bones and drags her to the ground.

Staring straight ahead and not sparing her sister a glance, Ari calmly replies, “I’m just tired. But if you want to go to Jackson’s parents’ place, that’s fine.”

“I don’t need to,” Rosen stresses, “I just wanted to show it to you. But if you don’t want to—”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Ari sighs, long and deep. “Let’s go. I want to see it.”

Her enthusiasm is lackluster at best, but Ari thinks she’s being conciliatory until she catches Rosen’s expression out of the corner of her eye: solemn, pained.

“Sorry,” Ari offers. The word comes out in monotone even though she drummed up all the sympathy she had.

“You know, it wasn’t Mom or Dad who suggested you come out here to stay with me and Jacks until the wedding,” Rosen says.

“I know.”

“It was me.”

Eyes fixed on the flat stretch of road ahead, Ari nods.

“When Mom called me after your accident, I was so scared. She said you were fine, probably wouldn’t even need to stay in the hospital overnight, but I couldn’t stop sobbing. Jacks had to come in and take over the call for me; I couldn’t even talk. I knew things had been bad for a while, Ari, but that night it finally hit me… I realized I could lose you.”

The road whips by, fields of yellow and green. “Rosen…”

“I know we haven’t been close lately. Not since I met Jackson and you moved in with Lou and everything just got… busy. And I didn’t realize that I missed you until that night – until the night I learned I could have lost you forever. So I called Mom first thing the next morning and I told her, when Ari’s ready, I want her to come here. I want her to get away from all that shit in the city and all the people who fucked her over and just… start over. Reset. Tillson City’s not much, but it’s a good place for that.”

Running her tongue along her front teeth, Ari nods.

“It wasn’t just about you,” Rosen’s quick to add. “I wish I could say it was. I wish I could be that selfless, but I’m not. It was about me, too. I wanted you here with me. I wanted to get to know you again. I wanted to be close with you again, like when we were kids. When we had each other’s backs and we told each other everything.” As the car slows in front of a long driveway lined with a canopy of trees, Rosen turns on her blinker and pulls off to the side of the road. She glances at Ari. “I know you’ve been lonely. And, I mean, I’m getting used to a new town, to a new way of life… it’s nice to have someone familiar with me who knows where I’m from. That’s why I’m glad you’re here.” She shrugs, offering a soft smile as she pushes her side bangs behind her ear. “I think we’re supposed to be together right now. I think we need to help each other.”

Mustering a small grin, Ari reaches across the console to pat Rosen’s hand. “Okay,” she agrees. “We can try.”

Rosen’s eyes brighten, but she’s careful not to display too much emotion. She pokes her thumb in the direction of the driveway and says, “This is the Hawley place.”

Ari leans forward to examine the surroundings, though the house is covered by such thick forest it’s impossible to see beyond a bit of evergreen trim.

Sitting back in her seat, she says, “Looks pretty impressive. Let’s check it out.”

The Tillson City economy isn’t exactly booming. Originally a coal mining town, the population spiked following the first World War and then slowly trickled down beginning in the eighties as the country relied increasingly on alternate fuel sources. These days, a good portion of its residents – Jackson included – work outside of town.

“New businesses are pretty rare,” Rosen tells Ari as they wander downtown on a Wednesday morning, “and if one opens, it usually closes shop within six months.”

That’s why, she explains, she wants to scope out the newly established Kalene’s Garden, across the street from a business called Sherman’s that Rosen claims is Jackson’s friends’ ‘favourite piss-stained hole-in-the-wall dive bar.’

There are plenty of florists in Charleston, forty-five minutes down the road in Kanawha County, but Jackson wants the wedding arrangements to be local, both to benefit the rural economy and to eliminate stress and unpredictability. Kalene’s Garden, according to Rosen, opened only last year after the owner’s husband was dishonourably discharged from the U.S. army and fled the state, leaving her with two young kids and a mortgage.

“I figure she’ll need our money,” Rosen tells Ari with a smile, “so she’ll give me whatever I want for the wedding.”

A little bell jingles overhead as they enter the shop. If possible, it’s even more humid inside than out, but Rosen is the only one who complains. Ari’s immediately taken by the hanging plants in every corner, long vines spilling out from pots and tangling underneath, bright bouquets of lilies and bluebells crowding the counters, and the line of small potted trees leading to what Ari believes to be a greenhouse. In the air is a scent so fresh and sweet that Ari could bottle it. In fact, she finds the whole place charming and serene, even more so because they’re the shop’s only customers.

They’re directed to a small, cluttered office off to the side, where a petite woman in rounded glasses named Sherry presents them with a binder of wedding fodder. Rosen prattles off the details that Ari’s heard over group text or phone or in person a thousand times – the wedding is December sixteenth, to be held in Jackson’s family church, and the bridesmaids are wearing taupe – and she’s looking for the perfect wintry centerpieces to compliment her DIY lanterns and the perfect bridal bouquet, frosty yet soft.

When they get stuck on whether white roses are too bridal or not bridal enough is when they lose Ari completely. She removes herself from the room without either woman batting an eyelash in her direction. Then she roams the shop by herself and finds a small table of succulents that captures her attention longer than any bridal discussion ever could.

Tiny little succulents, unassuming shadows in the background, will outlive all of their floral counterparts. In the right soil, their roots flourish, widening and stretching to absorb the most amount of water in a flood. In a drought, the water storage in their roots is what helps them survive. Ari likes that about them, these smart little plants. They’re planners who take care of themselves, always stockpiled in the event of a waterless apocalypse. Dr. Sodhi kept one in her office, and Ari often stared at it when she went in there and was expected to speak. No matter how she fluctuated up and down, Dr. Sodhi’s succulent was always the same.

“Lookin’ for a friend?”

Ari gasps at the sudden voice, spinning around to face its owner. A woman in a sleeveless white blouse waters a ficus near the cash register. Her lips curl into a small smile, her tight black curls framing high cheekbones.

“Um… my sister’s in the office talking to Sherry about wedding bouquets,” Ari explains.

“What about you?”

“Just browsing.”

“Lookin’ for a friend?” the woman repeats.

Ari blinks. Does she really look that lost and lonely? Her eyes dart around the room before returning to the woman’s sharp face, and she replies tentatively, “Are you… offering?”

The woman laughs heartily, without mocking or scorn. She sets down her watering can and joins Ari at the circular table. “They are friends to us, you know,” she says, grazing her index finger across the top of thick succulent leaves. “Plants of all kinds, really, but succulents especially – they’re so versatile, so adaptable. People can rely on them. They fill a room with company even if a person lives alone.”

“Yeah,” Ari murmurs. Her eyes follow the woman’s long, nimble fingers as she spreads tiny pebbles in the soil surrounding the succulents. “So, um… how many friends do you have?”

The woman chuckles again, deep and warm in her throat. “Well, this is my shop,” she answers, “so I s’pose you could say I’m never without.”

While Rosen leaves the shop that day armed with several printouts and magazines to flip through, Ari pays $3.99 in change for a mini foxtail agave, leaves a brilliant green and opening like a flower. When she gets home, she finds it a nice, heated spot on her window ledge where it can bask in the humidity right under the sun. She spends a long time watching it there. It doesn’t grow, it doesn’t change, it doesn’t move. Maybe it feels that it’s stuck with her for good.

Either way, Ari gives it a couple of tablespoons of water to drink, gently touches its leaves, and mentally ticks off a box on the list above her light switch: Take care of a plant.

A few days later, Rosen is abuzz with excitement because her wedding dress, shipped from Manhattan, is ready for its first fitting with a seamstress in Charleston. When Ari agrees to accompany her as Maid of Honour, Rosen decides they should make a day of it. She packs water bottles in the cup holders of Old Man Earl and loads snacks in her purse as if they’re on a true cross-country voyage instead of spending less time in the car than Ari has spent travelling six blocks in Midtown during rush hour.

But it’s nice that Rosen’s excited about it, and truthfully, Ari doesn’t have anything else to do. They cross a wide bridge to enter the city, and as Ari looks out the window and stares down to the water below, she feels it’s almost like re-entering New York. Almost.

She hasn’t lived in Tillson City for much more than a week, but already she feels overwhelmed by the amount of people outdoors and the number of cars on the road in Charleston. It’s a glamorous riverfront metropolis in comparison to the arid and mountainous Tillson City. It has a movie theatre and a mall and food trucks and an actual skyline – albeit a pathetic one. Adorable, not pathetic, Ari corrects herself.

The sisters wander through the Historic District, where Rosen points out the white-pillared colonial homes that seem to be the inspiration for the Hawley family home back in Tillson City. According to Rosen, she and Jackson aspire to build the same kind of home –“not until after we’ve had two kids, though, or at least not until I’m pregnant with our second”– and they ogle at the beauty of a downtown core embedded in an awning of leafy trees. Ari extends their walk several blocks, despite Rosen’s complaints, in order to log a full ten thousand steps for the day.

They drive to the only mall in town – in fact, the only mall Rosen knows of – and Ari picks out a new pair of yoga pants that are stretchy and cheap, but good enough to get the job done. Rosen finds two cushion covers in JC Penney that perfectly complement the living room set, so they both leave the mall in good spirits.

It’s as they sit on a patio along the waterfront, Ari with an ice water and Rosen with a white wine spritzer, that their pleasant outing turns sour. Ari is content to people-watch along the boardwalk, amused by the amount of people clothed in apparel from West Virginia University – “Take Me Home” and “Forever a Mountaineer” splashed across their chests and the WVU logo embroidered on their ball caps – but Rosen’s got wedding fever and has a hankering to discuss the design for the invitations.

“I don’t really get why wedding invitations are such a huge thing when I could just send out a mass email to all my guests and have their replies instantly,” Rosen muses, scrolling through samples on her phone. “But whatever, they’re pretty.”

“So if the designer gives you his final copy by Thursday and the invitations are printed by Labour Day weekend, when will you send them out?”

“Two months before the wedding,” Rosen answers robotically, having planned these details down to the minutiae. “The deadline to RSVP is two weeks from the wedding date to get the final numbers to the caterers. They’re upset that we’re pushing it that close, actually, since the kitchen at Jacks’ parents’ place is limited and they need to know in advance if they need to rent extra prep space.”

“Why not ask everyone to email you their reply rather than send it back through snail mail?”

“Well, Grandma doesn’t use email,” Rosen points out.

Ari rolls her eyes. “Pretty sure Mom and Dad would send along her RSVP.”

“This is the way wedding invitations are done.”

“Yeah, but people set up wedding websites these days to cut printing costs on RSVP cards and postage. Receiving replies by email would make it so much more efficient and environmentally friendly—”

“The invites are already pretty set in stone,” Rosen cuts her off, adding matter-of-factly, “so.”

Ari shrugs, leaning back in her seat. “All right.”

Rosen takes Ari’s recoil as invitation to lean forward, ensuring the space between them isn’t compromised by an inch. “What about my bachelorette?” she asks with a sly grin.

Eyes on a middle-aged woman lovingly feeding her partner a corn dog with all the high cholesterol fixings, Ari takes a large swig of water and then deigns Rosen a glance. “What about it?”

“What have you planned?”

“I thought it was a secret for the bride.”

“Yeah, but you eventually have to let me know the date, and what I should wear, and if I need to bring pajamas and a toothbrush…”

“Oh.” Ari takes another sip of water, knowing full well that her prolonged silence drives Rosen up the wall. “I’ll let you know, then. So far I’ve only seen that one bar in Tillson City – Sherman’s, I think? – so I don’t think it’ll be much of a surprise.”

Rosen’s spine stiffens as she straightens in her chair, brows turning downward. “Tillson City? My bachelorette is in Manhattan.”

“What?”

“I told you in April that when you plan my bachelorette, plan it in Manhattan.”

“But I thought the bachelorette party took place a week before the wedding.”

“It does.”

“And I thought, with you living here and all the guests travelling here, it might be less stressful to just… have it here.” Ari finishes slowly, the last few words quiet as the creases in Rosen’s forehead plateau into valleys.

“But all my friends are in New York…” Rosen trails.

“You said you had friends here.”

“Those are Jackson’s friends.”

“You said they were your friends, too.”

“Ari!” cries Rosen, her knee jerking into the table and causing two elderly women nearby to look over in shock. “Obviously I want the rest of my bridal party to be at my bachelorette, and the rest of my bridesmaids live in the city. And I want to go to a strip club, like I told you, and I want to do that bachelorette bingo game I sent you that just can’t do in a small town where everybody knows everybody.”

“What game?”

She huffs. “I sent it to you. It’s from Pinterest.”

“Oh.” Ari sips on her water even though her thirst is thoroughly quenched. “I haven’t had the time to look at it yet.”

“You haven’t had time.” Rosen repeats this in monotone, her voice dangerously low.

“No.”

Rosen smacks her lips together. “But you don’t do anything. How can you run out of time when literally nothing is on your schedule?”

Ari pales, but quickly gulps down the sting. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Nobody would understand! That makes no sense. Honestly, Ari, I gave you this responsibility, like, three months ago, and so far you haven’t done a single thing, which is like…”

Rosen trails off, too frustrated to continue. Ari shouldn’t prompt her, but she can’t help it. “What? It’s like what?”

When Rosen’s eyes lock with hers, they’re hardened and sad. “Do you even want to be a part of my wedding?”

The stare of the elderly ladies one table over fix on her again. Under the spotlight, all Ari can do is nibble on her lower lip.

“Everybody cares about you,” Rosen says, softer now. “I can’t have a conversation with Mom or Grandma without you coming up, even when it’s about my wedding. It’s all Ari’s acting like this or Ari’s off Zoloft again and we all brainstorm ways to help you. God, I even asked you to move out here with me! But you have to do something sometime, Ari. Sitting around waiting for something to happen to you – that’s stupid. Get a job, go on a date, plan my bachelorette! Whether it’s for yourself or for someone else, just do something.”

Ari doesn’t reply.

Dr. Sodhi once told her that in situations where she feels so misunderstood she doesn’t know where to begin, it’s sometimes best to let the yeller do the yelling and not say anything at all.

Ari’s alarm sounds at precisely 7:30 a.m. She spends five minutes listening to the gentle rustling in the house: footsteps up and down the stairs, the coffee grinder buzzing in the kitchen.

Must go on a hike. Hiking today. Today is about hiking.

Focused repeats of the day’s purpose help her throw off the covers and sit up. It’s easier to get out of bed this way. It’s easier than it used to be, anyway. Ari squeezes her eyes shut to forget the days she’d get out of bed at four in the afternoon, showering in just enough time before Louis got home to spare herself his groaning about how she’d done nothing since he’d left for work in the morning.

She uses a small spray bottle to spritz her succulent, just enough until its leaves are dewy and hydrated. It basks in the sun, and Ari imagines that if it had a face, that face would be smiling.

When she descends the stairs, Jackson is hopping into the car on his way to work with Rosen sending him off at the door. It’s enough time for Ari to slip around the corner unnoticed to pour a quart of water into her bottle from a pitcher in the fridge. She refills the pitcher with water from the faucet and is halfway through her water bottle when Rosen enters in her fluffy bathrobe, wisps of hair sticking out of her messy ponytail.

“How do you not get sick chugging that much water on an empty stomach?” she asks, upper lip curling in revulsion.

“It kickstarts my system,” Ari replies after a loud gulp. She stands with a hand on her hip. “Flushes out toxins. Improves blood flow to my brain, keeps me in a good mood.”

Standing stock still, Rosen uncurls her lip but says with a shrug, “Whatever.”

“You should try it.”

“Not interested.” She pointedly moves across the kitchen to the hot pot of coffee left for her by Jackson. “Two cups of Joe is what mama needs.”

Ari doesn’t bother arguing. She finishes the rest of her water bottle while Rosen pours herself a steaming mug of coffee, and then she turns her attention to the weather. It’s a beautiful summer day, eighty degrees and clear. Ari’s wandered the neighbourhood and figured out the roads close to home, but she hasn’t tried any of the woodland trails yet. She aches to be sheltered by a rooftop of trees, golden rays poking through the leaves.

Plenty of sunlight. That’s an item on her list, and she should start paying more attention to it while the August sun is still here.

“Do you want to hike with me?” she asks Rosen. “I think I’m gonna go through the forest at the end of the road. Jackson said it’s a nice walk.”

“Um…” Rosen trails, focused on pouring the milk, “what time?”

“Ten minutes? Fifteen?” Ari suggests.

“Oh. Then no.”

Ari’s shoulders slump. “We could go later this morning if you want.”

“I have those paint samples from Benjamin Moore to try on the bedroom walls,” Rosen replies with a cavalier shrug.

“This afternoon, then?”

“Well, hopefully I’ll be able to find a swatch that I like and then go back to the store to get them to mix it.” She looks to Ari with a gasp, stumbling upon a great idea. “You should come!”

“To Madison?”

“If they have the paint colour I want. Wanna come?”

Ari definitely didn’t coax herself out of bed this morning to sample paint chips. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What do you mean? What else are you doing?”

“Hiking.”

“You said you were gonna do that now.”

“I was trying to find a time we could go together!” Ari speaks through a laugh, though her lips don’t curve into a smile. “Sorry – backing up – are you interested in a hike or not?”

“Not,” Rosen says simply.

“Fine. That’s all you had to say.” Ari refills her water bottle from the pitcher in the fridge, adding on her way out, “See you later, then.”

Ari packs a couple of snacks for her hike and stays outdoors until early afternoon, when her quads ache in the most accomplished way from the uneven terrain on the hills. After she showers, Rosen has only just begun to swatch paint samples on the walls of the bedroom she shares with Jackson, so Ari lets herself out onto the back patio, barefoot, and finds herself dialling home. Nobody picks up.

It’s a couple of minutes before her cell rings, Home alight on the screen.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Ari, hi,” gushes Ana Pate. “I heard the phone ring but I was outside watering the plants. I forgot how long it takes!”

“That’s because I always do it for you.”

“I know. You do my weeding, too. I’m missing that.”

“That’s what you miss, huh?” Ari says dryly.

Ana chuckles. “Of course not. Miss everything about you. How are things going? Rosen says you’re developing a routine.”

“Yeah.” Ari stretches her legs in the sun and tries to ignore the icky feeling that Rosen’s been speaking to their mother about Ari’s schedule. “I’ve been doing okay. Keeping consistent, I guess. Which is good – for me, at least.”

“For anybody,” Ana insists. Ari’s not quite so sure.

“How are you and Dad?”

“Oh, fine. He’s out right now picking up a few things for dinner. I’m sure that man will come back with a steak even though I told him no red meat until the wedding. Do you know how much it costs?”

“Red meat or the wedding?”

“Both. We’re on a diet, both of us. At least until the cheque’s cleared.”

“Hmm, yeah. It’s all about Rosen’s wedding.” Ari cringes, instantly aware that her attempt to sound lighthearted has miserably failed.

“Well, it is exciting. And just remember: she’ll be excited for you, too, when the time comes.”

Ari clears her throat. She has to hear enough about the fucking wedding now that she’s living with Rosen full time.

“So, um… has any mail come for me?”

“Mail? You mean like a letter?”

“Yeah. Maybe yesterday or late last week?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe a credit card bill. Why?”

“Nothing,” Ari says quickly. To Ana’s expectant silence, she caves. “I was hoping to hear back from Fordham about that continuing education course.”

“Oh, honey. This late in the summer?”

“Yeah.” Ari casts her eyes down. “It was a long shot, I guess.”

“Well…” Ana sighs – a sigh Ari knows far too well. A sigh of sympathy, of sadness, of surrender. And Mom only uses it with her. “It’s probably for the best, don’t you think? You don’t want to be doing too much too soon. You should rest.”

“I can’t rest, Mom,” Ari says. “I can’t just do nothing anymore. I need to be busy; I need to keep my mind active.”

“You need to heal,” Ana says firmly. “You’ve been through a lot. Your mind needs a break.”

“I need to have purpose,” Ari insists. “Otherwise, I—I’ll sink into that dark place again.”

Another sigh. Then Ana says, “Well, I’m sure Rosen will keep you busy the next couple of months with the wedding. That should help.”

Ari rolls her eyes. “You might be shocked to learn that devoting my life to her wedding doesn’t exactly give me a lot of purpose.”

“Oh, Ari!” Ana snaps. “You have purpose, and you know that. That’s what you and Dr. Sodhi spent so long talking about. I’m sorry you didn’t get into a school this term, but I have to be honest, I really don’t think that’s what you should be focusing on right now. I don’t want you to get bogged down in an intensive program that you’re not as interested in as you thought you might be. If you go back to school, it should be because you have something in particular you want to study, not because you want to keep yourself busy. That’s running from your problems, honey. You know better than that.”

After a long pause, Ari gulps. “That’s not what you said to Rosen when she got into NYU Law.”

“Well, those were different circumstances. Rosen had a clear path for her future.”

“Was dropping out before the end of first term part of her clear path?”

“Don’t do that, Ari. Don’t be unfair. She followed her heart. Now she and Jackson are about to get married, so I think she’s happy with her decision.”

Ari says nothing.

“You know, you are doing something meaningful,” Ana adds softly. “You’re there for your little sister when she really needs you. She’s juggling planning a wedding and becoming a homeowner in a strange new town – she’s just as overwhelmed as you are.”

At this, Ari shuts down. The ‘just as [insert adjective here] as you are’ measure of relatability is, in fact, the opposite of relatable.

But it does remind her why she’s here, six hundred miles from home and cut off from everyone she’s ever known other than immediate family. It’s not just to get a grip on herself. It’s not just to help Rosen prepare for the wedding. It’s to give her parents a break. To let them pretend, for a few months, that their daughters are both happy, healthy, functioning adults who are making progress and being independent in the world.

The truth is that they only have one of those daughters, and she’s not Ari.

In the afternoon, Ari declines Rosen’s second invitation to join her in Madison to pick up a gallon of Palm Desert paint, which is “richer than Sepia but not as dark as Café Royal”, in favour of returning to the Tillson City downtown core. She takes Jackson’s bicycle, which is a little rickety and not adjusted to her height, but it carries her safely to town. She parks outside of Kalene’s Garden, where there is not a bike rack in sight. Ari hopes against all New York City hope the bike has little chance of being stolen.

Inside, she runs across the same woman who helped Rosen with her wedding flowers.

“I remember you,” says the woman whose eyes peer over thick bifocals. “You were here for the Hawley wedding.”

“I remember you, too,” Ari says. “You’re Sherry.”

“That’s right.” The woman holds out her hand to shake over the cash register. “And what’s your name again, dear?”

“I’m Ari.”

Sherry pauses with a slight frown. “Ari? I remember Jackson Hawley’s fiancée having a floral sort of name…”

When the ladies in the Massapequa hair salon used to mix them up, Ari used to joke that she hoped they didn’t give her Rosen’s ridiculously-shaped bangs. Lightheartedness doesn’t come easily anymore, so she replies evenly, “That’s my sister, Rosen.”

“Oh, of course. Rosen! What a pretty name.”

Ari blinks. “Yeah.”

“Well, what can I do for you, dear?”

Ari slips her backpack off of her shoulders and begins to unzip it. “Actually, I was wondering if Kalene is here? I wanted to speak with her if possible. It won’t take long.”

“I’m sure she can spare a bit of time,” Sherry says with a smile. She leans over the register again to point down the aisle. “She’s just in the office. She won’t mind if you give a knock on the door.”

Ari thanks her, but still she approaches the office on light feet, wary of disturbing the peace. She doesn’t want to be a bother. She doesn’t want Kalene to think she’s entitled or overbearing. She should just go home. She should just save everyone the grief.

She knocks on the door.

“Come in.”

Knuckles white, Ari pushes open the door and sticks her head inside. When she spies Kalene at the desk, her hair tamed in a low bun and her ruffled military green blouse complimenting her skintone, she pastes a smile on her face. Even when she spots a toddler seated on the floor with building blocks surrounding him, Ari can’t hide her smile.

Kalene holds up her head, her impossibly long neck elegant and straight. “You’re back,” she says warmly.

“Yeah—yes,” Ari stammers. She clutches the papers in her hand, certainly creasing them but too nervous to care. “I can come back, though, if this is a bad time—”

“Come on in. Take a seat.”

Ari obeys, lightly closing the door behind her. The office is humid, a little box of a room stuffed with binders and papers, a computer, and potted plants on every surface: the desk, the bookshelf, the window ledge. There’s just enough room on the floor for the toddler – a little boy, no more than a year old – and his small lunchbox full of toys.

“This is Mekhi,” she says, gesturing to the boy, “my youngest.” She reaches out to pet the back of his head. “Sometimes he comes with me to work when his auntie falls through on babysitting – don’t you, Mekhi? Hmm?”

He stares up at his mother adoringly, wooden block in his mouth and molten brown eyes blown wide.

“He’s adorable,” Ari says with a laugh, “and very good at building blocks.”

“The civil engineer of the family,” Kalene jokes. “So,” she continues, closing the binder in front of her, “what brings you back?”

Ari sucks in a breath, and just as promptly exhales. “I just—um,” she starts, glancing down at the resume in her hands, “I have a—I wanted to ask if you…”

She shakes her head, inwardly cringing. With another short breath, she looks up.

“I was looking for a friend,” she blurts out, “the other day, when you asked. I’m looking for a lot of things, I think.”

She pauses, wincing at Kalene’s possible reaction, but the woman is straight-faced, listening intently, and scrutinizing Ari with a thoughtful expression.

So she goes on, “I make myself these roadmaps—lists, really—to help me get through each day, but they don’t mark with an X what I’m searching for, so I’m really going on nothing. I realize this is really not a convincing preamble, but I just wanted to tell you that… I really like it here. In your shop. It makes me feel, um… warm? Not physically, but, like, inside of me. I feel warm when I’m here, and I feel in good company, and… that means something to me.” She hesitates. Then, swallowing her fears, she finishes, “I know what it’s like to not feel anything at all, so when I do feel something – anything – I latch onto it. I don’t want to forget it. And, um… I want to work here. Volunteer, even. If you’ll let me, even for just a few hours every week. I just want to spend time, if that’s okay.”

When Ari takes a breath, Kalene is smiling again. Maybe it’s not the shop, but Kalene herself who emanates warmth.

That’s a new thought. Ari hasn’t felt warmth from another human since Louis, and that was long, long ago. It was the sort of warmth that dulled over time until one day, she convinced herself she’d imagined it was ever there in the first place.

“What’s your name?” Kalene asks.

“Oh. Sorry.” Ari thrusts her resume into Kalene’s hands. “I’m Ari Pate. Rosen’s sister. She’s marrying Jackson Hawley, if that means anything to you.”

“It doesn’t,” Kalene confirms. With a quick look at the very top of Ari’s resume, Kalene promptly hands it back to her. Ari’s heart sinks. “Ariana,” she reads.

“That’s my full name, yes. Um, I—I have a degree in Molecular Biology with a minor in Environmental Science, and I know that seems heavy, but I think if you look at my experience, you’ll agree that I—”

Kalene holds up her hand, effectively sealing Ari’s lips together. “Would you like to come back tomorrow, Ariana?”

“For an interview?” Once again, Ari offers her resume.

Kalene declines. “For a training session. An orientation, let’s call it.”

Ari’s breath comes out in a gust. The blood drains from her head in a moment of surrealism. “Really?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t want to see my resume?”

“If you want me to look at it, then I will. But we’re a small shop, as you can see, and this is our passion. So it bodes well, to me, that it gives you a good feeling to be here. Those are the people I want to work with – not the ones with the most impressive resumes. At the end of the day, all those words on paper mean nothing. It’s what you put forth in action that carries weight.”

Ari nods slowly, more in awe of this beautiful woman than ever. Is she going fucking crazy, or was that the smartest thing anyone’s ever said to her?

“I’ll be back tomorrow. Count on it,” says Ari, rising to her feet. She nudges a few stray blocks at Mekhi with the tip of her sole. He reaches for one particular block and looks up at Ari with a sloppy, saliva-coated grin.

“Ten o’clock,” says Kalene, opening her binder as Ari takes her leave. “We’ll put you to work.”

Ari volunteers at Kalene’s on Wednesday and Thursday, five hours each day. Her shoulder-length hair curls and frizzes in the humid shop, and for the first time, that’s the biggest of her concerns. Kalene shows her how to water the irises in the plant basket, and in return, Ari tells Kalene what she knows about the structural biology of roses.

By Thursday night, though her thighs hurt from crouching to tend to the plants, Ari feels satisfied to near delirium. She’s come home with two new succulents: a beautiful kiwi aeonium with deep pink, outlined leaves, and one called a jelly bean, whose leaves look like just that. She arranges them next to the foxtail on her window and admires them with pride. Pride – a swell in her chest she’s not felt since that A in organic chemistry in junior year, all those years ago.

When she finally leaves her room to steep a mug of sleepytime tea – for a better, more peaceful sleep, it promises – voices filter up the stairs. She descends slowly, wary of disturbing Rosen and Jackson in the living room but unable to boil water in the kitchen without passing them.

“He’s single right now; he’s probably looking for someone,” Rosen says.

“I think you’re confused. Luke doesn’t look for someone, he finds someone,” Jackson chuckles.

“So maybe he could find her.”

“It’s not a good match, Rosie.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“I don’t see what the problem is. He’s a nice guy, he’s a longtime friend of yours, and I don’t see why it would be crazy to introduce him to Ari.”

Ari’s ears burn at the sound of her name. On high alert, she speeds her pace to the bottom of the stairs. Cuddled on the couch, Jackson and Rosen meet her eyes.

“Hey!” Rosen exclaims, using a hand on Jackson’s thigh to stabilize herself as she moves to the edge of the couch. “Great news: I ran into Jacks’ friend, Luke, in town and told him my sister was staying with me for a while. We chatted about you a bit. He seemed really interested.”

Blankly, Ari says, “Interested in what?”

“In you, of course. We thought it would be fun if you two met.”

Ari blinks. “What?”

“Tomorrow night. At Sherman’s – you know, that little dive bar downtown.”

“It’s not a dive bar,” Jackson interjects in offense.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s a local establishment.”

“It’s a dive bar.”

“No, it’s a neighbourhood pub,” he argues. “The owners keep it clean, and yeah, sometimes it can get rowdy in there, but in general folks go there for a drink after the game, to listen to some live music, to socialize.”

“I still think it’s a dive bar,” Rosen says with a shrug.

Jackson rubs a palm over his forehead. “People ‘round here don’t think of it that way, so you best watch how you speak of it in front of them.” Redirecting his attention to Ari, he adds, “It’s charming, don’t worry. It’s a lot of fun there.”

“I didn’t say it’s not fun, Jackson,” Rosen snaps. “I know it’s fun; I always have fun there.”

“You mean the one time you came with me?” he deadpans.

Rosen huffs in annoyance and promptly looks away from him, maintaining eye contact with Ari. “Luke’s really great,” she gushes. “He’s been working full-time at the DMV since high school and word has it he’s got a lot saved up. He wants to buy a plot of land and fix up a house right here in town to be close to family and friends. Oh, and he was on the football team in high school with Jacks. He’s really built.”

Jackson stares expressionlessly at the back of Rosen’s head.

Ari looks from Rosen to Jackson and back to Rosen again. Rosen might very well be holding her breath until Ari gives a definitive answer, so after prolonging the torture another few seconds, Ari slowly says, “He sounds… great.”

With a triumphant exhale, Rosen shoulders slump with a satisfied smile. She softens, tipping her head to the side in that telltale display of sympathy Ari knows far too well. “It might be good for you. You and Louis broke up, like, a year ago—”

“Six months ago.”

“—and I’m sure you’ve been lonely. I mean, I know you have, and that’s why you’re here. And you’re trying all this new stuff lately, like yoga and vegetarianism and whatever, so why not try a blind date? Honest, I think you’ll have fun.”

Ari groans internally. It’s times like these when having no one who cared for her would be easier to manage – there would be no one to disappoint, no one to have to humour. Even though Rosen’s arrangement sounds like absolute misery, Ari knows she’ll still end up doing it. For Rosen. And that’s a fucking kicker.

“Can’t he come here instead?” Ari asks. “That way there’s less pressure, especially if you guys are here to help if the conversation gets slow.”

Rosen scrunches her nose, repulsed. “You don’t invite someone to your house for a blind date,” she says, as if common blind date etiquette is written in stone. “How is that less pressure? You meet in a social setting so if they turn out to be a murderer, everyone hears your screams.”

“That is comforting,” Ari says dryly.

“Okay. Rosie, stop,” Jackson says, nudging Rosen in the back. He leans forward to take control of the conversation. “Luke’s a good guy. He’s not a murderer, for Christ’s sake. He’s the one who suggested meeting at Sherman’s, so it’s probably best to follow through with that. Besides, Rosie and I are out tomorrow night – it’s Sawyer’s birthday in Charleston.”

Rosen sags with the event reminder, seemingly not too thrilled to attend the birthday celebration of Jackson’s older brother, who lives and works as a corporate lawyer in Charleston.

“Oh!” Rosen cries. “But we can drop you off on our way there!”

It’s not quite the consolation prize Ari hoped for. Her eyes shake as she fights not to let them roll. “Great.”

“So you’ll go?”

Rosen’s lips form a pleading pout. Jackson sighs in defeat. As for Ari, well, she was doomed from the moment she walked down the stairs.

“Fine. I’ll go.”

Photo Credits: Anton Darius, Jesse Summers

#tls #my writing #fic #1dff #thank you for giving this a shot :)

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dwam-crack-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Beginnings

Given that I've randomly decided i could just use this place for blogging in general, I think I'm going to keep this first post relatively short.

I've been in the Ace Attorney fangaming "community" for several years now. I like to believe I've presented a substantial amount of content during those years when it comes to fancases. It's something I've personally, for the most part, enjoyed doing, and I hope the people who've played those fancases enjoyed doing so just as much. I also like to believe I've been around long enough to say I'm relatively experienced when it comes to witnessing how most projects -- both successful and unsuccessful -- are started, developed and ultimately concluded.

I'll be drawing attention to the unsuccessful ones here, for a moment.

Imagine yourself as a teenager. Maybe even a bit older. You've played a game you like. You really enjoyed it. Like, really enjoyed it. Something about it spoke to you. It got your imagination running. You kinda wish there was more of it. Then - lo and behold - you found out people have made an engine, maybe engines - that would allow you to create something like that. You check it out - you take a look at some of the stuff that's already been made with it. You think to yourself, "hey, that's pretty cool!" You maybe become a bit more familiarized with how the engine works, what it can and can't do.

Then -- you get this cool idea. It's a really good one. Like, so good you can practically picture it. It's a scene. Maybe even the final battle. You can hear the epic music. You can see the dialogue playing out. You can imagine the positive comments those other projects have gotten. Fuck it, maybe you even imagine an article in PC Gamer mentioning your game, claiming it to be a crowning achievement. You finally decide: "I'm gonna make it!"

So, you think it a bit more. You go to a forum dedicated to this sort of thing. You write out what will end up being your thread. You're careful to make sure you give just enough information about it. Too much, and it becomes a cluttered slog. Too little, and nobody will take you seriously. Chances are, you can't do art. But that's okay, you figure someone will help you out with that.

Granted, you're not entirely sure what you'll do if no artist comes along, or even if the project will be able to lift off the ground without it. But you're relatively sure it'll turn out fine.

So, you put the thread up. You get a few responses. Few people like the idea. Few people say they might consider joining, but nothing concrete. Someone asks you about how much you have so far. You tell them you're planning things. You give some arbitrary percentage - perhaps slightly larger than what even you feel is actually the case, but not like they'll be able to prove you wrong.

Eventually, someone comes along. It's an artist. They like the idea. They agree to work with you.

And thus, the project can finally happen. You're excited once more. The images of those cool scenes start coming back to you and you can't wait for it all to play out. The hype is real. More people are posting and expressing support. It's coming alive!

...But keep in mind I said "can happen".

In those aforementioned several years, I've seen this exact story play out many, many, many times. There are variations - sometimes the creator doesn't ask for help, says they can do it all themselves. Sometimes, they need even more than just an artist. Sometimes the project just ends up never happening exactly because there was no backup plan in light of there being no artist.

(Keep in mind, I am primarily talking about the perspective of an AA fangame developer, obviously things differ in other projects.)

There’s a lot of things that can happen here. But in the end, it comes down to one of these two conclusions:

The project lead plans everything out as promised, writes out the script and transfers what he has to into into the game, along with the artists' support. Everything seems to go smoothly, as if through a sheer miracle. Maybe there are some hiccups and hiatuses along the road, but fuck it, the job’s done.

More likely, however, the project dies for one or more of the following reasons:

The project never even leaves the planning stage. It turns out that the lead was far more interested in imagining all those fantastic scenes than actually making them a reality, always telling themselves: "ah, the means are there, it'll be done someday, now let me tell you about all these Japanese names I came up for my characters!"

One or more of the team's crucial members gets caught up in situations beyond their control and they're unable to do any work, slowing the project to a crawl, eventually killing it as others move on with their lives, as well.

The team members (most likely including the lead) don't understand the time and dedication necessary for something like this and are either unable to cooperate properly together, or simply cannot manage their time to make their work efficient. In other words, progress is too slow. Interest is significantly lost. Both from outside observers and within the team. Time passes and, very likely, my earlier point happens - where real life just catches up with them and the whole thing goes quietly into the night.

It just becomes boring to work on.

Now, to be perfectly clear -- I'm not saying there's blame to be found in any of these situations. Sometimes, things just don't turn out the way you want them to. It goes without saying that, if you gathered a team, that you’re not going to want to have their work go to waste. Most, if not all people, have that level of professionalism and courtesy within them to have the mentality of “I got you into this, I have to finish it”. Of course you'll want to get it done.

But you can't get blood from a stone.

And, frankly, you're in no position to claim you'll get anything done. Your determination, and your honesty, and your sense of responsibility be damned. Things change. Stuff just ends sometimes. Someday, you could wake up and realize you just don't want to do it anymore. What do you do then? Force yourself to work to make a half-hearted product? Pass your vision along to someone else and later be unhappy with seeing how that vision’s slowly being changed without your consent? If you’re working alone from the beginning, you can’t even do that.

Here's the common thread here.

People really like the beginnings of things. I don't mean that just with fan projects. It's like that with literally anything.

It's exciting. Makes your heart beat faster. Gives you the shakes. Feels like an impulsive decision that was somehow still calculated. Thinking about winning? Nah, no need. You’ve already won!

But in most cases - in cases where things end up not working out - it's actually exciting because the entire time you're thinking about the destination, not the actual journey. Or, maybe that’s not even it. Maybe you’re just so caught up in the moment that the idea of failure doesn’t even cross your mind, leaving you unprepared when things start going bad. You're young, and you're inexperienced, and you just tell yourself you can do it. And hell - you probably can!

...Thing is, at one point or another, you just don't want to. Maybe because more important things will start happening in your life. Maybe because you weren't honest with yourself about the commitment you were willing to pour into it. Maybe things were out of your control and, again, you weren’t prepared enough to fall back on anything. Maybe because... shit, I don't know. Could be any number of reasons.

My main piece of advice here would be -- before you do anything, anything at all -- get as much work done you yourself can possibly do. If you consider yourself a writer -- write out the script. Nevermind the art. If there's something in that script your artist can't do, you'll make a compromise.

If you're the artist, get art done so you can show it off to other people (who knows, if nothing else, might be a good way to hone your skills?)

If you can code - fuck it, code in some of the script! Even if you’re unhappy with the dialogue, at least have the structure set up. Find a way to speed up processes. Make things extremely fast for you when the time to act actually comes.

If you’re a combination of these three - well, answer should be obvious enough.

But do as much as you can so that when the time comes to make that thread where you either need help or you're just announcing the project to the world, you have something to show to people. To prove that you're in it for the long run. But more importantly, prove to yourself that you're in it for the long run.

That way, you:

Have people be able to trust you enough to apply for help

Have sped up the amount of time the team will need to create the project, since a part of the work is already done

Have a better understanding of your own project and what exactly you want from it; plus, are able to communicate your ideas way more clearly

Even then, there's no guarantee things won't fall apart. But you'll have done everything in your power to truly push yourself to make your dream a reality, and not just jumping into the fire, not knowing what you're doing.

This was probably a really roundabout fucking way of making this point, and I don't even know if half of this shit is comprehensible to someone who has never been in the kind of forum I'm talking about here, but I felt like ranting so, eh.

#ace attorney #aceattorney #fan project #writing

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onyxwolf21 · 6 years ago

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On Brody Stevens, Suicide, and Depression

If you are in trouble, please visit: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

Yesterday, Brody Stevens, an amazing performer and comedian, (and incredible athlete, as I’ve gathered he would wish to be noted) took his own life. I personally didn’t know him that well, but I’ve found myself deeply affected by the event. Why? I suppose I can blame Twitter, the vast majority of celebrities and comedians I follow in there have joined together in an outpouring of love and mutual grief of the likes that I’ve never quite seen before. And perhaps that’s why it has hit me so hard. I’m at a time in my life where I find myself, and many of my friends wrestling with these dark thoughts of letting it all go. Many of us are just as loved as Brody was, and we all have gifts that we could potentially be sharing with the world. Brody was a man who would get up on a stage and scream the actual word POSITIVITY at audiences, and you can tell he meant it. You could tell he truly wanted to believe it. He is a man who was open about his inner demons, he even worked himself being diagnosed with bipolar disorder into an episode of his television show. I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of depression and suicide lately, and to see someone so loved, so talented fall into its grip has crystalized some of these thoughts for me. It doesn’t matter how much you are loved. It doesn’t matter that you could have some of the most famous people in the world rush to your home with one phone call to be there for you. It doesn’t matter how amongst the best in your field, you still are the standout, the guy nobody else dares to follow, yet somehow be such a gifted performer that if someone did follow you, you’d have set them up perfectly. It just doesn’t matter how great your life seems.

I read a story about Brody forcing a friend of his to apologize to a worker at McDonald’s after he felt the friend had been short with the worker, and not just apologize, but raise enough of a ruckus that the entire building gathered around to witness a moment of apology and forgiveness (A story by Auggie Smith on Twitter). This was a man who affected people’s lives in the best possible way, and a man who has left a hole in countless people’s hearts that will never be truly full again. And on some level, I’m sure he knew that. Yet that internal battle still finally won out in the end. It terrifies me. Personally, I don’t believe I’ve experienced the depths of darkness that I’m sure Brody did, but I do still have a comprehension of how alone we can feel in those moments. The way our minds can tell us, no matter how many people have said to our faces, “I love you,” that day, that nobody really cares, nobody really understands, and maybe, just maybe, the world would be better off without us. Or maybe wouldn’t everything be so, so much easier if it were all over? The true bliss of being lost in a fantasy of not having to face the next day is a siren’s song that many people have finally fallen victim to. In our weakest moments, at the end of that downward spiral, that can seem like the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s what I’m afraid of. Not just for myself, but for my friends who struggle with these thoughts. That’s the underlying sadness I see in people’s words, as they express their grief at Brody’s passing, and share his best moments that he gifted us with. That they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t help him in the end. For Brody, his struggle is over. We don’t mourn for him. We mourn for ourselves, living in world where he isn’t around anymore. To make us laugh. To spread joy. To call us out on our bullshit when we mouth off to an employee just trying to do their job. It’s selfish in a way. I found myself thinking, “How could someone so talented, with so much to share and show the world leave us?” And I realized that was a selfish thought. It’s a thought that doesn’t understand the pain that person is going through. Often, the most talented people in the world are the one’s going through the most. These are people who experience pain in a way few others can, and that constant exposure is why they create such amazing art, but it’s also the source of the extreme sadness they must battle every day.

Suicide is not cowardice. It’s perhaps the bravest thing you can do, take that leap into the great beyond, not truly knowing what is waiting for you there. Perhaps it’s nothing. And perhaps that’s the most comforting thought of all. These are the things our brains tell us, that the pain can all just over, and before we realize what we’ve done, it’s just that. Done. We all go through low points in our lives. We lose jobs. We lose people. Relationships. We find ourselves at a point where everything seems lost, nothing seems like it’s going right, and it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better anytime soon. If you are at the point, me saying “I swear it will get better,” will seem like a bitter, unswallowable pill. It might even make you angry. Good. Hold onto that anger. Be angry at me, or that person who said that to you, not yourself. It’s better than being lost in the sadness. Ask me just how in the hell is it supposed to get better. Maybe I won’t have the answer right away. But let’s figure it out. Together.

I say all of this not to sound hopeless, but in an attempt to understand what would cause something like this. I believe that if we acknowledge the truth of why this happens, indeed why it keeps happening, maybe we can find a way to fight it. Depression can claim anyone’s life, no matter how beloved they are. And that’s important to understand. And my go to response was to always say, you have so much to give, please don’t leave us. But a person in that moment certainly isn’t thinking, “I have so much left to give.” In fact, that thought might even make it worse. Part of the reason I am writing all of this out, is an attempt to understand, and an attempt to come up with some answers, but I don’t have them. All I can think to say when something like this happens, is do your best to be there for each other. Even the most positive people in your life are likely struggling with things that would bring you to your knees in an instant. That’s why they are so kind, so empathetic. They don’t want anyone to feel the way they do, and some make it their life’s mission to combat that for others. The brightest lights shine the most in the darkness.

What haunts me is in these moments, is that all we can do is tell our loved ones we love them a little more, and share suicide hotlines with one another. And we should. Quite frankly, we are all going to die someday, what is stopping you from telling your friends you love them? Embarrassment? What a silly fear in a world where we must all face our mortality someday. Suicide hotlines have helped people, they’ve absolutely saved lives. But I also worry, in our darkest moments, that doesn’t register as an option. I hope it does. I hope if anyone reads this, if you ever find yourself in that place, seeing death as the only way out of your misery, I hope against hope, that as you start to take your steps down that tunnel to that light, you see another. Along the side of that tunnel. A small note that says: I love you. You can call me anytime, I’ll be there for you. Or, if you want to talk to a professional, here’s their number: 1-800-273-8255. Call. There’s another way, we promise, no matter what. Our love is not conditional. We don’t love you because of what you can do, but just because you are you. You could give up EVERYTHING today, and we will still love you. Just don’t give up your life.

Love, Jake

P.S. I would like to say I of course do not know Brody Stevens personally, and I hope that no one is offended by any of my speculation into his life. I’m deeply saddened by his loss, and the raw emotion of the loved one’s he has left behind has left me in tears, I’ve never felt such pain from people before. That’s why I was compelled to write all of this down. I think about how I would feel if someone I loved that much left us, and it knocks the air from my lungs. The helplessness and grief is absolutely a selfish feeling, but fuck it, if I can weaponize the selfishness of not wanting to experience the loss of someone in my life and help them, then I absolutely will. I’m here for you, and the small comfort I take even at my lowest points is knowing that deep down, I have people that are there for me in the same way. And if you don’t share that feeling, I swear, just reach out. Even if it’s a stranger on a hotline, there’s good people in this world who want to help you. No matter what you’ve been through, no matter what evils you’ve seen and experienced, choose to hold onto the good if you can. That dark tunnel doesn’t have to stay dark. Someone will come along with a light of their own to share with you, I promise. My only hope in writing all of this down is that someone may see this, and either understand what others are going through, or if they are going through this themselves, know that this doesn’t have to be the end. It can be the beginning of something new and wonderful. Don’t leave just yet. Please.

#suicide #ripbrodystevens #brodystevens #depression

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rfhusnik · 6 years ago

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Let's Really Care About The Americans Of Tomorrow

Written By: Steven Fillmore

Before I begin here, I want to admit that the current situation concerning illegal immigration into the United States was certainly what prompted me to write this. I’m sure you noticed that during the recent national elections, candidates for representative, senator, and governor all stressed what they would do to help America’s youth. Yes, they all had a lot of nice promises to make to the Americans of tomorrow; but they neglected to address one key issue: Who’s going to support thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants in the years to come? Surely as mechanization progresses, the signs point toward less unskilled labor being necessary in the future. Will employed Americans of the future need to support massive amounts of people who shouldn’t have been allowed to resettle here?

When I submitted this piece to our city’s leader Ralph Hawk, he and I argued concerning its content. He told me he felt it was borderline racist; but I said, “At my age, I’m too old to be concerned with the names various groups call one another. All I care about now (unlike many politicians who preach their caring of American youth while they don’t really practice it) is what life on this planet, but especially in this nation, will be like in the years to come.”

Thus, over the objection of Ralph, I’m going to take a chance here. I’m going to write something which may be objectionable to some, but which I feel is very sincere – and not racist!

I’ll say today that for over four decades I worked at a manual labor job in this city. And it was a good job, and the owner of the factory at which I toiled was a good man. He passed away about two years ago, and as soon as his death was made known, our leftist media descended upon his legacy and recast it portraying Mr. Havess as having been a miserly monster, instead of what he really was, an unpretentious kind hearted man.

And personally, although I never achieved any special status in my life, I also lived with the stigma of guilt hanging over my head. I tried to do what was right, but of course I could never be completely innocent of blame because, as liberals told me, all those minorities had life so much worse than me, and I didn’t care enough about that fact.

But now, as my final years near, I can’t help but think about the Americans of tomorrow. And I know that changes will come to the U.S.A. in years to come. Still, I fear the young people of today are too centered in the present. When I was their age, there was a great concern in this nation about pollution, manmade changes to the environment, and the one that we were told lay at the root of all newly realized (at that time) twentieth century problems – over population.

Yet today, as I look at the societal landscape of the U.S.A., I still see and hear many liberal based individuals talking about environmental concerns, but now with what I feel is a hypocritical addendum. These people now want the U.S.A. to allow mass immigration. They apparently want the American nation flooded with people from south of its border. And how, I ask you, will bringing tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of such people into this land, do anything to reverse environmental problems here? In fact, won’t it exacerbate such concerns?

If I were a young American today, I’d give a second thought to the mass immigration of Hispanics into the U.S.A. I’d ask myself how this trend of an ever increasing Hispanic population is impacting my homeland, and how it will impact it (and me) in years to come. And though it may not be politically correct to do so, I’d admit that many who are trying to enter my native land have no basic skills to support themselves should they enter here. And I’d recognize that many are criminals, or would become criminals after they’d been here awhile. And I’d also accept the fact that, thus far at least, these peoples have shown a tendency toward having large families. Thus, I’d ask myself, what will a greatly expanding Hispanic population mean for non-Hispanic Americans in the years to come?

But yes, I know that according to some I’m probably a near-racist. Yet, I’d be considered that no matter what I had to say. Simply, in the minds of leftists, because I was born without a skin color, I’ll be forever abusing other races and other Americans who practice what I’ll term “non-traditional lifestyles”.

And, what does it matter if my thoughts sometimes stray to the stereotyped white Americans of the future? What will life be like in The United States Of America when Hispanics are the majority ethnic group? Will they care about the minorities of tomorrow as much as those who are the majority today care about them? Will a “melding” of Hispanics and “the old white race” produce a new type of majority white race in years to come? And, what will the reaction of America’s black race be to these developments?

I wonder how many of those crossing our border illegally ever stop to think about how they’re altering the lives of true Americans by doing what they’re doing? Very few I’d suspect. In fact, it could be said that these are very selfish people. They apparently care only about themselves; otherwise they’d remain in their own native lands and try to improve life there. And I don’t accept the argument that they’re so poor and abused that there’s nothing they can do but try to escape. If they have the gumption and means to leave, then they also have those same abilities to stay where they are and improve life there. Remember, during times of peril in the U.S.A., the civilian population here didn’t simply give up and run away to Canada or Mexico.

Long ago is when America should have begun a serious and dedicated crackdown on illegal immigration. And yes, your children and grandchildren will pay a price for uncontrolled illegal immigration. They’ll pay it in dollars subtracted from their paychecks (or however they’ll be paid in years to come) to support people who don’t belong here, as those people languish on welfare or in prisons.

And it won’t be long before Americans of all ages realize that already today the so-called “American dream” lifestyle has been replaced by the “American do what you need to do to get by” way of life. And yet, though that may have changed, one thing that’s remained constant is that, in the eyes of liberals, anyone born of the white race is automatically a racist, and if he’s a male, nine chances out of ten are that he’s a misogynist as well.

Yet, over the years (but never more than the present time) we’ve heard liberal types tell us that they alone are the only people who really care about America’s future and, future Americans! And now, with the American nation at a point of division it’s probably not experienced since the last years before the outbreak of its bloody civil war, these liberal types put future Americans at risk by refusing to take whatever steps they possibly could take (and the building of a strong wall along our southern border would be the most effective one) to avoid an ultimate confrontation between Hispanics and Americans, which will be our children’s birthright, given to them by us their elders, because of the obstinance of liberals amongst us.

Now, there is no doubt that minority groups have been victimized in the United States over the years. And, there also is no doubt that much has been done to attempt to change racial biases and discrimination in this nation. However, now a new phenomenon apparently lurks on the horizon. It’s estimated that by somewhere around the year 2040, Hispanics will be the majority ethnic group in the U.S.. But what does the American media say about that? Little if anything. I guess media types are simply going to let the American populace hope and pray that the good of the two possible scenarios concerning the saturation of America by Hispanics will be the one which someday occurs. Oh, and what are those two scenarios? First, that a successful “amalgamation” of numerous ethnic groups would produce a strong and proud people such as the combining of Saxons, Angles, Normans, Danes, and several other groups led to today’s English population; or second, that diverse ethnic groups would someday be a major factor in the demise of the entire nation, such as happened in The Roman empire.

So, given what I’ve just written, I’ve wondered often what “little people” (and in American life today “little people” are usually all such types as are not involved in national politics, national media, professional sports, or the leftist portion of America’s entertainment sector) can do to keep America well and vibrant during the inevitable years of change which loom ahead. I’ll now mention the nine I believe to be the most important, and then I’ll “sign off”. Thank you, Steven F.

Number One: Build the wall along the southern border. This will greatly reduce the amount of illegal immigration into the nation. Number Two: Achieve a strong immigration policy for the future, and adhere to it! And, that policy should be based upon allowing entry into America of such people as will actually help America, rather than become a burden to it continually, or at least for a number of years. Number Three: Deport people who are now in our nation illegally, unless they can prove a reason constructive to America as to why they should remain here, and achieve legal citizenship here. Number Four: Stop promoting the United States of America as some sort of panacea in which all people automatically live the good life just due to their presence here. Number Five: Develop a new strategy for dealing with all nations directly south of the U.S., whether they be in Latin or South America. Try to help those nations improve their living standards, so that not so many of their people will wish to enter the United States. Number Six: Develop a comprehensive plan concerning world population. But remember, simply saying that those with more should sacrifice more will get no one anywhere in regard to this topic in the years to come. One thing that will always remain the same (and regardless of what type of economic system any nation may have) is that some mortals will not wish to labor so that the fruits of their labor can be given to other mortals who’d rather take life easy. Number Seven: If you are someone who has the valid opinion that life’s sacredness renders abortion a non-option, remember that you also must work to thwart uncontrolled world population growth. Many people may believe strongly that abortion is wrong, but all people should believe easily that starvation is as well. Number Eight:�� If you are a black American, remember that you are a proud and necessary part of an America which will probably change because of Hispanic immigration in the years to come. Try to adapt to that change in such a fashion as will help your race, and the other races and ethnic groups which will constitute the future population of the United States of America. You’ve always been told that America is a “melding pot”. And in the years to come, I believe your importance in American life will greatly increase, no matter what may befall any other race or ethnic group in the U.S.A. And Number Nine: Lately, through various sources, a number of left-wing policy advocates have been posturing for an end to all borders worldwide. The lunacy of this wish should be apparent, but in case it’s not, remember again, as stated in this piece previously, some people need to do the physical work which keeps societies functioning. And left-wing writers and policy advisors don’t (and won’t) picture themselves as doing the agricultural, factory, construction, and various other labor intensive type jobs whose performance will be necessary in the future no matter if nations have borders or not. No, those liberal types see themselves as being above manual labor tasks. Jobs such as those need to be done by peasants. Thus, what would happen in a world without borders? The answer is one of two possible scenarios: Either a grounded workforce would do society’s necessary tasks while various other people who would rather live off the labors of those workers traveled about worldwide or, numerous, or perhaps only one powerful centralized governments or government would ensure that all people would do their fair share of society’s work by imposing either numerous or one worldwide left or right wing regimes or regime across the world, which would then, by necessity curtail most or all the freedoms now enjoyed by the various nations who today function with a democratic republic as their economic system.

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