#rendering this was A Struggle and I am not super happy with the end result but Ichiban flip phone was too important not to post dkfj | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

artificialqueens · 4 years ago

Text

Happiness Isn't Here, Chapter 2 (Jan-centric) - Joley

Chapter Summary: Jan really wants to be friends with Crystal’s girlfriend, Nicky. Gigi struggles to comprehend her attraction towards Jan. Brita gets further invested in Jan’s love life and confesses why she was so drawn to Jan.

ao3 link

It had been three days since Crystal had texted Jan, and Jan was getting frustrated at the lack of follow-up. She and Brita had visited most, if not all of the spots Crystal frequented, but to no avail. And now Jan was out for a jog, hoping to either clear her mind or have a breakthrough with a new idea. But all she got was a leg cramp and a strong pang of hunger.

There was a convenience store towards the end of the block, so Jan decided to do a quick shop. She wanted to get home right after and take a shower, flushed red and drenched in sweat from her run, she knew she must’ve looked like a hot mess.

Jan started to walk down the snack aisle, but instantly backed out and hid. “Oh, come on,” she whined to herself before carefully peering back into the aisle. Sure enough, Crystal was there and oblivious to Jan’s presence, much to her relief in her given state. “Wait, who’s that?”

A woman walked up to Crystal and wrapped her arms around her from behind. The first thing Jan noticed was that this woman – this unfairly gorgeous woman – was dressed entirely inappropriately for a trip to the convenience store. This woman was dressed for a high-end cocktail party, wearing a little red dress and black stilettos with hair that must’ve had taken at least an hour to style. She didn’t seem to belong in Missouri at all.

“Yeah, that’s Nicky,” a familiar voice pulled Jan from her thoughts.

“Fuck, how long have you been standing there?” Jan jumped slightly, putting her hand to her chest.

Gigi shrugged. “Not as long as you’ve been staring, I imagine,” she mused, then looked Jan over. “What happened to you? You look like hell.”

Jan huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. “I went on a run, thank you very much. I did a whole… half a mile.”

“Oh shit, didn’t realize you were training for a triathlon,” she teased.

“You too?” another woman, presumably one of Gigi’s friends, chimed in out of seemingly nowhere. “What’s your routine? I’m pretty sure I’ve got mine down, but-”

“It was a joke, Kameron,” Gigi cut her off.

Kameron wasn’t alone either, as a shorter brunette joined her side. “Who’s your friend, Gigi?” she asked. “This the girl from the party you was talkin’ about?”

Jan smirked as she looked from Gigi’s friends back to her. “You were talking about me?” she asked, twirling her ponytail around her finger.

“Never,” she retorted dryly. “Jan, let me introduce you to two friends, one brain cell. This is Kameron and Vanessa.”

“Vanjie.”

Gigi rolled her eyes. “She goes by Vanjie.”

Jan offered the two of them a bright smile. “So nice to meet you guys,” she said, though her attention started to shift when she heard the click of high heels on linoleum getting louder and the conversation between Crystal and Nicky entered earshot.

“Who’s the sweaty girl with Gigi?” Nicky asked with perturbed confusion.

“What?” Crystal looked where her girlfriend was pointing. “Jan?”

“You know her?”

Crystal swallowed thickly, her eyes darting back and forth between Nicky and Jan. “No! I mean yes. I mean… kind of?”

“Kind of?” Gigi chimed in. “I thought you guys were friends.”

“We are,” Jan jumped in to assure. “It’s just been a while since we saw each other at summer camp,” she explained, happy to be able to tell the truth. “It’s been a while, we were–”

“Ten!” Crystal abruptly cut in. “That’s why the details are a little hazy, you know? It’s been so long.”

Jan furrowed her brows and looked at Crystal with a mix of hurt and confusion on her face. She tried to meet her eyes, hoping she’d explain, but to no avail – Crystal wasn’t looking at her at all, her eyes were fixed on Nicky.

Nicky did look skeptical, though she didn’t say so. “Well, you did smoke away most of your brain cells, I guess that makes sense,” she decided, watching as her girlfriend’s entire body relaxed in relief. Then her attention shifted to Jan, whom she offered a polite smile. “So nice to meet you,” she said, offering her hand out – not to shake, it was more like she was presenting it on display.

Not that Jan questioned it; she surmised that it fit the way Nicky carried herself. “The pleasure’s all mine,” she chirped, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

“What is it that you do?” Nicky questioned as she looked her over.

“Jan’s a lawyer!” Crystal jumped in yet again, though this time it appeared to be in Jan’s defense. “You just started at a firm out here, right?”

Jan nodded, ignoring the way her chest was still aching. “Yeah, it’s been going super well so far. What about you, Nicky?”

“I am a professional hairstylist,” she answered stiffly. “I do Beyoncé’s personal trainer’s sister’s hair, it’s very high-profile.”

Both Gigi and Crystal, with slight grimaces, had opened their mouths to say something, but Jan cut right in. “Really? Oooh, how fun! You should totally let me know if you’re ever taking new clients.”

Crystal winced and once again tried to interject, but Nicky answered before she could. “I do think I can fit you in, as a courtesy at least. Since you are a friend of Crystal’s,” she told her, then rifled through her purse until she pulled out a business card and handed it to Jan.

While neither Jan nor Nicky had noticed how Crystal was stressing out and Kameron and Vanessa had long since wandered off, Gigi noticed and cocked her head to the side so Crystal would follow her down the next aisle. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing!” Crystal insisted. “I just… don’t think it’s a good idea for Jan and Nicky to be friends. You know how she gets.”

“I guess,” Gigi shrugged. “But Jan seems pretty non-threatening, it’s not like you guys fucked or anything, right?”

She swallowed thickly. “Right. Because we only knew each other as kids and that would be weird,” she reminded herself, not wanting to forget the lie she’d established.

Her friend was dubious, but allowed it to slide. “So… Jan is definitely available, then?”

Crystal’s eyes lit up, this was perfect. “She is. Are you into her, Geege? Because you should ask her out, she’s great. And you’re great. So it would be, you know, great.”

Gigi shrugged, glancing down. “I dunno,” she told her, though a slight smile tugged at her lips. “Maybe.”

Before Crystal could argue her case further, Nicky rounded the corner. “Crystal, come on, we’re gonna be late,” she whined.

“We better go,” Crystal said to Gigi. “But think about what I said.”

——

Jan looked at her phone – 12:48 pm. She was a bit early for her hair appointment, by no accident. As soon as she stepped inside, she wanted to try to fit in a bit of a tour.

The salon reminded Jan of the one she would visit during the winter break she had spent in Beverly Hills. It was clean and chic and everyone who worked there could’ve moonlighted as a Victoria’s Secret model. Normally, she wasn’t intimidated by that, but she found herself cutting her tour short as anxiety started twisting her stomach into knots. Sure, she was used to the high-end life, but that didn’t make her ‘cool’. Jan didn’t know how to be cool – her ideal Friday night consisted of Chinese food, a bottle of wine, and her library of bootleg musicals.

But Nicky? Nicky oozed cool out of every invisible pore. It sent Jan back to her middle school days when she would see the popular kids and silently yearned to unlock the secrets to social acceptance. And while thirteen-year-old Jan had found the answer when she started high school without braces and with newly-developed D-cups, things were far less simple in adulthood.

“Jan?” The girl at the front desk pulled her back into reality. “You can go ahead and take the middle chair. Nicky will be right with you.”

Jan nodded and thanked her as she moved to take her seat. By the time Nicky made her way over, her racing thoughts had slowed to a walking pace, something she was eternally grateful for.

“Your hair is so thick and smooth,” Nicky observed, a hint of surprise in her tone. “You’re Italian?”

“Half Italian, half Jewish,” she confirmed. “Lots of hair on both sides.”

“I could tell from your arms,” she remarked offhandedly, but by then she was massaging shampoo into Jan’s scalp, rendering her too blissed out to register the comment.

Jan was entranced almost instantly, and she understood why Nicky worked at the only salon in Springfield with a near five-star rating. She had gotten actual massages that were less satisfying, and she was already certain she would be happy with any final result. “So, how long have you and Crystal been together?” she asked after a brief silence, curious as to how her answer would compare to Gigi’s.

“Since I moved here in the tenth grade,” Nicky answered. “Not consistently, but that isn’t the important thing.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re together now,” Jan murmured through gritted teeth, regretting bringing it up in the first place and deciding to change the subject. “This place is so nice, how long have you worked here?”

Nicky was too focused on Jan’s hair to notice the shift in tone. “About a year and a half, I cannot complain, but the goal is to open my own salon. I even think I can poach some of these girls to come with me,” she told her. “But securing a space is impossible.”

“I work in real estate law, you’re preaching to the choir,” she nodded, though her mind was already doing a speedrun of ideas. This was the ‘in’ she needed, how she could win Nicky’s favor and be her friend.

The comment didn’t connect the dots for Nicky, who finished Jan’s hair and spun her around. “And we’re done, what do you think?”

Jan gasped, her eyes bright and wide. It wasn’t an act, she was genuinely impressed with what Nicky had done. She had only trimmed a couple of inches off, but the styling was pristine, she never wanted to wash her hair again because she was afraid she could never get it back to this. “It’s gorgeous, oh my God.” As she got up and paid her, she added “Don’t stop thinking about getting your own salon, in fact, text me the info about the space you’re trying to secure,” with a wink.

Nicky’s intrigue outweighed her trepidation. “I guess you can give it your best shot, then. Landlord’s a real asshole, though.”

——

Brita eagerly led Jan into an empty conference room and set a folder down on the table. “Okay, so, what’s the plan? Before you say anything, I already looked it up and we can’t deport her to France unless we frame her for murder.”

Jan shut the door behind her and rushed to Brita’s side with concern and confusion. “What the hell are you talking about? No one’s being deported or framed for murder or… seriously, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Isn’t that what you were up to at your little hair appointment? Getting close to Nicky to find her weaknesses and exploit them to get her out of the picture? Everyone overshares at hair salons, it’s just how it works,” she explained as she opened the folder up. “I printed out all of the important social media posts dating back from when she started dating Crystal.”

“Brita, that’s eleven years’ worth of posts!”

She scoffed. “And? Do you want your happy ending with Crystal or not? Nicky is an obstacle in your way, she is the enemy.”

Jan rolled her eyes. “I don’t want her to be the enemy. I like her. She’s so cool and pretty and she smells nice and–”

Brita grabbed Jan by the shoulders and shook her. “Listen to yourself! This isn’t the Jan and Nicky love story, it’s the Jan and Crystal love story. The last thing you need to do is go all starry-eyed over, and I cannot stress this enough, Crystal’s girlfriend.”

“Okay, so, I get that you wanna help and I really appreciate it, but I promise I totally have this under control. You keep working on your plans, I’m sure they’re great.”

She sighed and let go of Jan. “I’m sorry, I know I’m intense and everything, but I just really like you and want to help you. I’ve always wanted a daughter, you know? I have a fourteen year old son, and he’s an asshole.”

Jan’s expression softened. “Aw, I didn’t realize… but that’s sweet, and it’d be nice to have a mother figure that isn’t massively disappointed in me right now. Don’t ask, it’s a story for another day.” Ideally that day would never come, but she didn’t expect Brita to let her off the hook on that either. “On that note, um, don’t get mad, but I’m getting brunch with Nicky tomorrow. But it’s a business brunch.”

“A business brunch?” Brita looked at her skeptically.

“I’m helping her get her own salon. The landlord’s a jerk but he’s only like, a four out of ten compared to what I’ve dealt with. And…” she strummed her fingers against the table as she tried to think on her feet. “Think of it this way – if she’s busy at her own salon, she’ll have less time with Crystal.”

Brita beamed and cupped Jan’s face, squishing her cheeks. “There’s that Harvard-Columbia brain at work, I knew you had a plan. You didn’t need to worry me like that, missy.”

Jan pressed her lips into a fine line and nodded. “It won’t happen again.”

——

Jan tried to keep her conversation with Brita in mind when she was out to brunch with Nicky, she really did put in an effort. But then she found out mid-mimosa that they got the location for the salon and Nicky showered her with gracious praise and it all went out the window. Jan’s latent praise kink and overwhelming desire to win Nicky over was more than enough to keep her from heeding Brita’s warning.

So, it didn’t end at business brunch. They wound up back at Jan’s house, talking, laughing, drinking, as if they had been friends this whole time. And Jan was becoming more and more convinced that in the end, she could have the best of both worlds – she could have Crystal as her girlfriend and Nicky as her bestie. There was no downside in that, right?

“Have you heard of The Nebula?” Nicky asked as she set the glass down on the coffee table, “It’s this cool, exclusive club downtown. Crystal and I were planning on going tomorrow night, you should come.”

Jan nearly spilled her drink with how quickly she perked up. She almost couldn’t believe this had worked so well and so fast. “Really? Oh my god, yeah, that’d be so much fun. I am such a club girl.”

“You’re so fun,” Nicky giggled, resting her head on Jan’s shoulder. “I love how fun you are, we’re gonna have the best time ever. You’re totally not the cunty east coast bitch I thought you’d be.”

“Aw, thank you!” Jan hugged Nicky from the side.

Nicky had ended up staying into the late afternoon, waiting until she was sober enough to take care of some things at the salon, but happily reminded Jan several times over that they would be going to The Nebula the next day at nine.

——

“Alright, are you gonna tell me what’s on your mind or not?” Crystal prompted as she watched Gigi absentmindedly clean the same glass for the third time.

Gigi looked up, finally putting the glass away and tossing the towel over her shoulder. “You know damn well I try to keep my head empty at any given moment.”

Even though Crystal might have agreed at times, she wouldn’t take that as an answer. “Come on, you’ve been weird ever since we all ran into each other at the store the other day.”

“I just…” she hesitated, chewing on her lip. “What’s her deal, anyway?”

“Who?”

“Jan.”

Crystal smirked. “See? I knew you liked her. You never act like that around girls like you did at the store. I don’t know what the hold-up is, she’s cool.”

Gigi snorted. “Cool isn’t the word I’d use, babe,” she retorted dryly, then added, “you sure she’s not into you?”

“What? Of course not. I told you already, we were kids, remember?” Despite how comically suspicious her voice was, Gigi didn’t push her any further, so she continued. “Hey, Jan’s coming with us to Nebula tonight. You should come, it could be like a cute double date.”

After a bit of hesitation, Gigi nodded. “Yeah, alright. My shift ended ten minutes ago anyway, I just gotta get home and change.”

The four of them met at Jan’s house, as she lived the closest to downtown, and took an Uber (Jan happily upgraded them to the best option) to the club. Considering they were four attractive women in mini dresses, they were granted entry easily and went right to ordering rounds of drinks.

It only took a few drinks to get Crystal and Nicky on the dance floor, giggling and grinding to the beat. But Nicky stopped after a couple minutes when she realized Jan and Gigi were still lingering awkwardly at the table, and simply had to remedy that. She jogged back to the table and grabbed both of them by the arm. “Come on, Jan, dance with Gigi,” she insisted, pushing them together.

“I didn’t expect you to come,” Jan admitted as she draped her arms around Gigi’s neck. “This doesn’t seem like your scene. Like, you probably think the music is too generic and the drinks are too sweet.”

“Well, both of those things are true.” Gigi rested her hands on Jan’s waist, the two of them doing the bare minimum to count as dancing. “But Crystal dragged me out and I thought it might be fun to watch you get drunk and make an ass out of yourself.”

Jan scoffed. Sure, she was a lightweight and already tipsy, but she thought she could ignore it if she tried hard enough. “Why don’t you get me another drink then, Captain Cynical?”

“Oh, I’m a captain? Here I thought I was just Lieutenant Cynical,” she teased, then let go of her to go to the bar.

While Jan was waiting, Nicky came back over and pulled her to dance with her and Crystal. “You and Gigi look good together,” Nicky remarked.

“You’d look good with anyone,” Jan mused playfully. “Oh my god, if we hooked up, we’d all be even!” She gasped, gesturing between the three of them and giggling at what she thought was a funny observation.

But Nicky and Crystal all but froze in their tracks. “What do you mean by that?”

Jan glanced at Crystal, suddenly remembering the lie she’d helped commit to. “I just, um…” To her relief, Gigi had rejoined them at that moment. “Oh good, you’re back!” She quickly took the drink and started to down it.

“No, no, tell me what you meant by that,” Nicky insisted.

Realizing she had been caught, Jan thought the only option was to tell the truth. “I meant, well, you and Crystal are together, and we, um… used to be…”

“You both said you weren’t,” Gigi cut in. “You both insisted you weren’t. What the fuck?”

“I just didn’t wanna make things weird!” Crystal defended. “But… yeah… Jan and I were actually sixteen when we met and um… did stuff.”

Nicky’s face reddened with anger. “I can’t believe you both lied to me!” She turned to Crystal. “We are leaving and will be talking about this. And you,” she turned to Jan, “just stay away from us.”

Although Jan tried to object and plead her case, Nicky was already storming out of the club with Crystal in tow, leaving her alone with Gigi. “Don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it.”

“For a Harvard-Columbia grad, you’re kind of stupid, aren’t you?”

Jan pouted and nodded.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

Jan nodded again.

Gigi wrapped her arm around Jan’s shoulders and walked her out of the club and got into an Uber with her once it arrived.

The ride was quiet, enough so that by the time they arrived at Jan’s house, she was asleep with her head in Gigi’s lap.

Being rail-thin and fragile looking in comparison, Gigi struggled carrying Jan into the house and placing her on the couch. “God, you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” she muttered to herself before taking the blanket off the back of the couch and draping it over Jan.

Just as Gigi was in the middle of contemplating if she should stay or leave, Jan started to wake up. “Ah, it lives.”

Jan looked around, slowly realizing that she was on her couch, and that Gigi tucked her in. She pushed herself to sit up a bit. “Um… thank you, you know, for helping me in. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, I know you’re probably pissed at me too.”

“Oh, I am,” Gigi readily assured. “But you look like a sad baby deer, so I can’t just abandon you, I guess,” she decided. “You need help getting to bed, Bambi?”

“Please,” Jan mumbled. The two of them went upstairs and Jan stepped into the bathroom to get changed and wash her face. Then once again, Gigi tucked her into bed.

Once Jan was sound asleep, Gigi went downstairs and crashed on the couch. But she woke up early in the morning and left without a trace. Without the alcohol softening her heart, she found herself mad at the fact that she so easily overlooked what Jan did in favor of taking care of her. And what was worse was that she still liked her.

When Jan woke up, she went downstairs, only to find her house empty. She felt a pang of disappointment, only to perk up at a knock on the door. “Gigi?” No answer, so with another wave of hopefulness she asked “Crystal?” as she opened the door.

“How funny, Gigi and Crystal are exactly who we need to talk about,” Brita huffed as she walked inside. “You are skating on thin ice,” she warned, walking Jan to the couch and sitting down. “What happened last night?”

Jan sighed. “Nicky found out Crystal and I were together and now she hates me and Gigi took me home. That’s it.”

Brita pinched the bridge of her nose. “I was afraid of this,” she muttered and took a deep breath. “It’s fine, we just need a new plan.”

#rpdr fanfiction #jan sport #crystal methyd #gigi goode #brita filter #nicky doll #brooke lynn hytes #kameron michaels #vanessa vanjie mateo #gigi x jan #crystal x jan #crystal x nicky #lesbian au #s12 #joley #happiness isnt here #rare pair

8 notes · View notes

scarlettlawyer · 5 years ago

Text

Part 13 of my reaction/commentary to the Phantoms & Mirages Saga, the fanfic series by @renegadewangs

(Chasing Phantoms): Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

(Haunted Specters): Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

(Vanquishing Mirages): Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

Vanquishing Mirages / Lifting Spirits: Part 10

Lifting Spirits: Part 11 Part 12

OH BOY we actually made it. Are we actually here? At the Lifting Spirits ending?! :O

It only took thirteen posts and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words and a couple of AUs and fun off-topic detours but WE DID IT. But it was the journey that counts, not necessarily the destination, no? XD

It was only the three of them- Simon, Athena and Bobby himself who were visiting Lex. There were very few other people who would bother to pay their respects, Bobby supposed.

[…]

The ambassador was probably the only other person who’d visit the grave with honest intent.

I don’t… necessarily think that’s true, to be honest.

I have some thoughts about this that I won’t go into, but, there were many people deeply upset by the fake verdict in-universe.

Lifting Spirits, Chapter 18

ascending.

I can’t it’s so much, the sweetness the…

”His identity was mine up until two months ago and it’ll continue to be mine whenever my uncle deems it time to take me out for some exercise.”

PALAENO OUT HERE GONNA TAKE LEX FOR WALKS LIKE A HECKIN’ DOG LOL? I love it.

While this was a suitable alternative to execution, in a way it felt like they were cheating.

Okay I really liked this line on first read honestly because. Yes.

Like, this ties in a huge amount to what I said in the last post. It… DID kind of feel like cheating to me back then? In the sense that this is such a wonderful, happy ending for everyone to the extent that it almost felt like it shouldn’t be possible given the past and the characters involved. It felt like a bit of a meta line? And I really don’t know if it was intended as such, that’s just how I interpreted/read it!

And these are the EXACT lines wherein, tied with the open acknowledgement of the inability to please everyone discussed in the last post, seriously made me embrace and adore this ending one thousand percent.

The “cheating” comment seriously resonated with me and just, by alluding to it feeling like cheating… to just embrace it… The open acknowledgement goes such a huge way. There doesn’t need to be any internal sense of dissonance whatsoever if the story is right there with you in terms of self-awareness.

By saying “not everyone can be satisfied with the ending” in and of itself allows me to be fully satisfied, and to no longer have to worry about the fact that it can’t please everyone, since the story is already aware of this and having pointed out that pleasing everyone isn’t possible anyway.

Mind you, my perspective now is somewhat more akin to hissing “no it’s not cheating back off this beautiful ending is 100% earned and righteous shhhhh”.

I… am really rendered speechless with some of the wonderfulness of this ending… And I’d actually... forgotten a lot of wonderful details too? Because I’d only read it through once before, and the fact that rereading the series to do these reviews has taken some time means the largest gap of time had passed between the first and second reading when it came to these last few chapters (making my memory of them the least fresh before reading through a second time). So the entire time prior to actually reading them once again, I’d been entirely going off memory of my first reading from like… a few months ago now, when discussing things with my friend(s) and thinking up scenarios. So, some things were like reading afresh and they just kinda outright killed me (in a good way) as if it was better than I had even remembered it being. Two examples of this are, 1. I could not recall with certainty an instance of Lex referring to Palaeno as “uncle”, and while reading through Lifting Spirits, noticed that even after the surgery he was still just referring to him as “ambassador”. Which, made me wonder if he had… So, suffice it to say… Reading this ending and seeing how he continuously refers to him as “uncle” & “my uncle” SO many times in such a short timespan, blows me away, and WOW!! WARMTH & LOVELY EMOTIONS ABOUND. 2. THIS IS KIND OF SKIPPING AHEAD TO THE LAST CHAPTER I GUESS BUT SIMON OUTRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGES THEM AS FRIENDS!!!!!!!! PLEASE I DIE OF WARMTH. I did NOT remember that, it is so… casually acknowledged!!! Like yes, yes, it is clear as DAY that, by the end, there is friendship among the trio, but it is casually verbalised by Simon like that and oh my goodness.

Lifting Spirits, Chapter 19

I will have to say that for the Lifting Spirits ending, I was way, way more invested in the themes of family and family dynamics instead of the shipping side of things. But SHIPPERS GOTTA SHIP and I respect that XD

Things spiraled out of control further and further.

Alexander… Luster Jr

Not with someone else, only Benny. …For now, anyway.

…AND HOW MANY NEW PEOPLE IS HE PLANNING ON MEETING WHEN ON HOUSE ARREST, EXACTLY?!

Lifting Spirits, Chapter 20

Really love the parallels vs differences between Benny and Lex illustrated so clearly in this chapter.

He didn’t want her to die. It seemed unfair of her to have to die while he got a second chance at living.

OH MY GOD? I Had TOTALLY FORGOTTEN THAT THIS GETS ADDRESSED/MENTIONED IN THE ENDING WHEN I’VE SPENT THE LAST FEW WEEKS/MONTHS ECHOING THIS EXACT SAME SENTIMENT!!!!

WILD that I had forgotten about this being brought up directly in the text considering how much I’ve been “”complaining”” about this EXACT ��double standard”.

My memory must be SO bad I genuinely thought that Mirage didn’t even get any mention anywhere in the ending, and that after Lex’s meeting with her in the prison she promptly Disappears never to be mentioned again in Lifting Spirits, which felt INCREDIBLY unjust and to do her character a severe disservice. Once again I am a FOOL. A FOOL. That’s my entire Phantoms and Mirages reading experience let’s just be clear: me just, fumbling around blindly and making a fool of myself xDD

I actually think this being brought up directly in the text is the precise thing which planted this thought in my head in the first place too, and then I just, forgot that it was brought up in-story and started going around thinking it was my Own Original Sentiment, pffffff. THAT’S UH. A BIT OF A RUNNING THEME ABOUT THINGS FROM THE ENDING ACTUALLY. This is what I get for reading the ending Once and then needing to go off of memory alone for the next few months: suddenly it starts seeming like my ideas are Totally Original, Not Drawn From Direct Textual Hints/Discussion Or Anything. LOL.

Lifting Spirits, Chapter 21

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

I have no clue if this was intentionally meant to echo one of the Phantom’s statements in Chasing Phantoms, but I found myself noticing it, at least on second readthrough, nonetheless!

“It would be best if you wipe that smirk off your face and hold your tongue, Bobby, as I’m quite certain your assumptions won’t sit well with me.”

Benny is right there? He’s right th

Hhhhhh I guess Benny is ok with the lack of openness then? dfhjbdfjfdkjb but Bobby’s RIGHT and Lex is a LIAR~

“I feel it is our duty as your friends to rub it in. Thirty eight years old, wasn’t it?”

“as your friends” once again, I’m ascending

Simon decided to tune out the remainder of the argument. Much as he believed Bobby had a point- the Jammin’ Ninja really was worthless against an opponent as grand as the Steel Samurai- he had no interest in partaking in the discussion.

SDKJNFDNJLFSDKJ

The former spy dropped himself back in his chair to return his attention to the watch he was constructing.

The

Former

Spy

: D (I misremembered the “former” part being way earlier in the narrative… and was kinda “huh!” whenever the narrative would still refer to him as “spy” long after the surgery on this readthrough… This is an example of my oversimplification of the distinctions the text makes between Lex and the phantom; in reality, there was still a transition involved, and things/characterisation wasn’t as clear-cut as I’d remembered it being in a “before vs after the surgery” sense. The subtle changes are… super great).

Okay, so for this ending (and the plot of Lifting Spirits), there was ONE thing that slightly nagged at me. Ultimately, I couldn’t be happier with how things turned out. But one thing that did strike me is that the Phantoms and Mirages narrative very clearly frames the phantom’s lack of emotions – their impairment as a result of the bone sliver – as a disability. Through the removal of the bone sliver, this disability is ultimately “cured”, and Lex is given the opportunity to become a “real” and good person.

In real life, in the vast majority of cases, there is no ready cure for disabilities, and a person’s disability cannot be readily separated meaningfully from who they are. It is something with them their whole life. It could be said that the disability itself is being kicked aside in this narrative instead of being accepted. (But, of course, given the context, it’s pretty understandable). There’s the slight potential for things to go awry if you warp some kind of message out of the narrative somehow such as “oh, it’s okay, if you’re disabled you can still have a happy ending… You just need to “cure” your disability first!” but that is obviously an extremely unfair and uncharitable reading.

I think it’s important to clarify that the Phantom’s lack of emotions – his disability in and of itself is not what made him a bad person (obviously), it was his actions. And I think that the narrative does make that pretty clear.

But the thing is,

It’s NOT actually the case that Lex gets suddenly magically “cured” of everything. That’s not the case at all! He must continue to struggle and to strive – he may not be emotionless anymore, but now he has to deal with the opposite, which is a sort of handicap all on its own. There are lasting repercussions from the bone sliver in the sense that now he must learn to deal with the intensity of what he is feeling. With that in mind, to frame it in terms of a “disability being kicked aside” is a pretty incorrect reading.

I said this in a previous post when I kind of touched on this kind of thing:

It’s just, the notion of a character actively striving to be good and overcoming themselves vs a sudden fix that gets externally applied

But another thing is… In my mind, I had exaggerated somewhat just how much of an effect this “sudden fix that gets externally applied” has as well. Lex must not only strive to overcome the extremity of the emotions he feels now, but there continues to be development throughout Lifting Spirits regarding how he interacts with the characters around him. It’s not like he gets the surgery and his characterisation/bonds with the others suddenly and abruptly jumps to where it was at the end and remains consistent through the whole fic; not at all. There CONTINUES to be development as he makes progress towards the point he’s at in the ending, even after the surgery.

Another thing about this ending is that it is so nice.

I think that Lifting Spirits, at its core, is a really beautiful story and concept. It really is. And part of why I had, perhaps, fought against or figured I wouldn’t find a good ending convincing is because I had convinced myself that it just wasn’t possible for the phantom as a character in general to ever achieve any kind of happy ending no matter what, EVEN IF I might like such a thing. I must make some clarification here, because other stories do offer a good kind of happy ending for them, but not in the same manner in which Lifting Spirits does, Lifting Spirits definitely feels like a different “kind” of good ending and a more “direct” good ending at that. I hope that makes some sense, because articulating the difference does seem kinda difficult.

Usually with favourite characters you want them to be happy, but with the phantom it had never been like that… I only ever wanted, or expected, angst or whatnot because… I simply did not think anything else was possible. And I was pretty content with that. But you… You…!

Anyway, there is another big aspect of the ending’s greatness that I want to talk about too. It’s kind of open-ended in the best possible way…

So many things happen that well and truly make it seem like the story is drawing to a close, and YET, simultaneously, there is very much this sense of new beginnings as well, and this ending works equally well regardless of whether there’s another instalment or not.

Something little like Simon getting his hair cut, or Bobby and Simon officially moving in with each other, are awesome things that feel very significant, that make you go “wow, we really are at the wholesome, satisfying, grand conclusion to it all huh? We’ve spent so much time with these characters, but now it’s finally time for them to go on their merry way, and continue to go on with their lives beyond the text written on the page.” They are CHANGES, changes to the “status quo”. You certainly get the impression that even if the story might be “over” for the reader, it certainly isn’t over for the characters – and that is the impression we would still get if there was absolutely nothing else written beyond Lifting Spirits – that their story would continue on regardless, and there would still be… adventure.

Because that’s another thing about the ending to Lifting Spirits. It closes off, and wraps everything up so very nicely. But at the same time, it remains poised, there is just this huge atmosphere of “stuff can still go DOWN” building. It’s the perfect ending where everything gets wrapped up but it is also the perfect set-up for anything to happen beyond the conclusion.

I sense this VERY STRONGLY in the segments where, for example, Benny considers how maybe he might need all the weapons and skills he has. Feels very “calm before the storm”.

Part of what’s so great about something like Simon getting a motorcycle is that the “the subway sucks” and “Simon trying to learn how to drive” subplot(s) have been present in the series from the very beginning. And finally, finally, after trying and failing at learning to drive regular cars, Simon has successfully escaped the subway at the very end.

We are given such hints on what could lie beyond, but also, from the way things are? There are a million different ways things COULD pan out in future, and the audience is only left to wonder.

We are given this strong hint that MAYBE… just maybe, this situation isn’t quite sustainable indefinitely. That perhaps, something’s gotta give at some point.

And that no matter what, the characters probably have some wild times ahead of them. Like that’s the thing: Even if Tracking Ghosts didn’t exist, I’d be left with the lasting impression that events of “Tracking Ghosts” length may still await the characters in the future.

But it’s all left so perfectly VAGUE. All left only in the realm of possibility.

I was satisfied to the extreme with the ending, I had to just take it and run at the time (of course I always planned on reading on), although back then to an extent I was outright BAFFLED at there still being this huge instalment to go. In the words of my friend, back then when I told her that Actually, there’s STILL even MORE to read:

Like, it truly felt like EVERYTHING had already been said and done. So how…?!

And since then, of course, I have not continued reading on as of yet, which has given me plenty of time to think.

And I have since realised that, as well and as thoroughly as Lifting Spirits DOES wrap everything up, there are still tiny, potentially loose threads. Tiny threads that could be unravelled until they could give way to all manner of things, scenarios, plots.

And that aside, there’s so much else that COULD happen as well. The Lifting Spirits ending is rife with potential. It is absolutely brimming with it.

And I also found myself realising that hey, there actually are things that haven’t been said and done yet. That there ARE little tiny things left nagging at me.

Tracking Ghosts contains a whole new threat, elaboration on Lex's emotional instability, road trips through Borginia, lots more 'Mirage' and Domestique LaSoote's backstory (oooh~). Also, the mother of all epilogues and a few more bonus chapters that take place afterwards.

Okay it is actually hilarious how little I remembered of all of this by the end. And that is to say: pretty much none of it. I straight-up forgot ALL of this being even mentioned in the Author’s Note at the end, and therefore have incorporated stuff like “road trips through Borginia” and “Mirage backstory” very VERY little in how I’ve thought about what to expect from Tracking Ghosts, at least in recent times, ahahahaha. Well I’ve got… quite a lot ahead of me, I’m sure.

I am certain that there’s so much more I could probably say about this series, I could continue to go on and on, but for now, there you have it, I think. I have not done this ending justice at all – it’s just so good it defies being done justice, and I don’t think I can fully articulate what I want to. But I’m content. Across so many posts, in thousands and thousands of words, I have already said quite a bit. XD

So now, all that’s left is to take that plunge and finally start to read Tracking Ghosts as I planned on doing once this series of posts was finished, huh? XD

I start my work week tomorrow, so it’s currently looking like… I will start reading it next weekend! It will have to be a weekend, sadly, as I can’t imagine starting and diving into something so huge when I have to try and focus on work/get sufficient sleep, lol.

OH I DON’T KNOW HOW TO END THIS POST-

Thank you, so much, for everything, and uh, apologies in advance for however much I might blow up your inbox/DMs/what have you when reading Tracking Ghosts. GENUINELY DON’T KNOW how much I will liveblog to you, if only a couple of things will slip through or if I’m just outright gonna go completely wild with it XD. IT WILL DEPEND ON THE STORY ITSELF AND HOW I’M FEELING I GUESS/my reactions.

These review posts have been… they’ve been really fun, I’ve enjoyed doing them a lot. They’ve been time consuming, but it was all 100% worth it and I’m very glad I set out to do them. I couldn’t not do them, really. I found myself realising that I just needed to tell you about the incredible journey/ride this series took me on one way or another – and, of course, I just have so many thoughts and so very many opinions about it. It lends itself so readily to analysis for me. But more than that, it feels like it SHOULD be analysed and subjected to analysis.

Talking with you is really great, and I hope to talk with you heaps more in future! Not just about your stories, just in general!

Thanks again, and I hope you have a great week! And then it will be TRACKING GHOSTS TIME.

#long post

4 notes · View notes

dandelliongirl · 6 years ago

Text

Final stretch

of January.

Holy damn it’s been a long month. 5 weeks! It’s really hard to wait for spring and summer because I’m really looking forward to my new summer house being finished and getting to furnish it. ♥

We started our 2019 by visiting my guy’s grandparents for his grandpa’s 80th birthday. It was really nice seeing my guy’s cousins from his mum’s side and get to hang out with my guy’s whole family as well. Usually one or more of them are missing so this time it was all of us together. We played board games and ate so much tasty food. I’m going as vegan as possible (excluding the occasional dairy and eggs) and trying to avoid wheat so it was a bit of a struggle but I’m proud of how well I did. The roads were very icy on our way there and our car did a 180 at one point but nothing bad happened and we got to change lanes safely. Both me and my guy got a really bad flu right after Christmas break ended that took us both out for almost 2 weeks.

On the 10th of January my new sleeping cottage was finally transported to our summer house. It was such an exciting Thursday that focusing at work was really difficult and I kept refreshing my email for any updates from the process. Everything went well and they managed to lower the cottage on the foundation safely despite the crazy amounts of snow and trees bent over the road. Waiting until Saturday to go see it in person was really difficult but it was so worth it! It was the sunniest and nicest day and everything looked gorgeous. ☼ The new cottage is the cutest and most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and the forest around looked magical with all the snow covering the trees.

We had a campfire going and did some cleanup from after the construction workers. We baked delicious treats on the campfire and had coffee/warm berry juice. I never wanted to leave.. ♥ All of Sunday I felt really irritated and depressed from seeing so much beauty in one day, but it was worth the beauty-hangover. Now I just have to have patience to wait until March/April for the snow to melt. They’re going to fix some damage done during the transportation, finish building the porch on site and finish work inside. I’ve already started to shop for furniture and written a list of things I need to buy for my new house! I really hope for a sunny summer...

Last weekend me and my friend finally got to continue my photography project. Photography makes me so incredibly happy and bringing out my camera for the first time in months got me super inspired. I’ve been watching a lot of Irene Rudnyk’s videos on YouTube and it is really inspiring to see that a lot of the techniques that I’ve learned over the years through trial and error are also used by actual professional photographers. Even though her style of portrait photography isn’t what I personally prefer her videos have taught me a lot about posing my model and looking for good angles as well as a bunch of useful photoshop and retouch tricks. Anyway my firend was dressed as a Little Red Riding Hood-ish character with a red velvet cape that I pinned on her with safety pins, and we went to a snowy forest to shoot some really cute photos. I started editing them last night and I’m hoping to finish today. I was also inspired to re-edit the results of our last photoshoot and I’ve done a lot more planning for future ones. It’s just probably going to take until July-ish. Another thing that I have to be patient and wait for.. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to shoot other photos in the meantime. I’m definitely wanting to carry my camera with me a lot more as I’ve been lazy and very married to my phone camera lately. I didn’t buy a 500€ camera to keep it in the camera bag - especially when taking photos with an actual camera gets me feeling this alive and inspired. ♥

Work has been going well as per usual. We’ve had a chill month before the craziness of trainings and technical help starts in February/March, and I’ve been enjoying my long lunch breaks, crossword puzzles and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.

This past week has been really cold and putting on several layers of ski-pants and thick coats many times a day takes an effort. Because of the -15 to -22 Celsius weathers I also haven’t been able to go skiing at all. On the plus side everything looks beautiful.☼ It’s this time of the year that makes winter worth it even though I’m always cold. Since it’s around midsummer on the southern hemisphere oranges are really tasty this time of year and that’s what I always look forward to.

So we’re 26 days into 2019 and still have no news on Animal Crossing for the Switch. ANOTHER thing to wait patiently for.. It really seems like time’s CRAWLING forward. I’ve been listening to a lot of ACNL hourly music (my favourites are probably 8pm, 1am, 3am and 8am) and imagining what the new game might bring... I just really hope that it’s good and won’t be a nightmare of microtransactions, paid online services and an integration into ACPC that renders amiibo useless. It’s both exciting and scary to wait for information to drop.

I finally signed up for graduation this May. Mum and grandmum are both working on my skirt, shirt and jacket and it feels so special having these important women create my outfit from scratch. We got a really cute jacket pattern and made a test version that looked really nice. I can’t wait to see the outfit come together. I’m also really hoping that my friend’s boyfriend signs up for graduation as well so that the four of us can go to the dinner dance together. It would be a lot of fun. Dance rehearsals start in a few weeks.

I’m going to continue photo editing and in the afternoon I’m doing my guy’s sister’s hair for a fancy event she has tonight. I’ll get to see my dear bunny friend again for the first time in almost a year. ♥ My guy is out of town for the weekend so I’m trying to get everything that requires my PC done. We’ve been playing the Witcher III basically whenever both of us are at home and that means my PC is occupied on most days. My guy goes side questing and plays gwent whenever I’m not home, and I join him for any interesting and/or main story missions. It’s a good system because I still can’t really relate to Geralt and am not that immersed into the world. It’s like starting Mass Effect 3 with someone else’s Shepard. Speaking of BioWare, the Anthem VIP demo dropped - as did EA:s servers. This doesn’t bode well for #TheDreadWolfRises but let’s hope people have a short memory and Anthem sells well despite this hickup...

Waiting (patiently) for springtime... ☼

#personal #diary #January2019 #memories

1 note · View note

cgpaints · 8 years ago

Photo

Monthly review, January 2017

Everyone who has read my “RIP 2016″ Post at the end of last year probably knows that that year ended on a rather bleak note for me. I really do not want to keep it at that though and I want to try to pull all the motivation to better myself out of the situation I seem to be a little bit stuck in right now.

So in order to do that I want to do a kind of “monthly review” thing just to force myself to look back at the last few weeks and see what I’ve been able to accomplish both art wise as well as freelance wise, or even life wise more generally speaking. So let’s just start it off and see where we are at:

Art:

The image shows every single bit of painting and drawing I made over the course of January. It includes every study and every drawing, doodle, experiment and finished piece I made last month. What it does not include of course is client work, which I am not allowed to show. You can download a huge version of the image heeeere:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3ngijvyy1kibk3a/full.jpg

I started the month off by wanting to focus on composition. It’s a subject I’ve been neglecting throughout all my years of painting and it really shows in my past work I think. I ended up learning a LOT about composition, value and color structure, which just felt awesome simply because I felt a great deal of control of direction when I painted my own images to apply all the things I’ve learned. Doing these studies and (I think) understanding a lot of the principles behind them cut out SO MUCH guesswork out of my own work. As a result I think I painted two of my strongest pieces thus far. Where I would try to render a painting to death in the past to make up for the lack of structure, having a clear composition actually opened up a lot of “artistic freedom” when it comes to painting and the act of applying paint(or pixels). This is a huge achievement for me as I never liked the aesthetic of super highly rendered digital art, it looks very boring to me and creating it feels very boring as well. I will definitely delve deeper into that in the future and I am looking forward to what’s coming

I also started to get back into watercolors. In the first place it is something that I always wanted to do just for myself but I always stopped mostly because of frustration and stupid excuses. This time, however, I managed to sit my ass down and just suffer through it. As a result finally a few things clicked into place I feel, I was actually able to create some small things that I’ve been fairly happy with and more importantly I am not fighting with the medium so much anymore so that I can finally focus on improving rather than ripping my hair out. Another reason why I started doing watercolors again was the hope that I would one day be able to actually sell some small originals, maybe in form of a little fanart series or something like that. As it is now, however, I don’t think that the quality qualifies me to ask for money for that stuff, so I’ll put that on hold for now.

This leads me to the last part wich is that I fiiiiiiinally picket up those pencils again!!! When you try to paint with watercolors you will probably notice that there is not much room for guesswork as far as the structure of your drawing is concerned. At least I noticed this LIKE HELL. I kept on thinking that my drawing was pretty tight and thought through just to notice in the middle of painting how off it actually was, which is super devestating because even a little undead warrior thingy can take up to a day until it’s finished. You don’t want to spend that time on something thats just crappy at it’s core.

So back to pencils and sketchbooks it was for me. All the pencil drawings are focusing on basic structure in 3D space, I desperately need to get more accurate with that. It’s weird how drawing is different when you use a pencil on paper. I use a cintiq for my digital work so one might think that it’s basically the same as drawing on paper and in a lot of cases it IS but for some reason that is beyond me it totally isn’t for studies. My brain just seems to work differently and more “thoughtfully” when I put stuff down on paper. It’s as if my brain has decided to detach itself from any kind of “seriousness” as soon as the thing I paint is digital, as if it was shutting itself down knowing that it is possible to bullshit a lot in photoshop. It’s interesting to me :)

So yea after struggling a bit with these pencils I think that I got used to it pretty well again and I will definitely keep at it!

Freelance/Life:

Freelance keeps being weird and very unsteady. The amount of clients are enough to get by somehow but it’s nothing to build on to be completely honest. I need to figure out better ways to get more consistent work and I do have some ideas in mind, I guess we will see in the next month(s) how everything works out. But yea it’s tough. For now “take care of your art and your art will take care of you” is something that I would really love to be true (and I live by that every day) but there also needs to be the business side of it, at wich I am not very good at the moment.

I was thinking about something along the lines of sharing my monthly progress in a way that might be financially helpful for me in some way. I made a little gumroad thingy for my composition studies this month. It was basically just a breakdown of my process and a little documentation of what I have been picking up during the time I painted them as well as a demonstration of how I break down the process. I would not want to call it a tutorial because it really wasn’t and calling it such would feel a bit arrogent to me. I shared this thing for free online and the response was great, people liked it and it was acutally helpful for some, which was great for me. Some people even donated a few bucks, which felt great as well.

You can still download it here btw: https://gumroad.com/l/JtIV

So I was thinking of maybe including some kind of study pack into these monthly reviews where I go over everything I made with little step by steps, video recordings and stuff like that and just share if for a buck or two at the end of the month. I’ll sleep a few nights on it first though. Also feel free to give your feedback on that idea. Would you care to spent a buck on something like that?

As far as financial stuff goes, I mentioned in my RIP 2016 post that things were a little hard but thanks to my amazing family I was able to take care of a few things which took an ENORMOUS burden off of my chest (Being able to sleep again is great!!)

There is still a lot of “existential anxiety” going on for sure but fortunately there is nothing there that can not be fixed in some way or the other, I jsut need to figure out how.

So yeaaaaaaaaa this is it for this month. I will keep pushing through february and we will see what I will have to talk about then!!

#art #drawing #painting #sketch #study #monthlyreview #personal growth #freelance #christof Grobelski #learning #gumroad

1 note · View note