#no idea how accurate this is since I'm halfway through the story

[anjinghangat]

[thesonicpunk]

youre so right that the way kishimoto limits sakura bc of his own misogyny reflects the things girls often face irl. based on what ive seen from interviews, kishimoto is the kind of male writer who thinks women need inherently be written differently from and have different types of stories than men, and it creates this weird self-fulfilling prophecy whereby believing he's not good at writing girls, he ends up being bad at writing girls. but somehow it sometimes circles back around to making him good at it? the struggle of always feeling like you're second-best to the men in your life...but by focusing only on trying to surpass them you just end up centering yourself around them even when you've forged your own path...shes so girlhood to me

aaaa anon ur egging me on ahah (i love it, let's discuss euehuhehu, or not u can just ignore me lol) I'm sorry it took me so long to reply, I had a deadline and halfway through writing this i realised i wanted to do it properly and so I had to come back when I had time It does kinda circle around to Kishimoto crafting a portrayal of aspects of girlhood that's, well, maybe not good since its not intentional or well explored/resolved, but definitely accurate in a lot of ways.

I've always thought Sakura's crush on Sasuke being a big chunk of her focus in life is a great example of this. Kishimoto writes it in because that's how he sees women: what else could they want other than a man? And he needs to show how desirable Sasuke is because his audience wants to see it, they're teenage boys after all and Sasuke's the cool anti-hero (Naruto's too goofy and the underdog at this point in the story for her to like him) so of course Sakura's in love with him. But, at the same time, Sakura's crush being so central in her life is quite accurate because, as a girl, you're socialised since you're very young to desire a certain type of man: the man all men want to be, because men want you to desire them. In this case, this is Sasuke: the cool, aloof, powerful shinobi from a prestigious clan, the strongest, top of the class guy.* You're told by all the media you consume, the stories you read, the comments your family makes and the relationships that are modelled for you in society in general that you exist to love a guy, to take care of him, that your biggest dream should be being worthy of that guy's love, because what else is there for a girl to aspire to? And as a girl you don't just accept it, because it's deeper and more ingrained than that: you actually want your life to look like that. Because all the other girls who already have that are so pretty, and when you smile people compliment you, and you're told that's where your worth lies, and you want to have worth and you want people to pay attention because it feels good. (That's why going after a guy like Sasuke, who is emotionally unavailable, is also very realistic: it feels better when it's hard won. it's like, "he isn't affectionate with anyone, so if he is affectionate with me, i've really got worth!" which is something we see Sakura feeling well into her marriage with Sasuke in Boruto, and it's very sad that she still accept such a behaviour after growing up.)

Even when you have other aspirations (becoming a ninja, in this case) you are just confronted with the idea that you will never be as strong/good/powerful as the men in your life (like you pointed out). The system has it in for you in the first place: it hasn't been designed for you to thrive. Your teacher doesn't push you as hard as he pushes the boys, he doesn't pay as much attention to you as he pays to the boys, and everyone always acts like you're defenceless in the batter field, not giving you a chance to prove yourself. So why shouldn't you feel like you maybe are less than the guys? If your teachers and your teammates see you that way, then maybe that's what you are. Can you really fault Sakura for believing that when so many women irl struggle with this immensely too? You're already taking a caretaker/disciplinarian role within your team because you're the girl, and you're only 13, so maybe you should stick to that, because that you're good at, and Kakashi praises you for not being difficult like the boys, because "boys will be boys" but Sakura-chan you're so easy to deal with!!! And then you find your niche, something you're good at (tho, ofc, it's not by coincidence that kishi's strongest women in Naruto are healers - tsunade and sakura - that in itself is already an essentialisation of female nature, but i won't get into it here, even tho it adds to everything) , and you work your ass off at that: you're not from a special clan, you have no special powers like Naruto or Sasuke, but you've become the strongest medic ninja and yet. That doesn't seem enough for the fandom to see your worth, you routinely get called weak and useless because subpar writing didn't give you enough chances to shine (even tho you have all the potential) exactly because your writer is misogynistic. yay When Sakura goes after Naruto to convince him to back down so they can kill Sasuke, of course she uses her womanhood as her weapon. Of course she tells him she likes him instead. It's desperate, it's flawed, it's even misguided, but she's been told all her life that's all she's got to offer, she's been told all her life that's what men will respond to and she's tried to keep up with them but she feels like she can't on her own terms (tho she can!!! she can she can she can), so she succumbs to the default way society tells her she has value. And Naruto defies a lot of things by saying no here, he defies even the patriarchy/comphetness he himself partook in as a child (by crushing on her, by wanting to be like Sasuke), and further solidifies himself as an extremely compelling male protagonist IMO (Kishimoto misses a lot but he didn't miss here, but anyways i'm not analysing naruto rn ahah);

This is just another way Boruto (the show) actively tarnishes Naruto's characters. Unfortunately, there was space for things to be resolved differently. With the ending of Naruto, we could have imagined something else for Sakura: she could have grown out of her crush on Sasuke, realised her worth, that her life doesn't need to revolve around him and invested her time in becoming whatever it is that she wants to become, but instead..... Sakura becomes a housewife who abandons her own aspirations as a ninja to be a sometimes-useful-prop in a narrative about another boy, she's gotten married to an emotionally unavailable man that doesn't really love her and is never around, and yet she still pines over him after years of neglect and pretends to be satisfied (but isn't really, who would be?) by the tiniest slither of affection and of course, A CHILD. Because that's all women are for, and all that they should aspire to in the next stage of their lives: why wouldn't she be happy now that she has a kid with Sasuke? She even says it herself.

Tbh it's all a bit gross! But in a way, realistic, since unfortunately this is the life of a lot of women out there. Also don't come for me for this take, the things i'm saying are informed by my own experiences growing up as a girl. Ofc there's nothing wrong with choosing a more domestic life as a woman, that's clearly not what i'm critiquing here.

TL;DR; She is so girlhood !!!!

*this is damaging to Sasuke too, as we know, because it incentivises a flat, superficial, unkind view of who he is as a person that overlooks his traumas, pressures him to play a role and limits who he is/what he needs and deserves in a friend/partner too. That patriarchy is damaging to men themselves is not news tho, it's the same for men in real life.

[oneatlatime]

Avatar Day

I'm back!

"A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar" That wasn't just chance, was it? Wanna bet that it also wasn't just chance that Zuko was near enough to see the beam of light?

HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE TO BE ASLEEP FOR A SPIDER TO SET UP SHOP IN YOUR MOUTH?!?!?

"What are you doing in my mouth" is a sentence so ripe for innuendo-isation that my brain tripped over itself trying to come up with a dirty way to spin it.

Love the boundary talk too. I had no idea that kind of therapy speak was around in the early 2000s.

There has got to be a more efficient way of stopping someone who can canonically fly than pulling down a whole ass tree vaguely in their path. And how strong are these rhino things?

Did that mask guy just try to bomb a child?

Tee Hee. A Pee Pee.

Boomerang has to come back though. That what boomerangs do. I refuse to believe that boomerang is gone.

I guessed about halfway through season 1 that Zuko would have to go through some identity struggles in this show, but I was wrong! It's Sokka who gets to reevaluate his identity. Ponytail guy doesn't have the same ring to it.

Dingalings all over this episode.

I've been wondering why we weren't seeing more Avatar themed places and events. Granted, the avatar's been missing for a century, but in a world where there is recurring proof of a spiritually endowed god-like person's existence, I would expect more temples and Holy days. I mean, we can't even prove that any of our gods exist and we still commit to building megachurches. Imagine how easy it would be to fundraise to build a temple to an Avatar when there's the underlying threat that if you don't donate, the demigod in question could show up at your house.

Two things: first, there were some serious resources invested in these floats. Either this village is loaded or has priority problems. Second: Aang is now well enough known worldwide, that villages he's never been to can accurately depict his appearance, costume, and personality. It really never occurred to them to lay low, did it?

"That's the biggest me I've ever seen." I'm curious to know your sample size.

Sokka could totally carry a torch. It's the torch that wouldn't be worthy of the wielder.

That about sums up my reaction too.

Zuko's in this episode. Hi Zuko! I'd know that musical trill anywhere. When was the last time I saw Zuko?

So I know that Zuko's got a wisdom problem, but could he at least wait until after dark to rob people? While wearing a very recognisable costume that is prominently featured on its own Wanted poster? Just a little common sense I'm begging you.

So in character for it to be Katara who takes action first when Aang is insulted/has his effigy set on fire.

This guy is stupid right? Kyoshi was around at least, what - two hundred years ago? And there's been two avatars since, who as far as I can tell aren't Kyoshi reincarnated but are whole other people, and he's still blaming Aang for some rando's death?

Pro tip: anyone introduced with the expression "glorious leader" is invariably neither glorious nor a good leader. Good leaders don't need hyping up.

I was wondering if that little remark about water tribe money at the beginning of the episode was going to have a payoff. Every time I think it's simple worldbuilding, it turns out to be plot. This show is so neat.

The loss of boomerang is having unforseen effects on Sokka's mental state.

"I can't do that [save the world] with people thinking I'm a murderer either." Says Aang. "So what exactly do you think every earth kingdom and water tribe person assumes you're going to do to the Fire Lord?" Says I. To be clear, I don't want to watch a goofy 12 year old commit a war crime, but I guarantee that no one in the avatar world is under any illusions about any fire lord going quietly.

How does Aang know how do push the 'expert detective' button?

How long is Katara's arm?

Ok I'm guessing from Katara and Aang's reaction to the polar leopard boots story, that Aang knew that Sokka could be conned into helping with 'expert detective' talk, because Sokka has retold the polar leopard boots story 800 times.

Sokka understands the importance of looking the part! Hang on I got a gif for this.

Well-known top three rich person activity: money fondling.

Moneybags should have put those metal reinforcing struts on the roof too. He probably cheaped out.

Oh my GOD this is peak sibling energy. This is MY thing. No touch. ME DO. MINE. Yeah I know it's obvious to anyone with eyes but I'M THE ONE WHO GETS TO SAY IT OUT LOUD.

Loving the bubble pipe.

HYBRID ANIMAL

NOT A DRILL

Rat Elephant?

Too late my man. The only person who didn't see that is Aangy.

Super nitpick time! Why did they build a defensive stockade when there are highly climbable cliffs 50 feet away and the fire nation have cliff-climbing tanks?

Funny how the mayor guy says "clear her name." Aang wants to clear his own name, the mayor wants to clears Kyoshi's. At least some people get that avatars are different people.

Last visit to Kyoshi was: -Harassing local wildlife -Misogyny -Crossdressing -Burning down the whole village -Harassing local wildlife again

What in that list inspired Suki to change the world/fight in the war?

Respect the props Katara.

I found the sane people is this village! You know what I love? When they're listing Aang's good points, being the Avatar comes FORTH. They get that he's more than his title.

I'm sorry but I cannot believe that this painting, which lives in a building without a door, is three hundred years old. Unless that thing is behind 15 layers of varnish or invisible glass, humidity would have destroyed it in the first decade.

Katara getting ragdolled got a big laugh from me. Plus the follow up pipe to the noggin. Gotta love a sibling slap fight!

With that model of justice it's no wonder the sane ones are in jail.

Sounds like someone was chasing butterflies when he should have been paying attention...

Zuko again. I'd forgotten he was in this episode.

"There is a simple honour in poverty" is a good-sounding line, but I'd believe it more if it wasn't coming from a former crown prince who, until like three weeks ago, never wanted for anything.

Can someone please make Zuko aware of the fact that honour as a concept exists outside of an avatar-capturing context?

In my experience, the hope you give to yourself when there's no hope left is less hope and more spite. Still works though.

Was all that talk about not touching Kyoshi's things just talk, or did the water tribe siblings have to steal this stuff?

YES Sokka is RIGHT stuff has POWER.

Did Koh steal their brains as well as their faces?

The village idiots fucked around, and now they're gonna find out! this is going to be good.

So Chin the conqueror was about as smart as the people of his village. He really thought he could take on the Avatar?

Good Lord avatars can move tectonic plates?

She's blowing a continent. She sailed a continent. Without a sail.

Tiny Momo.

Badadss lady speech aside, it's pretty funny that Kyoshi used her ability to manifest to be the opposite of helpful.

Just when I thought he couldn't possibly get more stupid, he sinks to an even lower level of dumbass. Zuko sucks all the common sense out of any room he enters; the only thing that's kept him alive this long is being in proximity to the world's wisest man as balance. So what does Zuko do? Rides off into the sunset WITHOUT Iroh. Dumbass. I give him two days before he dies in a freak foraging accident. Dumbass.

SERIOUSLY. DUMBASS.

Never thought I'd be happy to see these guys, but here I am.

Petty Aang! I've never seen petty Aang before. Boy contains multitudes.

Screw artifact preservation.

Three of these jokes in a single episode. This episode does rather feel as though it was written with the brakes off.

The lead rhino takes one look at Aang and is like "I'm not going to mess with that. Let's burn down some buildings instead." Let the record show, the lead rhino has more sense than Chin the Conqueror.

I knew it! Boomerang came back!

Raw dough. Uncooked dough. Their new snack is salmonella. "This is by far the worst town we've ever been to." Thanks to Sokka for the thesis statement.

Final Thoughts

This episode was hot nonsense! And I love nonsense, but it's too far when I find myself rooting FOR the rhinos. To be clear, I loved this episode's humour and especially the sibling dynamic between Sokka and Katara. I've literally had that exact conversation with siblings, usually about who gets to be the one to tell Mom about the spectacular awesome thing we saw that totally wasn't our fault and that we totally saw without going somewhere we shouldn't have.

But! The villagers? Stupid. We cut to Zuko? Heretofore unseen levels of Stupid. Even Iroh was being stupid. You do have to let children learn things for themselves and make their own mistakes, but in enemy territory? With a documented history of dumbass behaviour? And a propensity for dressing as a wanted criminal, while also being a different wanted fugitive while out of disguise? Mark my words; it's going to end stupid.

I loved the C plot with Sokka and identity. It's funny how it parallels/speedruns the journey Zuko's going to have to end up doing at some point (he'd BETTER), although probably not in a single episode with goofy props. If only teenage identity crises were as easily solved as a returned boomerang.

That scene with Kyoshi sure was something, huh? I actually rewound and watched it twice through before I tried to comment on it, because I was too enthralled to do anything but watch.

If all Avatars can do what Kyoshi can do, then Aang is: a) nowhere near as developed an Avatar as I've been assuming, and b) going to be really really scary one day. Not sure how I feel about Scary Aang. Although petty Aang was fun.

I love monster of the week episodes with low stakes and high humour, but this one was had so much stupid coming at me from so many directions that it did get a little annoying. Still, I'll rewatch it. That Kyoshi bit was delicious.

[dandelionsandderivatives]

American girl reviews: Cécile and Marie-Grace

I posted a few weeks ago about rereading some of the American Girl books, and I've been wanting to type up my thoughts about some of them.

American Girl has made some of their Black-history-centered books available as free ebooks online, so once I'd read through the books on my shelf, I decided to go see what they had available.

Cécile and Marie-Grace were introduced after I'd aged out of American Girl, but I had beloved younger relatives who were still very invested in the franchise, and so I picked up and read their books pretty soon after they came out. I remembered almost nothing about them, other than the switching-places-at-the-ball plot, and that I didn't find them particularly engaging.

On a reread, I think the series really suffers from the shared POV; I think it could have been done well, but the pacing is dreadful. The events of Meet Cécile and Meet Marie-Grace are almost exactly the same; there are multiple places where we see a scene from Marie-Grace's point of view, and then we have to reread it from Cécile's point of view in the very next book. Essentially, by the time we get to Marie-Grace and the Orphans, we're halfway through the series and nothing has happened. This issue continues through the books; there are a few places where we see something from one character's perspective, and then we wait till the next book to find out what the other character thought about it. This could be a fun way to build suspense, but in my opinion it usually feels anticlimactic (as there really isn't much personal drama between the two girls).

To be clear, I don't think this is a character issue; I think the idea of having a shared POV is inherently difficult, and AG bit off more than it could chew. The other series with best friends get seven books (six for the main character and one for the best friend), and I think they would have done well to add another book to the series. Maybe start with Meet Marie-Grace and Cécile (or perhaps Meet Cécile and Marie-Grace), and then arrange the series like so:

Meet Marie-Grace and Cécile

Cécile has an adventure (MG helps)

Marie-Grace has an adventure (Cécile helps)

Cécile and Marie-Grace team up to save Christmas!

Marie-Grace has another adventure (Cécile provides moral support)

Cécile has another adventure (MG provides snacks)

Changes for Cécile and Marie-Grace

This way you'd get less repetition and a bit more character development, and the book series might as well be a bit longer, since this is a New And Different Way To Approach American Girl Dolls.

As for the subject matter of the books, I don't think I had many complaints; at least, none that couldn't be fixed by giving the characters a bit more room to develop. I think a Black character with a wealthy family was a good addition to the lineup, and the interracial friendship was great! I just wish they'd had more story, rather than retelling a shorter story multiple times.

I also. . . don't think the art helped much. I'm not much of an artist, so it could be that I'm just not getting what the art was trying to do, but it looked oddly flat to me?

The collection was also a bit weird. I absolutely love the 1850s; they might be my favorite fashion decade ever. Everything Marie-Grace and Cécile wear is technically accurate, but all of it appears to be cut with no regard to how things drape in doll scale? Marie-Grace's blue two-piece dress, for example, looked really off to me because the sleeves are an odd in-between length. The basque bodice she's wearing is certainly an 1850s-appropriate style (and the collar is white, NOT self-fabric, which a lot of people get wrong), but generally you see that style with long sleeves, not short! I was able to find at least one period photo with a similar cut, so it's fine, but it still looks *off* to me. (I also suspect it's a more adult-woman style rather than a little-girl style, but I'm not 100% sure.)

Cécile's parlor outfit has the same issue: it's a darling idea, and the print on the skirt is to die for, and the jacket is cute – except the sleeve length, which looks awkward in every picture I've seen of it. And again, I don't think you usually see a short-sleeved jacket over a white waist like this? I'm not saying never; I'm just saying it sets off alarm bells.

Especially when Addy has a darling little Zouave jacket with proper pagoda sleeves in her school outfit. AG has managed to produce good mid-century sleeves in the past.

And all of the outfits I've seen just look a little off. The necklines are too high or too low, the sleeves are the wrong length, etc. Marie-Grace has two pink dresses that look similar enough that I'm shocked AG decided to put both into production.

I haven't seen any of the furniture in person. The stock photos make it all look rather plasticky and flat, but maybe it was really nice in person?

Final verdict: Cécile deserved better. Marie-Grace deserved better. It's been only a few weeks since I read them but I don't remember what Cécile's favorite food is, or what she liked to do other than sing and hang out with Marie-Grace.

I do like the parrot, though.

[sassypotatoe1]

I'm adding this story to my myriad of sage advice for budding artists and artisans. I have like a decade and a half of formal fine art training, a little less than a decade of fiber arts training but informal, and between 3 and 5 years of various other arts and trades that I pick up as it catches my interest.

I'm not a good sculptor, though I think that's down to my using cheap air dry clay meant for children because I can't afford the artist grade, and I can definitely whittle well enough, I know how to remove material to get to my desired shape, so by all accounts I should be able to do masonry and sculpting, and I won't know if I'm actually any good until I can afford better materials.

Every time I sculpt something with my cheap children's airdry clay I get people asking me for a sculpture, and I have to tell them it's a craft that, for me, takes way too long to accurately price with the quality of materials I have. I'm not giving someone a sculpture made of paper pulp air dry clay meant for children and pricing it according to my skill and the hours worked, because they will not get value for money. I have no guarantee that the sculpture will last.

When I make clothes for myself I'm pretty lazy about it, I construct it well enough that it won't fall apart, and if I alter the pattern I don't pay attention and end up with wonky seams and strange panels. I can block patterns, I know how they work, and I love draping to bits, I just don't bother with those steps because I'm lazy as fuck.

Part of it is down to the fact that when I sew I either have to sew completely uninterrupted for at least 6 hours, or not at all, because I can't get distracted halfway through or I lose my mental calculations and geometry. So the few times I've made apparel for someone else, I did it when I had uninterrupted sewing time, and it turned out pretty much perfect. Three of the 7 times I did it in the last decade people ended up paying me more just because they loved the final product. I saw all the flaws and hours of mistakes that went into it and that I wasn't able to fix. My last client 3 years ago told me they've never seen a skirt that neatly constructed. I glowed about it for a good while.

Sketching has always been easy enough for me, I have been drawing since I could hold a crayon and understand shapes. My sketching output, 20 years into the practice, still wildly varies. I can do chuck close level hyperrealism, and I can fuck up a stylistic Mr potato head doodle. It's all down to my energy, focus, level of inspiration and hyperfixation, and desire to get an idea down accurately VS quickly.

It's for this reason that I learned very quickly on that a sketchbook is not meant to all be perfect masterpieces. Sketches are doodles to get ideas down and practice techniques, not art works. My sketch book is an amalgamation of the most disproportionate mermaids and beautifully shaded hyperpigmented hands, they're never consistent, and I feel no obligation for it to be high quality.

Painting is a different beast. I paint tiny detail by tiny detail, in Neverending layers. I don't see the finished product until months after completing it. It's a collection of specific shading and highlighting techniques and brush strokes and all the mistakes where I couldn't get the line just right or the color vibrant enough. When I paint I can't just stand back and look at my painting to see how it's going, I have to take a picture of it, send it to someone and have them respond before looking at the picture again before I can see the whole.

I frequently go back to old projects that I deemed complete at the time and redo parts of it better than before, because my art is constantly improving the more I do it, but a lot of the time I go back to an old project, fully seeing it in my mind's eye as terrible, because I can't believe I was able to do what I did when I did it, and I find that I'm much more skilled at the craft than I remember. I get flooded with the question "I did that? How?" and I have to immediately try it again to prove to myself that I'm actually skilled and it wasn't just a fluke or a possession by an ancient master of that art.

My high school art teacher always insisted that a work of art is never complete, and it contradicted everything I've been taught about not adding more to a piece after it feels complete because you'll ruin it, so I didn't believe it, and then I revisited my high school final exam piece 3 years after making it to touch it up, fix some proportion and shading issues, because I wanted to enter it into a competition. I never did because you had to have created the entire thing within that year and I'm too honest to pretend that I did.

I feverishly repainted the gold handle on the tea cup at 4am after getting back from a performance, and I woke up the next day at 2pm wondering how the fuck I managed to do that quality of work. I'm capable of it, it's not a question of skill, I just have this mental disconnect between what my skill level actually is and what I think it is, and it's much higher than what I've convinced myself of.

Your art may be better now than it was before, but you might be surprised at how good it was in the past if you revisit old pieces, and if you redo certain aspects of those pieces you'll find that you're probably better now than you thought you were. And sometimes you're lazy and don't follow the right processes, relying on a sense of experience that can be distorted, and you'll churn out something much worse than your actual skill level could make, and that's okay too. Whatever isn't perfect is inspiration for the perfect piece. Keep going, give yourself grace, try again and again and again and you will see improvement.

When I was 19 or 20, I sewed myself a wool dress for medieval re-enactments. I hated it almost as soon as I put it on. The bodice was cut wrong; the lacing was uneven; the colour was garish; the front closure was historically inaccurate; the embellishments were sewn on with terrible thread. Wearing it, I was constantly aware of its myriad flaws.

Then in my twenties I hit my adult metabolism and didn’t fit into any of my old clothes anymore. I gave my old dresses to my foster mother, who sells costumes for a living, and the green dress sold. It entered the local medieval re-enactment secondhand economy.

Every time I go to an event, someone different is wearing my green dress. It draws my eyes because it’s a lovely colour and the fabric—real wool and enough of it—moves beautifully with the wearer’s body. I never recognize it at first, because every wearer has worn it a different way; it can be mixed and matched, dressed up and down, moved around a good century of history. From ten feet away its lacing looks elegant, its embellishments beautiful gracenotes. I think: Oh my god, that dress looks beautiful. Wait a minute, that’s MY DRESS.

That dress teaches me, every time I see it, to stop looking at myself through such critical eyes. That dress doesn’t just look good, it looks better than most other dresses in its category, because I put in the time and the effort (including using pliers to force a needle through six layers of wool) to make sure it was done right.

It’s my reminder that sometimes the things I do are actually good, and if I indulge my natural tendency to criticize myself in everything, I’ll end up missing when I’m actually awesome.

[the-sky-queen]

Alright! Let's review Spider-man: Turn off the Dark, shall we?

For those who didn't see my original post on this, here's the scoop: Spider-man: Turn off the Dark was this theater musical some people tried to make once upon a time. It was essentially just a complete failure. The story was a mess, the stunts got actors hurt and the music . . . well, that's the point of this post. You see, the music was written by Bono and The Edge, members of the band U2. If you know them, you probably know them for songs like I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For or With or Without You. (Or if you've seen Sing 2, you know Where the Streets Have no Name and Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out of.)

My sister is a massive fan of U2. I think she might have listened to all of their songs. So, I thought it would be fun to listen to the soundtrack of Turn off the Dark with her for the first time and see if the songs were any good.

(Keep in mind that this is all just my opinion. If you've got something different that you think, I'd love to hear it! This was honestly a very fun and fascinating soundtrack to listen to, and I'm sure there's people out there who like it more than I do.)

With all that said, let's get into this!

So, pretty much immediately, we ran into a bit of a snag. We didn't realize this until halfway through our listen through, but the songs are completely out of order on the soundtrack. So, here we were, trying to piece together some kind of coherent story for the songs we were listening to, and it was just a lost cause. XD It's not my first time listening to a sound track that has every song out of order (our family has a disc for the Shrek Soundrack that's like that) but it's still baffling. Why would you arrange the soundtrack like this? But anyway, as I said, we didn't even realize the songs were out of order until we got about half way through the soundtrack. Not realizing they were out of order, we came up with this crazy idea for a plot where Peter Parker was depressed because Uncle Ben dies just before the events of the musical, he's in a relationship with MJ, but is too sad to be entirely with her right now, he becomes Spiderman, and Norman Osborn is upset that his research got leaked and is slowly going insane. Totally not accurate, but it was fun to speculate.

In terms of the soundtrack as a whole, my sister and I came to a few agreements. First off, the songs were very much written by U2. It's got so many of their signature sounds and style. I've heard reviewers of Turn off the Dark say that the soundtrack sounds less like a musical soundtrack and more like the next U2 album, and I have to agree with them. (Though my sister doesn't really agree with the 'next U2 album' part. She sees things that are unique here, and I'll just have to take her word for it since I don't really listen to a lot of U2.) My sister found a lot of instances in the vast majority of the songs that seemed to be lifted out of other U2 songs from before and after this soundtrack, either as a direct copy or a spiritual second chance of sorts.

If you're going into this soundtrack blind and you're expecting a familiar broadway musical-like sound, you need to know right now that you're not getting that. These songs, as I said, sound way more like U2 songs than musical songs. According to my sister, Bono likes to write in such a way that his songs are accessible and relatable to anyone, and that sure is biting him in the butt here, because as a result these songs become very vague. There are like two or three instances in the entire soundtrack where Spiderman is actually mentioned (maybe four? I can't remember). You can usually barely tell what's supposed to be going on. You know how if you turn on the soundtrack for a typical musical, you can get essentially the entire story just from the music? Yeah, you can't do that here. Using my favorite musicals as examples here, but in Tuck Everlasting and Addams Family, there are songs at all the major plot beats. I know what's going on in the story. The characters are telling me what's going on and what they're feeling. Meanwhile, the Turn off the Dark soundtrack is all vague feelings and no events. I have ZERO clue what's going on, except in a few rare cases.

This soundtrack also has a problem with variety, specifically of the singer kind. Most of the songs are just Peter dramatically singing vague words. There's the occasional duet with MJ, two songs for Green Goblin/Norman Osborn, and one song for Arachne. (Don't even ask. If you don't know who she is already, then you might as well just dive fully into the rabbit hole that is Turn off the Dark and learn everything there is to know about this insane musical.) There's almost nothing for the ensemble to do, which is very sad. And while we're on the subject of variety, a lot of these songs sound VERY similar. Most of them have the same signature U2 rock style. It gets kinda tiring after a while. Maybe some people would like that, but I was longing for a violin or something by the end.

The Turn off the Dark Soundtrack is missing a lot of typical musical songs as well. Opening ensemble number? Not there. Hero's I Want song? I mean, you might be able to argue that's what Boy Falls From the Sky is, but I couldn't identify what exactly Peter WANTS in that song. I have no idea why we're supposed to care. That's a big problem for a musical to have.

One plus is the existence of the song Pull the Trigger. This song caught me and my sister SO off guard when we listened to it because it didn't sound ANYTHING like what we'd been hearing up to that point. It was so UN-U2 and weird that it circled all the way back around to being unironically amazing. At this point, we didn't know that it was the US military (for some reason???) talking to Norman, so I came up with the theory that the ensemble in this song were acting as the voices in his head, a la the first Raimi Spiderman movie. This is one of the songs on the soundtrack that I would DEFINITELY listen to again. XD (My sister isn't as big a fan of it, but I don't care. :P)

There were a few other stand out songs on the sound track, like No More (which hit us in all the feels so hard), Bouncing Off the Walls, and my sister really liked Boy Falls From the Sky.

Here's some notes we had for each of the songs:

NY Debut - Has no real reason to be here. It's just an instrumental, and not even an overture. It's boring.

Boy Falls From the Sky - Definitely feels like a U2 song, specifically because Bono hasn't figured out how to write as a character and not himself. My sister picked out several moments that seem to have been lifted out of other U2 songs

Rise Above 1 - Is clearly only titled this way because Bono didn't realize Rise Above 2 could've just been Rise Above Reprise, but okay. It uses second person 'you' a lot, which makes it very vague.

Picture This - Gives the vibes of the songs where Bono sings about his mom (who died when he was younger). Had a few lines that seemed redundant to me, but at least we got some MJ and ensemble action!

I Just Can't Walk Away - Sounded like a break up song between Peter and MJ??? It was pretty cool since we got more of a sense of story from this one than any of the previous songs. Also, that echo effect later on was very cool.

Bouncing Off the Walls - Sounded like an actual Spiderman song for once! All of the previous ones sounded like they were more written for Bono, but this one seemed like something Spiderman might actually sing. Thought the first few lines gave Venom vibes and I know for a fact he's not in this musical. Also, the chorus was kinda boring.

Pull the Trigger - WAS SO WACKY AND FUN!!! It came so out of left field and I want more. The patriotic bits didn't make a whole lot of sense though and the ending was weird.

No More - Honestly just so amazing. The struggles Peter and MJ have are clearly communicated and heartbreaking. The music itself was so well done as well. (Sidenote: the line MJ sings, "Everyday I feel the walls are closing in, When can I begin?" sounds SO FAMILIAR and I can't figure out what it sounds like. If anyone can figure it out, please let me know!)

DIY World - The concept was discernable but the execution was bad. It got a little absurd by the end.

If the World Should End - Had nice soliloquy vibes, but we had legitimately no clue what was going on. MJ knew something but was keeping it to herself?

Sinistereo - My sister loved it, but I HATE IT WITH A FIERY BURNING PASSION. The instruments were screeching and painful to hear and the singing itself was so flat and dead. I couldn't focus on anything else. I will never listen to this again. My sister found things to like somehow.

A Freak Like Me Needs Company - In all the reviews I've heard, this one always gets specifically talked about, so I was excited to get to this one. But honestly, I don't understand what all the hype was about. It's not nearly as high energy as I thought it would be. It's probably better on stage, but I expected more.

Rise Above 2 - Has some genuinely good and cool moments! But this was the point when I was getting really tired of the guitar and drums and wanted more variety.

Turn off the Dark - Sounded really sincere but since we know a villain was singing it, it just confused us. And towards the end, we started to get kinda uncomfortable.

My sister's final thoughts: Sometimes U2 gotta be cringe, but in the end they put out great art.

My final thoughts: It’s not a musical soundtrack. It’s the next U2 album with the occasional spiderman thrown in. U2 kept stealing from their own songs and that’s unimpressive to me. Bono’s trying so hard to be the next Andrew Lloyd Webber (but rock) and he doesn’t know how to write showtunes.

I think this soundtrack has some good moments that were really enjoyable. But as a whole? If we're judging Turn off the Dark purely on its music and nothing else, it's no wonder it failed.

But as I said at the beginning, if you've got something to add, PLEASE let me know. Despite all the things wrong with it, I still think this musical is genuinely fascinating and fun to talk about!

[qzwrites]

Maksim has a conversation with Baroness Delara Petrov

"ani i thought this was like. a rewrite of the warrior's apprentice to be a romance novel" look, i'm clearly out in the weeds here, i've got like. spin-off novellas already written and i'm only like halfway through the warrior's apprentice plot. idk.

---

Maksim had not been trying to seduce his distant cousin and his new spouse. In fact, they'd apparently been attempting to seduce him. A married couple hadn't tried to seduce Maksim since he was a great deal younger and less well-known to be effectively cut off from the Kasharik family coffers. And those couples, of course, had not been distant cousins, except in the way all nobility on this inbred planet was.

Yes, obviously he had found Jaz attractive, and obviously he had thought about the likelihood that ze would have been up to fooling around if ze hadn't been engaged and then married to Lord Petrov, or as he now insisted Maksim call him, cousin Sasha. Jaz was a good-looking ambi who had specifically sought out Maksim and his advice on how to fuck with the binarist hetero-patriarchy of this benighted planet; Maksim was Kavagoran enough to find certain types of recklessness very attractive, and queer enough that one of those types of recklessness was disregard for pointless social mores.

He was somewhat less prepared to find Lord Cousin Aleksander Petrov attractive, because the two conflicting pictures he'd had of the man since they were children were neither of them appealing. Lord Petrov's whelp, grandfather had always called him, and that was one of the more polite ways the main family talked about Sasha. Maksim hadn't needed to get too old before he doubted most aspects of that portrait--mutation was not the right word to refer to something that had happened as a result of toxin exposure in utero, after all, and only a complete fool could believe Admiral Emil Petrov's son would be feeble-minded even before you factored in the Gnillesian scientist wife--but he'd had very little reason to doubt the impression of Aleksander Petrov as a boring noble scion out to uphold traditional Kavagoran values as much as possible, as though that would ever compensate for his visible differences in a society that loathed the visibly disabled more than anything. Aleksander had his own personal bodyguard, rode around the city on a horse when he had broken legs, knew all the members of the Palace staff and upper government personally, and went immediately into the Officer's Academy after the relevant birthday. Classic boring scion of a noble Kavagoran house behavior.

Maksim couldn't deny it seemed like the smartest move available to Aleksander, since Kavagor was always going to be hostile to him, and relying on the nobility's nepotism and his father's position had a long and storied history, but he didn't think it was very interesting. Maksim, after all, also found himself a person Kavagor was always going to be hostile to despite his lineage, although admittedly the idea of sucking up to his family's political allies was a lot more distasteful than sucking up to Emil Petrov's political allies. Still, Maksim might have tried a bit harder to be less obviously queer and skated by in the finest tradition of undesirable noble spares, but the thought of doing so was just...tiresome. He thought anyone who did try that approach must also be tiresome.

But Aleksander had surprised him and a great deal of Kavagoran high society, bringing home as his betrothed Jaz, a Gnillesian ambi, and perforce outing himself as very much not a shining example of Kavagoran heterosexuality. Maksim suspected, after spending only a little time with Jaz, that his perception of Lord Petrov must have been very wrong indeed, because there was no way Jaz Arroyo, Gnillesian ambi mercenary who delighted in fucking with people's expectations, would fall for a man like Maksim had always supposed Aleksander to be.

Maksim might have had a more accurate picture of Sasha, he thought, if cousin Yakov had not always dismissed talk of him with, "Oh, Sasha," and a wave of his hand. He'd read that dismissal as agreement that Aleksander was boring, instead of what it actually was: Yakov not wanting to get into a discussion of his fascinating and potentially far more interesting cousin. Maksim guessed Yakov had heard more than his fair share of comparisons to Aleksander, who was brilliant and knew all the rules, plus how to manipulate them in his favor. In fact, Maksim now suspected Yakov had sometimes been attempting to use Maksim's brains against Sasha's, in attempts to get one over on his cousin. He had his doubts about the effectiveness of those attempts, now that he'd met Sasha.

Although it depended on the arena, he supposed, because Yakov had been a lot more successful at getting Maksim into his bed without weeks of dancing around the subject. Yakov wasn't even interested in Maksim, except as a potential source of non-judgmental dick.

(That was another thing Maksim had not intended to do, not least because Yakov was straight, but by their no-doubt appalled ancestors, it had been some of the best sex of Maksim's life. He couldn't bring himself to regret being wrung dry by a strapping young military officer, even if it was Yakov.)

Maksim climbed out of Sasha and Jaz's bed, plucked one of Jaz's silk robes from the wardrobe, and wrapped it around himself. It wasn't quite late enough for the sun to rise, but it was late enough that most people would probably call it early rather than late. However, Maksim had worked up quite an appetite in between the phenomenal dinner he'd consumed with the Petrovs and now, presumably because hours of vigorous sex with an attractive newlywed couple required lots of energy, and Maksim knew from long experience that he would be unable to fall back asleep without eating something.

He'd been attending functions at Petrov House ever since that first outing with Jaz and Helen to buy Jaz some appropriately gender-fucky Kavagoran clothing, so he knew his way around well enough. He traced his way back to the dining room, and from there it was easy to find the kitchen.

Maksim knew the Petrovs' cook had the mornings off after dinner parties, and he knew enough about traditional manners to guess that Baron Petrov still considered having Maksim over for dinner a dinner party, so he expected to be alone in the kitchen. But he was not.

Sitting at the very scuffed table that he knew must serve as the dining table for the Petrov staff was Baroness Delara Petrov herself, wrapped in a much more worn silk robe, sipping something out of a mug, reading on an old, over-sized tablet.

She looked up as Maksim stopped in the doorway, and smiled at him. "Ah," she said, "I wondered when Jaz would manage to get Sasha to just say something to you."

Maksim fought back a blush. Why Delara Petrov was so much more intimidating than any number of battleaxe baronesses that had the rest of the noble class cowed, he couldn't say, but he suspected it had to do with her operating on an entirely different set of rules that Maksim wasn't sure he knew. Oh, Jaz was Gnillesian, and Maksim had plenty of Gnillesian friends and acquaintances online, but they were all his age, not his mother's age. "Ze didn't get to," Maksim admitted. "I got tired of wondering."

Baroness Petrov chuckled. She gestured with her mug. "There's hot chocolate in the samovar," she said. "And Ma Eshman usually leaves sandwiches in the fridge."

"Whatever you pay her, it's not enough," Maksim said, making his way to the fridge.

Baroness Petrov laughed. "Enough to keep Sveta and Viktor from poaching her," she said. "Which isn't cheap."

Sveta was Yakov's mother, the pre-eminent socialite of the capital, and Viktor, of course, was the Emperor. Maksim supposed they offered some fairly stiff competition for good staff. As he grabbed a pair of wrapped sandwiches off a plate in the fridge, he said, "Well, perhaps it is enough then."

"So were you planning on sleeping with this entire generation of Petrovs?" Baroness Petrov asked mildly after Maksim had poured himself a mug of chocolate. He was glad she had waited until after he had the hot liquid set down, at least.

"Haven't I already?" Maksim asked. "Sasha and Yakov are both only children."

"Well, I know he's hardly more related to Emil than you are, but we did raise Viktor," Baroness Petrov said. "After his parents died, at any rate."

Maksim nearly crushed the sandwich he had just picked up. "Ah," he said. Yes, technically, he supposed the Emperor was a large part of both Sasha and Yakov's childhood stories. He was older than them by a few years, which Maksim thought had probably been a bigger deal as children than it was now, but how many other children had the Emperor even been allowed to spend time around?

"Although in that case, I suppose I also ought to include Helen," Baroness Petrov said thoughtfully. "Which would mean you're only halfway there, instead of two-thirds."

"I think I would rather take my chances with the Emperor than Helen," Maksim said, which he had half a second to regret before Baroness Petrov snorted.

"Jaz is right," Baroness Petrov said, still grinning. "You're the only remotely sensible Kavagoran I've ever met."

Maksim asked, "Your husband isn't sensible?"

Baroness Petrov rolled her eyes. "Does a man who gives his entire life over to Kavagoran politics seem sensible to you?" she asked.

Maksim snorted. "Well," he said, because he had often thought trying to change their ridiculous system from the inside seemed like the most difficult approach. He had a sip of his chocolate before he said, "I really should just be trying to find Gnillesian expats to befriend, shouldn't I?"

Baroness Petrov laughed again.

[iiruwu]

give us some harringrove recs bestie!

i gotchu bae!! but be warned, many of these are pretty much just the ones i've read at the top of the list, filtered by most kudos b/c thats just how i find all my fics. so, there's a chance you might've gone through them already. regardless these are some of my faves and have stuck with me for years after reading them. (this was also requested by @roseinthewoods so here you go!)

let us begin:

Under the Covers by ToAStranger -> my all-time fave harringrove fic. this absolutely deserves its popularity and has one of the best characterizations i've ever seen of the entire cast post-s2. not only are billy and steve super fleshed out, but i just adored how steve interacted with jonathon and nancy (who were equally great as far as characterization goes) along with many other characters. but steve rlly shines in this one! this author truly brings the world to life with their writing and makes you feel like you're really watching everyone's lives unfold in an organic, but also bittersweet story :)

dried up, half full by lymricks -> SUCH a good billy characterization. i mean, truly. also one of the best interpretations i've seen of what could have been billy's journey towards becoming a better person. lots of angst and inner turmoil. made me feel like i was truly in billy's shoes and rlly conveyed this sense of just not being able catch a break in any aspect of life throughout the story. im also gonna throw a quote in here that i have had saved for a while just 'cause it was so heartbreakingly good:

we could be heroes (just for one day) by brawls, ToAStranger -> another fic with really good characterization overall. unfortunately this one is unfinished but as im skimming this im remembering that the dynamic between steve and billy for this was just AGHHHH i was frothing at the mouth the whole time. so funny and sweet and very slowww to build up. it was a very realistic take on billy in specific post-s3, but, more than that, i loved the inclusion of almost the entire ensemble throughout this fic. the kids were such rays of light, it rlly made this fic that much better :)

master of puppets, i'm pulling your strings by wearealltalesintheend -> ONE OF MY FAVES!! this fic hooked me on the idea of billy & robin being friends and i was totally obsessed for a little while afterwards. the author wrote the two of them so damn well together in the s3 plotline and i just love how they were snarky as hell but also progressively more friendly and deeply trusting of each other as billy continued to open up. its also refreshing to see harringrove from an outsider perspective, with robin being there to help them connect the dots. (also characterization was an a+ as usual!)

Don't Leave Me (Hanging on the Telephone) by Glitter_Bug -> this is a fic that is a lottt more recent in comparison to the others. i've been reading this since it was about halfway done and i must say - the banter is PHENOMENAL between steve and billy. the dialogue alone hooked me in with how accurate to the 1980s it was with references and had me reading non-stop. the concept of billy being stuck in the upside-down and only able to contact the real world through the phone at steve's house is sooo damn good. it rlly offered a lot of opportunity for fun scenes with them through phone calls. this is also a fic that is actively being updated and is nearing the end soon!

Renegade (Who Had It Made) by moonflowers -> this was a very tender fic about billy's supposed death and included multiple POVs. i found max's POV abt her grief and coming to terms with his death to be such a nice inclusion that added a great touch to the story and also the many journal entries that she found as well!!! this fic felt very human and personal, like it was something not meant for ppl to see - which, considering the concept of max finding billy's journal with notes about steve in it and giving it to steve, makes sense. it was a nice harringrove slowburn overall!

andddd there we go! these are the most memorable ones i've read but there are so so many more harringrove fics out there that are just as good. i found some interesting ones just while skimming the tag alone. hopefully you liked this anon!!! these are very near and dear to my heart :')

[internetgremlin-writes]

FLAT SPIN CHAP 5 SPOILERS!!

OH MY GOD IGGY THAT CHAPTER WAS ABSOLYTELY PERFECT!!!!

The way he asked her to come to Barcelona… SO carlos of him I wanted to cry… AND THE WAY HE METICULOUSLY PLANNED EVERYTHING? I am sorry if you dont like / dont care about zodiacs BUT THE VIRGO ENERGY IN HIM JUMPED OUT, and I respect it soooo much. Everything he planned was so /him/, but also so so perfect for MC — the little gestures? Ordering for her? Translating everything for her? POSTING HER ON HIS STORY? God i literally melted

AND DONT GET ME STARTED ON HIM COOKING FOR HER… because god damn you Know how Weak I am and it was so beautiful, also the British breakfast once again just shows how much he cares for her and understands her🥹 i am just about to combust actually

AND THEN RACE WEEKEND? And everything with the green tractor and also MC and Sebs relationship? Once again nailed it sm god i love these teammates… and how she didnt want to fight Seb / come across like that because he just means so much to her????? Girl you got me on the floor rn…

What I cannot stop thinking about is how shes in for the championship, and as of rn so is Carlos… Will they be fighting each other further down the line or… 👀 Make up sex as an apology for aggressive overtaking again? Or podium celebration sex because BOTH of them ended up on the podium (Silverstone? 👀) So many possibilities omfg dont mind me

AND THEN LAST BUT NOT LEAST (thiugh i still have so much to say but my slow ass brain needs a bit of time i guess) the ending was just perfect… like am I the only one thinking Carlos didnt want to sleep with her pre race weekend bc he wanted to fully focus on her but couldnt with all the GO expectations around him? But now that it was done he could let himself fully focus on her and give her all the attention he thinks she deserves? God I love them sm… And the way you let all those emotions show through during the smut was just CHEFS KISS, the way they understand each other is just so 🥹🥹🥹 i have no words lol other than i’m SO obsessed..,

God i hope this all is legible its 4:14am now and i am prone to word vomit already when my brain is working so this may just sound like incoherent crap but i hope you know this chapter was SO GOOD, also the way you captured Barcelona imo was spot on like I wouldnt have noticed that it was all based on research and not personal experiences (though i guess i must confess i havent been to barcelona since i was 4 either… JSJDKFKF BUT YOU MANAGED TO CAPTURE THE SPANISH VIBES PERFECTLY THAT I CAN TELL YOU BC I JUST VACATIONED IN SPAIN LAST MONTH)

okay oh my god i am back from festival and i am finally going to reply to this without crying halfway through...

firstly OH MY GOD. you... you wrote all this... about my work?? I'm touched, I'm shook, I'm honoured, this is honestly the best feeling and probably as close to a "real" author with people analysing my work as I'll ever get and I am ABSOLUTELY here for it (especially as a literature nerd who loves to pick apart all of my books for fun)

haha I don't *dislike* zodiacs, I don't really follow them to that much detail but I vaguely have an idea of them. To be honest, the way I write Carlos is purely based on the guy we see as a Formula One driver and personality (but now you say that I totally see the virgo energy). ALSO I'M SO GLAD YOU NOTICED THOSE I am entirely convinced Carlos is a very detail-oriented person and especially when he is first seeing someone he would be really careful to go out of the way to do really subtle but meaningful things yanno?

As for the championship fight... well I don't want to give anything away but oh I *definitely* have a plan for MC and Carlos and the WDC ;)

Haha don't worry it all made sense! And thank you so much for the comment about Barcelona... it's a little embarrassing how long I spent on google for things to do in and around the city because I've never been to mainland Spain, so even if it's not 100% accurate I'm just happy the vibes were right!!

honestly just thank you so much for this, it means the absolute world <3 <3 <3

[bg-sparrow]

7,8,15,18 for fanfiction writer ask!

The wonderful @mangotortoise always indulges me on these FanFiction Writer Asks 🥰 Thank you for being an enabler (and curious about my process lol)!

7. When is your preferred time to write?

I don't really have one! Because I'm so scatterbrained, I write the moment an idea strikes if I can, even if it's just texting myself a few lines of dialogue I don't want to forget. Being a working mom doesn't leave much time aside from evenings/ late nights/ weekends, but when I get those Saturdays that I can wake up, park myself at my computer, and just go all day between switching laundry and loading the dishwasher, I love those days. I'm also really excited to write after I write loose scenes/ notes in my notebook because I end up expanding on them so much in the Word document effortlessly!

8. Where do you take your inspiration from?

Obviously, as fanfic writers, we're inspired by the source material, but my motivations beyond that vary by story. I'll stick to my BttF ones here.

For the Time Circuits Series, it wasn't born out of "I want to make a quality MartyOC across the trilogy" (even though that was ultimately my goal). I watched these films growing up with my dad a lot, and the idea of giving Doc a daughter and exploring that father-daughter relationship was my initial motivation before I even realized I wanted to rewrite the series years later.

Once Upon a Time in the West was at first a "stuck in 1885" AU for Cowboyvember, but after years of working on the T-rated trilogy rewrite, I wanted to try my hand at branching out into topics I'd never written about (depression, sexuality, etc). I was motivated to get a little grittier, and as someone who you could easily call modest, I wanted to see what I was capable of beyond the T rating. And I feel like I finally have enough life experience to give an accurate voice to these topics.

15. If you write OCs, how do you decide on their names?

Well, that depends! I enjoy the repetition and echoing in the BttF trilogy a lot, so it made sense that Doc's daughter is Emma (since he's Emmett). She just never had another name to me. Her middle name is "Jean", and at the time I decided that, I think I'd just reread Harry Potter, and "Jean" is Hermione's middle name. It's also an 80s nod to "Billie Jean".

Emma's mother is Dolores - because "DeLorean". And I think that plays a bit of a personal role in Doc choosing the DeLorean aside from all the science hoo-ha.

Clarence Livingston in There Are No Roads was the son of the cabinet maker in 1885. The cabinet maker's sign says "T. Livingston", and as Clarence was sort of the love interest in that story for Emma, his name became the male version of "Clara." So we have "Emmett and Clara" and "Emma and Clarence", and it makes me happy lol.

Other OCs I've created, it's a matter of making sure they're period-appropriate and a lot of "screen testing" -- saying the name out loud in dialogue, seeing how it fits against the canon names, etc. It's just like naming a child, honestly! It has to sound right and feel right. How do the canon characters feel meeting someone with this name? What nicknames/ pet names come out of it? Does the OC LIKE their name?

18. Do you have any abandoned WIPs? What made you abandon them?

Boy, I'm glad I'm being asked this now as opposed to two years ago! For the last ten years, I always wanted to come back and finish my stories, and I'm happy to say that I've completed two since I returned to writing in 2021: Principles of Compromise I left hanging for eight years, and Where You're Going (Time Circuits #1) I left hanging for three years.

I still have one I know I want to finish for the National Treasure fandom. I wrote a successful RileyOC story there in high school titled Another Clue, and I burned out halfway through writing the sequel to it titled One More Clue (but I still have all the notes to continue and finish it)! Perhaps now, with the new National Treasure TV show coming out on Disney+, it's a good time to hunker down and finish One More Clue (even though I'm totally going to have to spruce up Another Clue first because I've grown too much as a writer to leave it as-is before posting it to AO3).

I loathe getting so invested in an unfinished story, so I've tried to make it my mission to have the story finished/ an ending decided when I commit to posting a story. I don't want to make people disappointed like that. It's frustrating. So I'm trying to make good on it by finishing all my WIPs now!

Thanks again for the ask! I'm always open to more!! Have a great day!

[brigdh]

Writing ask meme - 22, 41, 74

22. describe your writing process from scratch to finish

Oh, man! So much depends upon the story. For short stuff, say, 3k or less, I generally get the idea and pretty much immediately set out to write. I write it in a single session or two, editing as I go along. Every time I get stuck, I go back up a few paragraphs and reread, while fixing typos, adjusting word choices, etc.

I do another editing pass as I actually upload the story, since I need to reread any to add in html tags for italics and such. Ideally a little time has passed since I finished writing, so that I have slightly fresher eyes to catch stuff.

For longer things, say 5-20k, the process is pretty similar except that I'll start taking notes for things I want to happen later on because otherwise I'll forget before I get to actually writing that part. The notes tend to be super vague, because they're just reminders of ideas I've had, and aren't actually meant to be a guide. Here's two examples from different stories:

Ironically, both of these scenes, once I came to write them, ended up very different than these notes and included almost none of the same ideas. But sometimes the notes end up being pretty accurate! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For stuff that is full novella or novel-length, I work from an outline. I might write a few opening scenes to get the feel for the story before I write the outline, or I might start with the outline; it just depends. I also take notes as I go along of things that it can be easy to forget: what color eyes did I say this side-character has? what season is it? how much time has passed?

A lot of times I get about halfway through a story and have to go back and re-outline the first half but with a particular focus on a theme, or a character's motivations, or something like that, so I can see shape of it more clearly and making sure it's moving forward and not just repeating the same beats over and over again. Here's an example of the re-outlining the early chapters of lay me down with a specific focus on what's going on in Stede's head:

Re-outlining like that also tends to really help me with deciding what to write next and what sort of things I want to include in the story.

If I get really, really stuck, I take a notebook and go somewhere without internet access – usually a park if the weather's nice, or a museum large enough to have rooms where you can just commander a bench and stare at a wall for a while – to just sit with my thoughts and let my mind drift until it finally agrees to start focusing on the story again and figuring out where I want to go. Then I take notes by hand that look pretty much like the above examples, though if it's working well enough I may start to write actual dialogue or description.

Whew, that was a long answer, sorry!

41. what is the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.

I don't really think of my ideas as weird, particularly! Like, once you commit to it and figure out how the characters would react, it no longer feels weird, even if it was weird in the abstract. "Stede wears a harem costume" is weird, but once you've explored his motivations and Ed's reaction, it's just another thing they might do.

74. are you a planner, pantser, or planster?

Hmmm, a planster, I suppose! I do usually make an outline, but it's pretty vague compared to some people's outlines. This is an outline I wrote for a story I never finished, as an example of what mine typically look like:

Clearly I don't do intricate outlines with dialogue and themes and such. I'm sure this is basically incoherent to anyone else, but it's just enough of a reminder for myself of what's going on. But I do like writing to some sort of plan and not just letting anything happen.

Thank you for the questions! <3

(The meme, if anyone else wants to ask a question)

[infin-8-morphosis]

So hmmm, 3 weeks of relative freedom and lets see, what did I do with it.

Probably most importantly I now have a standing desk (It's great. Now I can walk away every 5 minutes and not have to sit back down n remember what I was doing before I get distracted again) and most most importantly I have a functioning tablet that does not make my eyes bleed and brain cry from the colour inaccuracy. I hadn't seen purple in so long. You have no idea how much this speeds things up. In theory.. I'm still slow. It's just how I function, and that's okay.

Well I'm redoing the map again, to no-ones surprise.

Decided on it being a tidally-locked moon, with pretty extreme temperatures either side but a moderate middle. Its orbit is skewed so the moon has earth-like seasons, but less extreme. It has a lot of land, and 2 separated oceans, plus lots of craters, the ecological impacts (pun unintended but appreciated) of so many massive collisions it looks cool okay.

For reference the edges of the map, and the centre line horizontally, are the equator...s. If you cut it in half along the central horizontal line, the centres of the resulting squares would be the poles.

Bit outdated but, like this. That lower right corner is actually like 50% of the globe, probably too big but... it's okay, it's mostly frozen wasteland on account of being near perpetually dark.

Only the top of the main continent is done but I'm feeling good about it. Also bought a plugin to make it interactible so eventually it'll have many layers including the heights, climate, biomes, political stuff, roads, towns, etc. Don't you miss when old web games had interactible maps. Like Neopets. I am now living beyond my wildest dreams making them. Awesome.

Perhaps the biggest thing is this. Sort of... I decided to make a big worldbuilding decision, one I really have wanted to make for a long time but never knew how to go about it in a way that was better than just 'theyre aliens but happen to look like humans' (booo)

so the Valkyries are now 100% home-grown aliens, or I guess more accurately natives, since they used to be aliens to this planet.

This has some fun opportunities to explore non-magical possibly also sapient offshoots and relatives, better flow to the biology aspect now they don't feel so separate to the rest of the world.

Importantly they maintain a pleasantly human-like look and I guess function, while being visually and functionally different. They breathe through their necks (Realising Avatar already did this but they didnt give their humanoid the cool necks so boohoo i beat you to it. Also I forgot about the neck thing in that so I guess we're both cool. Theyre derived gills.) Also their neck is. on the back of their head. Its really cool. Their eyes are really that huge, but are oval shaped and dont actually rotate... only the layer of skin over it does, which contracts to from a pupil of differing sizes. So they have 3 eyelids, 1 skin, 1 membrane, 1 sphincter thing. Lovely.

You've maybe guessed already (Well probably not I hardly post them) But uhhh. This has a lot of implications for my characters, and more direly the uhhhh. giant comic I'm halfway through making.

Honestly I've kind of given up on 'finishing' it. I dunno, I feel content to move on with the story and just work on it whenever I want to do a bit more with it. It was always intended to be my 'practice' for the 'real' comic, which I feel fully capable of. Doesn't mean I'll do it tho.

And you can maybe also guess why I'm modelling them therefore. Uhhhh.... 3d comic anyone? maybe? probably not but ooooh. the ease of doing complicated poses, you have any idea how much of a wall a wierd pose is. using the 3d model as the background. I dunno, I've never seen it done before, I'd like to be the first at something, even if it doesn't work. I feel a lot more secure in my work than I used to be., to be free to fail.

If I can get the model to be as expressive as my 2d art (Which. Wuargh. Hard task.) and set it up so I don't need to unsymmetrise it (daunting but doable I hope with a few tricks) then there's nothing to stop me. Oh also clothes I guess and people touching and What To Do with Water and How To Rig Hair but like. I love 3d. And it'd be so much less destructive than 2d. I redo so many panels over and over from scratch because the pain of adjusting dozens of layers is greater than just redrawing. Imagine destroying that problem by being able to redo whatever I like and rerender it. Honestly the comfort something is changeable would maybe stop me from endlessly changing things.

So this model is ideally going to be a template for me to model my characters. I'm unsure if I'll be able to make them share a rig to the point that poses and such will be reusable... but I'll try. I think as long as the bones have the same names it'll work.

Here's an example of a redesign. Also little teen teri... cursed and skinny... Still a mild victim of funky tablet colours so if it's wierd, yeah.

(It's hilarious putting her proportions into 3d. She is so dense. She is easily 4x the body mass of the template, its ridiculous. And that was only the muscles, I didnt even add the fat yet. I probably won't model everyones skeleton and muscles but she needs it okay)

3d is really just, the closest you can get to those flash dressup games, you know the ones, but with complete creative freedom. And cloth physics.

[zeldaelmo]

For the writing asks 10, 19, 21, & 31 💕

Thank you so much for your ask, @playinggalaga !

Top three favourite fic tropes.

Enemies to lovers, idiots to lovers, and... Confession/first kiss fics. 😆

Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

From 'Dimissed', one of the advent calendar fics

“What are you doing here?”

Link wheeled around, ungracefully landing on his butt in the hard frozen snow. Zelda. Oh, Goddess, and he was… He scrambled to his feet, dusted his trousers and coat off, and raised his gaze to the green eyes staring at him from the garden bench. “I… um… well, I…”

“Aren’t you supposed to have some days off?” Her voice wasn’t exactly hard, but it was far from the usual amicable tone they held for each other. Had held for each other.

He laughed nervously, but his throat was so tight that only a gurgling sound came out. “I… My mom kicked me out.” That… was not really what had happened.

Can you accurately predict how long your fics are going to be? If you can, what's your secret?

*laughs nervously* Well... I have successfully written a lot of drabbles with a very low, exact word count (here), and I usually know how to approach an idea to keep it in that range. (Enter late, leave early, things like that) When it comes to longer fics, however, especially middle-length works, I cannot predict if I end up with 4k, 5k, or 6k at least since I'm halfway through. For long fics, I can tell often easier because I have an outline with an approximate chapter number.

What was the most difficult fic for you to write (but in the end you made it)?

Long fics are always difficult to write because you need to work persistently to get them done. You need to do all the footwork like transitions, the characters must have a voice, and you have to keep track of things that have to be consistent.

One story that was difficult for me was "Somebody that I used to know", mainly because I didn't finish in time for zelink week and had to write the rest after having already posted the first five chapters. I don't do that usually because it kills my motivation. On top of that, the last chapters were also very quiet and emotionally heavy, so it was a lot of work to get it right. But I did it and I'm very happy with the results!

[meandmyechoes]

hey, just wanna jot down something. can't believe October has run halfway already. Been weathering and, bothered by real-life things to sort of put it aside here. I planned to take a break from SW after Visions came out, did I miscalculated and somehow pulled into Thrawn-verse. I want to finish Chaos Rising and Greater Good before Lesser Evil comes out, but it's not a real deadline. I will persist to opt print over audio so I can voice Ziara on my own. I've also listened to Outbound Flight and slowly making my way through Heir to the Empire. Borrowed Survivor's Quest from the library since I heard the audiobook is abridged.

Spent sometime confined to a chair and the physical Chaos Rising last Sunday and found I really like/miss that feeling being absorbed in that world. But I can't read somewhere too quiet (i.e. too little distractions) or I fall asleep quickly. Reading on my phone en commute is very convenient and facilitates it, getting to highlight the book, but I do forget to blink. But all in all, I like that my reading is recovering.

Onto merchs. I took Captain Rex home two weeks ago but I'm the same indifference towards it. I don't know, I only ordered him as an accessory to Ahsoka and I just don't really have an idea what to do with him. I do love the character of course but spending money is not how I express it for him lol. It isn't even sitting on my shelf beause I haven't even cleared the space for them. I'm a bad collector I know haha.

And, ordered bunch of things. should've the rest of October's day so had a couple of craft projects in mind. stomping on the brakes is HARD. Well, 4 to 6 outfits. plus finally baby lekku. dyeing, painting, makeup, and film the whole thing. and a bit of baking, sculpting, props-making. Gonna try some new materials. Quite ambitious process really. I hope I can pull it off.

Fine, let's jinx it.

ordered three cheap dolls to try my first customizing. making... human characters first :) Zero confidence in actually drawing a face but I'll wing it. Then, restarting the baby ahsoka project because I found the right body now. lol had a fit thought I ordered a size too small. It was slimmer than I remembered but oh well. 

Thinking of re-bodying FOD Ahsoka but not sure I can actually bear to do so. I do hold out for acquiring a mint-in-box for display in the future though. Either way, looking for a back-up body for HT Ahsoka becuase I'm preparing for - none of her costume is removable. (saw the recent Harley Quinn release, nightmare if it's a fashion doll lol). I think I will check out the FOD Endor Leia first since it has agreeable articulation and hopefully similar body build. But that's not assured since except her all the girls have molded on tops or pants thus individual sculpts. Other bodies on the market are less muscular and I'm afraid that'd make Ahsoka's head look even bigger and disproportionate. First, I need to decide between a doll body or a figure body. BJDs doesn't really apply since it's mostly quarter scale or up. It's not my cup of tea anyway. The doll bodies I'm looking at are inexpensive, but I don't mind slightly better grade plastic. The major concern is still most of them being too thin. The good thing will be a wider option of shoes for small feet. For figures, the results I'm seeing isn't very, well, kid-friendly. On the opposite side of the spectrum, stuff I see are usually too busty or anatomically accurate. Kind of want to avoid seamless joints with stories about them cracking, and that filter out some more choices. Right now, the runner-up is Obitsu 27. The price is reasonable, bonus extra hands, while on the small side. But I can't find much user information about it, and I prefer to see/touch the real thing before purchasing it. I... I don't really like soft busts, I find it a very strange idea.

I have some really vague pieces of idea about a Halloween outfit because last year's sketch ended up staying on paper. But the actual process might depend on whether I will go through with the mid-autumn season dress first. HT Ahsoka has been in the pot more than two months now and she could release any time. I'd probably break down crying then.

CWArchives is not dead I'm just lazy to restock.

[oldanatomical-heartt]

Unwanted Wingwoman

Okay this one won’t be the best because I wrote it when I was fourteen so. You get the idea.

Summary: reader likes Peter but from afar. When your best friend finds out about your crush on him, she attempts to set you up. Her plan fails, but she doesn’t know that

Peter Parker. Where could you begin? He was sweet, funny, and you would never admit it but he was absolutely adorkable. He sat one row in front and two seats to the right of you in your honors chemistry class, and just the thought of him made your heart flutter. You snapped back to reality and your friends' eager faces in a circle around you at your sleepover.

"Well? You obviously like someone so who is it?" Your best friend (F/N) asked excitedly.

"I-uh," you started.

"I bet it's that Flash kid, he's totally your type (Y/N)," another one of your friends stated, making an awful attempt at a guess.

"Ew no way, how could you even think he's my type?" You questioned, crinkling your nose in disgust.

"What is your type then?" another asked, a sly smile on her face.

"Uh- I dunno, I mean, he's gotta be nice-"

"-pssh, everybody says that."

“-and he should have a sense of humor too, but not like stupid funny because he should be smart too."

"Yes, yes, we get it what about looks (Y/N)!"

"Oh, I uh- I don't really care... about- about what he looks like," you stuttered.

"Guys were getting way off topic she has a specific someone in mind!" (F/N) said, redirecting the conversation.

"Yeah who is it?"

"Tell us (Y/N)!"

"I will make you extra popcorn for the movie," (other F/N) bargained.

"Guys chill, you probably don't even know him, it's uh- Pete-Peter- Peter Parker," your voice caught in your throats from nerves when you finally said his name.

"I FUCKING KNEW IT!" (F/N) screamed.

"Oh my god (F/N) be quiet or my parents will hear!" You hushed.

Just as quickly as the moment where all the attention was on you had begun, it was over and the small party went back to even smaller groups of two or three chatting, while your best friend turned back to you.

"How could you not tell me? I could've been dropping hints all this time!"

"Because that's exactly what I don't want you to do," you nervously laughed, already pondering what might happen now in chemistry since (F/N) sat directly to the right of Peter.

"Now I know why I caught you looking over at me all the time, it's actually because you were looking at Peter!"

You blushed, thinking about how much you stared at the back of his head. You could probably create a very accurate drawing of some sort from how long the image was burned into your brain.

"Shut up, it's not a crime."

The rest of the night went smoothly, eventually watching a movie but not without (F/N) asking you a question about Peter every ten minutes. When morning came you said goodbye to all your friends one by one as their parents came to pick them up, except for (F/N). As you were saying goodbye to the last friend, you turned around to see (F/N) on your phone, typing away.

"(F/N) oh my god what are you doing now?" You whined, plopping down on the stairs next to her.

"Aaaaaaand sent!" She whipped her head to look at you.

Your eyes went wide in fear as you snatched your phone from her hand to see a sent text message to a number you didn't recognize saying, "Hey Peter it's (Y/N) from chemistry."

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god what did you do?" You asked, violently running your hands through your hair, a habit you do when you are anxious.

"I gave you a gentle push," (F/N) said smiling evilly.

"I cannot believe you! What do I say if he texts back?"

"Anything!"

"I can't just say anything (F/N) oh my god what did you do!"

"Relax, it'll all work out! I swear I'm a love goddess," (F/N) replied, suggestively winking at the love goddess part.

"Ew, yeah right," you giggled at your friend's actions.

"Anyways, pancakes? We can find a quick recipe on Pinterest or something," (F/N) said, starting off your day.

—————————

You anxiously grip you backpack straps as you stand at your locker, mentally preparing yourself to walk into chemistry. You still hadn't gotten a reply from Peter, which means he read it but didn't answer since it'd been a whole day.

"Ready?" (F/N) said, coming up behind you.

"Yep, let's go," you said uneasily as you shut your locker.

You and (F/N) walked into class and set your stuff down at your respective seats before you wandered over to her desk, as Peter hadn't entered class yet.

"Okay, just promise me you won't do anything weird, alright?" You pleaded.

"No promises, (Y/N)," (F/N) teased.

"I love you, but I swear to god you'll be the death of me," you sighed.

You tensed as your eyes landed on the doorway that Peter had just walked through. You scurried back to your seat to avoid embarrassment from either (F/N) or yourself. He looked a bit off today, you could tell he was stressed. He put his bag down and took his seat, resting his head on his forearms on the desk. Unfortunately, the bell rang immediately after, forcing Peter to look up and you to pay attention.

“I assume everyone took notes on last nights reading?" Your teacher, Mrs. Hanniack, said as she closed the door and strutted to the front of the room.

A collective yes fizzled from the class as Mrs. Hanniack started up the projector.

"Very well, because you're going to be using that knowledge on today's partner project."

You quietly sighed, taking a quick glance at your lab partner who sat to your right. It wasn't that you didn't like him, well, you didn't, but he never did any of the work because he never knew how which led to you explaining the procedure and the lesson at least twice all the way through to him while simultaneously trying to actually do the experiment.

"Unfortunately," your teacher continued, "some students have been receiving a grade they should not be getting because their partner does all the work. So, for this project, you can pick your lab partner, but choose someone who will contribute to the lab."

Your eyes immediately went to Peter but quickly skipped over him to (F/N) as not to offend her. She was smiling back at you nodding, so you shuffled your papers and made your way over to her, then pulled the chair from the desk in front of her and reversed it so you sat across from her. Peter hadn't gotten up yet and was looking around the room so you held your breath in worry that (F/N) would say something to tease you. Luckily, Peter stood up and walked away so you let out your breath.

"Alright, let's get going, I don't want any homework," you stated, looking over the procedure directions.

"Class," your teacher called, making you turn your head towards the front of the room where she stood.

You saw Peter looking at her with wide eyes and a slightly red face as she continued.

"Turns out we have an odd number today and Peter doesn't have a partner. Anyone willing to have a gr-"

"We'll take him!" (F/N) said, raising her hand and rapidly standing up.

With wide shocked eyes, you stared at (F/N) and glanced back at Peter, whose red face was turning back to normal. Your face, however, probably had a pink tint to it as you felt the heat rush to it.

"Well that sure was embarrassing," Peter chuckled, sitting in his seat.

"It's not that big of a deal, you just didn't have a partner," (F/N) shrugged.

"Yeah, the only one," Peter rolled his eyes and placed his head in his hands, propped up by his elbows.

Slowly, he rolled his head and parted his fingers enough to peer at you through them.

"(Y/N), right?"

Your face flushed red as you fearfully glanced at (F/N), then back to Peter and nodded.

"I got your text, sorry I didn't reply, I was a little... uh- busy."

"It's cool, yeah, sorry."

"Sorry?" He chuckled, "What for?"

You glanced back at (F/N) again, not knowing what to say.

"It's just a thing she does," (F/N) said.

"I dunno, I just felt like I was bothering you? I know I wasn't you don't need to say I wasn't I just feel like that a lot, even with (F/N), and she's told me countless times I'm not so I-I should know by now but I just-" you were cut off from your rambling from (F/N) clearing her throat

"Shall we get going?" (F/N) said, dramatically gesturing to the lab sheet.

"Oh yeah."

The three of you worked quickly, all being good at science, but you were a little less good at vocalizing your thoughts as they were a little jumbled by Peter's presence. You didn't let your silly crush stop you from trying your hardest to finish and maybe impress Peter while doing so. You all were nearly halfway finished when (F/N) abruptly stood up, causing you and Peter to snap your hearts towards her.

"I'm going to the bathroom," she simply stated

"Okay..." Peter replied, drawing out the a.

"You mean, like, right now?" You teased.

"(Y/N) shut up, no not right now!" She glared at you until she seemed to realize something and smiled sweetly, too sweetly.

"Anyways," she continued, "I'm not actually going to the bathroom. I'm just saying that to give you both some alone time. Peter, I know (Y/N) has something she wants to tell you."

(F/N) winked at Peter and your jaw dropped ten feet. You could feel the blood rushing to your face and it was no doubt beet red as you watched (F/N) flounce away to the teacher to ask for a bathroom pass.

"What is it?" Peter asked, breaking the silence.

"What- what's what?" You asked, not making eye contact.

"What that was, what you want to- to tell me."

"It-it's nothing really, (F/N) is just- just trying to start- uh- drama, you- you know how she is."

"No, I really don't."

"Re-really? Start-starting drama is her favorite hobby, I- I can't tell you the number of times she- she publicly embarrassed me just to get a- a story out of it!"

"Jeez, that doesn't sound very friend-like, and aren't you guys best friends?"

"Yeah, we are. She means well, plus it- it's never something to be mad over."

"Sorry to call attention to it, but do you always stutter? I don't mean to offend you if you have one, it's nothing to be self-conscious of, it's just I didn't notice it earlier."

"O-oh! I uh," you took a deep breath trying to soothe your nerves, "N-no, I just stumble over my words a lot when I'm uh- when I'm nervous.

Peter let out a laugh, "Why are you nervous? I don't bite."

Your face flushed at his words, causing him to drop his smile.

"Un-unless you're nervous because I make you uncomfortable. If I make you uncomfortable just say when and I'll try to correct myself because I would never try to make you feel bad, please, believe me."

"No, no, it's nothing like that," you assured him.

"Oh good. Well, are you sure it's really nothing?"

"Yeah," you paused, staring into his dark eyes for a moment, "yeah I'm sure."

(F/N) returned and plopped herself down in her seat.

"So, did she tell you?"

Peter looked at you and smiled, deciding to go along with what he thought was (F/N) attempting to spark drama.

"Oh yeah," he said, "she told me everything."

"Oh my god she did NOT!" (F/N) exclaimed, smiling ear to ear at you, "I didn't think you could do it!"

You face was painted with worry because you had to say something to (F/N) to let her know you didn't tell Peter about your crush without him knowing (F/N) was actually talking about something.

"Uhh (F/N)?" you said, but went unheard by her loud excited tone.

"How did she say it? Was she all awkward and stutter-y? I know she was but I need confirmation from a witness. What did you say back?"

"No actually, no stuttering. She was really cool about it, and I said that I feel exactly the same way on the topic," Peter said, smiling at you, oblivious to your increasingly panicked state.

"(F/N)?" you said again, more worriedly.

"Seriously? I'm so proud of you (Y/N), with how much you stutter when talking about him I was sure you'd be extra bad when actually talking to him."

Peter shot you a confused look, and your face heated up. Was he still oblivious and didn't realize she was talking about you talking about him? Or had he caught on?

"(F/N)..." you said through gritted teeth.

"Oh man, she's gonna hate me for telling you this, but she totally stares at you all the time during class. I always thought she was looking at me though, can you believe she didn't tell me until two days ago? And I thought best friends always tell each other their crushes immediately. Took her so long to tell me about the one on you. Anyways, since you said you feel the same, I'm assuming there's a date coming up?"

Peter's face morphed into a blank look, and his eyes slowly dragged themselves from (F/N) to you, a blushing red mess, and you immediately folded your arms on the table and smushed your face into them.

“(F/N)... I didn't tell him," you sputtered in defeat.

There was a pause, for what seemed like an eternity.

"(Y/N), I am so sorry, I thought you did."

The bell rang, but you remained unmoving, hoping the both of them would leave and you could walk to English alone. The class was filled with shuffling papers and bags, but you could faintly hear Peter and (F/N) talking, but it wasn't loud enough for you to hear. After the room quieted down, you slowly raised your head up and began to put your things together, thankful that they had both left. However, when you walked out of the classroom, you noticed Peter standing just outside the doorway.

"Uh, (Y- (Y/N), can we um, can we talk?"

"Uh, ye- yeah, I guess, but I got to- I got to get to English."

"No problem I can uh- walk you there. It's my lunchtime so it doesn't matter if I'm late."

...Perfect... You had a tendency to run away from your problems, not face them, so you wanted to curl up in a ball and pretend the whole thing never happened, not talk to the boy who just found out about your secret crush on him.

"I uh- so first off- um, is it true?" Peter asked, his voice soft, eyes mostly plastered to the floor, but shooting the occasional glance at you.

You sighed, tightening your grip on your backpack straps, then spoke softly, "Yeah, it's true. All of it."

Peter's face darkened a shade, "Even the staring part?"

"Ye- yeah..."

"Do you- um- would you like to- uh- listen. Are you free this Friday night? We've got a robot showcase for robotics club and at the end, there's gonna be one of those robot-dueling-matches, which I think are really cool, and I'm gonna get to operate the robot, and I thought that- well, since you uh- like me, you'd want to come? It's a recruiting event so non-club members are allowed to come and I thought it would kinda be like a date? I don't know if I'm doing this right, you're the first cute girl to ever like me, of all people, and-"

“Peter?” You cut him off

“Yeah?”

“That sounds amazing. What um- what time?”

“It starts at six I can uh- I can text you about it more, uh later tonight?”

You beamed.

“I’d love that.”

[cyancaddy]

Cleon hints in the novels

Before I read the novels by S. D. Perry, I was aware that Aeon was as canon as it gonna get for Capcom. In my opinion, the original RE2 offered nothing that could be interpreted as attraction between Claire and Leon...I still liked them together nonetheless. The obsession I have with Claire and Leon first started when I read the novels. 13 year old me was beyond ecstatic when there were actual hints towards a possible romantic relationship between Claire and Leon (which I thought was a 1000 % canon back then, it was Capcom approved after all). Since I now know the novels can be considered as very well written fanfiction, I came to the realization that Ms Perry probably shipped them too. So without further ado, I tried to collect all the Cleon hints from the novels... which are mostly from "Underworld" and "Code Veronica".

______

Underworld - Chapter One

David's thoughts

Rebecca was unloading clips and repacking the weapons, Leon and Claire sitting close together across from her, not talking. Those two were usually joined at the hip, and were still as tight as they'd been since David, John, and Rebecca had picked them up just outside of Raccoon less than a month earlier, dirty and damaged and reeling from their run-in with Umbrella. David didn't think there was a romantic connection there, at least not yet; it was more likely their shared nightmare. Nearly dying together could be quite a bonding experience. As far as David knew, Leon and Claire were the only survivors of the Raccoon disaster who knew about Umbrella's T-Virus spill.

_______

Underworld - Chapter Two

Leon's thoughts

And what about Leon Kennedy? He'd stumbled into the fight without a clue, a cop fresh out of the academy on his way to his first day at work - which just happened to be with the Raccoon PD. There was Ada, true - but he'd known her less than half a day, and she had been killed just after admitting to him that she was some kind of an agent, sent to steal a sample of an Umbrella virus.

So I lost a job, and a possible relationship with a woman I barely knew and couldn't trust. Of course Umbrella should be stopped... but do I belong here?

He'd decided to become a cop because he wanted to help people, but he'd always figured that meant keeping the peace - busting drunk drivers, breaking up bar fights, catching crooks. Never in his wildest dreams would he have figured on being caught up in an international conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger infiltration-type stuff against a giant company that made war monsters. It was crime on a much bigger scale than he felt he was ready for...... and is that the real reason, Officer Kennedy? At exactly that moment, Claire mumbled something from her light doze, nuzzling her head against his arm before falling silent and still again - and making Leon uncomfortably aware of another facet to his involvement with the ex-S.T.A.R.S. Claire.

Claire was... she was an incredible woman. In the days after their escape from Raccoon City, they'd talked a lot about what had happened, the experiences they'd had both separately and together. At the time, it had felt like an exchange of information, filling in blanks - she'd told him about her run-in with Chief Irons and the creature she'd called Mr. X, and he'd told her all about Ada and the terrible thing that had once been William Birkin. Between them, they'd been able to come up with a continuous story, with information that was important to the fugitive team. In retrospect, though, he could see that those long, rambling conversations had been essential for another reason entirely - they'd been a way to leach out the poison of what had happened to them, like talking out a bad dream. If he'd had to keep it all inside, he thought, he might have gone crazy. In any case, the feelings he had for her now were convoluted ones - warmth, connection, dependence, respect, others that he had no name for. And that scared him, because he'd never felt so strongly about anyone before and because he wasn't sure how much of it was real and how much was just some kind of a post-traumatic stress thing.

Face it, stop bullshitting yourself. What you're really afraid of is that you're only here because she is, and you don't like what that says about you.

Leon nodded inwardly, realizing that it was the truth, the real reason behind his uncertainty. He'd always believed that want was okay, but need? He didn't like the idea of being led around by some neurotic compulsion to be close to Claire Redfield.

And what if it isn't need? Maybe it's want, and you just don't know it yet...

He scowled at his own pathetic attempts at self-analysis, deciding that maybe it would be best just to stop worrying about it so much. Whatever the reason for becoming involved, he was involved - he could kick ass with the best of them and Umbrella deserved to have their ass kicked, big time. For now, he had to pee, and then he was going to eat something and do his best to catch some sleep. Leon gently moved out from beneath Claire's warm, heavy head, doing his best not to wake her up. He slid out into the aisle, glancing around at the others.

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Underworld - Chapter Five

Claire's and Leon's conversation

"Cold?" Leon asked. Claire turned away from the window, looking at him. He'd finished with the packs, and was holding one out to her. She took it, nodding in response to his question. "Aren't you?" He shook his head, grinning. "Thermal underwear. Could have used these in Raccoon..."Claire smiled. "How could I have used them? I was running around in a pair of shorts, you at least had your uniform. "Which was covered with lizard guts before I was halfway through the sewers," he said, and she was glad to hear him at least try to joke about it.

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Underworld - Chapter 5

Claire's thougts

Leon put his hand on Claire's shoulder. "You up for this?" he asked softly, and Claire smiled inwardly, thinking of how sweet he was; she'd been thinking of asking him the same thing. In the days since Raccoon, they'd gotten pretty close- and although she wasn't positive, she'd picked up on a few signals that suggested he wouldn't mind getting closer. She still wasn't sure if that was a good idea

and now's not the time to be deciding. The sooner we get this code book, the sooner we get to Europe. To Chris.

"As up as I'm gonna be," she said, and Leon nodded, and they climbed out into the freezing night to join the others.

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Underworld - Epilogue

With David and John supporting young Rebecca, and Leon and Claire smiling at one another like lovers, the five weary soldiers trudged off the screen and out into the gently blossoming Utah morning.

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Code Veronica- Chapter Four

Leon receives Claire's message from the island and tells Chris and Barry about it

Leon had turned out to be a half decent hacker, he was in the next room on the computer; he'd hardly slept since Claire's capture, most of his time spent trying to track Umbrella's recent movements.

With both their parents dead, he and Claire had developed a close relationship, and he thought he knew her pretty well; she was smart and tough and resourceful, always had been... but she was also a college student, for Christ's sake. Unlike the rest of them, she didn't have any formal combat training. He couldn't help thinking that she'd been lucky so far, and when it came to Umbrella, luck just wasn't enough.

"Chris, get in here!"

Leon, and it sounded urgent. Chris and Barry looked at each other, Chris seeing his own worry mirrored in Barry's face, and they both stood up. His heart in his throat, Chris hurriedly led the way down the hall to where Leon was working, feeling eager and afraid at once. The young cop was standing next to the computer, his expression unreadable. "She's alive," Leon said simply. Chris hadn't even been aware of how bad things had been for him until those two words. It was like his heart had suddenly been released after being gripped hi a vise for ten days, the sense of relief as physical as it was emotional, his skin flushing with it.

Alive, she's alive...Barry clapped him on the shoulder, laughing. "Of course she is, she's a Redfield."

Chris grinned, turned his attention back to Leon and felt his smile slipping at the cop's carefully neutral expression. There was something else. Before he could ask, Leon motioned at the screen, taking a deep breath. "They've got her on an island, Chris... and there's been an accident."

Chris was leaning over the computer in a single stride. He read the brief message twice, the reality of it slow to sink in.

Infection trouble approximately 37S, 12W following attack, perps unknown. No bad guys left, I think, but stuck at the moment. Watch your back, bro, they know the city if not the street. Will try to be home soon.

Chris stood up, silently locking gazes with Leon as Barry read the message. Leon smiled, but it looked forced. "You didn't see her in Raccoon," he said. "She knows how to handle herself, Chris. And she managed to get to a computer, right?" Barry straightened up, took his cue from Leon. "That means she's not locked down," he said seriously. "And if Umbrella's got its hands full with another viral spill, they're not going to be paying attention to anything else. The important thing is that she's alive."

Chris nodded absently, mind already working on what he would need for the trip. The coordinates she'd listed put her in an incredibly isolated spot, deep in the South Atlantic, but he had an old Air Force buddy who owed him, could jet him down to Buenos Aires, maybe Capetown; he could rent a boat from there, survival gear, rope, medkit, an assload of firepower... "I'm going with you," Barry said, accurately reading his expression. They'd been friends a long time. "Me, too," Leon said. Chris shook his head. "No, absolutely not." Both men started to protest, and Chris raised his voice, talking over them.

"You saw what she said, about Umbrella homing in on me, on us," he said firmly. "That means we have to relocate, maybe one of the estates outside the city - some-one has to stay here, wait for Rebecca's team to get back, and someone else needs to scout out a new base of operations. And don't forget, Jill will be here any day now."

Barry frowned, scratched at his beard, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. "I don't like it. Going in alone is a bad idea..." "We're at a crucial phase right now, and you know it," Chris said. "Somebody's got to mind the shop, Barry, and you're the man. You've got the experience, you know all the contacts." "Fine, but at least take the kid," Barry said, gesturing toward Leon. For once, Leon didn't protest the label, only nodded, drawing himself up, shoulders back and head high.

"If you won't do it for yourself, think about Claire,"Barry continued. "What happens to her if you get your - self killed? You need a backup, somebody to pick up the ball if you fumble."Chris shook his head, immovable. "You know better, Barry, this has to be as quiet as possible. Umbrella may have already sent in a cleanup crew. One person, in and out before anyone even realizes I'm there."

Barry was still frowning, but he didn't push it. Neither did Leon, although Chris could see that he was working up to it; the cop and Claire had obviously gotten pretty close.

"I'll bring her back," Chris said, softening his tone, looking at Leon. Leon hesitated, then nodded, high color burning in his cheeks, making Chris wonder exactly how close Leon and his sister had become.

Later. I can worry about his intentions if we make it back alive... when we make it back alive, he quickly amended. If was not an option. "It's settled, then,"

Chris said. "Leon, find me a good map of the area, geographical, political, everything, you never know what might help. Also post back to Claire, just in case she gets another chance to check for mes - sages - tell her I'm on my way. Barry, I want to be pack - ing major influence, but lightweight, something I can hike in without too much trouble, maybe a Glock... you're the expert, you decide."

Both men nodded, turned away to get started, and Chris closed his eyes for just a second, quickly offering up a silent prayer.

Please, please stay safe until I get there, Claire.

It wasn't much - but then, Chris had the feeling he would be praying a lot more in the long hours to come.

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Code Veronica - Chapter nine

Steve and Claire on the plane to Antarctica, Steve’s thoughts

He looked down at her, at her tousled hair and long lashes, his heart pounding even though he was trying to relax. She moved again, shifting in her sleep, her head tilting back a little and her slightly parted lips were suddenly close enough for him to kiss, all he had to do was tip his face down a few inches, and he wanted to so bad that he actually started to do it, lowering his mouth toward hers... "Mmmm," she murmured, still totally asleep, and he stopped, pulling back, his heart beating even faster. He totally wanted to but not like that, not if she didn't want him to. He thought she did, but she'd also told him a little about her friend Leon, too, and he wasn't so sure that they were just friends. Feeling tortured, having her so close but not his, he was relieved when she rolled away from him a few seconds later.