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kaz11283 · 4 years ago

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Chapter 5

Characters: Clint, you, Loki

Warnings: this is a SLOW burn, slight angst, fluff at the end, Loki starting shit.

Summary: life has never really bwen this complicated. Or well the life that you think you know has never really been this complicated. Living with the avengers, learning new things, yeah its gonna be a long road but what else do you have to look forward to other than the random runins with the god of mischief.

Loki Masterlist

~~~~~

It had been about a week since you had arrived at the tower and just as long as your incounter with Loki, you hadnt had much time to think about it though since you were normally nose deep in class work or training with Nat and Clint since Tony had sent you the message "If your gonna be an avenger you have to train like one, training starts at 6." You had left him on read after that, you had never been a morning person and you sure as hell wasnt about to start now.

"Alright y/n, lets try you on the bow today." Clint smiled walking into the arena where most of your training took place.

"After I finish this." You said pointing to your coffee. "I swear, you would think that after saving lives you would want to sleep in." You grumbled.

"Bad guys dont sleep, we dont get to sleep." Clint said wiping down a few of his practice arrows.

"You didnt get back till like 3 this morning. Im really starting to wonder if you sleep at all." You tossed your cup away and got up starting to do your stretches.

"Get over here so I can show you how to hold this thing." He saod holding out the bow.

"I know how to use a bow, I was in archery in high school. Top of my team." You grabbed the bow feeling the cool metal in your hand. His bow was diffrent than what you was use to, as light as air almost were yours had been heavy.

"This bow is probably a little different than what your use to. The metal is vibranium, the strings are made of some type of industrial woven string that Tony invinted in his lab. Might be a littlw hard for you to pull back." He smiled looking at the bow like a child.

"It is very beautiful." You examined it looking down the sights has you pulled the string back easily. "Absolutly magnificent peice of weaponry." You looked over at him and seen that he was staring at you wide eyed. "What?"

"No one else has ever been able to draw the string back like that." You let the string gently go back into place amd handed it back to him.

"I told you, I was in archery while I was in high school."

"Theres no way that someone no matter how skilled they are can pull that back."

"Well if your forgetting, apperantly Im not from here either."

"Yup almost forgot, Asguardian. Anyways. You know how to use one of these so lets set up a few targets and get to work. Tony wants to try you out on a few different things, eval you, and see what suits you best. Im already leaning toward you being good at the bow."

After he talked you through some of the basics that you had informed him you knew and he insisted on stating that it was 'mandatory' you were finally able to pick up one of the training bows.

"These bows suck. Stark has all the money in the world and he buys walmart brand bows? If you pull this one back to many times the string will break. Why cant I just use yours?" You roll your eyes looking back at Clint.

"My bow, my baby. If you want ine bad enough you can start off at the bottom and work your way up. You have a card why dont you buy one?" He countered, just then the foor opened drawing your attention.

"Sorry, didnt realize that the area was occupied today, I just wanted to get a few throws in woth the new daggers Stark and Banner decided to enhance for me. Wanted to make sure that they wouldnt bloe up in my face." Loki said walking over to the bay next to you and Clint. You hadnt had a moment alone with the trickster since in the hall weeks ago and now he was here acting as of nothingbhad happened. You looked down at the daggers that he had laid out.

"Wow, those are beautiful." You noticed that not only had he laid down two simple green handeled knives but he had also laid down a set of electric blue ones and a set of gold handle ones engraved with ancient symbols and roses with the stems winding down the hilt. "May I?" You asked leaning down to get a closer look.

"Of course y/n, you are the one that gave me those." He answered casually. Your breathing hitched and you turned to look at him.

"Thats not funny Loki."

"I dont know what your talking about. I was simpl-" he started before you cut him off.

"You know damn good and well what I am talking about. What did you expect? Me to pick it up and everything come barreling back to me? Here I'll do you one even better." You stormed up to the daggers and grabbed one of the gold ones up throwing it at the target on the far side of the room. You had expected it to fall short and clink to the floor but you never hears it fall. When you looked at the target you noticed you had hit the middle.

Clints jaw had dropped as he was looking around the wall to see what you had been yelling about. Loki looked at you with a smug expression. "I assume they must have had knife throwing classes at the school you attended as well."

"Shut up. Clint are we done, I have some studying for class that I really need to do." You looked at clint as he knodded still awestruck. "Thanks, I'll talk with Tony about getting a better bow for me to practice with." You took off toward your room.

Later after you had taken a hot shower and changed into some leggings and a baggy shirt you decided to go to the one place in the tower that you had decided to claim as your own little study corner. It was located on of of the high up floors that happened to be more of an observation deck, you could watch the team leave on missions, see the ocean, and watch some of the most beautiful sun sets that you had seen. You had notice while checking the place out that there was a fairly large window seat that you could spead your work out on as you looked out over the city, this small part of the tower was your little hid away, you hadnt seen any other member of the team up here so you figured when you needed the alone time you could come here. It had seemed to work for the most part until today.

You notice the shadow of the figure standing over you before looking up into the eyes of Lokis confused ones, you had noticed his lips moving before rolling your eyes and taking out your noise canceling ear pods.

"What do you want Loki?" You sighed placing them back into the chsrging dock.

"Well if you hadnt had those things in you would have heard me tell you that I was sorry for earlier." He sassed crossing his arms.

"How did you find me? No one really bothers coming up here." You pulled your legs under your chin and covering you feet with the throw that you had brought up with you this time.

"The AI system has no bounderies when it comes to privacy, it can tell you were anyone is in this god forsaken place." He responded. "May I sit?"

"And if I say no?"

"I'll sit anyways." He shrugged.

"Then what is the point in asking?" You leaned forward moving your papers and books out of the way. He reached down and grabbed a few of the papers to help you.

"Your doing a paper on Shakespeare?" He asked as he sat down reading over the page.

"Umm, yeah. Part of my agreement to come here is so that I can finish up my collage classes. Drama and Art Major." He hamded the paper back to you so that you could stick it in your binder. He gave you a look that you were use to getting from him. "Don't say it Loki." You out your hand up to stop him before he could even open his mouth.

"I wasn't going to say anything." He held his hands up.

"Hum, interesting. The god of lies actually sucks at lying. I should remember that." You smiled. This was the first time you had actually felt half way confortable around him.

"I could never lie to you." He smiled back. "You have always had a knack for seeing right through me."

"I wish you wouldnt do that." You sighed leaning your heas agints the window behind you.

"Do what exactly?" He askes mirroring your position.

"Where you mention something about my past. Its annoying and it breaks my heart."

"Well Dove, how do you think I feel? The worst part about it for me is that while you remember nothing I am stuck remembering everything. Your past, my past, our past together. It truly is the worst pain that I have ever felt. To have something that you have wanted for so long in front of you and they dont even want you back." He sighed looking out the window.

"Loki," you crossed your legs and placed your elbows on your knees. "I have never said that I didnt want you. I just dont know what is what."

"So you do want me?" He laughted.

"That is not what I meant and you know it." You leanded back again. "Tell me about us. About how you and Thor know me." He eyes lite up.

Chapter 6

Tag list:

@high-functioning-lokipath

@serpentargo

@drbaureid

@poetic-fiasco

@kgirardin

@sophlubbwriting

@supbeeches

@rosaline-black

@jesuswasnotawhiteman

@natandersonnla

@delightfulheartdream

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jasminevolkan · 4 years ago

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TIME IN A BOTTLE — self paragraph 001,

& character development TASK #5.

warnings: abandonment issues, divorce, abuse/neglect, death and illness, mentions of christmas, food and alcohol, curse words, jasmine having courage?

JANUARY 1ST 2021, 11:27 am.

Wishes of joy, success and health ended the traditional New Year’s brunch at the Volkan’s residence. Usually, the duo would make this celebration last all day long, but Jasmine had other plans. Instead, she put the leftovers in containers and headed for the exit. She kissed her mother on both cheeks and wrapped her in a tight hug. She earned a pat on the back as a notification she was squeezing her mother’s body too tightly. “Don’t want to let you go,” Jasmine whispered those words like an automatic response. “I’m not going anywhere,” Lana would reply.

They were creature of habits, an inseparable pair. They resembled Russian nestling dolls, there was never one without the other. As years went by, Jasmine grew more and more conscious of the inevitable. She was a star following the moon in a dark night sky, but one day the moon would be swallowed in the void and leave the burning dust nothing but an endless pain, deeper than a black hole. She was no stranger to grief, it did not mean she appreciated the experience. They discussed it often, a little too often to Lana’s liking. Her daughter was so fearless, yet she feared everything in her surroundings. She wished she could fly on her own, but she respected Jas’ desire to circle close to the nest.

They were creature of habits, an inseparable pair. They gifted each other the same thing for Christmas — a holiday they celebrated by choice — however they waited for the first day of the year to open them. Chocolate, candles and promises to spend time together in the future. They made plans to build sandcastles together on a rare calm spot of the beach, where Lana claimed there was a palm tree as old as her daughter. They remembered good and bad events that came out of the previous twelve months.

Usually, they would involve unfortunate recipes or complicated art projects that never came to life. More often than not, they would share a knowing look. The worst that came out of anything was Jasmine’s father. His presence (or lack thereof) impacted them on a daily basis, still. It left a whole in their lives, otherwise complete and satisfying. It fed into Jasmine’s insecurities, it encouraged Lana to relive the constant pain she was in while trying to comfort her daughter. Children to grow old in love and affection. No matter how much love Lana provided, it never seemed to be enough for her daughter.

Love and attention were the same thing as food, for Jasmine. She always craved for more and was afraid she would never get enough.

She walked out of her childhood home and crossed the lawn over to her house. Hidden by the mass of leftovers she carried expertly, she did not notice the box that blocked the door until she bumped her foot against it. She tried to scoot around the obstacle, in vain.

The breeze blew stronger, whipping locks of chocolate brown hair on her face. It sent a wave of goosebumps down her spine. She leaned down to open the box, pulling out stuffed animals, birthday cards and other items she remembered seeing in stores but never having the courage to buy it. Expensive paint brushes and other supplies, sets of gold earrings that sparkled under the sun; the list went on. She picked up a pink bunny, it seemed old and resembled one she had in her oldest memories but could never find again.

Jasmine looked up from the objects, the bunny squeezed tightly against her chest. She frowned and looked around, her mother was not on the porch, the other neighbours were probably asleep or gone. Avalon seemed very quiet, almost surreal.

Surreal like the shadow she noticed standing at the corner of the street. Her eyes squinted and blinked, but they seemed to have washed away the familiar silhouette. Somehow, the bunny felt like it radiated a comfortable warmth. She read the message that was left on the box, the handwriting was printed in her memory.

��I love you. I am sorry it took me your whole lifetime to realize it. Signed, “

The end of the message was scribbled in a whirlwind of blue ink. She had to focus really hard to recognize the three letters. Contrary to the presents or the mysterious figure, the word resonated no familiarity.

“Dad.”

FEBRUARY 14TH 2021, 3:02 AM.

Jasmine kept this a secret, the box and the message. She tried to play it cool, like it did not affect her that her father was trying to build the bridge he destroyed when he left for New York City. She hated New York. She hated bridges. She hated him.

No.

She loved him.

She pulled out a pink gel pen from this same pencil case she carried since high school, it had little doodles and messages written at the back from her friends. She ripped a sheet away from her binder that she used for ideas at work. And she improvised. It usually felt so natural for her, to cross boundaries and to do as she pleased. This time, it was painful and almost impossible to do.

“I loved it when you took me for a drive around the island on nights where I couldn’t sleep. I loved it when you brought me to the candy store after forgetting to pick me up from daycare because you were busy. I loved it when you read stories to me during rainy days so I would be quiet and fall asleep. I loved it when you gave me seashells from all of your work trips, even if they looked identical to those on the beaches down the street. I loved it when you took me to the park and pushed me on the swings just long enough before you got a phone call. I loved it when you wrote notes in my lunch boxes on school days, I saved them all in a bottle of bourbon you left on my night stand that one time you came home as the sun was rising.

I loved it when you acted like a father, even if it was just for a split second.

I love receiving magazines and seeing your name on the front page, congratulating you for all the listings you manage to sell. I love staring at the pages of photos and noticing that I look just like you. I love thinking of new ways to improve myself, because that’s what you would have wanted to. I love thinking you might come back here one day and we can make up for all the time we wasted loathing each other. I love thinking one day we might have a family portrait identical to the one you had in your office of your wife and kids. I love thinking that one day you’ll have one of me with them and hang it on your wall at home. I love thinking that one day, I will get to call you Dad.

I forgive you. I forgive you for leaving mom alone with me. I forgive you for hurting me so much I might just never heal. I forgive you for finding your happiness elsewhere. I forgive you for failing as a father. I forgive you for learning how to do better with your other children. I forgive you for leaving the life you never wanted. I forgive you for having dreams that were larger than what we could give you. I forgive you for breaking the promises you told me of this life where we would be a happy family.

I love you,”

The old pen was running out of ink, so she shook it vividly. She did not bother wiping her tears away, not the stain of pink on her hand that was tinting the paper. She added this short word she had blocked out of her memory all this time. It was just a nickname for all, but for her. She remembered the tone of his voice whenever he said this word, it was calm and posed, loving and caring. He said it rarely, but she could still hear it so clearly.

“Jojo.”

FEBRUARY 14TH 2021, 11:58 PM.

She scrunched the sheets of paper into a ball and threw it on the floor, missing the trash can by two feet at least. She then moved to the couch, grabbing her laptop from the coffee table and logged on her email. Her fingers floated above the keyboard until the screen turned darker. She was looking up to the clock on the wall, watching the seconds fly by.

She took a deep breath, hoping it would slow down time. It had the opposite effect, feeding into this adrenaline rush she desperately tried to repress since the beginning of the year.

She loved him. She never stopped, never will. It would not change. Something needed to change, however, and it was her unhealthy habit of being silent when she needed to speak out the most.

TO: Aleksander Volkan ([email protected])

FROM: Jasmine Volkan ([email protected])

SUBJECT: Receipts and birthday cards

Fuck you. <3

Minnie pressed the button, and sent the email. She shut her laptop close and ran to the abandoned paper on the floor. She unfolded it and held against her chest, disappearing into a room in the search for an envelope.

She was too far to hear the immediate sound of a response.

TO: Jasmine

FROM: Aleksander

SUBJECT:

I love you too.

#self paras.#about.#abuse tw #abandonment tw #death tw #food tw #(( 'love letter' it's not even a letter ~ jas never follows rules that's canon ))#(( the sweater/cardigan and now the letter/email? a true REBEL ))#catalina: task #catalina: love letters #tasks.

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prorevenge · 5 years ago

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"I have an A-, so let me steal you art."

I had this friend clear back in junior high. Well, she was more of an acquaintance than a friend. We will call her Miss.

I met Miss in my 8th grade. She had moved to the area during summer. I'm the type of person who tries to include those who aren't being included anywhere else. And, due to the fact that she was a new student who didn't move in part way in the year, she was alone. (When new kids come part way, they are swarmed by students.) Miss and I had a few of the same interests. Anime, especially Naruto, we loved making music, and though she was a tad overweight, she loved to run (which I thought was awesome).

Anyways. Even though we had connected in some places, Miss always made me feel...uneasy. She had this tendency to jump headfirst into something. Sometimes, it equaled out into a grand talent, other times, she had a severe addiction to Sims. But, due to this motivation she wore, her math skills were above and beyond. Miss was a year younger than me and was already in my math class. I was, and still am, terrible at math. It doesn't click for me. It is normal for me to stay in the D range for my math, even after doing all the worksheets, studying many hours every night and taking every test. At least I tried.

Miss refused to tutor me at all. Which was fine. Her choice. I do not think she quite grasped how tough math was for me. There was one day she came in and said, "Aren't you excited to take calculus with me. We should be in it the same time in high school." I just laughed. (I never even made it to pre-cal.) There was a strange thing I noticed though. Miss was absent every single test. I thought it was something that should be addressed. But, I had watched her do assignments and they were a breeze for her. I wouldn't see a reason for her to cheat.

Toward the end of our first semester, Miss had noticed that I drew on a regular basis. I'm an artist. Far more so now than back then. I can't even look at my art from junior high without cringing. She asked for me to draw her something. I was delighted and said yes. Whipping her up something that was similar to other pieces I had done. It was on line paper and wasn't the best thing I had accomplished by that age.

As the semester was coming to a close, I realized the likelihood of me getting a D+ by the end was small. That meant I wouldn't be able to go on the school trip. Which, as you would imagine, devastated me. The last chance I had was an art project my math teacher would do every term. It still involved math, but a creative outlook on it. This one was based on a radius of a circle. So someone could draw a dog with a leash as the radius, and the grass may create a circle around the dog. As long as it had that idea, it counted. And, the art was judged, first and second places received extra credit. Basically, this was salvation for the super artsy students.

There hadn't ever been a term where I didn't get first place. I got first place the year prior as well. This was the only way I had passed. I attempted to think outside the box. (As the dog and leash was used regularly.) I ended up drawing an angel with broken wings, chained at her ankle with a sort of magic suppression circle beneath her.

After the drawings were judged, the teacher would go through all of them and show the class. The last two were shown as 2nd and 1st place. Some people had cute ideas and then he went to 2nd place. I saw my drawing. The one I had turned in. I got 2nd place. That never happened. And then, he lifted up 1st place. I also saw my drawing. Mine. The one I had drawn for Miss. The speed at which I twisted to turn my body toward her must have given her the hint that I wasn't happy. She later came up to me and said, "I'm sorry. I needed the extra credit, I'm at an A-."

I didn't say anything to her at the moment. I was fueled with anger and anything that would have come from my mouth likely would have been nonsense. But it bothered me that she wasn't willing to tutor me for ten minutes, and then proceeded to claim my art as her own while I failed.

I let it go for awhile. I still refused to speak to her, yet, my animosity only grew when I saw her absent for the final test, and, as I saw one of her friends she had made taking pictures of his test.

At the end of class and test taking, I walked up to the teacher with a giant binder of all of my art. I declared that she had stolen my art and displayed him my works in the binder. One of which was extremely similar to what I had drawn for her. My teacher said, "When I saw her piece, I even thought it was similar to your art." I then told the teacher that it seemed strange that Miss was absent every single test. The teacher knitted his brow and pulled out our attendance records and skimmed through it before saying, "AEON, thank you for bringing this to my attention. You may go."

For awhile, I didn't hear if anything had happened to Miss. Semester was about to come to a close, I still had a D- and winter break was on its way. But, one day, I come into class and sit down. Miss comes up behind me and sits in her own. I still hadn't exchanged words to her and then I hear:

"Miss, could you come here?" I glanced at the teacher and he gave me a smile that eased my entire being. Miss made her way to the teacher and I got to eat every bit of the conversation. "Miss, it has come to my attention that you do not deserve the extra credit of coming in first place. A friend of AEON's approached me and showed me proof that it was a gift she had given you. You are aware that even though art may be given as a gift, you can not and should not claim it as your own unless the artist agrees you may?" I heard subtle agreements from Miss. "Good," the teacher continued, "with your understanding of such, I'm sure you understand why I must give AEON not just the extra credit from earning 2nd place, but 1st place as well, giving her 70 points of extra credit." He seemed to say that especially loud. That amount would put me beyond a D+. I was thrilled.

It didn't stop though, the teacher kept going, but quieted his voice as more students filed in. "I have been going over your attendance. I found a glaring inconsistency in your absents. You have been gone every single test." I heard a rustle of papers. "As you can see, there isn't a single test you weren't absent for. Thus, you took them on a later date after school. I have spent the last couple weeks investigating this and have found that another student in this class had been taking pictures of the test and sending it to you. Are you willing to confirm this at this time? Or, would you like to wait until we have a meeting with your parents."

Silence.

Pure, revengeful silence. All those years practicing my art wasn't going to be abused. I figured that she must have known that I was the reason for such knowledge to pop up and I didn't care by this point. I didn't need to say a single thing to her.

Miss finally spoke. "I am good at math, AEON can confirm that." I had to stifle a laugh, because, I honestly could. I watched her math in front of me all the time.

"Meeting it is then. I would like you to know that we have records of the text messages between you and the person who sent the images. He will also be joining the meeting. Whether or not you are good at math won't change the situation. In the end, you may need to retake this course."

Miss gave a brief, "Okay," and sauntered to her desk.

I didn't get to know much after that. As much as I wanted to hear everything, the teacher still needed to uphold a safe environment. That being said, there are some cherries on this cake worth taking note when I saw her again in high school. While I knew we were about to be in the same school again, I had no plans on reaching out. She sought me out though and pulled me aside.

Miss went on to say that I destroyed a lot of her parents' faith in her as well as her teachers'. Her entire school life was dissected and studied. They found further errors where they had figured out where she had been cheating. Any respect teachers found in her had decayed. Her final year in junior high was a mass of redoing classes and taking online classes to catch up and be ready for high school. I had ruined a lot of her life. And then Miss said, "I'm happy you did it while I was in junior high before someone called me out in college. I don't think I would have stopped if I hadn't been taken down. Since then I've been actually trying. I've even lost weight!" (I'm not sure what the weight thing had to do with me ruining her reputation, but, that's what she said.)

I went on to tell her that that's great and I hoped she would continue to prosper in her education and body, but I did let her know that I wouldn't be able to have a relationship with her again. I mentioned that having someone steal my art after I gifted it to them quaked a lot of my trust and I haven't given anyone my artwork since. (I have now after five years being out of high school.) She understood and took it well.

I feel like this is pro-revenge in two ways. One, I gave her her comeuppance, I got my revenge. I received my extra credit plus some. I went on the school trip when she didn't. Everything fell exactly where I wanted it. But, two, I also helped her stop cheating her way through life, inevitably leading to a better future. Who knows, she may have fallen back in her ways, but at the time, everything worked out.

(source) story by (/u/AEONmeteorite)

#prorevenge #by /u/AEONmeteorite #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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hazzabeeforlou · 5 years ago

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On the eve of HS2, I felt I needed to reflect and write a diary entry of sorts, an ode to where I was and where I am now, a musing on how HS1 ushered in a whole new world for me. This is long and more personal than anything I’ve previously shared, but in honor of vulnerability and maybe helping someone else who’s struggling... here it is.

The most exposure 2015 me had to pop music was occasionally listening to ‘hits’ radio. My old art teacher in high school had blasted the classics of the 60s and 70s daily, so I knew those, albeit not the names, but the music, the style, the melodic tropes and such. 2015 me didn’t have much time for pop music. I was getting a fancy degree in classical music from one of the best conservatories in the world, and I’d made it there after four years with a highly abusive teacher in undergrad who gave me horrible anxiety; by the end, whenever she would walk into a room, I would get chills and start shaking. She delighted in lying to me, in calling me out in front of my peers. Worse, I was arguably her highest-achieving student. The day I got into Juilliard she took me for “tea” to celebrate, where she proceeded to spend the whole time telling me how she had made this happen, how her connections got me to NY, how I should be grateful.

Entering the world of NYC and Juilliard I was an awestruck, anxious mess. Everything moved too fast, the school was overwhelming, my studio mates were famous already, some of them having won world-famous competitions and been on the cover of magazines. I was in the elite place, a place my working class roots had never prepared me for. My dad was a millwright. He went to work every day in steel-toed boots and overalls and often returned so filthy mom wouldn’t let him wash his clothes in the household washing machine. But I was nothing if not adaptable, and grateful, and charming, and I did my best. I worked hard. But my health kept deteriorating.

All through undergrad I’d been feeling progressively worse. I had horrible acne that I presumed was caused by stress, as I’d never suffered with it in high school. I was already an introvert, but body insecurity led me to hardly ever socialize. I would spent hours getting ready for things, never willing to show my bare face. But that wasn’t the worst; I’d developed what I now understand was an eating disorder, because no matter how much I exercised or dieted, I kept gaining weight, or rather, I lost all my baby fat but remained the same scale number. I kept telling my mother I was fat. I didn’t tell her that I hated the wind, that I hated running, because it made my stomach protrude and the whole world could see the extra pounds I carried. I never made an appointment with an OBGYN because I didn’t date much less have sex, and my mother had told me, well you don’t ever need to be seen until you do. I came to NYC well versed in wearing baggy sweaters and scarfs that hid my form. And for two years, as my breathing got worse and worse, as my energy levels dropped, as my skin hurt and itched, I pushed forwards. I remember practicing one day and my eyes going black. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe.

It was getting into an international competition that saved me. I got the news in early May of 2016; I jumped around my room and I started coughing, and the next day a hernia appeared above my belly button. I was only slightly worried, but I went to see the Juilliard doctor. She asked if I’d gained weight, she said even a couple pounds could do it. I was, as always, ashamed, red faced, embarrassed as she prodded around on my torso.

She said I’d need surgery. So I scheduled it in NYC for two days after my graduation. I played my recital, but with a binder around my abdomen. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t remember my memorized music. I nearly passed out. I stumbled on the sidewalk afterwards.

When I woke from the surgery I was in blinding pain, teeth chattering uncontrollably, in shock. I couldn't open my eyes, and every breath felt like knives slicing into my chest. I heard the nurses say, “We’ve given you three IVs of Percocet, do you want us to give you a forth?” I said no, thinking, ‘what if I die from an overdose?’ After two hours my mother came in search of me. It was supposed to be a day surgery. She demanded morphine. They sent me home on it, but two days later I’d thrown up twice and was back in the ER. A CT showed I had an ovarian cyst. The doctor said to me, “It’s 28 inches. It’s the size of a dinner plate.” I didn’t understand. They rushed me back for another surgery, and asked me to sign a paper saying I wouldn’t hold them responsible if I ended up paralyzed. I signed it. I joked with the nurses before they put me under. I was shaking with pain. I thought, if this is the end, I’ve had a good life. I’ll be with my doggy, my baby puppy. I’ve graduated from my dream school. I’ve gotten into an elite international competition. I’ll go out at the top of my game. It’s okay.

But then I woke up. Over the next year, I would wish countless times that I hadn’t. I could barely walk. I couldn’t lift things like a fork, or my computer. I couldn’t shower or cough or even shit. I couldn’t practice or sit upright for more than fifteen minutes. Pain became a constant. I started to wake up with night sweats, my forehead creased in subconscious pain. I would jump at every loud noise, my heart lurching like a ruined engine, and I couldn’t remember names of flowers. I fell into a massive depression over the next few months, made worse by the 2016 election; because of my infirmity I had moved back home with my Trump-voting parents. The bravest thing I did that fall was ‘come out’ as a liberal on Facebook. My parents pretended not to notice when I stayed up late that cold November night, huddled with a blanket on the couch, crying my eyes out.

The Christmas 2016 season is a blur. I know I half lived in memories, half in grief, but all in self-pitying misery. I remember reading a passing article about Jay, not knowing who it was, and I remember adding a lost mother to the list of things I cried about. How could the world be so cruel, so unfair? My days were filled with PT and sleep, immobility and exhaustion, and questions, questions like if I can’t do what I love, what I’ve spent years training for, what’s the point? What does it mean to be an artist when you can’t do your art? What is left of me that matters? Is the future only more pain? It would have been better to have died. It would have been better to have died.

Up until this point I had been unlucky in love. I could never find men attractive, though many friends pressured me to try, which of course had led to not good things. I’d been confronted a couple times about maybe being gay, but I’d shot this down immediately, my face bright red, my heart pounding. No, that’s not it, I’m just picky. Two girls in grad school had flirted with me; I’d accidentally gone on a date with one. I’d felt deeply, gut-wrenchingly uncomfortable about her. But how could I ever unpack all of that when just coming out as a liberal had given me anxiety for days...

The new year came and I had nothing to look forward to. I could see no happy future. I wasn’t really in my right mind. I would escape as best I could, perhaps in masochistic ways; I’d watch SNL for humorous liberal comfort, and Colbert to feel some spark of angry solidarity. And that’s how I stumbled on Harry. He got me with his puns, because I love those. For the first time in months, I was giggling about something, this charming boy with curls and dimples who had replaced the scream-speech of James Cordon. For once I didn’t turn the tv off after Colbert.

I began listening to Harry’s songs. As I had no reference for contemporary pop music, his old school rock album was familiar to me in a comforting way. I knew these sounds, these tropes, and yet they didn’t feel stale to me, they spoke to something I was feeling in the present. Because the album, in essence, was about pain, wasn’t it? Pain and escaping it. The lies we tell to survive, the dreams we cling to for hope, the drugs we use to forget. I’d never bought a pop album before, Harry was my first, and I listened to it for hours every day.

HS1 seeped into my blood, but I’d been on a hopeless, aimless track for so long that the railway tie hadn’t yet switched. One warm, sunny spring day I wrote a note, filled a bag with rocks, and walked to the old bike trail, out past the freeway, into the marshes and pools of abandoned swampy wasteland. FTDT played in my head on a loop as I walked, as my brain hummed with the equation of worth. Was it worth it to stay alive?

Yes. I threw the rocks. I threw them as far as my fragile arms would allow, and they splashed into the murky water. And I turned around and called my mom to come get me. Harry had made something that was beautiful, that was touching, that was real. And if he could... then maybe I could too. Maybe I didn’t have to be just what I’d been before. Maybe I could try creating other things; maybe I could make art that, like Harry’s music, made other people feel less alone.

There was something magical about that album. Not freedom, per se, but the promise of it, a glimpse of truth that kept me hanging on.

I began writing poems again, songs. I got into an orchestra program, I healed month by month, I started carrying crystals, I found this crazy fandom and, little by little, grew to understand that my yearning upon looking at baby larry videos was really a cry of sameness that I had never before understood. After the Pulse shooting, during my horrible homebound year, I’d watched Lin-Manuel Miranda give his love is love is love speech, and I’d burst into tears. And I’d not known why. Now I began to realize. I remember the first tentative anon I sent to Phoenix @alienfuckeronmain asking if maybe I was... bi? I remember anxiously awaiting her answer, as if I needed an invitation to join the community, to be valid, to have this not just be a crazy swelling of hope in my chest. She replied while I was wandering through a corn maze in the frigidness of October. The next day I walked into rehearsal and I felt free, free of the way boys looked at me, free of being FOR them, and I’d never felt so... alive. Coincidentally I met my ex girlfriend that day too.

Through Harry I found this fandom, and Louis. Louis, who has spoken to me on levels I cannot even express, whose class and political and emotional intelligence have challenged me to stand up for things I never thought I could. For me these last few years have felt like a journey WITH Harry. As he started waving them, I started wearing rainbows, just subtly. A knit scarf, a postcard, a bag. I started writing fic, the most healing thing I’ve ever done. I learned to create art away from the singular thing I’d been trained to dump my all into, and I learned that I have so much more to offer, even if chronic pain will follow me in some way or another for the rest of my life.

I’m so thankful to Harry for taking me on this adventure with him; I don’t know if I’d have ever taken that first step by myself. It was like he held my hand through it all, like this fandom held my hand through it all. Like by being himself, Harry helped me be brave enough to evolve too.

Through the catalyst of Harry’s art I’ve experienced more happiness than I’d have ever imagined. I cannot wait to go on this next journey, a second album, and reflect on just how far we’ve both come.

#mine #personal #tw suicide #tw disordered eating

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dontenchantme · 4 years ago

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garden of eden - part one

Rated E, Satan x MC - eventual smut and mature themes.

[no rad au] he was the serpent who had lured her out of paradise. she ought to hate him, but she didn't.

fics masterlist

It had been a long day at work, and she was exhausted.

Her boss had dumped a new project on her today. With very little context and a teammate notorious for delivering haphazard work, she had no idea how she was going to meet the two-week deadline, and honestly, she was stressing out.

It didn’t help that HR sent an email about their performance bonuses, and despite the long hours and the hard work she put in the past year, her bonus was laughable. Meanwhile, the aforementioned teammate got a promotion and a pay raise even though he hadn’t done anything of importance. He didn’t even lead a project!

She was pretty sure it was because he was fucking around with their boss’ superior. Men sucked. The company sucked. She should just resign from her damn job.

Her head was pounding as she leant against the wall, waiting for the lift to reach her floor. She hoped her boyfriend had remembered to heat last night’s leftovers. If he couldn’t even get that right, she might have a meltdown.

There was a ding and the doors slid open. She stepped out of the lift, reaching up to knead her shoulder – she could feel the tension underneath her fingers, and she thought it might be a good idea to schedule a massage. She’d have to take a look at her budget for this month. There was a really good place down the street…

Her thoughts trailed away when she noticed an unfamiliar pair of heels outside her apartment. Immediately suspicious, she took out her phone and checked her texts – nothing from her friends, nothing from her boyfriend either. But…maybe she was wrong? Maybe she was overthinking? Her heart thudded in her chest as she took out her key, slowly unlocking the front door. Luckily, she had just oiled the hinges, and the door opened without a sound.

The first thing she heard when she stepped inside the apartment was the sound of a woman moaning, and she froze on the threshold, unable to move, unable to think. She could barely even breathe. A second later, the moan became a breathless cry, and then she heard the woman call her boyfriend’s name.

Suddenly seized by blinding, overwhelming rage, she stormed in the direction of the master bedroom, where she shared a bed with her good-for-nothing boyfriend and threw open the door to see him pounding into a woman wearing her favourite silk robe. Both of them turned to look at her, their eyes wide.

She didn’t say a word. She just reached for the nearest object, which happened to be a hairbrush, and threw it at her boyfriend. He yelped, jumping away from the bed, just barely missing the brush. She took her bag off her shoulder and began swinging it wildly, trying her best to hit him while the woman screamed and crawled back against the pillows, attempting to cover herself with the blanket.

“You’re crazy!” he shouted, scrambling away from her as she aimed the bag at his head. She saw his limp dick flopping around and she would very much like to cut it off, but luckily for him, there was nothing sharp in the vicinity. “You’re fucking insane!”

“You were the one cheating on me with her!” she screamed, opening her bag and throwing the items inside at him – he narrowly dodged a black binder and a tube of lip balm. “You’re a useless piece of shit, you can’t even hold down a job and now you decide to go around sticking your dick in whatever hole you can find? I should just kill you!”

“Oi! Murder is illegal!” he yelled back, but she was beyond reasoning at this point – she couldn’t even direct her anger at the other woman, she was so sick and tired of giving all the time and never getting anything in return. This was the last straw.

“I am going to kill you.” She shot the woman a look. “Take that off and get the fuck out of here.” The woman hastily disrobed and gathered up her clothes, running out of the room – when her boyfriend tried to slip past her while she was distracted, she reached out and grabbed his wrist, filled with a sudden strength she didn’t even know she possessed. “Who said you’re allowed to leave?” she snapped.

“Babe, it was a mistake, I swear it didn’t even mean anything.” He tried to explain, but she was in no mood for his excuses today. It had been a shitty, tiring day and all she wanted after work was a nice warm meal and maybe some time to unwind and catch up with her favourite shows. But of course, this day had to get even worse.

“You thought I was coming home late tonight and decided to fuck someone else in our bed,” she said, her fingers tightening around him. He tried to pull away, but she was so angry that she didn’t even notice him struggling. “You know, I heard when cats and dogs get neutered, they lose their sex drive. Maybe I should neuter you too.”

“H-hey, don’t get any funny ideas. I’m sorry, okay? I know I fucked up!” He sounded panicky, but she just smiled, marching out of the room with him in tow. The woman was already gone from the living room – thankfully for her because she didn’t know what she might have done if she was still around. “Oi! Stop! This isn’t a fucking joke!”

She stopped and turned to stare at him. “So, our relationship is a joke, then?” she asked, keeping her voice as cool and neutral as possible. The rage still boiled within her, and it took everything she had to not lunge forward and wrap her hands around his scrawny throat. Asshole. “The allowance I give you, the meals I cook for you, the time I try to spend with you even though you know how busy I am – all this is a joke?”

“No, I appreciate you, babe, I do. But you’re taking things way too seriously,” he babbled, seemingly convinced that he could talk his way out of this. “You know what it’s like being an artist! You need to get inspiration from all kinds of sources!”

“Oh, right! Inspiration! From cheating on your loyal girlfriend of eight years!”

She tried to drag him to the kitchen where all the knives were so she could make good on her promise to neuter him, but he latched onto the couch and refused to budge, so in the end, they just ended up screaming at each other and she told him to get the hell out of the apartment and never come back.

He grabbed a towel hanging off the back of a chair and wrapped it around his waist, running out without a second glance. She glared at his back and slammed the door, then leant against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut and pinching the bridge of her nose. What a shitty day. Now that he was gone, the anger felt so…hollow.

She was still angry. Not just at him, but at herself for being so trusting. For giving in all the time. Her friends told her that he was an asshole, and she always defended him because…well, they’d been together since high school and it just felt like the right thing to do. She loved him, and he loved her. Or at least she thought he did.

If she had to be honest, she knew their relationship was a complete mess. Ever since he graduated from college, he kept telling her that he would find his big break, that his art would be displayed in museums all over the world someday. But all she saw him do was laze around at home; once in a while he’d work on some project that he would then abandon in the living room. His only saving grace was that he did help with the rent, though usually, his contributions didn’t make up even a third of the amount they needed.

But it was so much easier to just stay in a lousy relationship than to be single. It was nice to come home to someone, and anyway, she never had the time to put up an ad for another roommate. Not that she had a choice now, anyway. There was no way she could afford to pay the rent on her own.

Opening her eyes, she walked to the kitchen, deciding to heat the leftovers from last night’s dinner. She was pretty sure that asshole didn’t listen to her request this morning, but whatever. She was used to men letting her down anyway.

But before she stepped into the kitchen, she heard the sound of glass breaking and she froze – was there someone inside? Did that woman not leave the apartment? She just wanted to have a meal and some alone time. It wasn’t a complicated wish, so why did life keep testing her? She was about this close to snapping.

“If you’re still here, I recommend you get the fuck out –” Her tongue stopped working when she entered the kitchen and saw, instead of the asshole’s side chick or whatever the hell she was, a blond man with bright green eyes that almost glowed. He was leaning against the countertop, watching her expectantly, almost as though he knew she would come into the kitchen. As though he was waiting for her.

“Who are you?” Her mouth felt disconnected from her brain. Her mind was going at a million miles per hour – should I call the police? How did he get in here? Is he the asshole’s friend? No, I don’t think I’ve seen him before. Is he a robber? I don’t even own anything of value. Then one final thought – he’s too beautiful to be human.

The stranger tilted his head, smiling at her – it was a warm, pleasant smile, but there was something off about it, and she felt a shiver run down her back. He took a step away from the counter, and suddenly everything within her was screaming at her to get out, to get away from him, but she was rooted to the spot. He approached her with all the feline grace of a big cat cornering its prey, and unbidden thoughts of her family sprang to mind. She wondered if she would ever get to see them again.

He was dangerous. “You don’t know who I am?” he asked, shaking his head a little. “You were the one who summoned me, though. With that delicious rage of yours. It would be so very, very nice,” he whispered, “if you could take this knife and just run it through him, wouldn’t it?” The man held out a hand and she watched, amazed as an ornate dagger materialised on his palm, its hilt encrusted with sparkling jewels.

“It’s a cursed dagger,” he explained, noticing her interest. “It grants one true death by disintegrating both the body and the soul, thus ensuring its victims cannot go to either Heaven or Hell. It’s the loneliest, most cruel of punishments. But he deserves it, doesn’t he?” His voice softened into a croon, almost melodious. “You were far too good for him. He didn’t understand what he had, couldn’t appreciate the effort you put into supporting him and his career. Instead, the moment your back was turned, he found another woman and took her in your bed. The shame.”

He had an enchanting voice. So mesmerising, just like him. His green eyes glittered, and her feet moved of their own accord, bringing her closer to the beautiful man – her hand reached for the dagger, its sharp blade singing to her. “The shame,” she echoed, the rage and resentment she had bottled up for so long bubbling within her. “He deserves it. He does. After everything I’ve done for him.”

She didn’t know if she was agreeing with the man or if she was trying to convince herself. The man looked at her steadily, silently daring her to take the blade from his palm. She hesitated over the hilt, her fingers trembling. It was a stunning thing, deadly but gorgeous. Much like its owner, who held it out to her with a placid smile on his face. It would be ridiculously simple to just reach out and grab it. But she was shaking.

“What do you want in return?” she asked. It was too strange, too good to be true. He was too perfect, and she reminded herself that men couldn’t be trusted.

He chuckled. “You’re perceptive, aren’t you?” Then he paused. “I don’t blame you for being cautious. But you know perfectly well who I am. You’ve simply forgotten.”

He sounded so disappointed. She shouldn’t feel guilty – she truly had never seen this man before – but for some reason, she felt terrible about not recognising him. “Just close your eyes and think,” he whispered, stepping so close that he filled up her vision – she tipped her head back and stared at him, her breath frozen in her lungs. “If you pray hard enough, the answer might come back to you.”

If she prayed. Was he an angel? No, probably not – he looked like one, but there was a distinct aura of danger around him, one that didn’t seem angelic at all. Yet she felt compelled to listen to him, and she closed her eyes, wondering what to pray for. His distinctive scent wafted around her. Smoky, like burning wood, but there was something sensual too, a musky kind of smell that made her toes curl. Something stirred within her, something mysterious and foreign and exciting.

She felt slender fingers rest gently on her cheek. “That’s right. You’re an obedient girl, aren’t you?” he murmured. She could feel his cool breath against her ear, and she shivered, a sigh escaping her lips. “Your soul recognises me. Tell me, what is my name?”

“Satan.” A demon’s name. But saying it didn’t feel wrong at all. As his name left her mouth, she felt something lurch within her and she gasped. Her body felt like it was on fire – her eyes flew open and she reached forward, curling her fingers in his shirt. He watched her, amusement dancing in his piercing green eyes, and he didn’t resist in the slightest when she pulled his face down, forcing her lips against his.

She had to tiptoe and crane her neck just to reach him, but in return, his kiss was brutally punishing – his hand seized the back of her head and she moaned when he leant into her, his fingers pulling at her hair, forcing her to keep her head tilted. He was rough, alternating between deep, bruising kisses and actual biting, but there was something so freeing, so satisfying about how angry the kiss was. How it was nothing like the languid kisses she usually exchanged with her jerk of a boyfriend.

He brought her to life, and she could feel the rage that had been simmering all this time within her exploding, her fingers scrabbling underneath his shirt, her nails raking his back. He hissed and stopped pulling on her hair, and she was mildly disappointed for a moment, but the next thing she knew his fingers were wrapped around her throat and she was choking and struggling, her eyes rolling back in her head.

She couldn’t breathe, she was delirious, and maybe he might kill her, but she felt so alive. “Fuck you,” she managed to spit out, and she heard him laugh before he let go of her and she stepped back from him, wheezing. Her lips felt tender, and she could feel the imprint of his hand around her neck. But there was something within her that was drawn to him, something that told her to go back, to provoke him, to see how far he’d let her go next time. What would he look like when he was angry?

“You’re delightful.” His eyes gleamed, and she thought about how gorgeous they were, reflecting the fluorescent kitchen light. “Of all the sins you could have fallen into, you chose mine…I’m sure you’ll be a very entertaining human.”

He carefully placed the dagger on the counter – her gaze flitted to it, then back to him, waiting for him to say something. “Treat this as a favour, human. In exchange for that little kiss. You can think about whether or not you’d like to act on your urges – if you turn away, you still have a chance to save your soul. If not…” He shrugged, leaving the words unspoken. She understood what he meant.

“Why are you warning me?” she demanded. Her voice sounded choked still, almost breathless, and her fingers fluttered up to her throat. “Don’t you want to tempt me to sin? You’re a demon.” And demons tortured the souls of sinners in Hell.

Satan laughed. “You amuse me. No other reason. But if you would rather keep your precious soul safe…” He reached for the dagger, and she immediately lunged for it, wrapping her fingers around the hilt. It was strangely warm, and the jewels seemed to pulsate with a mysterious energy. He met her gaze, raising an eyebrow.

“No. I’ll keep it. Just in case. I need time to think about it.” She couldn’t let go of the soft, tempting whispers he baited her with, the promise that she could kill the ones who betrayed her, that she could give them a fate crueller than death itself – he had provided her with an extremely powerful weapon and she’d be an idiot to give it up just like that. “How long do I have to consider?” she asked.

“Take as long as you’d like.” Satan shrugged. “I’m in no hurry. And neither are you, I suspect.” He looked her square in the eyes and smiled – she shivered. She could sense the danger that lurked behind that genial expression. “But it’d be best not to wait for too long. Wrath is impatient, you see. Once you let those embers of rage fade away, the blade you hold now will be rendered useless. Keep that in mind.”

“Thank you for the advice.” She paused, and the man waited, as though he knew she wasn’t done speaking to him. She chewed her lip, then finally decided to raise the question on her mind. “What if I want to see you again?”

“That’s simple. Just get angry.” He reached for her, tilting her chin with one finger, and she shivered at his touch. “I’m the Avatar of Wrath, and I hide deep within the shadows of hatred. I appear to those consumed by their rage, to those who believed one time too many in unfulfilled promises. Call my name and perhaps I’ll come to you.”

He leant down and brushed his lips against hers, a brief kiss far gentler than the one that came before. Her eyes widened, and he pulled back – he whispered her name in a voice like honey and sin and at the very next moment, he was gone, leaving behind nothing but the smell of flames and the memory of his fingers on her skin.

Oh, and also the dagger. She glanced at the bejewelled blade, wondering what to do with it. The jewels twinkled under the kitchen light, and she studied the polished metal – it was pitch-black, and it seemed to shimmer as she moved it around.

Maybe this was a dream. After a long day filled with bad news, she finally snapped and dreamt up this entire scenario featuring a weirdly hot demon with a voice that made her want to sin, and eyes that seemed to draw out her very soul…yeah, she had to be dreaming. Weren’t demons supposed to be ugly creatures with wings and tails and pitchforks? He looked like a regular human. Albeit a really hot one.

The dagger felt uncomfortably solid, though. Carefully grasping the hilt, she took it out of the kitchen, heading back to her bedroom. She placed the dagger in one of her drawers and kept it away. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe it’d be gone when she woke up. Her stomach growled then, and she winced. Right. She had forgotten about the leftovers.

She prepared to leave the room, but she walked past the dresser on her way out and she couldn’t help but pause. She glanced into the mirror, wanting to reassure herself that everything was fine, that nothing had changed. But then she blinked and stared at her reflection.

Her reflection looked back at her, and she slowly reached for it, tracing the purplish marks that blossomed across her neck. They were shaped just like fingerprints.

#satan obey me #satan x mc #obey me #obey me shall we date

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mitchsenweek · 6 years ago

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MITCHSEN WEEK

DAY FOUR - MUTUAL PINING

Hello team! I hope you’re all enjoying mitchsen week.

Reminder that if you’re publishing anything of any kind to let me know - the tag is basically me and @imnotasuperhero and I keep refreshing it in case I find someone else there.

Day four fic below the cut!

Aubrey Posen was sitting at her desk stewing over the events of rehearsals that afternoon. She couldn’t pinpoint what was going on, but that little freshman with the piercings really bothered her. She had a bad attitude and she looked nothing like a Bella should. She knew it would be stupid to admit her but Chloe had talked her into it. Now, in one afternoon, she’d been proven right.

It still didn’t explain why she was sitting here obsessing about it hours later. She was roused from her funk by a knock at the door. Opening it, she was shocked to see the freshman in question standing there, looking hopeful. She didn’t let her guard down, just stared at the girl.

“Can we talk?” Beca said. “I kind of want to apologise.” Aubrey opened the door wordlessly and Beca entered nervously.

“Um,” she said, settling against the edge of Chloe’s desk. “I know I went off on you today, and I’m sorry for that. I can be very defensive... without going too far into the backstory it’s pretty much how I handle most confrontation. But it wasn’t cool, so I apologise.”

“Apology accepted,” Aubrey said. Beca wasn’t done though.

“But I want to make it clear, that regardless of what I said, you made a couple of snap judgments on me, none of which were correct,” she said. “And you don’t know me, you’ve barely spoken twenty words to me. I feel like that was unfair, especially since you’re in a position of leadership in that group. Whatever you say about me in that setting can seriously damage not only my reputation, but group cohesion, and that’s not what the Bellas need.” Aubrey was flabbergasted. Nobody had stood up to her before like this. Because she was right, essentially. But most people just apologised and bailed, but Beca was still there awaiting - an apology of her own?

“That’s true,” Aubrey said. “I’m sorry. I guess I can get a little single minded. I’ll make it clear that what I said about you was unfounded, I promise.”

“And finally, I want to assure you that the whole Treble thing is not going to be an issue,” Beca said. “I work with Jesse at the radio station but we are not ever going to be anything more than friends.”

“How can you guarantee that?” Aubrey asked. “He looks at you like he wants more.”

“Yeah well I’m like, ridiculously gay, so that’s never gonna happen,” Beca said dryly. There was a pronounced silence. “So can we start again?”

“Sure,” Aubrey said. “Let’s start again.”

“Great,” Beca said with a smile. “I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow then.” She headed out and left Aubrey sitting where she was. About thirty seconds after the door closed it hit her like a ton of bricks.

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t... have a crush on her?”

Beca was walking back across campus, her hands shaking slightly. She wasn’t very good at conversations like the one she’d just had, but it was important to her that she set things right with Aubrey.

In reality, she’d barely stopped thinking about the senior since she first encountered her. And she knew she had a tendency to prickly and defensive, so when it became clear that she and Aubrey were at loggerheads, she knew she had to do something. Because she didn’t want to fight with someone who made her insides swoop like Aubrey did. She didn’t want to grow to resent the other girl, not when she kind of spent a lot of time daydreaming about her.

So she sucked up all her courage and pride and apologised. It at least seemed to have gone well, which was a good sign. Now to work on reigning in her temper and holding her tongue. She smiled to herself as she recalled what Aubrey’s face had looked like when she’d casually tossed out that she was gay. She’d been surprised, and just a little bit curious. Beca hoped that meant Aubrey might actually be into girls, or she was about to spend the year crushing hard on a straight girl.

Aubrey was at her desk on her laptop. She felt like an absolute creep, but she was scrolling through Beca’s facebook and trying to learn whatever she could about her. She skimmed the basics - a couple years younger than she was but not problematically young, had come to Atlanta via the Pacific Northwest. There was nothing telltale in her history at all, so hoping even just for a tiny bit of background, she clicked on Beca’s high school page to see if she was mentioned. Feeling a tiny bit guilty, she moved over to her bed. If Chloe was to walk in she could see anything on Aubrey’s laptop if she were at her desk, but here it would only be her. She put Beca’s name in the search bar.

“Wow,” was the first thing out of Aubrey’s mouth. Beca was mentioned on her high school’s facebook page a lot. Like, a lot. Winner of Pacific Northwest Region songwriter’s competition. Winner of Oregon State Arts scholarship, three years running. Winner, Young Composers Award Cornish College of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon Music Award Finalist, Philadelphia University of the Arts - Highly Commended in summer session. There was a stream of news articles about any one of a million music awards the girl had won during high school, junior high.

Now she felt bad for discounting everything she said out of turn during rehearsal. She clearly knew what she was talking about. Closing her laptop and pulling out her acapella binder, she looked to see if Beca had filled in the space to mention her major or if she was undeclared. Nope, she’d declared. Music Theory & Comp, plus a second major in Production & Engineering. Impressive, was the first thought Aubrey had.

Chloe came in at that exact moment, so she casually closed up her laptop and set it aside.

“Hey,” her roommate said. “Beca find you? She was looking for you earlier.”

“Yeah, she was here,” Aubrey said. “She apologised for going off during rehearsal. And then I apologised to her for making assumptions and dragging her in front of you guys.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Aubrey said. “She made valid points. Plus she also said that she and the treble are never getting together ever in a million years.”

“Well, duh,” Chloe said. “She’s gay.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No, but she didn’t need to,” Chloe said. “She’s gay, so is Cynthia Rose and Stacie is definitely not straight.”

“You sure about that last one?”

“Uh, considering I made out with her over the weekend, yeah, I am.”

“Oh, are you two together?”

“No,” Chloe said. “One time thing. She’s cute, but she’s not interested in a serious thing and neither am I. It won’t make anything weird at Bellas, promise.”

“And you can just tell that the others are gay?”

“Same as I could with you,” Chloe said. “I’m not about to start waving rainbow flags around the group and announcing other people’s business, mind you. Stacie won’t care, she’s pretty much uninhibited in every sense of the word.”

“Yeah she strikes me as such,” Aubrey said. Chloe was right though. Nothing remotely changed between the girls during rehearsals. She watched them, looking for a sign, but there were none. She hoped the crush she had on Beca was equally as unobvious. She decided that the easiest way to make sure nobody was clued in to the way she felt about Beca was to avoid looking at her unless necessary.

It worked okay for a while. But as Aubrey learned more about Beca’s musical capabilities and how she could help the Bellas, they began to spend more time together. They worked on arrangements and talked about music, and Aubrey knew she was going to slip up one day soon. She was enamoured, plain and simple, but she didn’t see what she could possibly offer Beca, so she kept it to herself, except for when she vented it to Chloe. Which was often. Chloe tried her hardest to convince Aubrey to take a chance, but Aubrey couldn’t hear it.

Beca was trying just as hard as Aubrey to mask her feelings, and she was just as sure that she wasn’t going to keep it up for much longer. Aubrey was beautiful, and she was smart, and passionate. Yeah she was definitely bossy, but Beca kind of liked that too. She liked everything about her, to be honest, and she was not good at hiding it, which she discovered when she was busted staring at Aubrey during rehearsal by Stacie.

“Dude are you staring at Aubrey?” Stacie asked. “Like are you into her?”

“Of course I’m staring at her,” Beca said, after conceding that she couldn’t really deny the obvious. “Let’s just tally this shit up. First off, she’s gorgeous. Like get the fuck out of here with your face gorgeous. Second, she’s hella smart. She’s ambitious and she’s got a nice voice, she’s funny, confident... but she is like about ten leagues above me. So yes I’m staring but I’m okay knowing it’s not going any further than that. I’m nothing if not a realist.”

“Aw, don’t sell yourself short,” Stacie said. “Is she even gay though?”

“Don’t actually know,” Beca said with a shrug. She stopped listening to Stacie’s badgering after that. She was too busy watching Aubrey.

She knew she was in a world of trouble with this crush. Even the scent of Aubrey’s perfume was enough to send her head spinning. She wanted to know what it would be like to lean in close to her, breathe that smell in as she kissed her. She almost snorted as she registered her own creepiness.

“You okay?” Aubrey asked her. Beca feigned ignorance so she wouldn’t have to explain.

“Fine,” she said. “I should be able to get the next bit of the arrangement down in about ten minutes.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Aubrey said. “Stacie, can you come give Chloe a hand with choreo?” The freshman got up and made her way down to where Chloe was at the front of the room, leaving Beca sitting on her own.

Aubrey couldn’t help but watch Beca as she worked. She’d said she leave Beca to it, but she wasn’t able to tear her eyes away. There was something about the confidence of her right now, the way she knew absolutely what she was doing. She’d never seen anyone write on music charts the way Beca was doing, laying line after line on the page and barely ever going back to question what she’d done.

Plus she had this habit of poking her tongue out just a touch through her lips. It was cute. Beca was cute. She couldn’t believe she’d almost destroyed any chance of even a friendship with the girl the first practice they’d had. Thank god Beca had enough balls to stand up to her and they were able to start again.

Now the girl was writing mind-blowing vocal arrangements and dropping by her dorm to kick ideas around every other day. They were friends, but Aubrey kept feeling this tugging low in her gut telling her that she wanted more. She knew she was crushing hard, but she needed to ignore it.

“Dude, stare harder,” came a voice.

“Sorry?” Aubrey directed to Cynthia Rose.

“You’ve got the smitten face,” she said with a smug expression. Aubrey blushed a little. “Look I get it. Little B is an interesting character and whilst she isn’t exactly my type she definitely qualifies as a total hottie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aubrey said dismissively, but the red of her cheeks betrayed her.

“Sure you don’t,” Cynthia Rose said. “Whatever. Your secret is safe with me. But for whatever it counts, you two would actually make a hot couple. If either of you sacked up enough to make the first move, that is.”

Aubrey just shook her head dismissively. Cynthia Rose wasn’t one to pry, so it wasn’t brought up again. Until she was back in the safety of her room, with only Chloe there to hear as her reliable safety net.

Chloe didn’t mind hearing Aubrey go on about Beca. It was actually kind of adorable, she thought. Aubrey wasn’t the type to get all soft and swoony over anyone or anything, but she was so far gone for Beca it was crazy. So her only real problem with the entire situation was that despite her very earnest suggestion that she do something, say something, Aubrey kept saying no. That Beca wouldn’t be interested in a girl like her. It was maddening.

Beca was less restrained about her crush on Aubrey as time went on. She only really spoke openly about it with Stacie, normally at Stacie’s encouragement, but all of the Bellas could tell Beca was into Aubrey. She had absolutely no poker face so whenever they were in the same room as each other, Beca’s feeling were written all over her face. Aubrey flustered her with even the slightest of glances, and if the captain gave her some kind of praise or compliment during rehearsal she got so goofy and happy that it was visible on her face for hours.

When Stacie told her over and over that she should go for it with Aubrey, Beca would always counter that she wasn’t the kind of girl who ended up with someone as amazing as Aubrey. Stacie told her she was being ridiculous, naturally, but Beca was never going to take that step. So Stacie decided that she and Chloe should do something about it.

“I’m going to ask you something point blank here,” Stacie said. “And I know it might be breaking the best friend code on both our parts to be having this discussion but I think it’s important.”

“Oh this sounds interesting.”

“Now I only have suspicions, because Aubrey is pretty secretive, but am I going mental or does she have a massive crush on Beca?” Chloe looked surprised.

“Um....”

“Chlo.”

“Yeah, she does,” Chloe admitted. “Huge. Aubrey doesn’t do crushes. She’s head over heels, though.”

“Okay, good,” Stacie said. “Because it’s all too obvious that Beca is ridiculously into Aubrey. She’s not very good at hiding it and the only drama is that she is extremely gun shy about making a move.”

“Bree, too,” Chloe said. “So what do we do?”

“Leave that to me,” Stacie said. “Tell her the four of us are having lunch Saturday. Let’s meet here. I’ll take care of it.”

Chloe managed to convince Aubrey to come out with the girls for lunch by the weekend, so the two of them headed to meet Stacie and Beca at the Bellas auditorium.

“So where’s lunch?” Beca asked from her seat in the front row.

“We’re not going,” Chloe said.

“What do you mean?” Aubrey asked. “Isn’t that the whole reason we’re here?”

“Sit down,” Chloe said, gesturing to a seat near Beca. Confused, Aubrey sat, whilst Stacie got up and confronted the two of them.

“Okay,” Stacie said. “This thing between you two has gotten beyond a joke. All Beca can talk about is how amazing you are, Aubrey. How smart and beautiful and all of those nauseating things that a girl with a full blown crush notices. And Chloe here tells me that all she hears about on the regular is how unbelievably smitten Aubrey is for you, Beca. You’re so talented and confident and gorgeous and so on. So now that I’ve sufficiently embarrassed you both, Chloe and I are leaving so you two can do something about the super dramatic mutual pining.”

The two of them sat side by side with scarlet faces for an awkwardly long time. In the end Aubrey decided she was going to have to go first.

“So what Stacie said about me is true,” she said. “About how I feel. I’m kind of very into you.”

“Huh,” Beca said. “And it’s not exactly low key that I’m super into you. I think everybody can tell.”

“So... if our friends are shoving us toward this point,” Aubrey said, “maybe we could like, go on a date?”

“Before you suggest that though,” Beca said, her face going scarlet all over again, “it’s only fair that you should know I’ve not done this much. The dating thing. I’ve only had one girlfriend before.”

“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” Aubrey said. “One boyfriend. So inexperience isn’t just on your side. But even if it wasn’t, I’d still want to go out with you. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you came to my room and apologised after the first practice.”

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since then, either,” Beca said. “So yes. Please. Let’s go out.”

“Now? I mean, we did have lunch plans and they just left, so we may as well.”

“Yeah,” Beca said. “Um, I know a decent place if you’re okay with me driving?”

“Lead the way,” Aubrey said. Beca navigated them both toward her car and opened Aubrey’s door for her. They sat in silence for a few moments during the trip until Beca thought to put the radio on, the both of them singing along for a few songs.

“You have such a gorgeous voice,” Aubrey couldn’t help but saying.

“Thanks. Yours is nice too,” Beca said.

“I’m flattered that you would call mine nice, but honestly, my brain sometimes stops when I listen to you,” Aubrey rambled. That compliment brought a blush to Beca’s cheeks.

Beca ended up taking Aubrey to a simple sort of restaurant, nothing super weird or adventurous on the menu and it wasn’t too romantic for a first date.

“Hope this place is okay,” Beca said after they’d ordered. “It feels kind of coupley but not like overly so?”

“It’s fine,” Aubrey said. The two of them slipped into talking while they waited for their meals, and they admitted to each other just how far their crushes went. It was a relief to both of them that they seemed to be on the same page, but they also lamented that they hadn’t done anything sooner.

Once the food was gone and the bill had been delivered, Beca reached out for the slip.

“You should let me pay,” Aubrey said.

“I’ll get this one, since I picked it,” Beca said. “You can get the next one?”

“There’ll be a next one?” Aubrey said hopefully.

“Lots of them, I hope,” Beca said. “I’d really like that. Dating?”

“So would I,” Aubrey grinned at her and they got up and paid the check before heading outside.

“Wanna walk for a while?” Aubrey said. Beca nodded and slid her hand into Aubrey’s. Their fingers locked, both of them smiling as they strolled along the shopfronts.

It was a nice way to waste a little time. They just walked, and talked a little as they moved. But mostly they were both quietly appreciating the way even just holding hands felt, the racing in their chests every time their eyes caught a little. After a while they figured they should probably head back to campus, so they walked back to the car.

Beca slowed them to a stop right next to Aubrey’s door. She wanted to kiss her, provided Aubrey was okay with that. She looked up at her, almost hopefully, and saw that Aubrey was waiting, it seemed. So she bit her lip for a split second and then moved in to kiss her.

“Ow shit!” Aubrey exclaimed. Beca realised that in her eagerness she’d trodden directly on Aubrey’s mostly bare foot, thanks to the ballet flats she was wearing.

“Shit, sorry,” Beca said. “Real smooth, Mitchell. I’m sorry, Aubrey, truly. I’m just nervous.”

“Nervous?” Aubrey asked, her head tilting slightly. “Why would you be nervous?”

“Because I’ve been thinking about this, about you and me, about this moment for like... months,” Beca shrugged. “And I wanted it to be perfect. But instead I stood on your foot with my heavy ass boots and ruined it.”

Aubrey swooped in and kissed her soundly. Beca’s hands fluttered at her sides for a moment before she came to her senses and slid her arms around Aubrey’s neck. As she breathed in she could smell that perfume that drove her mental on every other day but it was a tiny, inconsequential thought when compared to the very idea that she was kissing Aubrey right now.

She felt hot everywhere. Her face was surely pink and she could feel a heat coursing through her and settling in her stomach. And when Aubrey pulled back she just knew she was smiling ear to ear.

“See? Nothing’s ruined,” Aubrey said. “I’m completely okay, I promise.” They shared a handful of kisses, softer and shorter than the first, but no less euphoria-inducing, before Aubrey was ready for them to head back to campus. Beca got back into the drivers seat and steered them back, Aubrey’s phone chiming just before they got there.

“Everyone’s hanging out to see how this turned out,” Aubrey said. “They’re all waiting in the auditorium.” Beca rolled her eyes.

“As much as I’d love to just not deal with that shit,” Beca said, “they’re going to be torturous whether we deal with it now or tomorrow or some other day. Let’s just do it now. While I’m still riding the high of finally getting to kiss you.” She parked the car and Aubrey was at her door as she got out.

“Hey,” Aubrey said. “That whole high feeling, that happiness at this finally happening?” Beca nodded.

“Not just you,” she continued. “I just want you to remember that. I can’t believe we just went on a date. My brain is melting down as we speak. I’ve wanted this for months, too.” Beca kissed her, soft and easy, letting herself take her time with it.

“Okay then,” she said. “Let’s do this.” Aubrey’s hand immediately found hers. They didn’t have any need to speak while they walked. Beca paused for just a second outside the doors, long enough to take a deep breath. Aubrey squeezed her hand tightly and opened the door. They walked in together, hand in hand.

Immediately their friends began clapping and cheering. Beca was blushing, she could feel it, because it was mortifying that all their friends had been so clued in to the immense crushes that they’d both been sporting. But Aubrey was slightly pink in the cheeks as well.

“So,” Aubrey said, “as you can probably see, Beca and I have decided to do something about the - what did you call it Stacie? Oh yeah, super dramatic mutual pining.”

“Largely that it’s no longer pining,” Beca said. “It’s more like dating. So yeah. Uh, thanks for shoving us toward this point, I guess.”

“And now we’re leaving,” Aubrey said. “Text if there’s dinner plans or something.” Amy wolf whistled at them as they left, neither of them turning back as the doors swung closed.

#mitchsenweek2019 #aubrey posen #beca mitchell #mitchsen #mitchsenweek #day four

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bleachedjam · 5 years ago

Text

Rambling on sexuality. Apparently you can't do a cut on mobile? Sorry then. Pretend there is one here and scroll past this.

I've always tried to find a label that fit me. I had never felt liked I liked anyone in the traditional sense. Girls and boys were on an even playing field for me. No one set me a flutter. There was no lust at first sight. But the way my peers discussed it made me feel...odd. Displaced? Like I was missing a joke everyone else got. So I faked it.

In elementary school, 5th grade, all the other girls picked a celebrity boy they had a crush on. I remember being confused how they decided. So I picked Aaron Carter, I think because I liked his song, "I want Candy". I mimicked what they said about their crushes, "he's so hot!" Another girl also liked Aaron Carter, but as I was a bit of an outcast we never discussed it. (His picture was on her binder.)

In middle school I tried to take up drawing. I had a sketch book I filled with drawings of both men and women. I gave the women large breasts and revealing shirts. My mother looked through my sketch book, and one night I heard her telling her friend, "all the breasts are so large, what if shes a lesbian?". And I considered it. What if I was? I had no idea. I felt the same way about men and women still. My friends were branching out and dating and talking about crushes on boys in school. I picked a boy I was friends with and pretended to like him. I even faked a journal entry and left it out so a friend would see.

In Jr. High I briefly dated a boy who was friends with a boy my friend was dating. He was crass and kind of a jerk. Someone asked me why I was dating him, because he, "looked and dressed weird". I tried to figure out which features were desirable, but all the guys my friends liked were so varied.

High school hit me hard. Something was wrong with me I was sure. I decided to just date whoever liked me. Less choices on my part. In October we held a Octoberfest carnival thing. My anime club, yes I was in anime club, had a booth were we sold churros. I met a guy a year older than me who ended up liking me. So I "liked" him. We dated until February. He rarely showered and never brushed his teeth. I always felt gross when we hung out. In February a friend admitted to liking me. I broke up with the other guy for obvious reasons and accepted when the new one asked me out.

Things seemed fine at the start but this guy would go on to mentally and verbally abuse me for 5 more years and torment me for a year after that. I confided in him how I never liked anyone and never had crushes the same way others did. This was the first of many things he would use against me. He convinced me to have sex with him, because once I did I'd like him and be attracted to him. And when that didn't work, well I'd already done it, so I had to keep doing it. Then when I doubted things and didn't like being with him, he'd play on my various insecurities. "You'll never really like someone, it will always be fake. Might as well stay with me." "No one will like you if you can't feel the same way back, your lucky to have me." "I'm the only guy you can ever get." And beyond that to, "No one else would want a depressed sack of fat like you. I'm doing you a favor." "There's so much wrong with you, how can you ever expect to do better?" "Your so ugly and fat I can't believe I stoop to your level." And worse and worse yet. It was a slow descent over almost 2 years, but when he had me where he wanted me, he started to cheat on me. I couldn't leave, I wanted to die. The years with him were the worst of my life. And I trace it all back to not understanding how to tell if I wanted to be with someone.

We graduated and he moved into my house. The abuse only got worse. I developed fibromyalgia and other chronic illness, believed to be from "trauma". His abuse escalated after that. I couldn't escape him. And why would I want to? No one would ever take a broken piece of shit like me. He was doing me a favor.

He ended up leaving me. I never had the strength to leave him. He left me for, in his words, "a healthy girl with no problems". For the next year or so he'd get drunk and contact me. Eventually I stopped all communication. I ended up getting a tattoo he had forbade me from getting. It was freeing.

I tried the online dating scene for awhile. I desperately didn't want to be alone. But I couldn't connect with anyone. People would send me messages and I'd see pictures but I never met up with anyone. No one ever stood out. I didn't know what or how to pick someone.

My sister had a friend from Canada she played games with online. I played with them a few times and he invited his work friend to play to. I won't say we hit it off. My sister and her friend logged off and then me and the other guy were left alone. We talked, he seemed nice. After a few months the two of them got invited down to our house for a gaming convention in the area. The friend and I had grown close and he decided he liked me. I knew this time, I did not like him.

But as it goes, that didn't matter. He came down, stayed at our house and asked me out. I said no. He pushed and guilt tripped me until I said yes. He stayed a week. Everything was a guilt trip. He bought me something so I owed him. He came all this way, so I owed him. I said yes, so I owed him. When he went back home I broke up with him. He staged and gave me a play by play of a suicide attempt. His tactics relied on guilt. I wasn't used to that, so it was hard for me to let go. I didn't want to hurt anyone. Eventually I finally got away from him.

During that time my other sister asked if she could invite a guy she worked with to play league of legends with us, as he was very good and we wanted to win an event or achievement or something. He played with us and we did it.

Him and I talked. I told him about the guy from Canada. The suicide attempt. Most recently he had gotten the bill from the ambulance I sent to his house and said I needed to pay it since it was my fault. I refused and tried to quit talking to him. The new guy and I got close. He was someone I would call my best friend. When the Canada guy started more drama, he asked if we could hang out in real life, because up until then we had only talked online.

We did. I went to his house. We got teriyaki and played Mario cart. Something about this guy was different. He was a best friend but something else. Like our hearts were talking. We connected on a different level, something I had never felt with another person before. On the way home I made a stupid joke about not believing he never had a girlfriend. He asked if I wanted to be his. I said yes.

I gave him a hug goodbye. I kissed him on the cheek. He tried to kiss me on the cheek too but I moved and he missed and we had our first kiss. Everything was right in ways I never felt before.

Today we're set to be married, living together and have an amazing daughter. I couldn't imagine life with anyone else. I can confidently say, he is the first person I've actually liked. Romantically for sure. Sexually? I still don't know how that works.

I throughly enjoy sex with him. I desire the intimacy and connection and obviously it feels good. But honestly, what the hell is sexually attraction? Because I enjoy it does that mean I'm attracted? I don't know. I've never looked at anyone and gotten any...sexual feelings from looking at them.

I enjoy drawn porn and porn comics from an aesthetic point. The art is beautiful. The human body is wonderful. But it doesn't do anything for me. I like the art, the shapes, the aesthetic of porn. But it doesn't make me feel anything or make me want to do anything.

To masturbate or have sex I have to focus on the sensations alone, or how my partner feels. I've never found porn that works for me. I don't get horny from visuals at all. Half the time I forget he does. I'll be changing and he makes a move and I'll just be confused as to what got him in the mood. I feel a disconnect between it all.

There was a while where I called myself asexual. Seemed close. But the more I tried to fit in with the community the more I felt odd. Not outcast, because the asexual community is amazing, but more like I was fitting an oval peg into a circle hole. Close, but not quite.

When I consider it, men and women are almost equal to me. I think I may be more drawn to women at least visually. If I hadn't met my fiance I would have loved to date a woman. I enjoy the female form more from a aesthetic stand point.

So lately I've been wondering if maybe I was pansexual. A friend of mine is pan and she posted a quote about being attracted to the person, not the body. It felt more right and more like me than anything I had seen from the asexual community. But at the same time, my sample size of people I've liked it only at one. So I have no idea.

I also wonder, does it matter? I'm going to be with the person I am with forever now. I don't need to find anyone else, so it doesn't matter which gender preference I have or don't have.

I guess with Pride month I've been thinking about it a lot. There is a lot of talk of, "fly your flag high and have pride!" But what if you don't have a flag?

I feel queer. That's about as far as I've gotten. I don't know if I'll ever find something past that or not. Right now queer feels fine, just unsure. I guess I'm somewhere between sexuality is fluid and still figuring myself out. Who even knows what attraction is.

So happy Pride month everyone.

#queer #LGBT+#lgbt pride #pride #asexual #pansexual #unsure #musings #rambling #blogging #life

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thegreatwhiteferret · 7 years ago

Text

I Can’t Help Myself

Summary: Vic had died a little inside when Mrs. Banks had said his name after Tozier’s. It was no secret that the Losers Club had always been the bane of Henry’s existence. That meant that Vic was supposed to hate them too, and after taking beatings every time the Losers did something to thwart Henry, Vic had an overall discontempt for them. Richie Tozier more so than the others, for reasons that Vic never really let himself explore.

Pairing: Victor Criss/Richie Tozier

Rating: Explicit

A/N: Alright, cards on the table, Vic Criss does not get enough love. And yes, I know that he is a bully and part of the Bower’s Gang, but he is a wonderful character to play with and expand upon. This fic was requested by an Anon after I begged for something that would allow me to write a Vic Fic. I am so sorry that it took me so long, I got swamped with requests and lost some inspiration, but I am busting my ass to get it back. I hope that y’all like this and GIVE VIC CRISS A FUCKING CHANCE. (Also I really fucking love writing Richie Tozier, God damn.) 💖💖💖

NSFW Under the Cut...

“We will be having an exam on Antiderivative and Indefinite integrals next Tuesday. I will be assigning you study partners, now to keep you accountable, I will also be passing out a log that you need to both sign and you both will also be responsible for handing in all of your notes. That means that I will know if you haven’t met up with your partner.” Mrs. Banks instructed from the front of the room, she was met with the collective groans of sixteen high school seniors. She chuckled slightly at their pain. “I know, I know, I am just the absolute worst. This is what you get for taking AP Calculus.” She moved towards her desk and pulled out a list of names. Richie raised his hand and she nodded at him to go ahead.

“Mrs. Banks, is there a minimum amount of time that we have to spend with our study partner?” He asked, pushing his thick glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Contrary to popular belief, Richie was all business when it came to his actual classes. He and the rest of the Losers had been talking about all going to college in Boston for years, and Richie had his heart set on M.I.T.. Applications were due in a few weeks and he was not about to do anything to mess his chances up.

“Well Mr. Tozier, I would say that a good minimum to set would be two hours, because I know that you all have work for your other classes, but in all honesty, I think you should work with your partner until both of you are completely confident with your understanding. Who knows? You might enjoy your study partner and choose to work with them for the rest of the year.”

Richie nodded in understanding, he looked around the room to see who he might possibly end up with. His eyes settled on his best friend Stan in the desk next to him.

“Keep looking, Richie, you know there is no way she is going to partner us up together. Every teacher in this school knows that we have been friends since we were toddlers. They want variety in the pairings.” Stan muttered, without even looking up from his notes.

“Well that is just...homophobic.” Richie settled on and Stan shot him a glare that told him to cut the bullshit. Richie rolled his eyes and began looking around the room again. He was a little bummed when he first found out that he and Stan were the only ones out of the Losers who were admitted into the class, but he wasn’t completely shocked. Bill exceeded in English, Mike and Ben in History, Bev was all over art, and Eddie was taking all of the extra science classes that he could to prepare for pre-med.

As he looked around the room he was striked by the fact that although he had known all of these people since kindergarten, he didn’t really know any of them. He might be able to pull their names out of his ass, but anything more than that would be impossible. His eyes settled on a figure slumped over his desk in the back of the room, a shock of blonde hair falling into his eyes as he read through his notes. It was Vic Criss. Richie had been shocked to find out how intelligent he was, once the Bowers gang broke up a few years prior and Vic actually began to apply himself. No longer afraid of what Henry and Patrick would do to him if they found out that he was actually smart.

Then Patrick had been sent to a juvenile detention center somewhere in Kansas or another bum fuck state like that, a facility that could control his mental illness and prevent him from harming any other living thing. That had happened when Richie was a freshman. Henry had still tried to terrorize people, but without the resident psychopath, his threats didn’t seem so harsh. Instead of asserting his dominance over the entire student body, he took it out on his much smaller and weaker boyfriend.

Richie didn’t know the full story of what happened. He had heard rumors that Belch had been the one that saved Vic’s life, carried him to the hospital himself to receive help one Wednesday night in late fall when Vic and Richie were sophomores, but no one ever knew for sure. All anyone knew for sure was that when Vic had returned to school the following Monday, he looked like a train had hit him. His already pale skin was covered in painful looking bruises. He yelped everytime he sat down or moved too suddenly.

Belch became his bodyguard and escorted him through the halls, making sure no one touched him. Henry being the lovely human that he was blew up one day a week or so later, calling Vic a pathetic little slut who was too much of a sissy to take it like a man in front of everyone at lunch. Vic had run off in tears as Belch and Henry started swinging at each other. Eddie had been the one to follow Vic into the boys bathroom and held him as he cried, reassuring him that everything would be okay.

Richie wasn’t supposed to know about that. At least, he figured that Vic would probably prefer if no one ever knew. Eddie had told Richie in confidence, needing to get it off the chest, and Richie promised to never mention it again. He wouldn’t of course, Richie knew when to keep his mouth shut.

“Okay, then.” Richie was pulled out of his thoughts when Mrs. Banks cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention. She had found the appropriate list for the class, and Richie could vaguely see that there were two columns on the paper. “Let’s see...Mr. Uris, you will be working with Miss Bloom…” Stan groaned slightly, Pattie had had a crush on him for the last year and a half and refused to accept that he was in love and in a relationship with Mike. A few more names were read off the list, and then he finally heard his own. “And Mr. Tozier, your partner will be Mr. Criss. You have the rest of class to set a schedule to meet up. I’ll be here to answer any questions you have.”

Richie’s eyes drifted to the back of the classroom again and his eyes automatically found Vic’s. He tried to send him a polite grin, but Vic just nodded towards him a solemn look on his face, and dropped his eyes down to his notebook again.

Richie sighed, he had no idea how this was going to work out.

Vic tapped his pencil gently against the table in the library where he was sitting, waiting for Richie. Vic had died a little inside when Mrs. Banks had said his name after Tozier’s. It was no secret that the Losers Club had always been the bane of Henry’s existence. That meant that Vic was supposed to hate them too, and after taking beatings every time the Losers did something to thwart Henry, Vic had an overall discontempt for them. Richie Tozier more so than the others, for reasons that Vic never really let himself explore.

He was about to just give up on Richie ever arriving, he was twenty three minutes late already, but then there was a crash at the front of the library and suddenly a sprinting figure with black curls and an outrageously loud printed shirt was coming in his direction and sliding into the seat across from him.

“Shit...hi! Sorry I’m late.” Richie apologized, slightly gasping for breath. Vic shot him an unimpressed look and opened his binder, trying to locate the specific notes he needed. Richie eyed him as he did this. “You know that you’re going to have to talk to me right? For this whole study buddies thing to work, it’s going to involve talking.”

“I’m aware, Tozier. But thank you so much for checking in and making sure that I did. I appreciate it.” Vic replied cooley, his voice void of any emotion. It made Richie want to squirm in his seat, he didn’t like it one bit. Richie groaned, they needed to clear the air.

“Alright, Criss. Let’s get it over with, cards on the table. Why do you hate me so much?” Richie asked point blank, Vic lifted his eyes from his papers and stared at Richie for a moment, he groaned when he realized that Richie didn’t find his actions intimidating.

“I don’t. I don’t hate you.” Vic mumbled, it was so low that Richie had to strain to hear him. He shot Vic another pointed look. “Jesus Christ, what do you want me to say, Tozier? You know how it was. Our groups didn’t get along. It’s as easy as that. I don’t hate you, I don’t particularly like you, but I don’t hate you.”

“Well then…” Richie started, a wicked smirk crossing his face. “We will just have to change that, won’t we?” He let out a low chuckle, and Vic knew he was in for it. He wasn’t going to escape these study sessions unscathed.

The thing is, that when Richie sets his mind to something, he gets it done. It’s a fact that infuriated the other Losers at times. Last year when he had heard about the Women’s March in D.C. he decided that Bev had to be there to experience it for herself. Everyone shook the idea off at first, it was too expensive, too far, but Richie believed in himself and sure enough, he and Bev walked the streets of the capital wearing their pink pussy hats.

Vic was no different for him, he was determined to make the boy either like or hate him, preferably like. He couldn’t stand the neutrality of being in between.

The thing that was different for him was how surprised he was that he enjoyed Vic’s company so much. Vic was really intelligent, but in the way that he still had to work hard for his grades, like Stan did. Richie had always been able to walk in completely unprepared for an exam, and still pull a high grade.

Vic was also surprisingly funny, he didn’t even have to try. Richie really enjoyed finding that out about him, sharing hushed laughs in the library. They met after school every single day, long after the first test had come and gone. He really enjoyed their study sessions, although they rarely got much studying done. Vic was becoming a really good friend.

Vic wasn’t sure when exactly it happened. Somewhere in between mathematical formulas and stupid jokes, he fell for Richie Tozier.

He resisted for as long as he could, reminded himself of all of the pain that Richie had inadvertently caused him over the years.], but every time that he tried to get himself to hate him, all he could see was that goofy smile, freckled face, and his kind brown eyes hidden behind his huge glasses. He was so far gone for him.

He closed the door to his room, flicking the lock closed and dropping his backpack on the floor before throwing himself on his bed. He had just gotten back from one of his study sessions with Richie, and the bastard had licked his lips every five seconds, causing a familiar heat to pool in Vic’s abdomen.

He wiggled his jeans down his hips kicking them off and onto the floor. His flannel and t-shirt went next until he was laying in just his boxers and socks. He let the heel of his palm press lightly into his clothed cock, feeling how hard he already was. He raced to get his boxers off next, his cock springing free to curve up against his belly.

He squeezed a pump of lotion out from the bottle on his bedside table, and rubbed his fingers together in an attempt to warm it up, and then his hand was on his cock. Jerking in a slow and familiar rhythm. He closed his eyes and threw his head back into his pillows, moaning out at the feeling of his own hand. He thumbed his slit slightly, collecting the drops of precum that had collected there and let them mix with the lotion. He kept jerking up and down, flicking his wrist when he would get close to the head.

Images flashed behind his closed eyes. He imagined running his fingers through those messy dark curls, and pulling on them. God, he would pull on them so hard while Richie swallowed his cock. Then there were Richie’s fingers, long and slim, skilled from playing the guitar, Vic could imagine how the callices would feel against his delicate insides, fucking him open. His tongue, that sinful tongue. Vic wanted that tongue inside of him. In his mouth, God in his ass.

Vic could feel his orgasm fast approaching, his hand sped up, chasing release. He rubbed his thumb against the sensitive ridge under the head of the cock, just on the verge of painful, and then he let himself imagine what Richie’s cock would look like. Long and slim, but impressive, just like Richie himself. He jerked two more times before he was cumming. He felt his toes curl and his entire body spasm, spurts of milky white cum landing on his chest. He stroked himself slowly through it, before he fully collapsed onto his pillows.

Not even a moment later, he felt the shame kick in. Of what he had just done. He needed to keep control of himself. He couldn’t let this go on any longer, what if he slipped up at school? What would happen then.

A stray look and a small smile on his face. That was all it took for Vic’s feelings for Richie to be noticed by the worst possible person. Henry.

It happened at lunch. Vic and belch were sitting off in the corner where they always did, the Losers at their own table in the middle of the chaos. Richie had stood on the cafeteria table and started to perform what was surely the worst Irish step dance in history. Bill and Ben had tried to pull him down off of the table, but he was surprisingly strong and coordinated enough to leave them toppled over while he was still upright. The other Losers just shook their heads at his antics, Bev recording the whole thing on her phone.

Vic smiled at the sight. The sight of the happy boy that he liked dancing goofily on a cafeteria table. It felt like only seconds had passed before he was being lifted out of his seat and slammed into the floor. He gasped for air, head throbbing from impact. He looked up to see Henry, damn near foaming at the mouth above him. Belch moved to help Vic up, but Henry shot him a warning glance, the kind that told everyone that he would actually slit his former friend’s throat if he had the chance.

“ARE YOU FUCKING HIM YOU LITTLE FAGGOT?” He screamed down at him, Vic tried to scramble up to his feat, but Henry pushed him back down by his shoulders. “I ASKED YOU A QUESTION YOU DUMB SLUT. ARE YOU FUCKING RICHIE TOZIER?”

“N-no NO.” He stammered out, his chest felt heavy, like he couldn’t fully breath. He wished that he had his anxiety medication on him, but Henry never believed in those pills anyway and would have just thrown them away.

“What are you Stuttering Bill now?” Henry asked with a cruel laugh, he squatted down in front of Vic, he was so close that Vic could smell of stale cigarettes that clung to Henry’s tongue, and something else he knew all too well, beer. “I saw you smile at him Victor. You pathetic little fag, in love with a Loser?” Henry looked at someone behind Vic and sneered. Vic didn’t have to look to know that it was Richie.

“HEY BOWERS! Why don’t you leave him the fuck alone?” A voice called out, it was Richie’s, and it made Vic’s heart clench in his chest. Why couldn’t Richie just keep his mouth shut. Let Vic take this beating, and just move on with their lives.

“Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth, Tozier?” Henry spat, and his attention was back on Vic who had managed to stand up, but was struggling to keep his balance. “Does he know, Vicky? Does he know what a pathetic little slut you are, all the things you let me do to you? What you let me AND Patrick do to you?” Henry snarled, and Vic’s breath caught in his throat.

He hadn’t let them. In fact he had convinced himself that it was all a dream, that the pain that he had felt in his ass, like he was being torn open until he bled, was just a dream. They had gotten him drunk and high, just enough that he would be pliable, but not enough for him to black out, he honestly thought that he would have prefered that more, but then he wouldn’t have been able to feel what they were doing to him, and that was truly Pat’s kink. Causing people horrendous pain. Henry liked the dominating side of it, and that night he had. He had dominated Vic without his consent, and let his boyfriend be violated by his friend as well, at the same time. The painful memories came flooding back in Vic’s mind. He could feel the tears pricking his eyes.

“That’s right, Vicky. You remember good and well. He’s never going to want you, even trash like him wouldn’t want something used and destroyed like you.” That was the last thing Vic heard, because he was running again, he had to get out of there, away from him. He was tired of Henry tearing him down like this, in front of people, it was cruel. This time he didn’t just run to a bathroom and hide, he hightailed it out of the front doors of the school and just ran.

He collapsed to his knees once he reached the park, body overcome with emotion and unable to physically continue. Sobs began wretching themselves from his throat, tears flowing freely now. He hadn’t heard anyone behind him, but then he felt a hand touch his shoulder and he flung himself backwards, scared at the prospect of it being Henry, there to finish him off.

“Hey, I’m so sorry. Vic, can you look at me?” A soft voice said, and he whimpered at the sound, he knew that voice. It was Richie. He blinked back tears and turned his head to look at the other boy. Richie wore a concerned expression on his face, and he moved to kneel in front of Vic, careful not to touch him again. Afraid that he would spook him. “It’s just me, Vic. It’s just me.” He soothed.

Vic nodded, and tried to get control of his breathing, he moved closer to Richie, allowing him to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Richie rocked him back and forth in his arms for a few minutes, until Vic had stopped shaking.

“I…” Richie started, but stopped, trying to figure out how to word what he wanted to say. “I am so sorry, that he said those things to you, that he physically did what he did today, and everything else he did before. I’m so sorry, Vic. You don’t deserve that.” Richie told him softly.

“You don’t know that.” Vic said, voice small as he shook his head. “You don’t know me. I’m pathetic, just like Henry said. I let him do those things to me…” He couldn’t continue, he keeled over and began retching into the grass, the newfound memories present in his mind.

“I don't think that you’re pathetic. I think that you are so strong.” Richie told him, and Vic scoffed slightly. “And I would really really like to get to know you. More than I do already, because I like you Vic. I think you’re special.” Vic looked up at him with tear filled eyes.

“You mean that?” Vic asked, and Richie just nodded. They stayed still and silent for a few more minutes, before Richie was pulling himself into a standing position and reaching a hand down to help Vic right himself.

“Why don’t we go back to my house? I can make you some tea, and we can get to know each other a bit better. How does that sound?” Richie asked sweetly, and Vic could feel his stomach flutter at the tone.

“That sounds perfect.” Vic told him, and let Richie grab his hand, leading him down the streets of Derry to his house.

Vic let out a yawn and stretched as he began to fully wake up, he was in an unfamiliar bed and it startled him for a moment. He was about to panic when the door to the room opened and Richie walked in with two mugs.

“Hey, you’re up.” Richie said with a soft smile, Vic must have looked confused, because he continued. “You were really worn out when we finally got back here, you’re in my house by the way, so I figured that it would be best to just let you sleep for a while, you’ve had a rough day.” Richie told him, handing Vic one of the mugs.

“Thanks.” He said, accepting it and taking a small sip of the hot herbal liquid. “For everything, for following me and getting me somewhere safe.” Vic said, nothing but sincerity and gratitude in his voice.

“Of course.” Richie smiled at him again, he really needed to stop doing that. “Vic...can we talk about what happened, what Henry said?”

“I...I don’t really want to talk about the abuse...the things he did to me…” Vic said sadly, a hiccup making its way out of his throat, a sign of how upset the topic made him.

“No. Not that, although if you ever feel comfortable telling me, I would listen as best as I could.” Richie told him. “I was referring to what Henry was saying, about you having feelings for me...do you?” He asked softly, voice full of something that was hard for Vic to pinpoint.

“I do. I’m sorry, I tried so hard to fight the feelings, but I just couldn’t.” Vic confessed, a frown etched on his face. Richie gently grasped Vic’s chin and pulled it up so that he was looking him in the eye.

“I’m glad you couldn’t, because well, I couldn’t either.” Richie told him and Vic’s eyes went wide with shock.

“W-wh-what?” He choked out, and Richie let out a small laugh before leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to Vic’s lips. He pulled back almost immediately, watching the smaller boy’s face to see his reaction.

“Was that okay?” Richie asked, that mysterious tone was back, self doubt he recognized it as now. His eyes held so much hope, but also fear.

“FUCK YES!” Vic cried out, surging forward to capture Richie’s lips with his again. He crawled into Richie’s lap easily, refusing to break the kiss. Richie held onto his hips, while Vic ran his hands up and down Richie’s back. They pulled back after a few minutes, desperate to catch their breaths. “Richie…?” Vic asked, gaining his attention. “Will you fuck me, nice and slow and lovingly? I’ve never had that before.” Richie’s breath got caught and he choked slightly.

“Are you sure? It’s been an emotional day…” Richie started to ask, but was cut off when Vic pressed his lips to Richie’s again.

“I’ve never been more sure of something in my life. I trust you, please make me feel again.” Vic said softly, and Richie nodded. He pulled his t-shirt over his head, and stood to pull his jeans off as well. Vic followed suit, pulling his sweatpants and long sleeved t-shirt off as well. Richie let out an audible gasp when he saw some of the scarring that Vic had on his arms and his chest, he knew that they were battle wounds left by Henry.

Richie helped Vic to lay back on the pillows, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek before moving down to his chest. Richie pressed a sweet kiss to each of Vic’s visible scars. Acknowledging all of the pain that he had been through. When he was finished, he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of Vick’s briefs and looked up at him for permission, Vic nodded and Richie pulled them over his ass and down his legs, so that Vic was laying completely bare in front of him. He licked his lips at the sight.

“Can I suck you off, Sweetheart?” Richie asked, and Vic moaned at the thought. Henry had never done that for him, in fact Vic had never had a proper blow job in his entire life, and here his crush was asking him if he could. He nodded in consent. Richie moved forward, wrapping his hand around the base of Vic’s cock and guiding it to his lips. He took it in easily, letting his mouth slide up and down the shaft. Vic let his hand rest in Richie’s curls and Richie groaned, encouraging Vic to tug his hair slightly. When he did, Richie moaned louder, the vibrations sending shock waves through Vic’s cock. It was beautiful, but he didn’t want to cum from just that.

“Richie, if you don’t stop I’m gonna...you know.” Vic let out, and Richie pulled off with a pop, smiling up at him.

“Okay, I’ve got you, how about we try some fingers next? I’ll take it nice and slow, working you open for my cock.” Richie told him.

“Yesyesyesyes.” Vic rushed out, and Richie let out a fond laugh. Richie reached into his bedside drawer and pulled out a tube of lube and a condom. He set the condom on the bed, and popped the cap on the tube of lube. He squeezed enough onto the tips of his fingers that he could coat three of them. He rubbed his fingers together slightly to warm it up before turning his attention back to the boy in his bed.

“Can you hug your knees to your chest for me, V? Put that pretty hole on display for me?” Richie’s tone was sweet, but also had a directive tone to it. He wasn’t just asking Vic to do something, but rather telling him exactly what needed to be done. Vic did as he was told and hugged his knees to his chest. Richie groaned at the sight, when his little pink puckered hole revealed itself. “Alright, here goes one finger.”

Richie traced the ring of muscle with one of his lubed up fingers, teasing Vic’s hole ever so lightly. Vic whined and Richie finally relented, pushing his finger past the ring of muscles and into his hole, he took it easily, and soon Richie was thrusting in and out with more force. Vic moaned out at the sensation, and then his jaw dropped open when he felt two fingers pushing back into him. Richie scissored his fingers and flicked his wrist every once in a while, driving Vic absolutely crazy. He was going too slow, he needed more.

“Richie, please. I’m ready. I can take it.” Vic cried out, but Richie shook his head and added another finger so that Vic was being stretched open by three. He was right about Richie’s long and slim fingers fucking him open. It was perfect, exactly what he fantasized about. He started rocking his hips back to meet the thrusts of the fingers, and Richie took that as his cue that Vic was ready for more.

“Are you still with me?” Richie asked, and Vic nodded, cheeks and chest flushing from his arousal. He watched as Richie shed his boxers, his cock just as beautiful as he had imagined in his fantasies. Richie grabbed the condom from the bed and open the foil package, easily sliding the latex down his cock. He leaned forward, the blunt head of his cock resting against Vic’s hole. He gave him one more concerned look, met with a nod, before he slowly pushed himself all the way in. It took a minute, he didn’t want to hurt Vic after all, but then his hips were meeting Vic’s ass, and it felt amazing.

“You can move.” Vic told him, and Richie started thrusting in and out of him slowly and fluidly. Vic moaned at the feeling, screwing his eyes just from the sheer force of pleasure. Richie picked up his pace, building a steady rhythm and adjusting his hips to fuck right into Vic’s prostate. “Ahhhhh fuck!” Vic cried out and Richie repeated the action. Vic was crying out with every thrust, every slight touch of skin on skin anywhere but their crotches.

Richie could feel his own orgasm coming closer, but this was all about Vic. He needed to cum first. Richie snaked his hand down in between them and took a hold of Vic’s cock. He began pumping him in time with his own thrusts. It took less than ten strokes before Vic was letting out a long and drawn out moan, cumming all over his and Richie’s chests. Richie kept pumping into him, now with a purpose, he pressed in one final time and filled the condom deep inside of Vic’s ass. He pulled out carefully, dropping the condom into the wastebasket next to his bed. He moved to lay behind Vic, his arm wrapping over his midsection, and he pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

“Thank you for this, Richie. It was amazing. I just can’t help myself when I’m around you.” Vic said graciously, and he could feel Richie smiling from where he was rested against his neck.

“Right back at you.” Richie said with a slight giggle. “Now how about we go to sleep now, and then deal with discussing what this means when we wake up?” He asked, and Vic nodded turning to press a sweet kiss against his cheek.

The snuggled into one another, neither remembering the last time they had felt this safe and comfortable. Vic and Richie thanked God they were assigned as study buddies.

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truthbeetoldmedia · 6 years ago

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The Bold Type 2x09 "Trippin'" Review

Can you believe we’re already nine episodes into the second season of The Bold Type? The only episode that remains is the season finale, perfectly set up by this week's episode. I mentioned before that if this show does anything well, it’s wrapping up the season, and this one is no exception.

In this episode, Jane spends almost the whole thing drunk and/or high, which was super entertaining to watch. (She also does a great rendition of “Torn” while drunk at a bar. Damn, Katie Stevens!)

However, things don’t start out so carefree for Jane — the episode begins with Ben handing her a binder full of information about her possible fertility choices moving forward. Ben is still being weird, I see. Here, have a binder full of terrifying life choices! Brought to you by none other than your boyfriend! I mean, there’s close up photos of cells and people in MRI scans… not the most comforting thing to look at.

I know Ben is only trying to help, but it’s very obvious that this isn’t the kind of help that Jane wants. She already has a doctor she can consult with on these issues, she doesn’t need another one. The purpose of a boyfriend and the purpose of a doctor are two very different things, and Ben seems to only be fulfilling one of those. I’m not alone in thinking this, either. Later on in the episode Jane calls the binder “fertility preservation for dummies” and laments to Kat and Sutton that he’s acting like he knows what’s best for her without asking her how she feels.

After a rough morning of dealing with this, Jane runs into Pinstripe in the elevator. Jane needs the comfort that a distraction can bring, and she chooses Pinstripe over Ben. They go to a bar for lunch and have a contest about who can fit the most olives in their mouth — super cute, right? And exactly what Jane needs.

We also see a new dilemma beginning for Jane in this episode: what to do about Pinstripe? Last season they were friends with benefits, and Jane broke it off because it was too casual. She wanted more, and she knew that Pinstripe wasn’t that kind of guy. But, in this episode, we see some growth on that front. Pinstripe is taking life (and Jane) more seriously; he can see that something is stressing her out and he asks her about it, something that Season 1 Pinstripe never would have done.

Later on in the episode he tells her that he hopes he can be more than just her “beer o'clock” guy, and credits her for encouraging him to pursue writing his book. I’m sensing a set up for Jane in the finale: Ben, the guy who is basically her doctor that she occasionally has sex with, or Pinstripe, the guy who (in Jane’s words, people) “gets her” more.

Kat has a dilemma of her own this episode, but it’s more professional than personal (although there are some developments there, so stay tuned). Scarlet is launching a new and improved website, and during one of the pre-launch meetings Jacqueline drops a bombshell on Kat and co: the new website will no longer allow people to comment on any articles, videos, etc. Kat disagrees with this venture immediately; when they do get offensive or hostile comments they’re very quickly deleted, and disabling comments will take away the reader discussions that make the site and the magazine so vibrant.

I have to agree here — maybe if one particular article is sparking some vitriol then disable the comments on that one, but not the whole site. The whole point of Scarlet is to both start important conversations and have fun ones, and without comments the magazine is simply shouting into the void. Not to mention that people can and will still comment, but they’ll do it via Twitter and social media rather than directly on the website itself, which would take away a significant portion of web traffic.

In a panic, Kat decides to talk to Richard about the issue. Richard and Jacqueline have a great relationship that’s based in mutual respect, so she figures Richard would be the best person to get the point across to Jacqueline. This idea backfires, and Jacqueline instead takes issue with Kat trying to go around her rather than take her answer on the subject.

Now, this is a little uncharacteristically cold for Jacqueline, but it makes sense given the circumstances. On the day of the new website launch there was an article published, accusing Jacqueline of fading from relevance and importance at Scarlet. So, it’s not a surprise that Jacqueline feels the need to defend her judgement.

Kat’s worries are confirmed later on when the launch results in almost no web traffic increase and the response to the disabled comments was universally lambasted. Jacqueline calls Kat, asking her for advice, which results in Jacqueline enabling comments and publishing a piece about the importance of community discussion and involvement.

While quickly resolved, the issue with the Scarlet website sparked a realization for Kat. During this really stressful and confusing time she only wanted to seek out Adena’s company, not anyone else. In this episode the three girls take a small road trip to Sutton’s hometown in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and while there Kat develops a connection with a local bartender. She’s hesitant to go home with her, though, and Jane is confused: isn’t sex with a hot stranger the perfect thing to distract from the drama going on at work? Well, not for Kat.

In the past few episodes we’ve seen Kat and Adena make their relationship an open one, so Kat can explore her sexuality while still being emotionally attached to Adena. At first it was awkward for Kat, but now her issue isn’t getting past having sex with strangers: she realizes that she wants to be with Adena and only Adena, and that she doesn’t find comfort in their open relationship anymore.

For a relationship that’s been rocky the whole season, this is great news, right? They do end up getting back together, but there’s still some tension: Kat asks Adena to go to breakfast, but she turns her down in order to work on her art some more. It’s obvious this makes Kat uneasy and a little upset.

This is where my issue starts: I am not a fan of how Kat has treated Adena this season. She hasn't been mean or rude to Adena, but she has been a little selfish, and this episode is no exception. Why, you ask? Didn’t Kat just opt out of an open relationship to spend more time with Adena? Yes, but when you look at the season as a whole, there is a clear divide of give and take, with Kat doing almost all of the taking.

Early in the season we saw Kat become jealous of Adena, constantly questioning her relationships with women and being paranoid that they would run into one of Adena’s exes wherever they went. In the very next episode, Kat kisses a strange girl at a club. She tells Adena right away, but she’s obviously upset. Adena offers the option of an open relationship so Kat can explore her sexuality, so Kat starts casually seeing other women. She also tells Adena about this, when Adena specifically told her that they should keep Kat’s adventures separate from their relationship.

Now, in this episode, we see Kat run back to Adena when she needs something from her (in this case, comfort). I don’t think this is malicious or manipulative, but the truth is clear: Kat is doing whatever she wants while Adena just takes it.

This is especially one sided when you think of how much Adena has sacrificed to be with Kat: she’s in a country that doesn’t want her, away from family, struggling to look for work. While Adena CHOSE to stay with Kat, I still can’t help but wonder when Adena’s needs will take precedent.

Now to Sutton, who has finally gotten a great story that doesn’t involve her job or a relationship. As we learned last episode, Sutton is going to Paris (!!!), so naturally, she needs her birth certificate for the passport application. This is where that road trip to Pennsylvania comes in: the only way Sutton can get her original birth certificate fast enough for the application is to pick it up herself.

We finally get to meet the infamous Babs Brady, Sutton’s unstable, hard-drinking mother. Sutton is on edge almost immediately after setting out on the road trip, bracing Kat and Jane for the trainwreck that is her mother. Sutton even tries to go directly to her old home and find the document herself, wanting to avoid seeing her mother at all. Unfortunately for Sutton the spare key is missing, so her and the girls head over to the local dive bar, Dicey Riley’s, to wait for her mother to show up. When Babs does show up, Jane and Kat are confused: she’s put together, clean, and not drunk.

Despite this obvious positive change, Sutton is still pretty hostile and outright rude to her mother. She’s still living in the past, unwilling to listen to her mother talk about her new job at Dicey Riley’s (she even quips that it’s only for the free drinks), her seven months of being sober, and her intention to go to nursing school. Sutton maintains that her mother is a wreck and that she’s still living in a rat infested house, neither of which are true anymore.

This isn’t as simple as Sutton simply being rude and in a hurry to get her birth certificate. Anyone who has an addict in their life, especially a parent, is familiar with what I’ve just outlined. It’s not that Sutton doesn’t care that her mother has been sober and has a job: it’s that she’s heard it before, a million times, and each time she gets her hopes up everything just comes crashing down.

A big shoutout to Meghann Fahy for acting her ass off this episode; it’s rare that we get such a genuine portrayal of the child of an addict coming to terms with a parent’s sobriety. That’s mostly because most people would think that’s a good thing, and it is, but it’s not that simple. Sutton is trying so hard to keep her mother as she was because it’s easier; it’s familiar, and almost safe. She KNOWS her mother is an addict, she KNOWS nothing she says or does will change that, so she cut all ties to her mother and her hometown and committed herself fully to her new life in New York. If her mother is sober, she has to revisit this familiar place again, and brace herself for the very real possibility that it won’t last forever. The happiness of a parent being sober is also accompanied by the 24/7 dread of waiting for them to fall off the wagon once again.

Sutton isn’t easily convinced — what’s to say that this time is different? Kat tells her that they have each other. Sutton has a great support system in Jane and Kat, and she’s no longer alone in dealing with any of her problems. If her mother stays sober, that’s fantastic (and to Jane’s point, at least she has a mother). If she doesn’t, she has two fantastic friends to support her.

So — What’s going to happen in Paris? Who will Jane choose (if anyone)? What will happen to Jacqueline? What about Kat and Adena? Finale episode, bring it on.

The Season 2 finale of The Bold Type airs August 7 at 8/7c on Freeform.

Alyssa’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

#The Bold Type #Trippin'#Addiction #Kadena

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bolbianddolanhouse · 4 years ago

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BNHA self insert AU [Book 2]

Beginning of Book 2 Read here to catch up!

Chapter 13: Did Y’all Try The Chicken?

Time flies when you’re in love~ but how do I even begin? Right before the end of summer break, I got all my memories back! The first thing I did that day was hang Toei off the ceiling fan in the commons room by his underwear, then switching that bitch on. Hoshi and I kept our relationship lowkey but then we got caught giving each other a good luck kiss right before the physical final. Luckily everyone was approving of us but they were upset that we didn’t say anything about it for months. The school board approved extracurriculars in hero schools! So our circle can do our thing in a safer environment! We went to the school dance this time around in matching attire that I made myself. Toei got sent to general ED because he failed the exams to stay in the hero program. But we got 3 students from their program in exchange and they’re pretty cool. I attended graduation to see Maru and Elise graduate, I’m very proud of them making their childhood dreams come true. They’re still together too! That makes me very excited to graduate alongside my love too.

Right now, it’s our 3rd year at UA, Mid February. My mom’s birthday passed and it was celebrated with all of us going to this Dim Sum place. Love is in the air but my mind is on post-UA plans...

“Hey what are you up too?” I asked Hoshi, who was scribbling away on some documents.

“I’m applying to some accredited programs” He responded “I talked to Loud Man and he gave me the proper paperwork to start applying for a teaching credential.”

“Oh! You’re going along with your first choice?” I was surprised, we talked about career pathways before the end of 2nd year and Teaching/Coaching was one of his top 3 choices.

“Yup, because full offense to Mineta sensei, I’d want a hero with a degree to teach the next generation of heroes” Hoshi shaded “But what about you?”

“Well, I have a guaranteed spot at my uncle’s agency” I sighed “I could go to college, Waseda would gladly take me in. But I don’t know! My heart is telling me to go back to performing.” I pouted as I rested my chin on his shoulder “I imagined myself going to the dance academy in Shibuya or play with the big leagues in Amsterdam!”

“Doesn’t hurt to apply” He encouraged “What’s the real loss if they reject you? You have two other things to fall back on.”

And that started my application journey, any time I had was spent on researching and applying. I didn’t tell my parents this though, I want to show them that I am worthy to the academies before they discourage me from going far to study. They never told me why growing up, guess they always saw me as their little girl that couldn’t go on her own. But I’ll show them!

Nothing notable happened all of 3rd year. Which was pretty wack because the first 2 years nearly killed me and Hoshi! Big time skip to one month before graduation...

“Hey Lili, do you think your mom can drop me off at my dad’s house the weekend of graduation?” asked Hoshi as I was doing a fitting of his graduation clothes “I got word that he’s not coming.”

“What? Not coming to your graduation?!” I gasped “After all this time, he still can’t just at least show up to say congratulations? What a coward!”

“But that’s what my dad’s friend told me and I’m not surprised” he looked at the garment in the mirror “He’s not doing that well since my other brother finally slipped away to my older brother’s place. So I’m going to pay him a visit.”

“How are your brothers anyways?”

“They’re great! They can’t wait to see you” he laughed “Be warned that the oldest is going to be calling you ‘sister-in-law’ from now on.”

“Sister-in-law? I guess I’ll try to adjust to that” I said as I hugged them from behind “I can’t wait to finally move out of this cramped room and back to my parent’s house. Then we’d visit each other when we have free time and figure out ourselves from there I guess.”

“My brothers already have my room ready when I move out of here” he puts his hands over mine “But I’m excited to see how life is going to be with you. Oh, almost forgot to ask! What happened to the dance academy stuff?”

“I’m still waiting on two of them to get back to me” I responded “From Shibuya and Versailles.”

“Versailles...France?”

“Yea, isn’t that crazy that they considered me?”

Hoshi paused to think “What’s going to happen if you do go to France?”

“I’m- not sure yet” that threw me for a loop “All I know is that I’ll never stop loving you and I’ll miss you like crazy. And I’m going to shower you with kisses every-time we meet to make up for lost time not kissing.”

“I guess we’ll figure it out when we get there” he turned to give me a kiss “I love you.”

And a week later...I got my last two responses. Long story, short: I got accepted to Versailles on full ride only because of my double quirks. Which means that come graduation, my parents can’t say no because I made it big this time. Hoshi was the first person I told and they were happy that I’m that much closer to making my dreams come true. Hoshi got accepted to a fellowship at Meiji University for Hero Education on multiple scholarships. I was so proud of my love pursuing higher education but a little sad that we will have to part in a few months.

-Graduation Day, school auditorium-

“Oop! I see my family” I said as I peered around the crowd “See anyone you know?”

“I saw my two family friends, my brothers and I think I saw the Wild Pussycats?” responded Hoshi “Can you believe Toei-kun is graduating with us?!”

“I want to say I’m proud but I’m still salty” I crossed my arms and huffed “It’s a miracle he’s here!”

The graduation ceremony started and I’m not one to sit through things like this, so I dissociated while holding Hoshi’s hand. Afterwards, we met up with everyone for pictures.

“Hey Iida-san” the class rep got my attention “I just wanted to say it was an honor to be your classmate and I hope we could stay in touch! I want to know what schemes you get into.”

“We don’t have to be so formal Hashima-kun!” I chuckled “Aren’t we friends? I will keep in touch.”

A smile spread on his face “You- you said my name!”

“Uh yea” I pointed to his clothes “Your family name is embroidered on your Hakama, and I must say! It’s very clean needlework and colors are impeccable.”

“Oh uh, thank you!” he got embarrassed as I got closer to see the needlework “I think this is the most attention you’ve ever given me, hehe.”

“Probably, watch me forget your name again in an hour” I chuckled “But you have my number and Hoshi’s, keep in touch with us! We’d like to hang out on free time or just check in on each other.”

“I would love too!” He smiled and turned away “Until next time, bye!”

I waved him off and continued the celebrations with my family and Hoshi’s group that came to see him. Tigre and Pixie Bob came to see Hoshi to tell him that they were the ones that continued to pay for his hero tuition after he got kicked out of his dad’s. Tigre gave him the gift of binders and cash towards his top surgery. Hoshi was in tears to know that they did that even though they met briefly. He told everyone that he’s going to study at Meiji Uni and I told them I’m going to The Versailles Institute of the Arts on full ride in the Dance Program. My parents were torn about it, but they decided that maybe it was time to let me go and be who I’ve always wanted to be. Nobody was expecting it but I was in tears and hugged them tight. Everything was falling into place....well, almost everything.

-Saturday after Graduation, Togata House-

“Are you sure it’s alright to leave you here?” my mom asked worriedly.

“I’m sure, I’ll call if anything” Hoshi said as he unbuckled his seatbelt “Thank you for driving me.”

“Be careful love” I cautioned “I don’t want to hear that you got hurt.”

“Relax, he wouldn’t” He got out of the car “See you later! I love you.”

Hoshi’s plan was to spend the afternoon at his dad’s house to talk things over, then go to his brother’s place a few blocks away. He knocks on the door and stands there for a full minute.

“Maybe he’s busy” he said to himself “Oh who am I kidding, he saw the van pull up and doesn’t want to open the door.” He sat on the porch step and sulked “What can I even do now? I just want to talk.”

On the other side of the door, Mirio was having a hard time bringing himself to open the door. Watching his child sit on the porch step like they did when they were little, wondering where their mother was. It hurt to relive those memories but he also wanted to talk, he had a lot to come clean on. After what seemed an eternity, Mirio opened the door.

“Hey champ” Mirio said once their eyes met.

“Hi Dad” Hoshi stands up “How have you been?”

“I’ve just been here” Mirio didn’t want to say that he’s been depressed “but why don’t you come in?” He waits for Hoshi to walk in “Would you like some tea?”

“I would actually, being around the Iida family got me hooked on coffee” he said as he sat at the table “Rarely do they drink tea, or as Mrs Iida says ‘hot leaf juice’!”

“She said the same thing when we were in high school!” Mirio laughed as he put the kettle on “Oh you graduated huh? Sorry I couldn’t go, I couldn’t get off work and-”

“You don’t have to lie to me dad” Hoshi interrupted “I know you couldn’t bring yourself to come out of guilt.”

“Hado told you huh” Mirio sighed “Well, it’s true. I feel awful for not coming and I didn’t want to make a scene on your day.”

“That’s why I came here” Hoshi responded “I want to air out our troubles and tell you everything. Because I’m an adult now and I feel like I can talk to you about what happened.”

“I’m listening” Mirio said as he sat in the seat in front of Hoshi.

Hoshi tells him about what he’s overcome, his strong suits, about Lili, and his plans to study hero education.

“...I have to thank you for all those years of training. They prepared me for everything I’ve come across with” Hoshi’s tone changed “So thank you Dad, it may have been hard to raise me but you did that right for me.”

Mirio broke down in tears “How can you say nice things to me when I’ve done nothing but hurt you!” he slammed his fists on the table “I don’t deserve your praise, I know I hurt you and denied your identity. Surely you carry hatred for me!”

“I don’t, not anymore” Hoshi took a deep breath “You’re my dad and we’re all that we have left of each other. You lashed out because you didn’t want anything to change, I’ve come to understand that you just wanted things to stay the same. It was hard for all of us when mom died, but I never stopped to consider you the villain. I’d feel hopeless and want control if I was single father of three with a hero job, I’ve forgiven you” he put his hand on his dad’s fist “You don’t have to accept me, because I love myself and found people I consider family. But if you change your mind and accept me, I welcome it.”

“I do accept you, I’ve regretted kicking you out of the house when I did” Mirio forced himself to look at Hoshi “But how was supposed to cope? It’s like you made yourself disappear and I was scared that I did something wrong to make you like this. But your brother told me that this makes you comfortable, you feel more yourself. I realized I was trying to preserve your mother’s wish and image, but what’s the point of that! You’re not a doll on display, you’re a person and you can do whatever you want.”

“Mom’s wish?”

“That’s another thing I wanted to come clean about” Mirio wiped his tears “Your mother and I were never married. She was trying to escape her parents from forcing her into a quirk marriage, so she lied to me for a few months of dating and confessed that she just needed to get pregnant and leave town to start a new life. I got her pregnant and I said I’d house her and raise the child because I didn’t want her to go off on her own with nothing. She stayed and her parents disowned her, and we grew our family. But that was the least of her problems, she was dying due to her quirk and her only wish was to have a family with at least one daughter.” Mirio smiled “The look on her face when you were born was only something a mother could do. She was so happy that she didn’t care if she was dying, she had her wish and loved you with everything in her being. All those tight hugs before she left for ‘work trips’, those were her hugging you good bye in case she dies while she was away for medical treatment. She knew she wouldn’t live long enough to see you graduate, she wanted you to have this actually...” Mirio goes to his room and came back with a wooden box.

“Her music box? I remember this thing” Hoshi said as the box was placed in front of him “She wanted me to have this?”

“Open it” Mirio handed him a key “She said to wind it before opening it.”

Hoshi did and the gentle music played along with the spinning figure of a dancer. Inside was a note and nothing else. Hoshi picked up the note and read it aloud.

To my darling Hime,

You’ve made all my wishes come true when you entered my life. And though I won’t be there for all the happy times or the days when you need a hug, know that I’ll always love you and I’ll be looking over you. If you ever feel lost or scared, you can find me among the stars. I can’t wait to see the person you’ll become and the people you’ll share your love with. I’m proud of you.

Love you from the stars and back,

Tsuki

(P.S. Pull on the ribbon)

“Mom’s name was Tsuki” Hoshi’s tears flowed “She was the moon! Dad this is so sad, I didn’t remember my mom’s name when I renamed myself. I chose Hoshi for a different reason!” He put the note down “She said to pull this ribbon, I wonder why.” He pulled on it to have the bottom of the music box pop off and show a hidden compartment “WHOA! WHAT THE McFUCK?!”

“I don’t believe it! It’s wads of large bills!” Mirio said in shock “I don’t know where all this money came from, your mom didn’t work.”

Hoshi took out all the neatly packed rolls of cash “There’s at least a small fortune in here! Well into the hundred thousands!” a thought ran through his head “Wait, dad. Did mom come from a wealthy family?”

“Yes she did actually, why do you ask?”

“What exactly happened when she left her family?”

“Well...first she confessed about her plans” Mirio thought hard to recall that long ago “Then her grandmother died of old age, her family got into a fight over the will and I didn’t see her for a few weeks, I got her pregnant and 2 months later she left her family to live with me.”

Hoshi’s jaw dropped “Dad, this is her inheritance money! She knew she was on the will and left with the money” Hoshi was in disbelief “Mom was clever, this was her way out and she could’ve done it by herself. She wasn’t completely helpless like you thought.”

“Huh?! I wondered why we had separate bank accounts, she paid everything with cash and paid for all her medical expenses” Mirio finally put it all together “Damn, and I was going to propose to her too.”

“You were?”

“Yup, I even kept the ring” Mirio led Hoshi to the family closet and got a ring box from the top self “I loved her, I’ve grown to love her but I guess waited too long.” He opened the ring box to show a pearl ring in hyper-shine platinum “Your mom liked shiny things and polished surfaces, so I got this ring custom made for her. I was planing to ask her when she came back from the last treatment, but...you know.” He closed the box and gave it to Hoshi “You’ll need this more than I will.”

“Huh? When will I-”

“Aren’t you going to marry Lili?” smiled Mirio “Just don’t wait too long, I lucked out and her dad almost did too...Don’t let go of her, she’s the one.”

“You approve of us?”

“Of course! She makes you very happy and is protective of you” Mirio put his hand on Hoshi’s arm “Plus I know her family. You struck it well son.”

“You called me son” Hoshi perked up.

“You are my son aren’t you?” He brought Hoshi in for a hug “It feels so good get everything off my chest, I want to have a good standing with my sons.”

Hoshi put his arms around his dad “Me too, I’m so happy I came over.”

“Okay, theres one more thing I wanted to say” Mirio said, breaking the hug “Now don’t act shocked, but I’m in a relationship with Tamaki.”

“Oh...okay” Hoshi was unfazed “So you’re gay? Demi-sexual?”

“Why are you so causal about this?” Mirio was confused.

“Dad, I’m a transgender male that’s attracted to girls” Hoshi explained “Of course I know about these things. Also, you and Mr Amajiki have been super close for years that I thought he was going to be replacing mom. And I was okay with it because I approve of him! It’s cool if you fell in love with someone else, everyone deserves love.”

“I imagined things going differently” Mirio chuckled “I’m happy that you accept me and Tamaki.”

“Now comes the awkward part, how are you going to tell Kenki and Moegi?”

“You know, I didn’t think about that” Mirio scratched his head “Guess I have to come up with a boys night at the house or something.”

And so ends Hoshi’s visit to his dad’s house. He got his closure and then some. Things were made right and he doesn’t have to worry about food or rent for a long while. Now comes the sad part...the day Lili has to leave.

-Iida Household, Thursday afternoon-

“Have you decided on a school Iwee?” I asked as all four of us were having quality sibling time in my room.

“Yeah, I’m also going to UA” He sighed “in the agent department.”

“Eww seriously? Another UA student in the house?” I gagged “You’re going to give mom and dad a heart attack!”

“Shut up! Just because we use guns and shit doesn’t mean I’m going to be the idiot that gets hurt!” Iwa huffed “Mom has been training me for weeks to prevent that.”

“Whatever you say” I shifted my attention to the twins “And you two? Where are mom and dad booting you to?”

“We’re going to that school with the beige uniforms” Rosa complained “It’s disgusting!”

“She means we’re going to the distinguished middle school in Taito” Oro clarified “I’m getting in because of my grades, Hanaka is going because of her behavior.”

“Oye what’s that supposed to mean?!” growled Rosa “You calling me a pendeja?!”

“I’m calling you a hot-headed, potty mouthed latina” Oro gave her the side eye “You and your friends!”

“How are your friends anyways?” I asked “I don’t see them coming around the house anymore.”

“They’re mall rats” Oro blurted, Rosa punched his arm “Ow! Why are you hitting me, I’m right!”

“We like the term, mall girls” Rosa said with attitude “Our daddies gave us their cards for spend on whatever we want!”

“Kinda wish he didn’t” Oro and Iwa sighed.

“F in the chat for Dad’s credit card” I bowed my head.

“F” Oro, Iwa and I said in unison.

“Yeah yeah! Say F all you want!” Rosa whips out the credit card “I bought myself the entire Gothic Chic make up line from Etude House. I’m going to live my lolita goth fantasy entering middle school.”

“That’s like $500 USD worth of makeup!” I gasped “You don’t even have a vanity to display the vanity pieces in that collection! You know what, you can take my vanity because I’d hate for you to do that thing where you just throw everything in a storage box and not care.”

“Ninos! Come down stairs!” called out mom from the living room “Your abuelitos want to talk to you!”

We ran downstairs at top speed. We love our abuelitos from America but it’s a shame they can’t visit whenever they can. They seemed very proud of me with my decision to go to a dance academy. After the video call, I thought about my mom’s post UA pathway and how she did it.

“Mom? How did you achieve everything you wanted?” I asked my mom once everyone left the living room “Like, how hard was it after high school?”

My mom gave me a melancholy look and sighed “To tell you the truth Lili, I don’t have everything I wanted. It felt like my entire life, my plans, all of it was falling apart at the beginning. But that was because I didn’t know I was on the wrong path” She explained “I didn’t have somebody to tell me that I should leave my toxic relationship or to rethink my life choices. All I did was pick myself back up and kept running forward, because that’s all I could do being by myself. Everything I have now is a blessing and proof that I got lucky at just the right time.”

“Oh...does that mean you’re not happy?”

“I didn’t say that, I am happy! I have steady income, married, had children and have incredible friends that have my back. But those are my blessings” She smiled “I don’t deserve them, but they’re here to stay. What I really wanted was to live my life in America with my family, go to college and be a quirk doctor or a writer! And maybe have a few kids before I die. My life was laid out for me before the incident that changed everything. What my life is now, is nothing that I’d ever imagined myself having! It’s beyond my wildest dreams, all because I decided to take a life-threatening chance.”

“What did you do?” I was curious, she’s never told me this story.

“I was 15 when I made this decision...” she told the story of the incident “...it was one of my most valiant feats but one that costed me my freedom. I wanted to come back a perfect daughter, one that can protect my family and provide for them. I left behind all my dreams, family and my soul mate so I could protect them. And everyday, I pray that today will be the day I can go back and be with them again.” She looks into my eyes “Do you understand why I was so overprotective of you?”

“Yes, I get it now” I croaked as I wiped my tears “You didn’t want me to repeat your suffering. But why did you let me go this time?”

“Because you’re following your dreams” she chuckled and ruffled my hair “You’ve faced your own trials and lived through them all. And all children have to leave their parents at some point, so it’s your turn to start a journey into your own future. But this time, you have us to help you and have a home to return to.”

“Mom, I’ll come back being the perfect daughter then!” I said, fighting the tears “Someone to be proud of!”

“Silly girl, you are the perfect daughter” she wiped my tears “and I’m very proud of you. I want you to come back feeling accomplished, okay?”

“Okay mom” I pounced on her to hug her “thank you, for everything you’ve done.”

“No Lili, thank you for being you and blessing me” She responded as she squeezed tighter “I’m so happy to be your mother.”

I didn’t know I needed this conversation with my mom. But I’m glad I did! There’s this, I wanna say...closure? That I didn’t know was needed. Everything makes sense...the heavily protected housing, the gap from her graduation from UA to when she had me, to the friendships she’s made, to why she doesn’t want to talk about going back home. Maybe she does see herself in me, the passionate fighter and dreamer. Thats who we are. I’m going to make all my dreams come true, for her and myself! She’s my inspiration going into this next part of my journey...oh shit, it’s 10pm! I should sleep!

-Chapter 13, End-

#bnha #mha #self insert au #book 2 chapter 13 #not canon #will update regularly #ask me anything #//Palma-sama Speaks #yall I was crying so hard writing this chapter! It's an emotional one for sure #The background on Hoshi's mom was something I paralleled from Steven Universe when Steven found the truth about his mom #I liked all the hints and stuff to Hoshi's mom being the Moon and Hoshi the star. Ya know...Tsuki is japanese for moon and Hoshi is star #Also note how I didn't make the two heroes? I wanted to explore other careers within the AU (Hoshi studying Hero Ed is important later!)#Lili reflecting on her mom's past was a full circle moment that I wanted to have to make sense to why things were kept back when she asked #Yall saw that MirioxTamaki ship? It was a self indulgent thing...leave me alone! I see a sunshine with their emo...I'm gonna ship them!#The sibling interacting here foreshadows the next book's plot along with character development! TBH the next book is heavier than this one #Speaking of which! Next is the last chapter of this book! BUT first the FAQ and Hoshi character sheet before the finale...thanks for reading

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skepticaloccultist · 7 years ago

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Hell Fire Club Books

Hell Fire Club Books is a rather remarkable, very old school approach to book binding and publishing. Helmed by Eamonn Loughran they have released an astounding collection of esoteric and occult volumes over the last two decades. Individually hand craft leather and vellum bound volumes, hand worked tooling and incredible editions and folio bindings are a hallmark of HFCB work.

After reviewing his incredible edition of the Keys of Rabbi Solomon I thought that a chat about the work his is doing would be enlightening to those who, like myself, have a love for fine bindings and beautiful books.

+++

Lets start off with a bit of background on Hell Fire Club. When did you start publishing fine bindings? What was your first volume?

Well 'Hell Fire Club Books' really began about 20-21 years ago with my interest in the PGMs (Greco Egyptian Magical Papyri) where I produced a facsimile of one document with suggested new readings, it was the legendary 'Headless God' invocation, something that I am working on completing for this year (yes 21 years later!). The real intent of Hell Fire Club Books was to provide a window into the magical current of an old incarnation of Thelema and to link that with the modern world. I was living in Buckinghamshire (UK) at the time and had been simultaneously researching Crowley's techniques in Liber Samekh and the history of the 18th century Hell Fire Club. Behind 'Hell Fire Club Books' is actually a small circle which keeps the legends and symbolism of the original Hell Fire Club alive, thats what makes it unique!

Fine binding is having a renaissance at the moment, with deluxe editions becoming the norm for most publishers of the esoteric. HFCB on the other had is all fine bindings. How do you choose which works you feel need the special bindings you create?

Things jump at me! I literally get a big charge from the creative and magical work I'm handling and from there its a daemonic rush to the bindery where something physical takes shape! I was trained in a bindery in Nottingham UK which was established in 1903, the old guys had never worked anywhere else and binding in leather by hand was a daily practice. My first real test there was a run of over 450 leather bound books in silk lined boxes for the Houses of Parliament, a row of highly skilled craftsmen working like steam engines drinking tea all day and chatting about fishing and cricket with me in the middle trying to keep up! I learned from working with them and soaked it all up with enthusiasm every minute! I suppose I'm a visual and tactile thinker really, I've never understood the concept of a non-physical magic, for me everything is inherently physical and where the manifestation of a book touches people not only in distant places but across time then we can be sure that their experience is a more powerful one, a book literally initiates a new current.

Leather and vellum binding and sourcing high quality papers are increasingly difficult. Where do you acquire the variables for your productions?

Fortunately the best producers are all still in business! In the UK there are a number of bookbinder suppliers both trade and conservation etc plus good tanneries both here and in France and Germany. I have to say that from long experience there is only one supplier of vellum I would use and thats William Cowleys of Buckinghamshire, they have been in business over a hundred years and their work is perfection every time. I have used many paper-marblers and toolmakers over the years and have ventured into using letterpress a few times, we have two large format vintage presses here which I hope to use more of this year.

As our readers are aware I am a lover of beautiful bindings and consider it an art. Each of your works being made by hand and not outsourced means they are practically art objects. How do you feel about the sometimes eye watering secondary market valuations of your work?

Well to an extent the 'dealer' market can help to keep things in the public eye for many years, I do believe that many dealers are simply looking at the math and pricing accordingly, but yes there are a few examples of unfriendly pricing which is a pity. Personally I get more satisfaction in knowing that somebody out there got the one thing they really wanted than that a small number of people have one of everything. Im a bit of an idealist and would like to feel that handling a book or other object made by hand inspires people to really get into something, to really live it and for that magical act to reverberate throughout their lives.

Having done a bit of binding myself one hurdle has been finding the tools required to do the gold tooling for the covers, particularly the brass text pieces. How did you come on to the tool set you have?

I literally built it up over the last 10-15 years, I did inherit a significant collection of 19the and 20th century brass letters and tools (including sets in Greek and Hebrew) from the bindery I worked for, otherwise I have had tools designed and cut for each individual project. Theres a tray cabinet in the bindery with over a hundred drawers of tools and blocks which is a goldmine of ideas, sometimes I just spend an hour browsing!

Your recent publication of Peterson's translation of the Honorius looks to be another exceptional work. As you move forward with HFC do you foresee more contemporary works and translations being released?

Yes absolutely, in fact over the last year I have expanded the bindery and whether for my own imprint or for others I have been involved in at least one new publication per week. Over the last 9 years I was mostly involved in running a village pub in a place called Castle Bytham in Lincolnshire, the bindery then was a converted barn at the rear of the main building. To be honest I had outgrown it in the first few months and was looking for a larger workspace either within the village or nearby. About 12 months ago I took on a huge space in a Victorian malthouse which has since been filled with more benches, presses and so forth, a simply enormous studio but I love it!

Are you doing all of the bindery work yourself or do you have assistants? A run of hundreds of volumes is an incredible amount of work for an individual.

I am doing all the work myself I do have a bit of help with hand sewing one day a week but apart from that it's me myself and I! I was trained in a bindery established in 1903 and the prevailing attitude was pretty Victorian, the company was considered old fashioned on the 1960s and hadn't changed a bit when I worked there! I worked with a bunch of old guys who had either been letterpress trade apprentices or had gone up in the trade as bookbinders, one even had his original indenture (a form of apprentices' contact which goes back over 100 years). I actually own a set of presses and hand tools which were bought by the company when they stared as a stationers shop in the early 1900s, one of the hand tools is dateable to the 18th century (it was in a biscuit tin!) and was a treasured talisman until the company moved premises and I inherited it.

I do often hear the voices of the old binders I used to work with, turning the same presses daily that they worked at for forty years, old chaps who loved cricket, fishing and weekends away in caravans. What always tickled me was the way they gently poked fun at each other about things that happened over thirty years previously! I'm the late 1960s one of the guys had fancied himself as a songwriter and even appeared on an early television talent show, he was beaten to the prize by a singing dog, his workmates never let him forget it and thirty years later they all still sang the song on his birthday!

Do you have a particular work you feel is your masterpiece so far? One that stands out to you as an exemplar of your fantastic skills?

I guess I would have to say that the vellum edition of The Holy Books of Thelema in a leather clamshell box was pretty damn good! I got a real kick out of making all the books and boxes for all the different sets, it was over 1000 books handmade plus boxes etc so a huge commitment for one person but to think that it was the first time (since Crowley's own 1909 edition) that the Holy Books had been produced in the manner he specified, arranged exactly as the A.'.A.'. students ought to receive it. After that I think that 'The Sacred Magic of Abramelin' edited by Georg Dehn (both vellum and calfskin editions) and the 'Honorius' by Joseph Peterson are rather special.

Tell me about the re-release of "Secret Symbols of The Hell Fire Club". What type of binding and edition size can we look forward to?

The Secret Symbols of The Hell Fire Club has been an important publication for us since its first release seven years ago, it went out of print very quickly and copies are extremely difficult to find even for our members. An electronic version was made available but since then both new information and original sources have come to light which make a new edition essential. I should imagine we will produce a limited number of leather copies and a trade edition which will be sent out mainly through the United States.

The book traces the ideas and history behind the Hell Fire Club of the 18th century and gives an insight into its survival today, following clues left in the caves at West Wycombe and architecturally in the house and surrounding area, an initiatory journey is unfolded which throws light on the nature of the current of Thelema before Crowley, a mystery school with a symbolism otherwise unknown.

Have you done commission work or custom volumes for individuals or other publishers? Is that something you are open to doing?

I have done many commissions over the years and am working on a few now, mostly private manuscripts that require archival boxes or some manner of conservation but occasionally rebinding older printed books and creating blank books and artists books. Large format work is a particular favourite of mine and I love using the bigger presses to produce monsters!

I have worked with other publishers on a number of occasions and there are some well known esoteric works I have had a quiet hand in, I think in time the bindery will expand again as we continue to publish and to accept archival and private work. Who knows what the future holds...

Explore the many creations of Eamonn's Hell Fire Club Books here:

www.hellfireclubbooks.co.uk

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wanderingjotun · 8 years ago

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A rant on jobs and applications

I really need a new job. Really, really. This one is slowly killing me. As in I’ve drained my already-meager savings, and had more intrusive thoughts/ nearly self-harmed more in this position than I have in my entire life put together, and I’ve only been here 9 months. So the fact that looking for a new job stresses me out more than this hellhole is saying something. And is contributing to this awful downward spiral that I’m not sure how to get out of it yet.

Why does job searching stress me out so much? Because our system is really fucking broken, I have undiagnosed anxiety/depressive issues, and our system is really fucking broken.

I have a Bachelor’s degree, graduated in three years instead of four, have consistently been employed since a little under a year after I graduated (with experience in the fields I’m applying to) and still can’t get a damn interview.

I’m already disadvantaged because I have a very feminine legal name and misogyny is still a thing. Plus, it’s easy to see from my resume how young I am, and no one wants to hire a Millennial if they can get someone else.

I’ve spent 15 years of my life studying and working with English and writing, developing it into my singular marketable skill, but I still haven’t figured out how to actually use it for marketing after three years as a social media professional. Which means I don’t want/can’t get marketing positions—which are really the only thing creative writing is good for in most business settings.

I have that one marketable skill set that is apparently in high demand, but after six years out of college, I don’t think I want to actually make a career out of it. But I can’t afford to go back to school to develop another skill set and taking a minimum wage job will get me and my roommate evicted from our apartment and unable to feed ourselves, due to sky-high rent, student loan debt (which will only get worse if I go on forbearance or default, which are my only two choices for the massive state loans), and other costs of basic survival in the U.S. So I’m stuck applying for jobs I don’t actually want on a career path that’s sucking me dry, because there aren’t really any other financially viable options for survival at the moment.

All of the things I think I would like to do as a career are closing, or being de-funded, or are otherwise in danger due to the current political and economic climate in this country: museums, libraries, community/cultural centers, nonprofits working with the queer community, and almost any other artistic or humanitarian organization. In addition, the arts are all undervalued and making your way as a freelance artist of any stripe is (while easier than it has been in the past, thanks to the internet) incredibly difficult, and not ideal for shy, anxiety-prone people like me. That’s not even taking into account the self-employment taxes (which I’ve dealt with for three years and they nearly bankrupted me each time) and other legal issues that come with being a full-time freelancer.

“You need five years of experience for this entry-level job,” or “you need an incredibly specific degree that only two schools in the country actually offer,” or “you have to know literally everything about everything to get hired in this position.”

Are you an introvert? Have a disability that prevents you from going out regularly and talking to people? Just don’t do well in person? Well, congratulations, you’re fucked in the job market, because the only way to get a job is to know people. As another post I’ve seen floating around said, “networking is just a way to rebrand nepotism as a skill.”

The only way to get past the applicant screening programs is to literally rewrite your entire resume for every position you’re applying for in order to ensure you’re using all of the correct keywords, in the correct order. That wastes so much time that could be spent applying for other positions, or cooking dinner or something, but your resume will literally get sent to spam or auto-deleted if you don’t do it. Same for cover letters (which are hellacious in and of themselves; query letters for novels are less painful than cover letters, and those make me tear my hair out).

Also a waste of time are all those applications (of which there are hundreds) that require you to both upload a resume and manually type in your work history. Seriously, there is nothing that makes me less likely to finish an application than realizing they want me to do this shit.

More often than not, I won’t hear anything from an application one way or another. When I do get a rejection, it’s a form rejection with no real reason as to why they didn’t ask me for an interview. So I have no idea if my skill set is lacking, my resume is poorly organized, the computer spat me out because I mistyped a keyword, or some other thing I could improve for my next round. I know it’s standard practice not to provide a reason, but it’s frustrating not knowing if it’s me or the resume or the person who’s hiring that’s the problem. Is it in my control or not?

I have too much experience for an entry-level job, but not enough for a higher-level position, and there don’t seem to be any jobs in-between. My only options are an unpaid internship, or a director/supervisor. What the fuck?

Employers want to see results on your resume—things you’ve changed, or improved, or accomplished. So what the hell do you put on a resume if your entire working life has been “well, I survived this without murdering someone,” or “I posted shit that no one read because SEO is dead and I literally had zero financial or creative support from the company”? Sometimes, your job is literally to be a grunt for the company—which is why I’m trying to get the fuck out! But employers don’t seem to accept that.

There’s this weird-ass idea that if you just look harder, your perfect job will fall into your lap. Or just talk to more people. Or try this other job board. Or just be open to taking a position that you’re not 100% sold on (which is how I wound up where I am now). Newsflash: this only works if you know what you want, you can negotiate for what you need, and you have a viable and marketable skill set in the current job market. No matter how hard I look, I won’t find my perfect job because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t actually exist in a way that will also allow me to eat next month, and I don’t have the capital or the time to just “create it.”

If you’ve tried a lot of different things in your work life because you don’t or didn’t know what you wanted to do, it’s considered ‘job hopping’ and you’re often seen as a bad or disloyal employee. Because how dare we attempt to find something fulfilling that also allows us to continue living? Thanks, capitalism.

I want to ensure I’m moving into a company that will allow me to freely talk about my girlfriend, or wear my chest binder (once my digestive issues allow me to) without fear of getting fired, but there’s no way to tell that during the application process. So, for all I know, I could be applying to highly homophobic places without realizing it and wasting everyone’s time even more than I already am.

Speaking of another waste of time, this entire fucking process feels like a useless cycle. Send resumes out, wait for months to hear nothing, rinse and repeat. It’s demoralizing and exhausting and awful, but it’s really the only way to get a job in today’s market. And that’s bullshit. So much bullshit. In the meantime, I’m over here trying to remind myself not to claw my face off and that digging my eyes out with a spoon is a bad idea (I don’t know why my self-harming intrusive thoughts center around my face/head, but they do).

So, yeah. I’m fucking stressed. I feel like I’m trapped in this lose-lose situation—I can’t physically or mentally survive in this current position for much longer, but I feel physically ill every time I open the job boards and try to find something I think I’m fit for. And, unless I get a better-paying job, I can’t afford a therapist, or medication I probably need, or even good produce on any regular basis. I need to look for a new job, but looking for a new job takes more spoons than I have when I get home. But I need the new job so I can recover the spoons. It’s this awful catch 22 every damn day. And I’m terrified that there’s no way out.

#Personal #Long post #TW: self-harm mention #day job blues #Add to this the bullshit that's happening on a national level and I'm just so done with everything

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scifrey · 8 years ago

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Improbable Press put out a call asking fan fiction authors how they went from Free to Fee. Here’s my response. Happy reading!

The Story of How I Started Selling Stories

My parents, teachers, and acting/singing coaches will all tell you that I've always been a story teller. For the first twenty four years of my life, I was determined to do so through musical theatre, though I had always secretly harbored the desire to write a hit stage play. My early writing consisted of plays for my friends and I to put on, interspersed with prose that I supposed would one day become a novel, but which wasn't my passion.

I was a big reader, but where this habit came from, I'm not certain. While my mother always had a book on the go - whatever crumbling paperback law thriller or murder mystery she'd been handed by the woman down the street when she was done it, which was then passed on to the next neighbor - my father and brothers preferred sports (either on TV or outside in the yard) over reading. I stumbled into fantasy and science fiction because Wil Wheaton was hot, and his show was on every Friday night, and from there I consumed every Star Trek tie-in novel my tiny rural library carried, then started following the authors of the novels into their other worlds and series.

So you won't be surprised to learn that this was how I found fan fiction for the first time. My "I love this, gee, I wonder what else there is?" muscle was well developed by junior high, and before the internet had come to The Middle Of Nowhere Rural Ontario, I had already gotten quite adept at search keywords and codexes to track down more books to consume. Imagine my shock and joy when, in the middle of my Phantom of the Opera phase (come on, fess up, you had one too), the internet in my school library told me about not only Fredrick Forsyth and Susan Kay's stunning re-tellings, but of something called fan fiction.

I wasted a lot of the librarian's ink and paper printing out these books and secreting them into binders and pretending to do school work at my desk or backstage between scenes. A lot. And yes, I still have most of them.

And as we all well know, the jump between reading and writing is a short when one is submerged so fully in communities of creators. Everyone else's "What If" rubs off on you, and it's just a matter of time before you find yourself playing with the idea of coaxing a few plot bunnies over to spend some time with you. Not everyone loves to write, but gosh darn it, if you want to give it a try, then you couldn't ask for a better, more supportive community. It doesn't matter how new you are to it, everyone reads, everyone comments, everyone makes suggestions. People beta read. People edit. People co-write. People cheer, and support, and recommend, and enthuse. Yeah, there are the occasional jerks, flammers, and wank-mongers, but on the whole? There's literally no better place to learn how to be a writer than in fandom, I firmly believe this.

So, of course, born storyteller that I am, I had to give it a try.

I started writing fan fiction in 1991 for a small, relatively obscure Canadian/Luxembourg co-pro children’s show called Dracula: the Series. I used to get up and watch it on Saturday mornings, in my PJs, before heading off to whichever rehearsal or read through or practice I had that year.

1995 brought the English dub of Sailor Moon to my life, (and put me on the path to voice acting), and along with a high-school friend, I wrote, printed out, illustrated, and bound my first “book” – a self-insert story that was just over eleven pages long, which introduced new Scouts based on us. From there, I didn’t really stop.

1996 led me to Forever Knight and Dragon Ball Z, and from there to my friend’s basement where they’d just installed the internet. We chatted with strangers on ICQ, joined Yahoo!Groups and Bravenet Chat Boards. (Incidentally, a friend from my DBZ chat group turned out to be a huge DtS fan, too. We wrote a big crossover together which is probably only accessible on the Wayback Machine now. We stayed friends, helped each other through this writing thing, and now she’s Ruthanne Reid, author of the popular Among the Mythos series.) In 2000 I got a fanfiction.net account and never looked back.

In 2001, while in my first year of university for Dramatic Arts, I made my first Real Live fandom friends. We wrote epic-length self-insert fics in Harry Potter and Fushigi Yuugi, cosplayed at conventions (sometimes using the on-campus wardrobe department’s terrifyingly ancient serger), and made fan art and comics in our sketchbooks around studying for our finals and writing essays on critical theory or classical Latin. I was explaining the plot of the next big fic I was going to write to one of them, an older girl who had been my T.A. but loved Interview with the Vampire just as dearly as I, when she said, “You know, this sounds really interesting. Why don’t you strip all the fandom stuff out of the story and just write it as a novel?”

You can do that? was my first thought.

No! I don’t want to! Writing is my fun hobby. What will happen if I try to be a writer and get rejected by everyone and I end up hating it? was my second.

But the seed was planted. Slowly at first, and then at increasingly obsessive pace, I began writing my first novel around an undergrad thesis, fourth-year essays, several other big fanfics that popped me into the cusp of BNF status but never quite over the tine, and then a move to Japan to teach English. From 2002-2007 I wrote about 300 000 words on the novel that I would eventually shut away in my desk drawer and ignore until I published on Wattpad under my pseudonym on a lark. It was messy. It was long. It was self-indulgent and blatantly inspired by Master of Mosquiton, Interview with the Vampire, Forever Knight, and anything written by Tanya Huff, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Charlaine Harris. This was fine for fanfic, but in terms of being comfortable with presenting it to agents and publishing houses, I felt that it wasn’t original enough.

By this time I was teaching overseas, and in my spare time (and boy, was there a lot of spare time while sitting in a Japanese teacher’s office for 40 hours per week when one only actually teaches for 11 of them) I started applying to MA programs (where I eventually wrote my thesis on Mary Sue Fan Fiction). I also spent it researching “How to Get Published”, mostly by Googling it and/or buy/reading the few books on the topic in English I could find at the local book store or order from the just-then-gaining-international traction online bookstore Amazon.

What that research mostly told me was “Write and sell a bunch of short fiction first, so you have proof that a) you can do the work and b) you can finish what you promise you’ll finish and c) you have proof that other people think you’re worth spending money on.”

Short fiction. Huh. Of course we’d studied short stories in school, and I’d even taken a short story writing class in university, though nothing I’d written for the class was indicative of the kinds of stories I preferred to tell. But I felt pretty confident about this whole writing short stories thing… after all, I’d been doing weekly challenges for years. Drabbles. Flashfic. Stories and chapters that were limited to the word count cap that LiveJournal put on its posts. I’d written novellas without knowing that’s what they were called; I’d written whole novels about other people’s characters. All I needed was an idea. Short fiction I could do.

Unfortunately, everything that came to me was fanfic inspired. It frustrated me, because I didn’t want to write a serial-numbers-filed-off story. I wanted to write something original and epic and inspiring. Something just mine. I started and stopped a lot of stories in 2006-2007. I’d been doing NaNoWriMo for years by then, having been introduced to it in undergrad, and I was determined that this would be the year that I wrote something I could shop. Something just mine. Something unique.

While I adored fanfiction, I was convinced that I couldn't make a career on it. What had once been a fun hobby soon because a source of torment. Why could I think of a hundred ways to write a meet-cute between my favorite ships, but come up utterly blank when it came to something new and original and just mine?

It took me a while to realize that my playwriting and short story teachers had been correct when they said that there are no original stories in the world, no way you can tell a tale that someone else hasn’t already tried. The "Man vs." list exists for a reason.

The unique part isn’t your story, it’s your voice. Your lived life, your experiences, your way of forming images and structuring sentences. Your choices about who the narrator character is, and what the POV will be, and how the characters handle the conflict. In that way, every piece of writing ever done is individual and unique, even the fanfic. Because nobody is going to portray that character’s quirk or speech pattern quite like you do, nobody is going to structure your plot or your imagery like you. Because there is only one of you. Only one of me. Even if we're all writing fanfiction, no one's story sounds like anyone else's, or is told like anyone else's.

That is the reality of being a storyteller.

And strangely enough, the woman who opened my eyes to this was a psychic from a psychic fair I attended, who told me that Mark Twain was standing over her shoulder admonishing me to stop fretting and just get something on the page – but to never forget character. My strength, she said that he said, was in creating memorable, well written, well rounded characters. And that my book should focus on that above concerns of plot or pacing.

Well, okay. If Mark Twain says that’s what my strength is, then that’s what my strength is, right? Who am I to argue with the ghost of Mark Freaking Twain?

An accident with a bike and a car on a rice patty left me immobile for six weeks in 2006, and I decided that if I was finally going to write this original short story to sell – especially since I would need income, as the accident made it obvious that I would never be able to dance professionally, and probably would never be able to tread the boards in musicals – now was the perfect time. I was going to stop fighting my fannish training and write.

I cherry picked and combined my favorite aspects of Doctor Who, Stargate: Atlantis, Torchwood, The Farm Show/The Drawer Boy, and my own melancholy experiences with culture shock and liminal-living in a foreign culture, and wrote a novella titled (Back). It was a character study of a woman named Evvie who, through an accident of time travel, meets the future version of her infant daughter Gwen. And realizes she doesn’t like the woman her daughter will become. It was a story about accepting people for who they are, instead of who you wish they would be, and had a strong undercurrent of the turbulence I was going through in trying to figure out my own sexuality and that I wouldn't have the future in performance that I had been working toward since I was four.

Deciding that I would worry about where I would try to publish the story after it had been written, I sat down and wrote what ended up being (at least for me) a pretty standard-length fanfic: 18,762 words. It was only after I had finished the story that I looked up what category that put it in – Novella. Using paying reputable markets, like Duotrope, the Writer’s Digest, MSFV, Absolute Write, SFWA, my local Writer’s Union, Writer Beware, I realized that I had shot myself in the foot.

It seems like nearly nobody publishes novellas anymore. SF/F and Literary Fiction seem to be the last two bastions of the novella, and the competition to get one published is fierce. The markets that accepted SF/F novellas was vanishingly thin I had to do a lot of Googling and digging to figure out who I could submit to with an unagented/unsolicited SF/F novella. If I recall correctly, it was only about ten publications. I built an excel database and filled it with all the info I found.

I put together a query letter and sent it off using my database to guide me. Most of the rejections were kind, and said that the story was good, just too long/too short/ too sci-fi-y/not sci-fi-y enough. Only one market offered on it – for $10 USD. Beggers couldn’t be choosers, even if I had hoped to make a little more than ten bucks, and I accepted.

It was a paid professional publication, and that’s what mattered to me. I had the first entry on my bibliography, and something to point to in my query letters to prove that I was a worthy investment for a publisher/agent.

And energized by this, and now aware that length really does matter, even in online-only publications, I started writing other shorts to pad out my bibliography more.

I tried to tailor these ones to what my research told me the "mainstream industry" and "mainstream audiences" wanted, and those stories? Those were shot down one after the other. I was still writing fanfiction at the time, too, and those stories were doing well, getting lots of positive feedback, so why weren’t my stories?

In 2007 I returned to Canada and Academia, frustrated by my lack of sales, desperate to kick off my publishing career, and feeling a creative void left by having to depart theatre because of my new difficulties walking. I wrote my MA, and decided that if (Back) was the only original story that people liked, then I’d try to expand it into a novel.

Over the course of two years I did my coursework, and read everything there was to read about how to get a book deal, started hanging out in writer’s/author’s groups in Toronto and met some great people who were willing to guide me, and expanded (Back) into the novel Triptych. I kept reminding myself what Mark Twain said – character was my strength, the ability to make the kind of people that other writers wanted to write stories about, a skill I’d honed while writing fanfic. Because that's what we do, isn't it? Sure, we write fix-its and AUs and fusions and finish cancelled shows, and fill in missing scenes, but what we're all really doing is playing with characters, isn't it? Characters draw us to fanfic, and characters keep us there. Characters is what we specialize in.

Fanfic had taught me to work with a beta reader, so I started asking my fic betas if they'd like a go at my original novel. Fellow fanfic writers, can I just say how valuable editors and beta readers in the community are? These are people who do something that I've paid a professional editor thousands of dollars to do for free out of sheer love. Treasure your beta readers, folks. Really.

“It reminds me a lot of fan fiction,” one reader said. “The intense attention to character and their inner life, and the way that the worldbuilding isn’t dumped but sprinkled in an instance at a time, like, you know, a really good AU. I love it.”

Dear Lord. I couldn’t have written a better recommendation or a more flattering description if I’d tried. Mark Twain was right, it seems. And fanfic was the training ground, for me – my apprenticeship in storytelling.

Of course... what Mr. Twain hadn't explained is that character-study novels just don't sell in SF/F. They say Harry Potter was rejected twelve times? HA. I shopped Triptych to both agents and small presses who didn't require you to have an agent to publish with them, and I got 64 rejections. Take that, J.K.

At first the rejection letters were forms and photocopied "no thanks" slips. But every time I got feedback from a publisher or agent, I took it to heart, adjusted the manuscript, edited, tweaked, tweaked, tweaked. Eventually, the rejections started to get more personal. "I loved this character, but I don't know how to sell this book." And "I really enjoyed the read, but it doesn't really fit the rest of our catalogue." And "What if you rewrote the novel to be about the action event that happens before the book even starts, instead of focusing solely on the emotional aftermath?"

In other words - "Stop writing fanfiction." There seemed to be a huge disconnect between what the readership wanted and what the publishing world thought they wanted.

Disheartened, frustrated, and wondering if I was going to have to give up on my dreams of being a professional creative, I attended Ad Astra, a convention in Toronto, in 2009. At a room party, complaining to my author friends that "nobody wanted my gay alien threesome book!" a woman I didn't know asked me about the novel. We chatted, and it turned out she was the acquisitions editor for Dragon Moon Press, and incidentally, also a fan of fan fiction.

I sent her Triptych. She rejected it. I asked why. She gave me a laundry list of reasons. I said, "If I can address these issues and rewrite it, would you be willing to look at it again?" She said yes. She was certain, however, that I wouldn't be able to fix it. I spent the summer rewriting - while making sure to stay true to my original tone of the novel, and writing a character-study fanfiction. I sent it in the fall. I do believe it was Christmas eve when I received the offer of publication.

From there, my little fic-inspired novel was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards and a CBC Bookie, was named one of the best books of 2011 by the Advocate, and garnered a starred review and a place on the Best Books Of The Year at Publishers Weekly.

The award nominations led me to an agent, and further contracts, and even conversations with studio execs. It also made me the target of Requires Only That You Hate, and other cranky, horrible reviewers. But you know what? I've had worse on a forum, and on ff.n, and LJ. It sucked, and it hurt, but if there's one thing fandom has taught me, it's that not everyone is going to love what you do, and not everyone interprets things the same way you do. The only thing we can do is learn from the critique if it's valid and thoughtful, and ignore the screaming hate and bullying. Then you pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and go write something else.

Because a screaming hater? Is not going to ruin my love of storytelling.

But for all that... the day someone made me fan art based on Triptych is one etched in my memory. It means far more to me than any of the emails I ever received inquiring about representation or film rights, or wanting meetings to discuss series.

The lesson I learned from publishing Triptych - now sadly out of print, but we're looking for a new home for it - is that if I chase what the "mainstream" and the "industry" want, I'll never write anything that sells because my heart won't be in it. I have to keep writing like a fanficcer, even if I'm not writing fanfic, if I want to create something that resonates with people. And if it takes time for the publishers and acquiring editors to figure out what I'm doing, and how to sell it, then fine - I have an agent on my side now, and a small growing number of supporters, readers, and editors who love what I do.

Do I still write fanfic? Very, very rarely. I’ve had some pretty demanding contracts and deadlines in the last two years, so I’ve had to pare down my writing to only what’s needed to fulfill my obligations. Doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas for fics constantly.

Sometimes the urge is powerful enough that I do give into it – I wrote To A Stranger, based on Mad Lori’s Performance in a Leading Role Sherlock AU recently, when I should have been writing the second and third novels of The Accidental Turn Series. And even more recently, I cleaned up To A Stranger into something resembling a real screenplay and started shopping it around to film festivals and producers because I love this story, I love what I did with it, and I’m proud of the work. If To A Stranger is only ever a fanfic, that’s fine with me. I poured my heart into it and am so proud of it. But I figure that if there’s one more project I could possibly get into the real world, then why not go for it?

The worst thing the festival heads and producers can say about the work is: “No, thank you.” And being an online writer has taught me not to take the “no, thank you”s personally. Applying the values of Don’t Like Don’t Read or Not My Kink to your publication/agent search makes it much easier to handle the rejections – not every story is for every person.

Maybe once every producer in North America has rejected it, I might think about working with someone to adapt the screenplay into an illustrated comic fanbook? Who knows?

That’s the joy of starting out as a writer in fandom – felixibility, adaptability, creative problem-solving and cross-platform storytelling comes as naturally as breathing to us fan writers. It’s what we do.

You may not think that this is a strength, but trust me, it is. I was never so shocked at an author’s meetup as when I suggested to someone that their “writer’s block” sounded to me like they were telling the story in the wrong format. “I think this is a comic, not a novel,” I’d said. “It sounds so visual. That's why the story is resisting you.” And they stared at me like I suddenly had an extra head and said, “But I’m a novelist.” I said, “No, you’re a writer. Try it.” They never did, as far as I know, and they never finished that book, either.

As fans, our strength isn't just in what we write, or how we come to our stories. It’s also about the physical practice of writing, too. We’re a group of people who have learned to carry notebooks, squeeze in a few hundred words between classes, or when the baby is napping, or during our lunch breaks, or on commute home. This is our hobby, we fit it in around our lives and jobs, and that has taught us the importance of just making time.

We are, on average, more dedicated and constant writers than some of the “novelists” that I’ve met: the folks who wait for inspiration to strike, who quit their day jobs in pursuit of some lofty ideal of having an office and drinking whiskey and walking the quay and waiting for madam muse to grace them, who throw themselves at MFAs and writing retreats, as if it's the attendance that makes them writers and not the work of it.

We fans are career writers. We don’t wait for inspiration to come to us, we chase it down with a butterfly net. We write when and where we can. More than that, we finish things. (Or we have the good sense to know when to abandon something that isn’t working.) We write to deadlines. Self-imposed ones, even.

We write 5k on a weekend for fun, and think NaNoWriMo’s 50k goal and 1667 words per day are a walk in the park. (When I know it terrifies some of the best-selling published authors I hang out with.) Or if we fans don’t write fast, then we know that slow and steady works too, and we’re willing to stick it out until our story is finished, even if it takes years of weekly updates to do so. We have patience, and perseverance, and passion.

This is what being a fanfiction writer has given me. Not only a career as a writer, but tools and a skill-set to write work that other people think is work awarding, adapting, and promoting. And the courage to stick to my guns when it comes to telling the kinds of stories that I want to tell.

This is what being a fanfiction writer gives us.

Aren’t we lucky, fellow fans? Hasn’t our training been spectacular?

J.M. (@scifrey) is a SF/F author, and professional smartypants on AMI Audio’s Live From Studio 5. She’s appeared in podcasts, documentaries, and on television to discuss all things geeky through the lens of academia. Her debut novel TRIPTYCH was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards, nominated for a 2011 CBC Bookie, was named one of The Advocate’s Best Overlooked Books of 2011, and garnered both a starred review and a place among the Best Books of 2011 from Publishers Weekly. Her sophomore novel, an epic-length feminist meta-fantasy THE UNTOLD TALE (Accidental Turn Series #1), debuted to acclaim in 2015 and was followed by THE FORGOTTEN TALE (Accidental Turn Series #2) this past December. FF.N | LJ |AO3| Books | Tumblr

#Improbable Press #Fan Fiction #fanfiction #triptych #j.m. frey #the accidental turn series #free to fee #words for writers

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xt1erminator-blog · 8 years ago

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My History With D&D: How I Got Started

This should have been my introductory post on this blog, but, lazy.

It was a dark and stormy night.

No really, it was a dark and stormy night. I'm not just pretending to be Snoopy writing a novel. Anyhow, I recall being over at an elementary school friend's house for a sleep over I believe. Must have been 10 or 11 years old. There were three or four of us, and my friend, we'll call him Willy, was Dungeon Master. I had no actual playing experience before this night (the only time I had run into this strange game was several years earlier when I was over at the neighbour's house and their much older teenage kids were sitting around the kitchen table with their friends, the table cluttered with big books and weird shaped pieces of plastic and small metal figurines, and bottles and cans of pop and chips and all sorts of delicious looking junk food... it was similar to that scene in E.T. where the kids are playing D&D [not the photo above! - that’s from Freaks & Geeks] except it was daytime). And here I was now, sitting in a camper trailer in the middle of a big thunder/rain storm being shown how to make something called a "character". I have no recollection what race or class this character was, or his name. I do remember though that he used a mace as his weapon and wore chainmail, and had iron rations. Maybe he was a cleric. I think it was red box Basic D&D we were playing.

I think I might have played a total of two or three games at Willy's place. Mostly with the same other friends playing it each time. The last game we played was using the 1st Edition AD&D rule books, and it was way over my head at the time. I remember stealing money from my paper route collections (which were probably due at the end of the week) and buying my own red box Basic D&D set and some dice, and I played the solo adventure for awhile (damn rust monster!) and then just hid out in the basement with a stack of graph paper, and drew out dungeon after dungeon after dungeon. They all sucked, I’m sure. I think the next major book purchase was the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook. And then the Monstrous Manual binder. Man, I hated that binder. What an awful format. I mean, great for organizing, being able to take out monster sheets and add in new ones, etc. but functionality-wise, it was a disaster. The binder didn't sit well with the other books on a shelf and whatever lamination they used for the exterior of the cover got very scuffed up if you put it in a backpack and it looked like ass in no time flat. The good old days. I would borrow other books and modules from anyone who was willing to let me take them away from them for any length of time, and sit there and read parts of them, mostly paying attention to the cool maps and the artwork. I remember photocopying many a module at the public library too.

So for several years after, I would mostly just read the books, and Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and attempt to create my own maps and even once or twice spent some money on miniatures and tried to paint them. Massive fail. If I would have know that the Ral Partha Forgotten Realms Heroes miniatures set I bought for $15 back in the late 80's/early 90's (whenever it was) would be worth hundreds of dollars almost 30 years later, I would have taken greater care with how much primer I carelessly sprayed on to those poor little figures, getting the shit all over my dad’s workshop tool bench (sorry Wulfgar, Drizzt, Dragonbait, Alias, etc.!) and how much paint I recklessly slapped on to them thinking I was doing things right. Ouch.

I tend to ramble so I'll try to summarize everything else up until now with a bit less detail. After elementary school came high school and there wasn't a lot of action when it came to playing Dungeons & Dragons, well with cool people I mean. There was a small group at the first high school I attended, that would play a game in the art room in the lower level of the school. I sat in once, maybe twice, to check it out. Wasn't my bag. These were the stereotypical super geeky, taped-up-eyeglasses nerds that were more interested in dissecting the rules and not playing with any real imagination it seemed. They were kind of like robots. Plus, not very fun when you have 45 minutes for a lunch break to try and make any progress in an adventure. I heard about others in this school who played, but I was never invited to go play in anyone's campaign. I stopped in a few times to see what was going on with another friend's home game, but didn't end up playing because they were a little too into roleplaying. Most of the playing I did happened later in my teenage years when I ended up playing in late night sessions with some older seniors at another school I went to, and then some games here and there with a bunch of fellows who have since turned out to be what you might call "life long friends". The good guys. Then, in my early 20's, I was the first of anyone I knew to do something incredibly stupid: meet a girl on the internet (1997), marry her and move to another country.

From that point on, I guess I lost interest in the hobby. I had always wanted to run my own game, but no opportunities ever arose, or I didn't have anywhere to play or I was just too on edge to be able to compose myself if a game were to actually take formation. I spent a lot of my time learning how to play musical instruments and often partied. Often. I don't regret it, those were some of the best times I've had. Years passed and I really didn't think about D&D or playing any sort of table top game at all. I grew more fond of digital entertainment, PC games, console games, etc. I ended up attempting to become somewhat of a "photographer", and after many years I think I'm happy with where I am at with that particular hobby. It was one of those things you never thought to pursue and then one day, you end up spending several hundred dollars on a friend's used DSLR body and a strange, big zoom lens you have no clue how to use properly.

After almost six years and a "should have seen that one coming" style divorce, I returned back home and was again surrounded by my long time friends. It took a little bit of adjustment to get back into the circle with everyone - just picking up and leaving the country when you're 22 years old and supposed to be starting to explore your options for a career and everything, can kind of make a mess of your social connections. I ended up getting back on my feet pretty quickly though, and found work a month and a half after coming home. I'm still there actually, almost 15 years later.

So, how did I reconnect with my beloved hobby? It was almost two years ago or so (summer of 2015, I don't know if Tumblr dates these blog posts, I don't think so). My wife's step brothers had asked if she knew anyone who had ever played Dungeons & Dragons. She mentioned to them that I did. She asked on their behalf if I would run a game for them, they were curious and hadn't played before. I declined, no way no how. Been out of touch with it for years. Didn't play anymore. Made up some excuses. Left it at that. I had never run my own games before and had no confidence that I could be very effective when trying to introduce newcomers in to the game.

Then, at the end of that summer, another opportunity arose. Some mutual friends/family expressed interest in trying out the new 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. They had been watching Critical Role online and somehow it came up in discussion. I had spent the last few months recalling my love for the game from my past, and ended up being much more receptive to the idea. I was much older, had been through a lot of situations in my life where things like social interaction was easier for me to become comfortable with, and I was developing a passion for it again, it seemed. After downloading the free basic 5e rules, and researching some things on YouTube, I was all for it. Our first session was on my 39th birthday at the beginning of October, 2015. It has snowballed into an addiction since then. I have invested a lot of my time (and money) into a small collection of books and miniatures, and some writing to fuel a small Forgotten Realms campaign. We don't play often, maybe every month and a half to two months, as it depends heavily on my wife's work schedule and when she can book a weekend off. I don't like playing on weekday evenings, as I'm usually pretty burned out from work or there just isn't much time to get into a good game before having to cut it short because people have to work the next day.

My Forgotten Realms campaign, currently one of two games I run, started out with three characters: a dwarven sorcerer, a half-orc druid and a gnome rogue. For the first session or two, I attempted to incorporate a PC that I was playing, a cleric of Bane. His appearance was very brief, as I decided it was not going to work well, playing a character while trying to hold down the fort being Dungeon Master and running the show. I'm not at that stage yet. So, I sent the cleric off in the night to go tend to an important mission while the rest of the party carried on. I used the majority of the 5e Starter Set module, Lost Mine of Phandelver. It did the job. I twisted it up a bit and definitely didn't follow it as per the booklet, and I still do that to this day. My style when using pre-written adventures, it seems, is to grab bits and pieces that are essential, and do the rest on the fly and change as necessary based on what the players may do to throw things off. And that's a good thing. It's helping me build skills to become a better Dungeon Master that can adapt to different scenarios, because it almost always doesn't go the way you plan it will go. I learned that early on. After a few months of playing and completing the Wave Echo Cave area, a situation arose that brought the party through a portal leading to the entrance to the Undermountain dungeon, located underneath The Yawning Portal in the great city of Waterdeep. This was an opportune moment to introduce a new player to the group, which happened thanks to a spur of the moment idea I had, to invite an old friend who I knew was a fan of what we were doing. I wasn't sure if he was up for joining the group, but you don't know until you ask, right? The next session, without saying too much of anything, the door bell rang and moments later the group now had a paladin amongst their ranks. It's been a way better game since.

The second campaign I'm going to start running over the next few weeks will be based upon the Eberron setting, which up until last week I had personally shrugged off any time it came up in my travels, and had no interest in even reading what it was about. I'm not sure why that is, I think the brief encounters I had with it previously were based on flipping through some 3rd Edition books, and I just wasn't picking up on what it was all about. I have never been much into anything 3e, the look and design of the books are unappealing to me. This past week though, one of my players and I got ahold of the 4th Edition Eberron Campaign and Player's guides, and I started reading them. I am really liking the setting and am looking forward to trying to use it in a new game. Lightning Rails, Airships, Warforged, Shifters, Dragonmarks - very cool stuff! Also of help here was a video on Nerdarchy’s YouTube channel where the guys discuss 10 Reasons Why 5th Edition Needs Eberron

This leads to my next post: What Might Eberron For 5e Be Like?

Coming soon!

-runDMsteve

#eberron #d&d #d&d 5e #nerdarchy #forgotten realms #Dungeons and Dragons #waterdeep #undermountain #tales from the yawning portal #lost mine of phandelver

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