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honestsycrets · 6 years ago

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No Thieves Welcome XI: A New Plan

Author’s Notes | hvitserk sinks back to old habits. it’s only the start.

❛ pairing | hvitserk/reader

❛ word count | 2398

❛ genre | heavy angst + plot heavy

❛ summary | hvitserk goes to the one person he knows can belp.

❛ warnings | dark!hvitserk, manipulation, blackmail, hvitserk being a shit, violence, cheating, single parent fears, hvitserk gets what he wants.

“You got her pregnant?”

Why was it every time this happened, he was the one getting shit for “getting” someone pregnant? Was it always on him to make sure they were taking something? Hvitserk sat on the fluffy couch with a cup of cheap ass bland ramen that she made. Apparently the egg in there would soak up some of the spice that was churning his stomach already.

“Is it my job to make sure she’s taking shit? Gotdamn.” Hvitserk slurps up his ramen angrily, cheeks full as his green eyes leer at her. She stands cooking some weird dish for his actual dinner, her long light brown hair bouncing around the middle of her back with rose gold curls.

“If you don’t want a baby.” His phone reflects his mother’s voice.

“Mor, you’re not helping.”

“She’s right. It’s not coincidence that this happened again, Hvit. You should use condoms.” She says, turning around and looking at him with her kind eyes. “First Margrethe and now… (Y/N)?”

“You know I don’t do condoms, Thora.” Hvitserk says.

“Then it’ll happen again.”

“She’s already knocked up! I can’t knock her any more up!” Hvitserk punches his hand into the soft cushions. Then he smooths his hand over the leather cushions as Thora’s favorite maine coon jumps up beside him. “Besides… she broke up with me.”

“She did?” Thora brings him a bowl of ærter which he looks to blandly. For once, he had no appetite after that spicy ramen. He stares down at his cup.

“The fuck am I gonna do? She’s pregnant.” He runs his hand down his face. His mother’s face contorts on his flat phone as Hvitserk hovers eyer it, drops of wet tears plopping onto the screen. “Bet you she’s gonna hold this whole Magnus bullshit over my head and I’ll never see my kid either.”

Thora plucks up the fluffy cat, dropping back onto the couch beside Hvitserk. She combs down the wily mane, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Abruptly Aslaug cuts in on the middle of her conversation.

“We will make her jealous.” She says from the phone on his lap.

“What?” He says in response. “Is that smart?”

“Women are always territorial when they are pregnant. I doubt she’ll be any different.” He states. Hvitserk makes a small humming under his breath, throwing his arms behind his head. It had been a while since he played any games.

“It’s not going to be Margrethe. She’s off her meds.” Hvitserk agrees.

“I can do it.” Thora says meekly.

“You?”

“I am your ex. It shouldn’t be too hard.” Thora agrees with a nodding of her head. Hvitserk glides his arm around her shoulders, tugging her in to kiss the top of her head. The fluffy kitten jumps out from between them.

“You’re amazing, Thora.” He worships his friend-- best friend if he had one. Then he turns his eye down to the phone on his lap. His mother sits with her little yorkie, combing down the wily strands of hair. He hears Ivar shuffling around in the background about his engineering program.

“Thanks, Mor.” He grins, pulling apart again with Thora’s father comes into the room. “It’s a plan.”

Whining at home would have tipped off mor and far. You hadn’t told them yet, and honestly, you were afraid to. Even though you were eighteen years old and free to make your own decisions-- it would have been easier to have their support.

“I told you!” Asta hops ahead of you. Your gloved fingers held a warm hot chocolate, smiling under your breath as Asta broke apart the bagel she had brought to school just for you. It made you feel better since you ran off Hvitserk the prior weekend. She hands you a garlicy chunk.

“I didn’t think it was true.” You mutter softly, nuzzling down into a fluffy red knit scarf. “He didn’t seem like the type.”

“What type?” Asta asks.

“Fuck boy.”

“Are you kidding me?” Asta hops on the last concrete step, bending so that her hair might tickle the sides of your face. “All the Ragnarssons are total fuckboys. Except Sigs and Ivar.”

With her hair tickling your face, you shake your hand to flutter her hair away from your face. Then bringing your hot chocolate to your lips, you take a warm sip. The twinge of chocolate sauce on top of fluffy whipped cream warms your lips in the breaking cold of the day.

“That doesn’t make me any less… you know. What about the milkshake having a daddie?” You say as a group of girls darts by, full of their giggles.

“Milkshake?” She prompts. You shoot her a look and at that she realizes what you mean. Asta reaches out to tug you at the elbow onto the last step, winding her hand around your arm.

“Well if you want to keep the milkshake, I can be daddie milkshake and you can be mommie milkshake!”

Right, like that would work! You laugh about it as Asta tugs open the dull metal blue door open. The warm air hits your skin, warming it-- but that’s not the only thing that it reveals either. The Ragnarssons have a table. All the brothers tend to sit at it. Ubbe, Sigurd, Ivar and the one you really didn’t want to see: Hvitserk.

You expect him to jump off his chair after you. You expect him to look at you, text you, beg for you to come back. But no, there’s nothing. He doesn’t move an inch from where he is in your direction. Rather his arm slinks around the pale shoulders of Thora, his ex-girlfriend. You’re familiar with her during their break up. But they don’t seem at all broken up anymore, motioning his fingers to Thora’s lips just after turning her chin toward him.

“(Y/N) ignore it.” She says.

But you can’t ignore it. The sight of their lips sliding against one another, Thora’s eyes sliding to a shut while Hvitserk’s own catch you out the corner of his eye. Out of some spiteful reaction he only deepens the kiss, ever keeping his eye on you the whole time he does so. You know that this is all a show to him in that instant.

“Looks like you’ve lost your shiny new sticker.” The voice belongs to Margrethe. She stands with her hands in a fuzzy black jacket, glancing off to where Thora’s hand grips the metal lining of Hvitserk’s jacket. As if almost instinct, the hand over your belly tightens. You lose the enamoured moment between Hvitserk and Thora and glance over your shoulder where Margrethe is, twiddling an unlit cigarette between cleanly manicured fingers.

“I guess it was always going to happen, (Y/N).”

God, someone shut her up. Asta glares over her shoulder as if to tell Margrethe to beat it. She doesn’t give a shit about the warning. Even more than that-- she actually dares to keep on speaking.

“After all, you were just friends.”

It’s not supposed to hurt this much. You threw him out! So why… did it hurt to be replaced? It hadn’t even been more than a weekend! Could he have really gone to Thora’s all weekend after you kicked him out?

“Beat it Margrethe.” Asta growls at her side. Margrethe’s blue eyes narrow a bit, looking out toward where Thora was looking for a monitor. None there so she tips him into another sweet kiss.

“I…” You swallow-- hard. “I have to go.”

You’re distantly aware of Asta calling your name as you speed off in the direction of the bathrooms within the cafeteria. As you speed to the safety of dull, tiled walls Asta throws a heated glare toward Hvitserk. It’s almost as if it’s magic because Hvitserk leaves Thora’s lips with the deepest of smirks upon his handsome young face. Then again he lowers his head to return to the game of mancala on the table, laughing even.

That fucker.

Her feet carry her in Hvitserk’s direction. Harsh stomps that carry Asta to the table where Hvitserk and Ubbe were playing with a bit of mancala. Asta is the easy one to ignore. The one that normally is too mild mannered to do anything about what Hvitserk would do to you. This time, however, she’s had enough. She forces herself between Sigurd and his sweet girlfriend Blaeja, lurching over the table.

“Asta--” Ubbe sees it coming first.

Her balled up carried her body weight as it connects to Hvitserk’s defined cheekbone. He’s thrown off enough at his bench that he tips over onto his back. With a heavy thud, Hvitserk falls onto the faux tiles. He gives a harsh grunt, snapping his head around just in time to see her coming right after him.

“What the fuck, Asta?!” He barks out, bringing his hand to his busted lip. He honestly thought it was the end of it after one good punch. He’s sorely mistaken as her hands come over his throat and god, he doesn’t remember her being so close that she can actually choke him out! Clearly, she’s made it sitting upon his chest. Under other circumstances he could have found this kinky.

“Miss Nilsson!”

Except she was ringing his neck and shaking his neck so hard that he was going a little splotchy eyed. He gasps under her hands, the lack of oxygen making everything go hazy and black. Before he could dig the knife out of his pocket though-- he’s granted relief by way of one of his teachers standing over him. With Ubbe’s help, Finehair has tugged her off of him and Magnus joins his friend’s side. Within moments of the incident other students are turning around from their tables and looks toward their table.

“You fucking piece of shit!” Asta roars. “How could you knock her up and throw her away?!”

Thora appears beside her to help him to sit upright. Her fingers trace the outline of Asta’s upon his neck, fussing over the change in colour. Finehair is as curious as everyone else however. Given the other day, he knows just what is going on.

“Are you okay, Hvit?” She asks sweetly.

“What are you talking about?” Sigurd asks standing up beside him. “(Y/N)’s not pregnant.”

“Hvitserk?” Ubbe prompts his smaller brother to speak.

No one speaks. Not Asta who is led off by Principal Ingstad, who slipped through the front doors. Nor Finehair who has kneels below by Ubbe and Thora. He assists Hvitserk in standing up and as you peep out of the bathroom door rubbing wet tears from your eyes. Harald takes Hvitserk’s shoulder in one arm despite the stagger towards where you were.

“We should talk in my class.”

“You got miss (Y/N) pregnant?”

Why was it that everyone told him that? Hvitserk stood with his hands jammed into his jeans, leaning forward with the slightest roll of his eyes. Finehair slips behind his desk, jangling the drawer open.

“That was what the other day was about.”

“Yeah.” He says. “It was.”

“Don’t use condoms?” Harald holds up the foily package of one. Shit, why was everyone always on him about condoms! Hvitserk digs his hand into his pocket, unwrapping the plastic around another cherry lollipop. He had been binging them lately. Hvitserk began to wonder if it was a stress result of coming unraveled. Without your stability there-- everything was starting to to slip back… and back… and back.

“Na.” He says.

“If you’re sleeping with many women--”

“I’m not.” Hvitserk interrupts. “(Y/N) broke up with me. I was trying to get her back.”

“You couldn’t just buy her flowers?” Harald presses. Cute, Hvitserk thinks. There’s a reason that only Lagertha seemed to have been with him. At that, even, he’s heard rumors of Lagertha being a dominatrix in her free time. Rumors that could not be confirmed or denied. In that absence, he has to agree.

“You haven’t been with women, have you?” Hvitserk rolls his tongue around his candy as he comes closer to his teacher. “You wouldn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“What they’re like.” Hvitserk sets his hands to Harald’s shoulders. “They don’t want fucking flowers. They want attention. And by this time tomorrow, the whole school will be buzzing about my baby mama.”

Harald lifts one of his eyebrows, shifting to look at the young Ragnarsson behind him. Ragnar Lothbrok was more than an ordinary man. Lagertha was no ordinary woman. For years he’s considered what it was about their family. He looks up toward Hvitserk with blank expression; unsure of why this Ragnarsson is even going to school.

“It would be wise.” Hvitserk pats his shoulders, snatching the condom from Finehair’s fingers. He inserts it back into the front pocket of Harald’s shirt. “If you just stayed out of our business. Or I’ll uncover yours.”

The bells sung.

Hvitserk collects his notebook and green pencil back into his lazy black backpack. Physics had gone well and his guilty little shit Magnus was working out perfectly to his advantage. What a stupid shit his brother was… but that was okay. They could fix that. Floki could even see it on him, giggling at the imperfect answer from another student while they collect their things.

“A-Are you gonna see (Y/N)?” Magnus mutters shakily. It was lunch. Margrethe butts in between Thora’s arm to take Hvitserk’s, shoving her out of the way particularly roughly.

“He’s going to take me to the cafeteria.” Margrethe chirps-- ignoring her presence. “I ordered pizza.”

A rictus of a smile keeps on Hvitserk’s face as he unpeels her hand from his elbow. Then turning his gaze down to his phone on his table, he shakes his head. Thora keeps to herself as confident as she ever had been.

“I’m out to see my woman. She’s probably all alone and depressed with Asta out of the way now.” Hvitserk presses his forehead against hers, rubbing his forehead against hers in an affectionate motion. Their noses brush like cute little pups. He pats his little brother’s shoulder on his way out the door. Then with sardonic heat, Margrethe turns back to Thora.

“You took him from me, you little-- little whore!”

Floki tsks his tongue to catch Margrethe’s attention.

“Not in my room, Margrethe.”

And when she turns back around, Thora is gone.

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certified-protagonist · 6 years ago

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So You Want to Pace Your Novel

An opinion piece on pacing, an element of fiction that determines the speed and impact of scene in a novel.

Care Warnings for the Example Piece: captivity, implied torture, implied death, panic

Don’t look back.

These monsters will kill them if they let up.

Going back there to captivity to pain—no, they want freedom. They want fresh breeze. They want the sun.

Quick as a whip, the protagonist snaps around a corner and bolts down a hall. Their heels hit the tile lightly and lift just as quick—the percussion of their fear jams their heart and refuses to release. It’s this way. It must be. By now they have no choice. The monsters hoot and holler at their back. They have no time.

Go, they will their body. Go, go, go!

They fly ahead with erratic breaths. The dark walls blur together, nothing is familiar, but there, ahead, there’s the light! They burst toward it with renewed vigor. The ground shakes, almost hurls them off their feet, and the walls shift. This hall—is it shrinking? A hasty look proves it is. The hall is closing in. It narrows with every lunge.

No, they beg, no, no!

The number of lit sconces diminishes, the air thins and clogs with dust, but they’ll be damned if they don’t reach that light. Screeching monsters hound their every step, crave their blood, hiss and spit poison at their back. But they won’t go back. They can’t.

Run!

They push. The protagonist tucks low and aligns themself with the wall and stumbles into an awkward gallop as they near the tightening end. They must fit. They have to fit. They can’t not fit, or the monsters will get them.

Go go go go go go!

The monsters’ shrieks spike higher, closer. They’re right there—the protagonist feels them on their arm, their neck, the skin of their ear.

With one last thrust of speed, the protagonist leaps into the light. They tumble and roll across the loose earth as the walls close tight with a boom. There’s a sickening crunch. They wince at such a sound; it reminds them of broken bones and the lash of cords. They keep their eyes down; the scent is enough. Their every limb trembles from exertion, but they far from relax.

They scrabble around and check their surroundings; are they out? Are they free? The first thing they notice is the quality of the air, its texture. It lacks the dust and musk of their cell or the punishment chamber, and it feels lighter and refreshing and cold and sweet. As they pull in the air, it’s so clean and unfamiliar it turns their stomach. They swallow back any bile and keep drinking. Air. This is fresh air. They take it in greedily.

The protagonist looks up as sweat runs down their face in sheets, blinking away fearful tears and when their eyes clear, they see trees. Color. Green.

They marvel at the canopies, where light shines between the gaps and graces the earth in gentle beams. Tentative and cautious, they crawl over on hands and knees to the closest beam with bated breath. They lift a hand and ease it into the ray, and, holding it there, they watch the light show every fracture in their cut and bruised skin. The warmth presses into their shaking fingers and their palm. Heat. They close their fist in it and squeeze, as if trapping a small piece of the sunbeam.

Pacing is one of those elements of fiction that writers aren’t strangers to struggling with. It’s pivotal, it’s necessary, it demands balance and flow to give the effective punch needed to keep readers engaged. Whether it’s a chase scene where there’s no time to think, or a dark night full of self-reflection, the content of those moments will lose their desired impact if the pacing is wonky. It’s quite tragic.

Think about it: a fight scene with long sentences, passive voice, and clear, full thinking on a character’s part gives off this unhurried tone that begs the question if this is a fight scene or retrospection. Where’s the hurry?

In the opposite sense, quiet time where the character is self-reflecting in an active voice, the narrative is in short sentences, and thoughts are but a moment has such a peculiar energy, it makes you wonder: Just how seriously is the character taking this moment? Why are these sentences so quick and packed tight? What’s the hurry?

These are extreme examples, and as with other elements of fiction there’s that gray area that makes it difficult to discern what a scene needs. Even so, whether it’s almost there, completely out of whack, or missing that mysterious something, this article will offer some elements to keep in mind when you’re pacing/revising the pacing in your novel. Taking them into consideration during the revision process can help get those iffy, stressful areas in the draft where you want them to be.

One of the first things to consider is word choice. How’s the verb? How’re the adjective or the adverb where those apply to the prose? The words that are in use when it comes to narration can change the pace of a sentence or a moment. To achieve impact, diction that specifies the action can not only provide a clearer, packed image, but also imply how fast the action is happening. In the passage above, the protagonist snaps around a corner instead of turns. We know they’re running, but snapping implies a hastier movement, an emotion in place, and a sense of urgency. Later in the piece, the protagonist eases their hand into the sunbeam, rather than stick their hand into it. This implies not only a slow gesture, but also an emotion and a sense of inhibition. It’s word choices like this that can determine how things slow down or speed up; meticulous use of diction is an advantageous skill to have when thinking of pacing a novel.

An element to look at as well is sentence length. Long sentences create a slower pace and short sentences speed it up. Paragraphs of long sentences may be effective for description or reflection, but fast paced moments like fight scenes could benefit from shorter sentences. In the passage above, there are shorter sentences at play when the character needs to move. They’re running for their life; they can’t spend time in a long sentence. Near the end, the sentences get longer. Not long enough to imply the character has relaxed, but long enough that they imply the moment is slowing down. The shorter the sentence, the quicker things move into the next one. The longer the sentence, the more time spent absorbing the information it holds.

Punctuation also plays a role in the pace of a sentence; they decide when an action comes to an end and how it comes to that end. In a sense, it plays with breathing. Poetry teaches that commas suggest a half breath, periods a full stop, and the em dash is a quick cut into the next sentence, interrupting a thought with another, which is a quick or held breath. These and other marks like them effect cadence in a sentence. Commas shuffle through thoughts rather than directly end them; em dashes interrupt thoughts; and periods mark an end to a thought and signals an advance into the next sentence. When working on flow and pace, look into how a sentence or a punctuation mark can play into crafting the desired effect.

There’s also the matter of voice when it comes to pace and flow. Novels have a combination of passive and active voice to control the speed at which a writer wants the plot to move. Active voice brings energy to the page with powerful verbs, like sprint versus run and lunge versus jump. Active voice also uses verbs to mark complete actions and move characters forward. The passage above is in active voice. The character is always moving because of verbs coming right after the nouns or pronouns. Active voice creates a fast, forward momentum that’s hard to achieve with passive voice.

Passive voice contains verbs that tend to be prefixed with variants of to be. Some of these verbs end in -ing; this mean an action isn’t finished and it’s still ongoing. “To be” verbs put before those -ing verbs make that ongoing action complete, but the character is motionless as a result. The same can be said about other verb tenses; “he was stopped” still implies that an action happened in the past, but the character has yet to move forward. Passive voice tells what happened to a character, not what they did. The pace seems slower in these instances and almost stagnant, as if we’re meant to stay in the moment. Keep an eye on the type of voice being used when concerned about pace; sometimes to be is not to be, and it needs to be removed from the sentence.

Speaking of the moment, scenes can also affect the pace of the novel. Long scenes full of introspection, description, and narration are slower paced than short scenes bursting with action, movement, and decisions. There’s also transitions or jump cuts; transitions from one place to another keeps the pace leisurely, whereas jumping from one scene to another can pick up the pace, since the story is leaping ahead rather than taking its time to move from one scene to another. The pace of a novel can be controlled by playing within these parameters and deciding how many long scenes a story needs versus shorter ones.

This also means scene management. It’s a good rule of thumb to not spend any more time in a scene than is necessary to complete its arc. Each scene has its own arc of exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action. It may not be as massive or pivotal as a chapter or even the novel as a whole, but scenes still have these arcs that carry weight, and should be looked at when fiddling with pacing. Say a scene is all exposition. This is a lot to download and remember over the course of the chapter, and it can really bog down the pace. The same can be said of fight scenes that go on for much too long; it’s a lot of energy to keep up with a fight, and readers can only sit on the edge of their seat so long before they get tired and scoot back or fall off. The pace may be quick, but actions can get repetitive and the pace reaches a standstill as a result. Managing how long the characters spend in a scene and how the story moves within that scene can help stabilize the pace as well as determine it.

Another thing to look at in scenes is how much dialogue is in place. Dialogue tends to be the quickest element to digest when reading. If there’s a lot of dialogue, the scene is quicker. If there’s little dialogue, the scene is denser. With dialogue, it’s like being in the conversation; what are they saying, and what are they doing while they’re saying it? And with any conversation, there’s pacing to consider there as well. Monologues are slower to move through than a curt answer, several lines of dialogue require more time than a quip. Deeper conversations are slower than hasty exchanges by trade. Writing the exchange between two or more characters with few pauses and plenty of actions can create that forward momentum that a faster pace requires. To create a slower pace, writing dialogue with pauses, introspection, and less actions is a good way to achieve that vision.

The biggest take away here is that pacing is ultimately regulating how fast or slow characters or events move through a novel, and discovering that pace is dependent on the choices made in crafting the prose. There’s action and introspection, conversation both weighty and light, travel and racing, movement and pausing, and using diction, dialogue, sentence variation, and punctuation as tools to make those tenants of pace leave their desired impression.

Play with these elements, find what works best, and apply what you find to your draft to keep readers engaged and right where you want them.

Keep it pushing, and happy writing!

💕Julie

#writing help #writing tips #writing #pacing #novels #writeblr #my Creative Writing degree is showing #will it continue to show it's face #it's more likely than you think #I hope this helps somebody #gotta get that based reader engagement #can't tell me my princess is in another castle no sir #nunna that

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jillmckenzie1 · 5 years ago

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One Year on Wheels

I am often asked if I miss having a house.

My gut response is rather defensive. I have a house. It just happens to be silver, sits on wheels, and can be transported to any desired location via my car. So, the simple answer is no, I do not miss having a house. I have one.

If only life were as easy as the simple answers.

The more complicated (and therefore, more realistic) answer is yes, I miss having a house. And I still don’t mean the thing with four walls and windows and a door. Don’t let me fool you—I am most definitely plotting my dream homes over here (yes, plural). One is a black A-frame in the middle of the woods, and the other is a high-rise condo in the middle of a downtown metropolis, but my body’s reaction to this question goes much deeper than concrete and wood and exposed brick. It is more of an acquired heaviness. Because as a nomad, I’m struggling to feel connected to anything.

Today marks my one-year anniversary of living life as a full-time trailer traveler (trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are), and while Breckenridge is now the proud owner of my longest stint in the Airstream – five months – I still don’t inherently belong to this community.

For starters, I don’t actually live in town. I am a 2.5-minute drive to the free shuttle lot that takes me to the base of the gondola (which involves a “California stop” at the red light to turn right on to Airport Road) and a $13 Uber ride to Main Street (no tip). If given a preference, I’m going to spend the night curled up with Nugget under the covers inside the tin can than spend $26 for transportation so I can then spend $21 on three Tito’s and sodas (double, tall, lime, thanks).

And to get a trailer into Breckenridge, or into any town for that matter, is an altogether impossible task. Most RV parks sit just outside city limits, entirely dependent on zoning laws, and to own a property inside those limits with a driveway that will allow for Airstream access would cost me Nugget and my first child and what I owe the government for all those degrees I’m currently not putting to use. If you’ve been following my Instagram stories for quite some time now, you will recall the drama I’ve experienced in trying to find hookups all the way from Half Dome to Houston.

Living in an Airstream will be fun, they said.

Alright, alright, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. Because of course, Airstream-living is pretty damn fun. I’ve simply realized that the freedom associated with this lifestyle is much more of a perception than it is a reality.

At this point in the story, I need to point out a couple things (for now) that the Airstream has taught me about the inner-workings of my devious mind.

One, location is everything to me. Ironically, a ten-hour road trip will slap a silly smile on my face, but a ten-minute commute to Pure Barre puts a damper on my day. In my regular life (whatever that means), I am one-hundred percent team no car. And I recognize that my enchantment with mountain towns stems from this ability to live almost anywhere within the desired zip code and still have access to nearly everything via foot—from the yoga studio to the grocery story to the local dive bar.

Two, because location is everything to me and because I am now fully aware of my ability to live in a mere 100 square feet, I could quite literally survive in a cardboard box if it were near all of my daily hot spots. Seriously, the old me cared way too much about square footage and upscale amenities (hashtag American Dream). Again, don’t let me fool you, Airstreams are by no means cheap. I will pay good money for quality things, and I do, in fact, like quality things. But I would rather have 100 square feet of amazing than 1,000 square feet of good. Most importantly, I now have the confidence to turn 100 square feet of mediocrity into something magnificent with the help of YouTube and my own two hands.

So, back to the regularly scheduled program, yes, I do miss a house. And when I say that I miss a “house,” I need you to hear me that I’m really missing the connection associated with being part of a community. Because when I moved into my Airstream last year, I wasn’t trying to make some statement about minimalism or tiny-home living. I didn’t put an end date to—what most would deem—this episode. For once in my life, I just didn’t have a plan. The only thing that I could define inside myself was that I was scared to commit to a place.

I was scared because I didn’t know the community I wanted to claim as mine.

Navajo Lake (Brian Head, Utah)

So, with my freelance marketing business in my back pocket, I bought a home on wheels and dared to live out the dream—the opposite of the aforementioned American one—which I have now learned happens to haunt so many of us in our sleep. And there were times when I sat. And there were times when I sped. And regardless of that setting, I’ve learned that I needed every single day.

I’ve also learned what it means to stare loneliness deep in the eye. Working alone as a freelancer and living alone as a single person can often create 24-hour vacuums of solidarity (like, actual full days of zero physical communication with another human except for through the buttons and speakers on my phone).

Ask me if I love freelancing, and I will tell you I do. Ask me if I love living in an Airstream, and I will reassure you that it’s one of the best decisions of my life. But I will typically follow those positive squeals with a slight twinge of my lips that reads, “But somedays, it’s just too much choice.”

When there is nothing to ground me into time or space or place, the door is SO open, and I unashamedly admit that it can be intoxicatingly overwhelming. I often find myself searching for reasons for a door to close, even just a little; my personal quest to discover the satisfaction in the stationary.

Because I’m tired of choosing. Because whoever said that “freedom isn’t free” was right. Because some days, the weight of both my personal and professional lives can feel so nauseatingly heavy. And yes, there is something liberating about the freedom. I do have the world at my fingertips. But hear me: I have the world at my fingertips. The whole damn world. I don’t have someone to turn to and say, “let’s go” or “please, help.” I don’t have a colleague sitting across from me on her computer, telling me about her shitty second date with the guy up in finance or asking me about my opinion on how to handle her drunk grandma on Thanksgiving. I don’t have another set of hands to fix broken inverters or another set of eyes to gaze upon Sedona sunsets. I don’t have the pleasure of falling asleep next to a soul who magically fits next to mine (even if he grinds his teeth).

I have to make every decision for my clients who hire me because of my marketing expertise, and then I have to make every decision for myself when I’m trying to survive out on the open road. I say this with humility when I write that very few people are acting with such autonomy in both areas of their lives.

I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have a boss to micromanage me. I don’t have a passenger (or fellow driver) to hold up my road trip by begging me to go to the bathroom. You’re right. I don’t. And there are days when I thank my lucky stars that I don’t. But I also never get to choose autopilot. I don’t get to mindlessly scroll through my email and still get a paycheck. There is no one for me to divvy out responsibilities to so that I can carry a little less of the load.

And what I have learned is that I can say that I want this life or that I love that autonomy and it can still be hard. I can still be struggling inside the appreciation for my current state of being. I do not have to choose a feeling as if those feelings only exist as ultimatums.

I had a conversation with a good friend in Texas the other day who informed me that he was thinking of taking a job in another city, pretty far from his current country roots. I divulged that I had spent the entire day looking at condos in downtown Denver. There was an unstated, yet deeply understood, feeling of fear seeping through our iMessage chat log, which I broke with, “If we’re not scared, then we’re not doing the right things.” The second I saw those blinking bubbles, I knew that he was going to agree (he did).

Newsflash. Airstreams don’t fit in underground parking structures.

So, I spent most of last weekend crying (a strong dose of PMS may have also had something to do with it). Because this thing that used to scare me—living in a trailer without the stability of a permanent structure to call home—has now become my deepest sense of security. Meanwhile, the loneliness that comes as a natural byproduct of this life has magnified my two deepest needs.

One: I want to do life with someone, and it should come as no surprise that dating on the road is a rather trivial thing.

Two: I need professional stimulation from other creatives and entrepreneurs who are going to inspire me, which is difficult to find when sitting alone in my underwear in my Airstream that’s parked just outside of town.

So, I repeat, I spent the weekend looking at condos in downtown Denver. Because if I’m going to do the city, then I’m going to do the city. Please, plop me into a penthouse in the middle of Mile High (you’re not surprised). Because the mountains feed my soul, but those skyscraper buildings spark a deep level of excitement inside my brain. The honking horns and the shuffle of feet ignite a fire in my fingertips.

Again, I know what you’re thinking. And no, I wouldn’t get rid of the Airstream. Yet. I honestly question if I ever could. My emotional attachment to it at this point is at an all-time high. I’m also very aware that, unfortunately, money doesn’t grow on trees (guess our parents were right about that one after all).

The hard truth is that I don’t want to be done on the road. I’ve simply realized that the road is comfortable. And maybe that means I should stay roaming. But maybe it means I should try something different. Maybe it means that I need to find my balance. I repeat: I’m not in this experience to make a statement. I’m here to find my truth. And I know that part of that truth is that I don’t want to live on wheels forever. Travel on them, yes. Build my foundation on them as a permanent place of residency, no.

In my downtown search for the perfect pad, I was confronted with handfuls of people questioning my current living situation—an immediate assessment of whether or not I would fit in at a particular complex or if I could afford to live there.

Me: “Well, right now, yeah, I actually live in an Airstream.”

I have to admit, it’s hard to look at people’s faces when I make this statement (if they even know what an Airstream is). And y’all already know how many men try to make it back to the cozy confines of my twin bed in the tin can (insert massive eyeroll here). You see, I can directly pinpoint the moment of jealousy, how the light quickly floods over the person’s pupils, a split-second of drunkenness inside a state of complete sobriety. And I get it. I owned those eyes once (and I’ll forever own them as long as people keep talking about snowboarding in Japan or camping in Banff or eloping at the highest peak in the Sawtooth Mountains).

Jealousy is beautiful to a certain extent. When channeled appropriately. It reminds us that our dreams are real. It inspires us to act.

The problem is not the jealousy. The problem is that I’m allowing their story to become my story. I’m getting wrapped up in the easy answer because it’s easy for jealousy to fuel my continuation. I’m also putting myself back into an ultimatum, as if there are only two choices here. Stay. Move.

And another one of my learnings from life on the road is that there are never just two choices. Two choices may present themselves on the surface, but if you’re willing to do the work to go deeper, you will find a myriad of ways to determine your desired solution.

Corona Del Mar Beach (Newport Beach, CA)

It’s a rather bittersweet feeling to be confronted head on by the excitement of new opportunities and the sadness of leaving something that is deeply loved. If I’m being honest with myself, there hasn’t been a time of transition in my life where the excitement and the sadness weren’t violently crashing into one another like a boy celebrating his twelfth birthday jacked up on Pixie Stix and head-hunting his friends in the driver’s seat of a bumper car. I can distinctly recall that wave of bittersweet washing over me when I’ve left other places like Basalt, Portland, Louisville, and Sun Valley to pursue different—not necessarily better—dreams.

I was recently explicating my fears of trading in full-time freedom to one of my best friends from Denver. Halfway through our three-hour conversation—one of those where you both keep telling each other that you’re going to get off the phone, but never do—he simply states, “I get it. You’d be giving up the life that everyone seemingly wants for the life that everyone already has.”

Ooph.

And that’s the thing about best friends. They often times know us better than we know ourselves. If they’re really good, they open us up to our own shit. And the great ones make us answer to the voice inside our heads that we’re incessantly trying to silence.

Me: “Yeah, Dub. Can we not?”

But, we can. I can. I will.

Because to be living in an Airstream is an amazing experience. It has been amazing. And if it’s meant to continue after she goes into the auto body shop for the next few weeks to fix the monstrous dent in her backside (thanks again, Houston), it will still be amazing.

But, change…change can also be amazing.

I’ve come to this stark realization that choice feels so heavy because we are usually choosing between two (or more) right things. The issue is not with the choice. The issue is with what we do after the choice is made. Because we are too often plagued by paralysis for fear of choosing what is wrong (when a wrong does not exist) or by regret for fear that the other option would have turned out better (when it is impossible to ever know).

The true power of choice lies in our confidence to pursue one of them with reckless abandon.

It would have been easy to regret this transition one year ago. My learning curve was steep by anyone’s standards. I could have succumbed to a thousand thoughts that this life just wasn’t meant for someone like me. But I never gave myself that option. Not because I wanted to ascribe to some naïve YOLO philosophy that justifies behaviors in the name of “no regrets”; trust me, I’ve regretted plenty of my life choices—but because I consciously understood that the minute I gave myself the ability to second guess my decision (like really second guess it) then I was not going to be able to be fully present in this moment (however long this moment may be).

One year ago, the Airstream was the right choice; however, staying in Sun Valley or moving back to Colorado would have also been the right choices. But I chose the Airstream. With reckless abandon. And in doing so, the Airstream chose me back. That doesn’t mean I didn’t cry. A lot. And it most certainly doesn’t mean that I didn’t ask myself regularly if what I was doing was in fact, right. It just means that I stood up to the part of myself that wanted to bait my insecurities into believing that I was wrong.

Now, I find myself facing that same fork (or spaghetti junction) in the road. And maybe the Airstream and I will end up in some campground of the dark night observatory in Stanley, Idaho. Or maybe I’ll choose some penthouse in downtown Denver. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll voyage to some waterfront RV park across the street from Whole Foods in Palm Beach, Florida.

The only thing I know today is that I’m dropping off my house at the Airstream dealership to get work done for the next few weeks. That wave of bittersweet excitement and sadness has washed over me in the last month more times than I can even count. Because I needed Breckenridge. Choosing to leave Texas for this Colorado tourist town, a return to my roots, was nowhere near easy. The pain tried to tell me that what I was doing was wrong. The pain was misinformed.

Because Breckenridge, you were every little bit of right.

When I left Houston, I wrote, “If I am meant to be here, or anywhere, I need to feel the weight of missing this place. I need to re-ground myself in the geography that is a manifestation of my spirit. I need clarity. I cannot consciously live inside of habits that are out of integrity with the life that I am preaching for others to seek. I cannot settle.”

The leaving hurts. It always hurts. No matter the level of connection to the community. Because leaving still severs my daily patterns. It still forces me to wake up with a different view. It radically transforms my exterior. It requires that I readjust the small amount of autopilot gifted to me through my routine.

Yes, I miss a house insomuch that I miss the bond to a specific place or a physical group of people, but Breckenridge was never about the community. It was about me. It was about the mountains. It was about revealing another layer of myself to myself. And, in the digging, I just happened to find a guy—without an app—who reminded me that two humans doing the work can live inside of something magical (if even just for a moment).

At a point in my life where I wanted to throw in the proverbial dating towel, I realized that a relationship with two ready and willing adults can actually manifest into something worthy of sacrifice. Because somewhere amidst the shitty conversations that are required for a relationship to grow, I was inspired by my own voice. I was moved by my own ability to finally articulate what I want and need from a partner. I learned to trust myself—something so foreign to the version of me that existed just one year ago—and I braved into a territory that challenged me to be grounded in my own authenticity (no matter how deep). I also realized that “men suck” was a story that I was telling myself to protect my ego and my heart. The truth is that we all suck, but we’re all trying (some better than others). And my faith in finding a best friend with whom to hold hands and slap butts and fight over who gets the first shower (when we inevitably settle on taking one together) was restored to a level that I’m not even sure had ever existed.

So, I’m hitched up and headed out. I will simultaneously smile at the Airstream monopolizing my field of vision in my rearview mirror and cry for the pain of another goodbye. I will embrace the bittersweet.

In these moments, I’m always reminded of the David Bowie quote: “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” It most certainly won’t. And I am committed to finding myself, finding my person, and finding my balance on this road we call life.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/one-year-on-wheels/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.

By the time it reaches the midpoint of its 10 episodes, the series is one of the more confident and assured examples of what I call “Big Moment TV,” where every episode involves some jaw-dropping visual or conceit that’s meant to send you to Twitter to buzz, “Did you see that?!”

And as directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, the genius (and newly minted James Bond director) behind everything from the wonderful 2011 Jane Eyre to the visuals of the first season of True Detective, those moments really land. I wanted to go to Twitter to talk about them, except that would have been a violation of my screener agreement with Netflix.

And yet there’s something so calculated about Maniac. There’s rarely the thrill of the unexpected, which is tough to explain in a series that longs, deeply, to provide the thrill of the unexpected. Every time the story would shift, or enter another genre entirely, or let the actors play other characters than the ones they came in as, I would nod and say, “Sure. Makes sense!” Which is not what I think anybody involved was going for.

Some of that stems from performance (Hill is a fine dramatic actor but maybe not the guy you want sublimating all of his live-wire energy to play a depressive), and some of it stems from the storytelling, which is a wackadoodle pastiche of “mind-fuck cinema,” in which the movies ask you to question reality and wonder what’s going on and so on.

But not only have you seen the basic dramatic beats of Maniac over and over again, but Maniac takes great pains to explain to you, at every turn, what’s going on, how the characters feel and think about it, and what those crazy, trippy visuals could mean. It’s a mind-fuck movie so unconfident in its ability to fuck with you that it follows up every big reveal or jaw-dropping mindscape with a moment that seems to ask, “Did you see what I did there?”

This probably already sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown together in haste, which don’t really cohere. It is, and it isn’t, and to explain why, I’m going to have to spoil the show almost in its entirety, so follow me after the massive spoiler warning to talk about why it’s easy to remain interested in Maniac but hard to become truly invested in it.

The rise of Big Moment TV has been driven by two factors. The first is that TV storytelling has grown more complex in terms of serialization, but the second is that lots of people still kind of half pay attention to what they’re watching, because they’re doing chores or playing a game on their phone or whatever. So if you watch an episode of Game of Thrones and there’s a big, bloody death or something, that jars you out of whatever other thing you’re doing and forces you to pay attention.

But, increasingly, these sorts of shows feel driven less by the whims of their characters than by the whims of their creators. Game of Thrones went from a show that made you feel the weight of every death to a show that wantonly killed characters without much regard to emotional resonance or storytelling sense. And that’s, ultimately, part of the fun of that show, but it took it from a must-watch to a fun show that often struggles to reach its potential.

But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix. (It was an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos.) All while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.

(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)

The story focuses on Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill), two 20-somethings struggling with barely repressed trauma and other mental conditions in a near-future New York where everything, including friendship, has become a part of the gig economy. You can even sell your likeness for various ads and stock photos, as Annie has done, which means that when Owen bumps into her at a purported pharma trial for a new drug, he both feels he already knows her and fears he’s hallucinating her. (He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, see.)

In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix

Anyway, the drug trial turns out to be a complicated procedure designed to put people through a sort of psychological boot camp, where in stage one they relive their greatest trauma (the loss of her sister for Annie; a suicide attempt — that might not have even happened — for Owen), attempt to better understand the roots of their psychological issues in stage two, and then confront those issues and their trauma in stage three, in hopes of healing and moving on.

The trial is overseen by a group of people cosplaying as the characters erasing Jim Carrey’s memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, including Justin Theroux, the dryly funny Sonoya Mizuno, and (I swear I am not kidding about this) Sally Field playing a depressed computer.

The bulk of the series involves what happens when a mechanical malfunction results in the fusing of Owen and Annie’s subconsciouses, which results in them essentially entering an anthology series. Across five of the season’s 10 episodes, they play different characters, in different genres, following what amounts to Fukunaga’s syllabus for a “history of American indie film” class. There are suburban capers, and an extended (kinda awful) journey through a gangster/crime movie tale, and a story where Owen becomes a hawk. (That last one’s a lot of fun!)

This is, I think, a pretty compelling way to explore two characters who seem paper-thin at first. By having Annie and Owen journey through both of their subconsciouses at once, the show could theoretically fill in details about these people’s core beings while still allowing for plenty of action and adventure. Seeing Annie as a Long Island housewife trying to steal a lemur, or as a con artist interrupting a seance, or as a half-elven ranger in a generic fantasy kingdom gives us different sides of the actual Annie’s persona and lets Stone have a lot of fun.

But I could never escape the feeling that the show’s weirdness was less an organic investigation of two people in crisis and more a mechanism designed to keep me watching. The journeys that Annie and Owen take through their brains feel assembled more from other movies and TV shows than from genuine psychological exploration.

On a show limited only by the human imagination (at least in theory), these adventures stay frustratingly earthbound. They’re “imaginative,” in the manner of a college student who’s carefully cultivated her persona out of bits and pieces of other personas she’s seen elsewhere, rather than authentic.

The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix

It feels a little churlish to complain about this, because watching Maniac is a lot of fun. I sat down intending to watch a couple of episodes one day and ended up watching seven, because I really did want to see what would happen next. The writing staff — led by Patrick Somerville of The Leftovers fame — has given real thought to the story of all 10 episodes as well as the story of each episode, which leads to fun journeys through the various genre pastiches the writers come up with. (I loved the Long Island-set crime caper, which felt straight out of a Coen brothers movie.)

But I could never get past the stage where I was enjoying the show’s considerably gorgeous surfaces to access some deeper level. And then after watching the finale, I read a quote from Fukunaga in a recent GQ profile of him, and something clicked. He said:

Because Netflix is a data company, they know exactly how their viewers watch things. So they can look at something you’re writing and say, We know based on our data that if you do this, we will lose this many viewers. So it’s a different kind of note-giving. It’s not like, Let’s discuss this and maybe I’m gonna win. The algorithm’s argument is gonna win at the end of the day. So the question is do we want to make a creative decision at the risk of losing people. …

There was one episode we wrote that was just layer upon layer peeled back, and then reversed again. Which was a lot of fun to write and think of executing, but, like, halfway through the season, we’re just losing a bunch of people on that kind of binging momentum. That’s probably not a good move, you know? So it’s a decision that was made 100 percent based on audience participation.

Now, listen, the notes-giving process in Hollywood is important. I’m not somebody who rails against notes, or thinks they ruin the creative process or tear down impeccable works of art. But something about letting a computer give those notes speaks to why Maniac, ultimately, felt less human than human to me, why it always seemed like it was assembled more than it was a deeply felt passion project for anyone. And, indeed, the series is based on a Norwegian show of the same name, and the various genre pastiches look a lot like other Netflix shows if you squint, and every single actor feels specifically chosen to appeal to a very specific demographic.

This would almost feel like Netflix snarkily commenting on itself if the show didn’t take itself so seriously. The fact that it turns into a genuinely sincere story of how Owen and Annie come together to better each other’s lives in the last few episodes is either the bold swing that saves the enterprise or a case of too little, too late. I’m more in the former camp than the latter, but it’s not hard for me to imagine talking myself out of that stance.

And yet there’s something kind of beautiful about a series that applies the dull plotting of most other TV shows — all life-and-death stakes and, “We’ve gotta get to the [plot device] before they do!” numbness — to two emotionally damaged people trying to heal. There’s a bravado here that I can’t write off, even if I never felt like the show went deep enough to turn either Owen or Annie into anything more than ciphers, despite all of the self-analyzing monologues both deliver in an attempt to sell their complexities.

Whatever complaints I have about the show, then, might be a part of its commentary on a world where our mental horizons are so often occupied by stories we’ve heard elsewhere. If you and I somehow had our subconsciousnesses fused, and then went through a series of adventures in dreamspace together, wouldn’t it be more likely that those adventures would be drawn from the movies and TV shows we had watched than something wildly original?

Maniac isn’t weird enough to really achieve what it wants to, but it does say something — however accidentally — about how reality is already weird enough. Maybe that’s why we’re so content to live inside the dreams of others.

Maniac is streaming on Netflix.

Original Source -> Netflix’s Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/netflixs-maniac-with-jonah-hill-and-emma-stone-is-either-too-weird-or-not-weird-enough/

Netflix's Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough

Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.

But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix — an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos — while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.

(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)

In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix

The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix

Maniac is streaming on Netflix.

Source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/9/21/17884512/maniac-netflix-review-emma-stone-jonah-hill

0 notes

theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

Link

Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.

But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix — an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos — while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.

(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)

In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix

The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix

Maniac is streaming on Netflix.

Original Source -> Netflix’s Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes