#so i suppose it makes sense LOL but i personally expected his turbulence to be a little higher though these quizzes actually tend to be-

[agapestricken]

wholesumvalues.

i stole this from @byanyan! (i hope you don't mind, my friend AHHH <33)

tagging: @furiaei, @divingdownthehole, @threadpull, @question-marked, @whampow, @iobartach, @fartemis-crock, @violetgleams, and anyone else who might want to participate in this!!

[writing-in-april]

Postmarked In The Past

Spencer Reid x Female Single Mom Reader

Summary: After sixteen years of no contact Reader reconnects with Spencer because she has to reveal the secret she’s been keeping since she stopped sending letters to him.

A/N: Hey heyyy! This is my sixteenth fic (it’s actually was totally unintentional to choose the 16th for this fic even though the daughter is 16 in this fic lol 😂) for my 30 fics in 30 days for April!! This one is based off of this request and is part of my unlinked Spencer Reid & Letters series! Thanks for all the love and support lately- I was going to put out my plan for my 1500 follower celebration yesterday or today but if you saw my post I’ve been struggling so it’ll probably come on the 19th or the 20th. Submit an ask here- I love hearing from everyone 🥰Thanks for reading and hope y’all enjoy 🥰

Warnings: Reader keeps a huge secret she definitely shouldn’t have, Reader is a single mother-the daughter doesn’t have a specified name but she is specified to be 16, Reader is very defensive when her daughter finds the letters, mentions of a one night stand

Main Masterlist Word Count: 2.5k

Spencer had been a bright spot in my life, one that had been snuffed out all because of me. When I had found myself pregnant with his child, after I had visited him once, I bolted. For a long time I justified my actions, saying to myself that it was better that Spencer was unburdened while his career was just starting out. But, deep down I knew how wonderful Spencer would have been as a father, how he would have moved heaven and earth to make everything work. And, that guilt haunted me.

The memories I had of him were so far in between, every moment with him had been so fleeting at the end. I struggled to sometimes even remember how he looked as it had been sixteen years since I last laid eyes on him.

I had to strain my memory to remember the way his gelled hair curled around his ears and how sometimes I saw him let the curls free only around me. His eyes had been brown, I could remember that. But, pinpointing what shade they were when they glinted in the light or were drenched in the shadows was lost to me. I knew he had been tall and lanky, his hands reflecting that with how spindly they were. To remember how those fingers had felt on my skin, or how his lips had marked me, or how he would gently stroke my hair was too difficult. Whether it was because I couldn’t remember or that I didn’t want to, it was just too hard for me to want to try to strain my memory anymore.

The labor had been the most difficult thing I had gone through, no one had been there to hold my hand. And, I didn’t really want anybody else except Spencer holding it. I had gritted my teeth and accepted it, pushing through the physical and emotional pain, especially since the pain of losing Spencer had been entirely because of me. I had been given a beautiful baby daughter that day and it was then that I started to force myself to forget Spencer, she looked too much like him to be able to bear.

The only things that remained in my life that involved him were the letters I sent to him in the last year of our relationship while we were long distance and my daughter. The letters were able to be shoved in a box at the bottom of a closet, but my daughter confronted me with my actions everyday by existing. I loved my daughter very much, I just tried to avoid the topic of her father by concocting a lie and making myself forget all of Spencer’s features so I wouldn’t see them as much in her. My nightmare would be the two things converging to confront me with my guilt, I don’t think I could handle that.

—-

At the kitchen table I saw my daughter, holding a letter. Her holding a letter wasn’t at its core a bad thing of course, but I could tell by the slight yellowing of the paper that it was getting old. Immediately panic spread through me; there were no other old letters she’d be looking at besides mine, the ones I sent to Spencer.

“Those are private.” I snapped defensively, definitely too hostile to be reasonable. It was obvious by my tone of voice that I was hiding something.

“Private?!” She yelled, giving away that she had already read at least a few of them. I clenched my eyes shut to prepare for her question, “Are these from my father?! Who you said was a one night stand?!” I vividly remember explaining the lie I had concocted for her, her being confused why I would only be with her father once. It was a hard subject to dance around, a difficult lie for me and her to swallow. But, the alternative was too painful for me to be honest with her, or honest with Spencer. And, I knew it made me selfish, at the time it had been so Spencer wouldn’t stop his blossoming career. With time I realized that I really had done it because I had been scared. The guilt had started to sting worse when I realized that.

I had been caught, there was no weaseling out of this. I hanged my head in defeat, finally admitting to the large lie I had even roped the rest of my family in, “Yes.”

If she had been a dragon she’d be breathing fire on me while she spoke, “And why would you keep this from me! Did he do something bad or something?! Is that why you didn’t tell me?!”

“No-I-“ I stammered a few times until I found the words, “I- I did it because I didn’t want to hold him back… We were so young, and I knew he’d quit his new job across the country to come back to me.” Keeping the details still vague was my only armor right now. I kept to myself how those letters were the way we communicated for months when he started in the academy. We were only able to meet up once a month, and one month I unexpectedly fell pregnant. I never sent another letter or came to visit him again once I found out.

She clenched her jaw at me, looking back down at the scores of letters that we had written, and I had hidden. Her next question now made me clench my jaw, “C-can I see him? Or call him? Or send him a letter?” If you don’t know how to contact him anymore I’m sure we can-“

I was nervous as to where this was going. There was no way I could contact Spencer again after all these years, the guilt already ate at me everyday. Seeing and remembering his face would only make it worse. Fear was fueling me and I cut her off because of it, “No- I- I don’t think it’s a good idea...I just need more time- until I’m ready.” I started to shrink away from her, my authority slipping through my fingers as I became more and more vulnerable.

“You’ve waited sixteen years, you’ll never be ready.” The spite in her voice was stinging, she wasn’t completely wrong in her statement.. And when I didn’t answer she then stormed away, slamming the door to her room.

——

Our relationship in the few weeks following was strained at best, estranged at worse. She barely spoke to me since then, the biggest conversation we had was about what was for dinner- and that had been about two sentences long.

I was slowly coming around to the idea of perhaps finding a way for her and Spencer to reconnect. The guilt that I had been so afraid of becoming worse if I confronted it head on, only grew worse by avoiding it. I was actually going to talk to her after I got home from work, until I realized what she did.

She left her own letter on the table titled Dear Mom, detailing where she was going without giving any specifics. There was one part that gave her reasoning for writing her plan down, she didn’t want me to have a heart attack even if she was mad at me. Plus there were a few sentences about how she had used her own money that she had been saving up, which was supposed to be for college only serving to make you even more frustrated. At the bottom she wrote- I’m going to find my Dad, please don’t follow me or call the police.

I scoffed to myself, wondering if she expected her warning to not to follow her to be followed. Of course I was going to follow her, there was no way I was going to just let her go off on her own like that.

It wouldn’t be too hard to find her. Spencer may have changed apartments since then, but one quick google search of news articles he was mentioned in showed me that he still worked at the BAU in Quantico. It was probably a safe bet that my daughter did the same thing and was planning on visiting him at his office.

The plane ride there had been tumultuous, not in the sense that there was any chaotic occurrence or severe turbulence on the plan, more like in my mind. My hands shook, my foot tapped, and my mind raced while I took the long flight from Las Vegas all the way to Quantico. My mind went round in circles whether or not I viewed Spencer meeting my daughter- our daughter as a good thing. It was difficult to accept that even though they’d both most likely be mad at me, they deserved to meet. Especially since I knew how good of a father Spencer could potentially be. Once I had landed I didn’t stop, getting a cab straight from the airport to where the BAU offices were located.

The building looked daunting in front of me. It wasn’t a skyscraper by any means, but the task that I was here to do was so big it felt like one as I stared at it while trying to work up the courage to go in. The guilt however, was too hard to ignore.

My mind was on autopilot as I told the secretary at one of the front desks. It was too stressful to focus on worrying, so exhausted from the emotional roller coaster I was riding. An agent had assured me that she was safe which made some of the stress melt from my shoulders luckily.

“Here she is.” The agent gestured to the office, empty of any other person except my daughter. I felt even more relieved now that I saw her with my own eyes.

When I entered she waited a second before speaking timidly with disappointment, “He’s not here, he's on a case.” Her demeanor had deflated almost immediately as she saw me escorted up.

“Who told you that?” My arms crossed around my chest, nervous and furious all at once. I didn’t need to tell my daughter how in trouble she was, by the pout on her face she knew she’d be getting grounded for a long time even if I did let her talk to him.

“This nice lady named Garcia, she works with him. But, she did tell me I had to wait for you until she called him” For the first time since I had read her letter to me I cracked a smile. When we had still been communicating, Spencer often wrote and spoke about his teammates. Besides a fleeting photo of the team shown to me by him while I had been over here visiting, all my perceptions of the team and how they might look were all based on my imagination.

Despite that, when a vibrantly dressed woman clicked her heels into the room, I knew it was her. Spencer had perfectly described her, shining bright compared to the dull colors of the bureau’s office.

“So your Spencer’s baby mama.” Yep, she was definitely as blunt and beautiful as Spencer had described. I blanched at her comment, though I didn’t deny it, which was all she needed to know to confirm.

“Can you give me his number?” I skittered past the question, not wanting to confirm it out loud.

She beamed brightly at me, already starting to punch in the numbers with the phone on the desk in front of me. “You can call him now if you want on this phone, they just stopped working for the day.”

When she handed me the phone, it had already started ringing. I couldn’t help but panic, almost refusing the phone until my daughter nudged me forward to grab it. My finger trembled severely as I wrapped my hands around the phone, but I still managed to hold on to bring it up to my ear just as someone picked up the phone.

“Hello?” It was him, he sounded so similar to the boy you knew, that boy was a man now. He sounded more haggard compared to sixteen years ago; I wondered what all had happened since then.

“Hey- Spencer it’s me.” By the hitch in his voice that came through the speaker, he knew who it was.

At first I heard nothing from him, only some rustled feedback in the speaker. My shoulders were practically at my ears now afraid he might hang up. He did eventually stumble out a greeting, “H-hi? Why are you calling me after all these years- aaand on a phone at my work?”

“I’ve got to be honest with you,” I cryptically answered with an evident shake in my voice. I was biting my nails now, not caring if I chipped the polish on them. My daughter grabbed my hand to comfort me even though she was probably still furious at me which helped coax out my next statement, “cause I haven’t told you why I stopped talking to you…” I breathed in deeply once before I finally admitted the secret I had held for so many years, “Spencer, you have a daughter, she just turned sixteen.”

Dead silence was all I got, that was until I heard a choked out sob from him, “Why?”

He didn’t need to elaborate any further, it was quite clear what he was asking. Again another meek shaky reply came from me, “There were a lot of reasons- the main one was I didn’t want to hold you back.”

My daughter was now crying as was I, I hadn’t given her my reasoning until now. Maybe one day I’d give Spencer all the reasons why I had hidden it from him for so many years even though it was painful. I had held a lot of guilt about not ever contacting him again or even sending another letter. Spencer deserved to know everything, especially about his daughter who was the spitting image of him in almost every way.

“Can I talk to her?” I agreed, which seemed to surprise my daughter. I think she thought I’d be furious enough with her to not let her speak to him. She would still be getting many privileges taken away from her, just not this one as it was my fault she never knew her father in the first place. My fingers shook even more as I moved to click the speaker button so he could hear her speak.

“Hi- dad.” They spoke for a while, while I took the back seat, barely interjecting. They both deserved every ounce of father and daughter time that I had deprived them from throughout the years. My chest did feel lighter now that I had told him, now that my daughter was getting the chance to know him. Hearing them laugh and giggle with each other almost immediately only cemented how much she was her father’s daughter.

When the phone was handed back to me, after seemingly hours of talking (Garcia had even popped in a few times to get me more coffee) Spencer asked,“Can you stay in Quantico till I get back?”

I smiled, happy that I’d finally be able to see and remember his face again after all this time, “We’ll be here waiting, it’s time you meet your daughter in person.”

Ask Me Anything

—

Tag lists (fill out this form to join): If your url has a strike through it means tumblr won’t let me tag you- check in your settings if you allow yourself to be searchable

All works: @shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar @s1utformgg @boxofsparklingmuses @multixfandomwriter @takeyourleap-of-faith

All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99 @princesssmooshie @peterpanouat @anaagraceeberr @ashcakes1918 @reid-me-a-story @cosmic-psychickitty

Spencer Reid/CM: @calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes @onlyhereforthefanfics @jareauswifey @princesssmooshie @peterpanouat

Letters Series: (Group of Unlinked fluff fics about Spencer and letters): @whoreforthebau @sierraraeck @90spumkin

[fizzingwizard]

Episode 13! I don’t have all that much to say about it. But there were three things in particular I really liked!

Sorato moments! It may be small (I mean, they’re kids and they’ve known each other for like a day), but no one will be able to say Sora and Yamato didn’t have any development in this season!

Sora Getting Shit Done! She’s as cool as Yamato. Scratch that, she’s cooler than Yamato. She’s honest and compassionate. She’s brave like Taichi, values her friends as much as Yamato, AND she can get along with both of them. Bahahaha.

SO MANY adorable Jou&Gomamon moments this episode. Like seriously. SO MANY.

I’ll just tack some here:

More below!

So our two groups are still separated! Jumping ahead, but next week we’ll see MegaKabuterimon, and that rounds out two episodes for each group. But that still leaves Zudomon’s appearance. Just a hunch, but my guess is we’ll see him the episode after which will be the reunion episode too. If not, I suppose the groups are gonna stay separated longer, but this is my guess.

So, once again, our kids have been in this world for Not Very Long At All. It doesn’t seem like they’ve had to stop and sleep so far, though they’ve eaten a bit. Probably it’s still the same day in digital world time o.o It’s completely plausible that they’ve been sleeping and we’re just not being told about it though. This is a kids show, next week Koushirou could be like “we’ve been walking for a week!” and we’ll just have to roll with it lol. But until that happens, I’m going with it’s been about a day and almost everyone’s easily got two evolutions under their belt. Evolving is much easier in this season - Taichi and Yamato even got a Jogress already - so it’s definitely past time to throw out old concepts of how evolving work. The kids clearly have Crests, but they don’t know what they are, which means that’s a thing we’ll be seeing in the future. In spite of that, they can evolve to higher levels. So, maybe something else is in store for them when the Crests become important. Very interesting.

We are back with the trio who’s got their shit slightly more together. Except for Jou’s stomach. Was really amused by Yamato using binoculars. I assume Sora brought them. I’m so used to Taichi’s telescope, but it only makes sense that each group should have some working gear!

Also par for the course, Yamato looking at what’s ahead while Jou’s being sick and Sora’s in between helping them both :P

They find this thing. The hive of brainwashed mecha soldier bees. The person who wrote this episode has definitely had a bad run in with suzumebachi.

As they try to escape, Jou immediately falls off Birdramon.

Me: “Oh no! Someone go help him!”

Gomamon:

Me: “NO NOT YOU”

Like I know they’re partners... but Gomamon doesn’t even have hands. xD All he can do (and all he does do!) is fall together. They’re partners so it’s not surprising, but still... Wheeeeeee!

Honestly though it is just so adorable to me how useless Jou is and how hard Gomamon tries for him... even though Gomamon has a lot more excuse for being useless. I mean, he’s made for a water habitat.

Gabumon: “Jou’s with Gomamon, so he should be okay...”

-___- You know nothing, Jon Snowmon. You know nothing about how much trouble Jou can get himself in

See!?!?!?!??!?! DOES THIS LOOK LIKE THEY’RE OKAY TO YOU, GABUMON??? EAT YOUR WORDS!!!

This is what happens when you try to too hard to make a bee cute. So overdesigned xP It’s like hitting me on the head saying “I’M CUTE, LOOK AT ME!! I’M CUTE!!!” like chill dude, it’s ok. just chill

I guess it works on Sora though, she’s as concerned for this cutie pie as she is for Jou... maybe more.

We make a quick switch to group number 2 who are finally living up to my expectations for how nuts they are. Koushirou’s connection is turbulent, to use the lingo Tumblr always pisses me off with!

Mimi offers to help. “My grandpa can get you a better one!” She... she tries.

Taichi offers to help too. “Times like this you just gotta whack it!” Koushirou looks appropriately terrorized.

I’m so relieved to know Taichi and Mimi are both still batshit.

Yamato and Sora hatch a plan to save Jou by getting themselves captured too. Honestly the show doesn’t spend enough time on the cool stuff like hatching this plan! It just happens! It def got me thinking how brave and cooperative Sora is. Like, we already know Yamato is cool, and he has more experience in the digital world than the others. But Sora just rolls with it. She’s not freaking out, she’s thinking things through, and she can help strategize. 99 Adventure was like “Girls don’t need to do things like pedal swan boats or take watch at night!” This ones like “Girls can definitely do those things! As long as they are pink when they do them!”

Jou and Gomamon arrive in the hive where they are immediately separated... and Jou is thrown out with the trash. BAHAHAHA. GEEZ this show will not ease up on Jou!!

by the way... Gabumon... ARE YOU EATING YOUR WORDS YET!?!?

Sora and Yamato make it inside and hitch a ride on Garurumon...

... They both jump like this when they need to get off so Garurumon can evolve. With jumping style like that, Sorato is a ship made n heaven.

Fuck everything I said about Gomamon working best in his water habitat, IT WAS ALL A LIE. First swimming through sand, now this. Jou has LITERALLY NO EXCUSE for being as useless as he is anymore

also Wolverfish is back, I am some day going to make one of those old geocities shrine sites just for Wolverfish

They are surrounded on all sides though, so what should we do? “Go down.” Yamato, DID YOU FORGET WE ARE IN THE AIR.

Once again Sora is A-OK with all of this! Jou’s the only one having a normal human reaction to A HOLE OPENING IN THE FLOOR OF AN AIRBORNE VESSEL

Gomamon T____T Jou would be mince meat without you

It turns out that Yamato’s shitty plan wasn’t so shitty after all, because either he and Sora talked about what they’d have to do if the couldn’t stay inside the hive, or Sora is psychic. Or just that good at cleaning up after hot-headed men. Anyway yeah Birdramon to the rescue.

For a hot second there it looked like Yamato was going to be like “We don’t have time to save those Digimon” again. Which, I thought we worked through last time, so I was confused. BUT it turns out he only wanted Sora to know he’s got her number. He’s figured out she’s not the type who can turn her back when someone needs help, even if she’s got her own priorities to think about. Sora’s selfless. Yamato clues into that. AND HE TOTALLY SUPPORTS HER <3

Urrrk can Yamato do anything that isn’t Cool

I just love the way he holds them.

Sora faces off with the hive... who’s blast causes a volcanic eruption or something!

Birdramon fights back!

It’s not very effective!!!

Now as much as this is supposedly a Sora episode... she’s had some cool moments but it doesn’t feel like Her Episode as much as last week felt like Mimi’s ep, or the weeks before felt like they belonged to Taichi and Yamato. So actually, that makes it strike number two for Sora, although this episode is definitely better than episode four. It’s not fair. I’m just glad we got some new stuff for her this time, but the writers seem so determined to make her the “good girl” that they forgot character development needs to involve some stakes. So, in place of that, they just do another montage.

First Sora reflects on how useless Jou is.

Then she reflects on how hot Yamato looks when he’s totally helpless.

Then she thinks about how the two of them remind her of pitiful baby bees.

The result... Garudamon!!! Always my favorite Ultimate evolution.

It’s a laaaaaaaser battle!!!!

Yamato’s like “Holy crap I’ve got to get with this girl”

We then set up the intro for next week’s episode, with Koushirou’s computer starting to work again, though not completely. I want it to not work at ALL so Koushirou can be like “i’m no longer useful to my friends, woe is me!” and his friends can be all “Koushirou you’re my best pal no matter what!” and then he saves the day using his noggin. If it was good enough for Mimi’s grandpa it’s good enough for you.

I’m also amused to learn that in spite of apparently selling computers, Mimi’s grandpa too is an advocate of hitting them to make them work.

Agumon mimicking every adorable thing Taichi does is adorableness overload.

Taichi once again offers to smack the computer, like the Taichi of my childhood. However, he claims he’s joking. He’s a 21st century kid after all.

Agumon tells him hitting the computer will hurt his hand, so he should let Agumon do it instead T___T omg that’s the cutest thing EVER I’d give this episode ten stars for this moment alone

but ignoring adorable Taichi/Agumon and Jou/Gomamon moments, I’ll give this episode a 6.5/10. It was almost there! It really needed more Sora though! You know, the spotlight character of the week??

I just don’t feel her as convincingly as the others... which is in part intentional, I think, because that’s Sora. She doesn’t talk about her own feelings so much, she’s private, but she cares very deeply about those around her. I absolutely am with that, but I think that’s really challenging to write, and it wouldn’t bother me so much if we were getting more development in small ways for all the kids all the time. Instead the primary way is these spotlight episodes. We had them in 99 Adventure too, but there was more dialogue between the kids. Watching this episode, I had a thought like “This reminds me of a formulaic Pokemon episode.” As in, there’s someone to rescue, we rescue them, it has little to no consequence for us on a personal level and next week we won’t even mention it happened. At least this episode, they did mention Neemon’s group, to show how this is a pattern for Sora. I’m gonna cross my fingers that means Sora’s going to come out big in the future, we just gotta believe in her and wait. That being said, I’m not trying to be negative, I am also happy that we got these bits for her at all, and especially that we got it confirmed that Yamato sees through her as much as she sees through him!

Next week’s preview...

Kabuterimon: koushirou, you are helpless without your computer, never forget that!

... x’D not

Totally stoked for a Koushirou episode. I hope it kicks butt. Even if it doesn’t, we still get a good helping of my boy Koushirou. <3

[lilyshadowwriter]

Simblr Story Meme

Hiya! I’ve been tagged in the Simblr Story Meme by @wannabecatwriter, @lyrea, @lilinabesims, @goatkibble, and @twinsimskeletons. Thank youuuu and here we goooooo:

1.) How many stories are you writing?

I only have one story and that’s Different Winters, heh. Although I guess I could at least call each generation a separate story, right? Sort of...they all connect...hopefully more strongly once I finally get to writing out Generation 6. I’ve also, as you all have seen, been writing side arcs to Different Winters, such as Augustus’ and Gemma’s stories in the Gen 5 Specials. In fact, I haven’t updated the actual heiresses’ story (Joanne’s) in almost two years now yikes wtf I’m awful. I did make a promise though to return to her story after I post A&G Pt. 2 though so....I’ll get there, lol.

2.) What’s your favorite story/favorite post you’ve written?

Hmmm.....this changes over time because I feel like my writing has improved over time, but there are a couple stand outs. One would have to be Chapter 5.9: Chandelier, of Joanne’s story. Looking back I don’t know that it’s even written all that well, but it was such a monumental time in Joanne’s life...her lowest low and the crash that began the steady uphill climb into discovering her true self and reconnecting with her family after years of not speaking to them. The entire thing is a train wreck, but it did admittedly provide an impetus for change. The same goes for Chapter 4.11: Disintegrating of James’ story. Apparently I like absolute fucking train wrecks...I guess because I like following their rocky journeys of improvement afterward. It’s heartening, to be honest. 

The other, and genuinely my most loved favorite, is So, What Are We Now? Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, the flashbacks I did to share Augustus and Isaac’s story. I’m sincerely proud of the writing I did here, to the point where if people read nothing of my story except this, I’d still be happy, lol. It all flowed so naturally....and it was a story that had always existed in bits and pieces in my head that I was finally able to share and explain why Isaac’s reappearance in Augustus’ life was such a jarring event...and why it continues to be so. Plus the dynamic and conversations in this part....ugh, I just love it all. Usually I look back at chapters and cringe at certain parts, but not this one, and that makes it stand out from the rest.

3.) Who do you personally ship in your story?

Mmmmmm, I can’t currently say without providing potential spoilers. How about looking at the past then, yes? Yes.

After much deliberation, I would have to say James and Candice remain a favorite. Their relationship endured some of the toughest challenges that a relationship could experience and it was painful and turbulent and scary and yet Candice’s faith in James- her unconditional love and unrelenting determination, and James’ fight to be a better man for both her and his daughter, created beauty out of what many would have considered to be a hopeless situation. It’s one of those stories that in all likelihood should have, and often does, end disastrously, but not in this case, and for that, they will always have my love.

The other, is teen!Augustus and teen!Isaac. What they had was so soft, and genuine, and deep--a mutual care and adoration for one another that perhaps was in many ways puppy love, but was also undeniably true and pure. They just...loved one another. All of it, everything. And this sweet, lovely thing was completely torn apart by fear and hatred and that never fails to make me tear up...like I’m doing now, lol. Ugh. It was special, precious...forever lost....and will always have a place in my heart too.

4.) Who do you think has had the most character development in your story (bonus: why)?

Ehhhhhh *clicks tongue* So....this one’s a little difficult in the sense that I feel like most of my characters are fairly well developed? I have a lot of doubts and hang-ups about many aspects of my writing, but I feel like character development is one of my strengths...a stand-out among a lot of things that I feel need improving, lol. That being said....I suppose I would have to say Isaac, only because in the original drafting of Gus’ story, he was, ultimately, a character to be forgotten. That is, he had a very specific role to play, and then that was it, much like Hannah in Joanne’s story. Hannah was important in Joanne’s life when she was there, but once Joanne cast her aside she really wasn’t ever heard from again. In many ways. this was the original role Isaac was meant to play as well, but his character took on about a thousand more facets than I ever expected or even intended him to. In fact, his character grew so strong that it changed the landscape of Gus’ story completely, to the point where now, I’m not even sure of its ultimate outcome. I have a few more scenes that I do have planned--things that I know are going to happen...but from there....I’m not so sure. It depends on the characters themselves and what they will do.

5.) Tag 3 story simblrs that you’ve been reading!

Uhhhhhhh, so most of the stories I read are on WordPress. Also everyone I do read has pretty much already been tagged? I’LL JUST SAY WHO I’VE RECENTLY CAUGHT UP ON AND REALLY ENJOYED, OKAY? Lol. SO, that would be @lyrea​‘s Unbridled (WP), @photosimthesis​‘ Rose Legacy (WP), and @simmreaper​‘s Re:Vamp (WP and Tumblr). There are others, but those are the stories I most recently caught up on, so there we go! Check them out. They’re all awesome ^_^ <3

[how2to18]

PETER COVIELLO’S RECENT MEMOIR, Long Players, has proven to be excellent readerly company across this summer. In it, Coviello tells the story of his divorce and its aftermath, his ongoing and inventive love for his ex-stepdaughters, and how his relationship to music has threaded through it all, helping him remake himself. In some ways, the book is a departure for an academic literary critic — it is raw and deeply personal. But the book is also of a piece with Coviello’s critical work on forms of intimacy, and as such, it connects critical and personal writing in a really inventive way. I recently sat down with Pete at the wonderful independent Brooklyn bookshop Books Are Magic to discuss taking the leap from academic writing into trade writing, his process, friendship, and more. What follows is an edited reprise of our conversation.

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SARAH BLACKWOOD: Okay, Pete, to set the weepy, emo tone of the evening, I wanted to tell a quick story about the beginning of our friendship. If you recall, when we first met, you were in the thick of the heartbreak you chronicle in this book, and I was still in graduate school. But, to bracket for a moment what was going on with you at the time — promise, we’ll get back to it! — I just want to say that from my side of things, meeting you at that moment was sort of life-changing? Like there I was, a gnarled and unhappy student, certain that I would never know enough, that I’d be revealed as a fraud at any moment, just in the thick, miasmic forest of graduate school neurosis, and when you arrived it was like, Oh. Oh! Here is a way to be! A super smart, accomplished intellect who was also somehow raw and open and occupying his intellect in this sort of full-bodied way. And so in those last months, as we started to become friends, something also happened in my writing. It opened up. That’s a very real gift you gave me! What is more, I recognized it at the time. I recently went digging through old files (horror!) to remind myself what I wrote about you in the acknowledgments (lol) to my dissertation (lol), and this is what I found: “Peter Coviello showed up in Chicago at just the right time to remind me that writing and talking about literature should be a joyful endeavor.”

[Pause for Pete to quietly weep for a minute.]

Now of course, I see that what I took for joyful openness was coming from real heartbreak. But in reading this book now, almost 10 years later, it really struck me, the extent to which you were still able to give — as a friend, as a scholar, as a community member — even while you were completely losing your shit. 

So, Pete: How did you do that?! Or maybe that’s an impossible question, so how about we start here: memoir is sometimes derided as a solipsistic, naval-gazing genre, but I found this book just the way I have always found you to be, which is very other oriented. You know, obviously this book is radically peopled — it includes a lot of friends and characters strewn all over the world — and I wonder if you could speak a little to how the writing process brought you in touch with yourself but also with all these other people, and maybe you could speak a little to how you see personal writing working in that way: as a way to both look inward and outward at the same time?

PETER COVIELLO: Well, Sarah, the first thing to say is: That’s a ridiculously moving story! That I was in any kind of heartening relation to anybody during that queasy, ill-spirited time is basically an amazement — let alone to you, whom I remember because you were so ready to get a drink, and to introduce me to your people, and to fall to cheerful fighting about, like, Henry James heroines. You helped to nurture in me the fragile little belief that there might yet be worlds, new worlds, left for me to inhabit, there in the aftermath of the collapse of the intimate world anchored by my marriage.

So this is just a really kind thing to say. One of the nicest responses I’ve received to the book was when someone at a reading said, “It seems like you were loved extremely well by your friends” — which was of course gratifying, because, just as you suggest, a lot of the book comes out of this sense of startled, dumbstruck gratitude. I was cared for, in those bad days, in ways so far beyond what I was able to return, even marginally, in terms of attentiveness or affection or really any of the rudiments of grown-up friendship. I think the book got a lot better, over the course of its drafting, when it ceased to be a meticulous accounting of these long inward seasons of sorrow and became something closer to what it is now, which is a kind of love letter. Or, more truthfully, several love letters, sewn together into one: a love letter to all the people who, with an extraordinary delicacy and patience, loved me back into a belief in the happier possibilities of being alive; to the little girls, my suddenly ex-stepdaughters, who sustained our closeness with these fully amazing everyday feats of ingenuity and openheartedness; and, of course, to all those songs — songs and songs and songs — which pretty much never stopped offering me the sensation, if not quite the fact, of better, brighter eventualities. They kept offering, I mean, a way to feel tethered to the world, and to all these beloved people.

Another way to say it, I suppose, is that writing like this — “personal writing,” or whatever we want to call it, became for me a way to think, with some sustained focus, both about gratitude and how to be in relation to it. It occurred to me, late in the compositional day, that a good deal of what those turbulent years entailed for me was figuring out how to get a handle on the stark surprise of being loved — by friends, but not only by friends — when everything inside me was shouting out, pretty convincingly, that if what happened to me showed anything at all, it was that I was not, finally, lovable. To anybody.

So, I mean, loving people back toward a mislaid belief in the ampler possibilities of being alive? I still think that’s an extraordinary human transaction. I should say too that it’s one I would not know half as much about without, oh, many, many years immersed in queer theory, and for that matter in the worlds of queer sociability out of which that scholarship grows. I think part of me wanted to write a book about that, which meant tending to all those passages of sustaining friendship.

One thing I really loved about this book’s accounting of heartbreak and friendship was its timeline: it bounces around, even as it tells a roughly chronological story, and reflects how emotional life so often fails to follow a narrative of progress.

Can you talk a little bit about how you found the experience of trying to map or chart a set of feelings, like how to put into narrative coherence the way that heartbreak and depression don’t follow a ladder-step of progress?

Oh man, I like what you say about the, as it were, competing chronologies of heartbreak: the actual one, where you travel from city to city and make new friends and do your job and such, and the emotional one, where you’re all over the fucking map. That was certainly my experience of that subspecies of plummeting misery: “One night is lovely, the next is brutal,” as Liz Phair puts it, with enviable concision. So having to map those two very different trajectories — that was a challenge! — but it was also, in the end, a fun kind of writerly challenge.

Here’s a quick way of saying what I mean, which comes with a little story. When I first drafted the book, it was much longer, and it had a pretty different trajectory. When I finished that initial draft, I was so psyched. I gave it to my agent in this state of amped-up pride and eager expectation, and he read it, line by line by line by line, and — total hero that he is — he was like, “Yeah man, this is so great, nicely done, good work! Also: It’s really wrong.” And what was wrong was that it did not move — it was just, in that first draft, one long, wearying account of the intricacies of, you know, being devastated by a divorce. And what Chris said, and what even more amazingly he said in such a way that I could hear it and not just be fucking demolished by it, was: “Ultimately, your sadness is just not that interesting.”

Writers! This is spectacularly good counsel! It was, of course, devastating (I think part of me was like, “No dude, there is nothing more interesting than my prolix sadness!”), but it had the great effect of making me think about exactly what you’re talking about: how to plot the book, according to what arcs of development, and across what grids of circumstance.

This did two things that ended up being just hugely important to me. It forced me to back away from that story of, like, Woe Woe Woe Is Me!, and, in turn, to get enough room to see a very different story than the one I’d been telling. That was the story of how much I had been involved in the making of that terrible period of sorrow — how much I had done to contribute to it, to make it happen, and to sustain it. We are back here, I think, to shame, because one of the things the book is finally and most largely about, I think, is its protagonist’s terrible, blinding narcissism — his eager, grandiose belief that he could (for instance) just love the sorrow right out of anybody. Having to rewrite the emotional order of the book forced me to grapple with that and to see that part of what the book might be about is the labor of unlearning that kind of self-aggrandizing narcissism, that garden-variety “my love can redeem all hurt” sort of dumb masculinity.

Because I mean how better to unlearn your narcissistic grandiosity than by, oh, writing a memoir?

Chris’s insistence that I needed to rethink the plotting of the book — along with that of my wonderful editor, Elda — also brought home, at last, the thing they’d been trying to tell me for quite a while. This was just that the book wasn’t really about my sadness, or my loss, or whatever. The best version of the book, they kept saying, was going to be about the girls, and they were right.

The girls! Pete, I say with some authority: you are an excellent writer of children and parents (for example: “We were people with children standing mannequinlike and laden with mittens and scarves and snacks among others like ourselves in humid waiting rooms,” or the concision of describing children as “by mystifying turns noisy and silent.”) I’m curious: Did you keep notebooks while the girls were children? How did you muster all that rich detail about a time pretty long past?

Dude, of course I kept notebooks when the girls were little! This I did for no better reason than that I was so stunned, so day-by-day overwhelmed, by how fucking bad I was at being in a parental role! I was forever failing in patience, in equanimity, in wisdom, in all of what I took to be the minimum requirements of parenthood. Only later did I come to understand that this feeling — the feeling of perpetual and abject failure — was not due to my being a stepparent, or not solely. (Come to find out, the proper name for that feeling of swamping incompetence is: Parenthood!) That everyday sense of being involved in something I wasn’t good enough for, and the volatile cocktail of anger and shame that went with it, made for something of the, let’s say, vividness of those early days.

The other side of it was this insinuating knowledge that, even at my most frustrated and fearful, I could never quite manage to keep wholly hidden from myself: the simple knowledge that the girls were, in the ordinariest ways, fucking amazing — hilarious, weird, each her own little cosmos, and also just astonishingly loving little persons. As I think the book tries to describe, this was just one of the adult facts of existence for which I was astonishingly unprepared.

Right, right: the deep failure, and unpreparedness, and improvisation of parenting! So the book is very much about improvised family — and it was released in June for Father’s Day. As you know, I am pretty singularly obsessed not just with writing about motherhood but also with how our culture treats writing about motherhood. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve observed from your conversations and reviews, et cetera, about how this book is being received as writing about parenthood?

I wish I better knew how the book was being received in terms of parenthood. I’ll say that one perpetually awful thing about the way our culture treats writing about motherhood — and this is something I’ve begun to learn how to be better attentive to, not least by reading you — is that fatherhood can very easily come to be assessed with the ridiculous absolving praiseful hyperforgivingness reserved for, y’know, dudes, or at least bougie white dudes. It is what my friend Katherine calls, perfectly, “the low bar of masculinity.” If, for that reason alone, it seemed to me important to stick pretty closely, in the book, to shame, to not let it dissipate, to not dismiss it as just the interior white noise proper to the rigors of parenthood. Because, I mean, if there’s anything men could stand to get in fucking relation to, it is shame — and by that I mean, precisely, getting accustomed to the practice of not dismissing it, of not being a shut-down kind of defensive. Of being willing to actually do the grinding work of parsing it out.

As you know from spending years talking about it with me, a lot of what I felt about the kind of parent I had managed to be was shame. One of the things that happens in the book, I think, is that the protagonist tries to figure out what parts of that shame were actually misapprehending — self-punishing misreadings — and what parts were totally, utterly earned. That is at least one of what you could call the “plots” of the book. And, as it turns out, I came by a lot of that shame honestly.

But this is less about the girls and more about, oh, everything else I was terrible at!

Well, one thing you are not terrible at is loving music and making mixtapes! What are some of your favorite pop songs/artists right now, here in the summer of seemingly the final year of the American experiment?

Oh, man, there’s just so much great music, you know? I’ll just say two things, both of which riff a bit from this little piece I got to write for Largehearted Boy, where you make a mix based on your book and then annotate it. First, we are fully immersed in this astonishing era of black pop genius: D’Angelo, Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe, Anderson .Paak, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Chance, Frank Ocean for the love of god! And that is a list even I can give you, even someone with such pathetically middle-aged and basic taste as mine. Also, as my friend Mark says, the daughters of indie rock are bringing it home: bands like Girlpool and Charly Bliss and Vagabon and Big Thief, and dream-pop’ers like Japanese Breakfast and electro-folk outfits like Sylvan Esso �� kids who probably grew up listening to records of the bands you and I were seeing at the Lounge Ax in 1994, or whatever, because that’s what their parents were listening to. They’re heartlifting.

And because we — or at least I — am fully and unmaskably middle aged, I might as well just admit that for a long time now the girls and I have reversed roles. I do not, categorically do not, give them music they haven’t heard. They’re the ones with their ears to the ground. (Which is how I came to know at all about Earl Sweatshirt, Sylvan Esso, Kali Uchis, and even — as you know — Chance himself.)

Okay, one last (big) question. Are you happy now? Pete, I know that you have found love, but do you want say a bit about what that’s meant to you?

Oh, Sarah. One thing to say is: You have been very patient with me, and very loving, over many years! That is to say: You have listened very gamely to a lot of lovelorn narration.

I guess I’ll say that the combined process of writing this book and falling in heart-swept love again — it was edifying. On the one hand, a lot of the book, as I’ve said, is about reckoning with all the ways that I was really, truly not at all good enough — however earnest and heartfelt I was in my efforts — at loving the people I loved. So one feeling is, like, Do better! Don’t entangle the person you so love with your own grandiose fantasies about yourself! (Or at least not too many of them…) Try to love the people you cherish a little less stupidly: that, for me, is one interior moral of the book.

But the other, I guess happier, side of it is different. At our reading in Brooklyn, one of the audience members said something that about knocked me over. It was something like, “There’s a lot of harm in the book, and a lot of sorrow — but not a lot of cruelty.” And I needed a minute to, like, take that in. What I suppose I hope he was saying was that, if the book is any evidence — and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t — I’d managed to free myself of the seductive story, the great narcotic fantasy, that I had been wronged, treated with callous disregard, or whatever. God knows that is how I thought about things for a stubbornly long time. But it was not a way of telling the story of those years that really did anything good for me — or for the girls, or for anyone.

So when he said that — you remember! — I kind of got teary. Because I thought, Oh jesus, maybe all the sharper edges of what happened — fully fucking 10 years ago — maybe that is, at last, as much as can be hoped, a thing that is behind me.

It made the kind of happiness I’m standing inside right now feel, suddenly, spacious. And what could be happier than that you were right there beside me as it happened? And that we’d head out to the bar to talk about it?

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Sarah Blackwood has written about gender, popular culture, motherhood, and bodies for the New Republic, Slate, The Hairpin, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. With Sarah Mesle, she is co-editor of Avidly and the Avidly Reads book series, forthcoming from NYU Press.

The post Encores of Love and Listening: Sarah Blackwood and Peter Coviello Discuss “Long Players” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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