#this gallery was super empty too when I came which was really nice | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

winterrose527 · 3 years ago

Note

have you done an Ella - museum curator, Robb - investor on a tour work??

Ummmm no I had not! And wow was this one cathartic to write. It came out way longer than expected because this is a subject near and dear to my heart...

Thank you for this prompt!!

***

She was so sick of this shit.

Over a year of it. Ever since the governor’s order in April 2020. Back then she’d almost believed it was just a blip, a couple of weeks. A vacation, almost.

But then the ban on gatherings. The shutdowns. Finally the masks.

Every museum in the country had shut its doors along with libraries, movie theaters, and every other place desperate parents could take their children on a rainy Saturday.

Theirs had been luckier than most. An endowment a few years prior, which had been earmarked but not mandated for an expansion had been used to keep the lights on and the staff fed - literally. Their programming had gone virtual and understandably attendance had dropped but not entirely – thanks to a few local artists that had generously donated their time for a last minute plug.

Ever since restrictions had lifted, the crowds had returned somewhat. A rainy spring and summer had helped, but they were nowhere near their ‘pre-pandemic’ levels (and with the Delta variant on the rise she wasn’t super comfortable with the term ‘post-pandemic’ to describe their current state of affairs).

She wouldn’t say that today though.

No, today everything would be rosy – not just the botanical gardens that abutted the museum and had been started in 1853 – no, 1854.

Not that she imagined the potential donor would be fact checking her but nevertheless there was no room for error. She needed to represent the museum well. Her colleagues were counting on her – not to mention the collection itself depended on her.

The board had decided at its most recent meeting if they didn’t get an influx of donations within this quarter they were going to sell off a few pieces from the collection.

There was nothing sadder to a museum than deaccessioning. The staff all loved and protected the collection, and they truly felt the impact they and it had on the community. Myrcella loved to walk through the galleries on Thursday afternoons to see the regulars who’d come to visit the paintings like old friends of theirs, stopping by to say hello to a Baroque oil here or an Impressionist watercolor there.

So if schmoozing yet another prospective donor was what it took to mean that Mr. Poole’s favorite still-life stayed put for his bi-weekly Wednesday morning visit, then she would schmooze. She would schmooze Sansa Stark like her life depended on it.

She knew Sansa Stark sort of. It was the sort of thing where pre-pandemic they had run into each other at half a dozen events every year and always had a lovely chat and discussed getting together and then never did. The North was a small world and they ran in similar circles. But they weren’t friends.

Still, she was her best bet. From the wealthiest and most philanthropic family in the North, of course she was.

And she had to deliver.

The board had all made it clear that they expected results, and it had been suggested that really Myrcella Baratheon shouldn’t have such a hard time finding donors. But all her usual suspects had come to her with their own sob stories full of please tell me you won’t shut your doors but without any promise of relief, and the people she knew down south – the sort that profited from the world being in such dire straits had no interest in a little regional museum. No matter how much she marketed it as a hidden jewel.

To them, there was little worth in a jewel hidden, and they had no interest in having their act of charity buried under the northern snows.

So Sansa Stark was it.

She smoothed her dress, chosen carefully for the occasion. Sansa was always impeccably dressed and favored ladylike, tailored dresses for daytime, just as Myrcella did. Today, which had turned out to be a gorgeous one, she’d chosen a pale blue scallop trim knit dress, her grandmother’s wristwatch her only accessory. Feminine but appropriate. More comfortable than the clingier dresses she only ever so occasionally wore when taking around a male potential benefactor.

“Good luck,” Gilly, their glum registrar said as she raised her wrist to her nose to make sure she could still smell the scented oil she’d spread there that morning.

“Thanks baby,” Myrcella sighed, “Lunch from that naughty salad place when I’m done? My treat?”

Gilly smiled at that, “My treat if you get her.”

“Oh, now the stakes are really high,” she teased and blew Gilly a kiss and walked through the halls.

She felt eyes on her as she went. It was a small, tight-knit team, and it made it all the harder every time she received a sheepish regret. If she couldn’t succeed, one of them might lose their job if the board couldn’t decide what to sell. Even if they could, depending on how long this lasted.

Game face, Baratheon.

She took a deep breath and then smiled for fifteen seconds. She let it drop, knowing that it would still be in her eyes when she walked outside and it felt a little more genuine when her heels clacked along the gorgeous marble floor.

Walking over to the security desk, the smile reappeared on her face.

“Morning Roddy,” she grinned.

“Good morning to you Miss Myrcella,” Rodrick greeted her, “You see the game last night?”

“You’ve known me for four years,” she noted, “When in all of that time have I ever seen the game?”

He chuckled, “There was that one time in 2018.”

“Oh no, I totally lied about that,” she assured him, shrugging, “I wanted you to think I was cool.” She then looked around the empty lobby, “No Miss Stark?”

He grimaced, “Not yet. Traffic is back though, folks still aren’t used to it.”

She nodded, picking at a non-existent thread on her dress and looked around. Her eyes narrowed in on something and she crossed the lobby and picked up a tiny scrap of paper, crumbling it in her hand and then walking back over and tossing it in the trash behind Roddy’s desk.

“I’ve been sitting here for two hours, didn’t see it,” he noted.

She smiled, “Well you’ve been doing less important things like making sure no one robs the place.”

He opened his mouth to say something to her but then his gaze was directed behind her, “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t open until 11 o’clock on Tuesdays.”

“I sort of have an appointment,” the man said.

She knew that voice. She’d heard it before. In a coat closet at Alys Karstark’s birthday party. At the next table over at a charity even in 2019. Deep, stubbornly Northern, as unyielding as Valyrian steel.

She felt her palms sweat and forced herself not to rub them on her dress, rubbing them together instead and then turning around with a bright smile.

“You’re not Sansa Stark,” she greeted him.

He grinned sheepishly, though she wasn’t sure this man had ever had occasion to be sheepish in his entire life, “Afraid not. Myrcella, right? We met at that thing – that um… save the…whatsits.”

She giggled, and she heard the sound echoing garishly on the marble, “I believe that evening we were saving the seals. Or the… tulips, maybe.”

His smile spread slowly across his face, a dimple marking its end like an exclamation point, “Well we did our part even if we can’t remember what it was, I’m Robb Stark.”

She liked that he introduced himself. He’d done so every time they’d met, as though he in no way expected her to remember him. Sansa had done it the first five or so. Must have been how they were raised.

On the other hand, she’d been raised to act as though someone was foolish for not knowing who she was, introducing herself had been something she’d had to learn when she moved north, like parallel parking and salting her stoop.

Her hand extended and his met it, taking hers in his larger one and shaking it firmly as he looked her in the eyes briefly and then her lips slightly longer before purposefully going back to her eyes, “Myrcella Baratheon, and I remember you, Mr. Stark.”

“Well if that were true you’d remember I prefer Robb,” he noted, releasing her hand.

She shrugged, leaning forward conspiratorially, “Old habits. Can I get you something to drink before we begin our tour?”

“No thank you, I’m fine,” he shook his head.

She nodded, “Well it’s beautiful out now, why don’t we start in the botanical gardens. There’s been a bumper crop this year, we recently had the Cerwyn wedding here, did you attend?”

He fell into step next to her and said, “No, I didn’t. I was meant to but they reduced it to just family.”

She nodded, “Right, seems to be happening quite a bit. Will you do the same for your wedding?”

He stopped walking briefly and before she could stop too he had started again, “No… uh, rather than reduce the guest list we decided not to have it at all. We called the engagement off in January.”

“I’m so sorry!” she internally stabbed herself in the throat, “I didn’t know.”

He shrugged, “The nice thing about there not being any events over the past year is that the press didn’t really get wind of it.” Then stopped abruptly, “Not that… it’s not like that makes up for the past year or anything.”

She laughed, “Don’t worry, I know what you meant. I am sorry though, about your engagement.”

“As am I,” he agreed, “But it’s for the best. We parted as friends. Had we gotten married, I’m not sure we could have done so, so I’m grateful for that, and for her.”

A gentleman.

So many men played the part. Opening doors, buying flowers. So few of them realized that manners mattered very little when they were offered without grace.

“That’s lovely,” she noted, pleased for once not to have to lie.

It was a gorgeous day, a perfect seventy-nine degrees and clear blue skies. As though they’d understood the importance of the occasion, the Phlox stood proudly in battle formation and the scent of honeysuckle surrounded them.

“Sansa wanted me to apologize for missing your meeting,” Robb noted.

“I hope nothing’s the matter?” she asked.

A grin overtook his face, “No nothing at all. She’s in labor.”

She smiled, grabbing his forearm briefly. They both looked down at her hand on it and she pulled it back as gingerly as she could.

“That’s wonderful,” she told him, “Her second, right?”

He nodded, “A girl. And I’ve convinced her out of the name Corona.”

She chuckled, “Oh come now, you could call her Corrie for short.”

“And her parents idiots for long,” he noted. Then told her, “They weren’t really going to call her Corona.”

She smiled, “And here I was about to tip off the press…”

He smirked, “Narrow miss, then.” He looked around, “So. Flowers.”

“Not just flowers,” she pointed out, “We have a community garden to the left and down that lane local beekeepers keep their hives.”

“My mistake,” he allowed with a close-lipped smile.

That smile annoyed her. It was the same one she’d heard in the voice of every southern donor she’d called when they’d offered her good luck with her little country museum.

It was the smile someone gave her when she’d already lost.

“Perhaps we should go inside,” she noted, “I can show you our contemporary wing which we’ve recently devoted to elevating female and underrepresented artists. Or perhaps that’s a bit too avant-garde for you. Would you like to see our hall of armor and weaponry? I believe we have a few pieces that your ancestors left on one battlefield or another.”

“I’m sorry,” he noted, rubbing his jaw, “I told Sansa we should just cancel this meeting but she insisted.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Stark –“

“Robb,” he corrected her.

“No, I’m addressing Mr. Stark right now,” she argued, all of the frustration and helplessness of the past few months bubbling up inside of her, “May I ask what exactly it is about this that you find amusing? Is it the painting that we’re going to have to sell so that it can end up in someone’s climate controlled storage unit and never looked at again? Or is it the leaky roof? Perhaps the pay cut we asked all senior employees to take? Or how about the summer interns who had gone through a rigorous hiring process only to be told we couldn’t take them on at all? I certainly hope it’s not the seniors who used to come here for their Saturday afternoon watercolor classes which we had to cancel because we didn’t have anything to pay the instructor even though it would have been the perfect activity for them because it is outdoors and safe. Or maybe it’s the after-school programs you find so laughable…”

“I’m not laughing,” he pointed out. “But you’ll forgive me if I take your righteousness with a grain of salt.”

“I’m not sure that I will, actually,” she argued.

“No?” he asked, “Well let’s talk about those seniors? Don’t you think that funding is better spent ensuring they have free and safe access to the vaccination that can actually save their lives? Or what about those kids? Sure, the after-school program is great, but how about providing computers to allow them to do remote learning? Now I’m sorry if you have to lose one of a thousand paintings in this place, but if money can be better spent giving people what they really need then I’m sorry – sell the damn thing.”

That was hard to argue with.

But not impossible.

“So you’ve drained your coffers?” she asked.

There was only room for one of them on the moral high ground and she’d always enjoyed the view.

His cheeks had turned blotchy in anger but they paled now, “Excuse me?”

“Are you in the red?” she asked, “Declaring bankruptcy? Let’s not go that far - Taking out loans? Leveraging assets?”

His jaw clenched, revealing a muscle in his left cheek that might have been attractive if she wasn’t about to rip his head off.

“No,” he noted, “But my family’s company and my family have given an exceptional amount this year already.”

“Well,” she pointed out, “It has been an exceptional year already.”

“Are you always this haughty with potential donors?” he asked, stepping ever so slightly closer to her.

A flash in her mind of his hand ghosting across the back of her neck as he secured her coat over her shoulders. That smell.

“Never,” she admitted, stepping ever so slightly towards him, “But you’re not a potential donor, are you? And tell me, is it really because you don’t think it’s worthwhile or because it doesn’t sound worthwhile?”

His face contorted in anger, “You think we’re giving so that people will write songs about us? We want this country back on its feet. We want to return to normal and if we can’t do that, we want to make sure to give people as comfortable an existence until it reverts on its own. Tell me, Miss Baratheon, can you actually find fault in that?”

She shook her head, “No, I can’t.” He looked surprised and she shrugged, “It’s a flawless argument. Just an incomplete one. Giving an exceptional amount right now isn’t enough. You have to give until it hurts, because you can. It is wonderful, exceptional, heroic, to be doing all that you have done so far. But what comes next? What comes after? What happens when the dust settles? When things open? When we get things under control? What happens when people are ready to return to what was before and none of it is left because it wasn’t deemed essential. Because it’s just flowers and amateur beekeepers and pretty watercolors? I understand that we are not on the top of the list and we shouldn’t be. But we should be on the list. We need to do more than survive, Robb. There are things apart from us that we need to endure. Things we need to protect.”

His mouth twitched at that.

“I’m sorry to say I don’t have time to see the armor,” he told her.

She felt the defeat trickle through her veins slowly.

She held out her hand, “Thank you for letting me rant at you.”

He shook it once again, narrowing his eyes at her, “Something tells me you’ve still got some left in the tank. I’d quite like to hear it. Have dinner with me tonight and convince me.”

It was happening to all of her girlfriends. After a year in isolation, their ability to detect a creep from a mile away had withered. She hadn’t thought that hers had too. He’d seemed like one of the good ones.

She pulled her hand away, “That’s not the way I do business, Mr. Stark.”

His eyes widened in horror, “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t get to make these decisions.”

“You’re the CEO,” she pointed out.

“Yes I am but Sansa insisted on inserting a clause into her contract that she gets final say over any philanthropic decisions,” he sighed, “I literally am not even allowed to choose the location of a book drive.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that, a tiny bit of hope bubbling inside of her, “So when you said you should have cancelled the meeting…”

“It’s because Sansa’s already decided that we will be giving a donation, she wanted to discuss the structure of it with you �� you know whether you’d prefer a lump sum, or whether you want it in increments, if you wanted it to be public to inspire other donors or whether you wanted it to be private so that they couldn’t use it as an excuse not to give…” he waved his hand, “She’s better at the specifics and I’m sure she’ll be calling you in between contractions to fine tune them.”

She laughed, “Please tell her not to. A pledge is more than enough to take to my board, we can map out the nitty gritty whenever she or whomever will be replacing her in the interim has time.”

He nodded, “You’ll have them within the week.”

She was about to thank him but the words caught in her mouth, “So wait a second… did you just wind me up for the sake of it?”

He grinned, a chuckle present in his voice though it hadn’t yet broken, “I’d like to point out that it took very little to wind you up.”

She laughed, because he was right and admitted, “It’s been a tough year.”

He nodded, “For everyone. So, now that you know I have absolutely no control and can hold absolutely nothing over you… have dinner with me.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I enjoy arguing with you,” he told her, then grinned sheepishly, “And because I lied. Sansa told me that I could cancel the meeting and I insisted on coming because I wanted to see you. The bad thing about this year is that there were no events where I could have a chance of bumping into you…”

“Oh that’s the bad thing about this year?” she asked.

“Well,” he grinned, then did a scarily good impression of her, “Maybe it shouldn’t be at the top of the list, but it should be on the list.”

#fanfiction #modern au #robbcella #fluff #prompt

12 notes · View notes

swiftlymoniquesblog · 4 years ago

Text

Safe House- Tom Felton x Reader: Chapter 2

A/N: Hello friends! I’m so sorry I haven’t updated anything in so long; life has been CRAZY! But guess what? Yours truly just finished up all her training at the Police Academy so I am now fully a 9-1-1 dispatcher (or 0-0-0 for my Australian friends or 9-9-9 for my UK friends!) In our spare time between calls, as long as we’re still available to take calls, we can do pretty much whatever we want so I hope that means I can still write and update! Unfortunately, I do have to work on Christmas Day this year but I’m still excited for the day!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday and I hope 2021 will be 1000000 times better than 2020! And don’t worry, this isn’t the last holiday update I have up my sleeve! ;)

Xxx M

Warnings: FLUFF, pining, longing, Tom being super adorable!

Word Count: 4,500

Previous Chapter| Holiday Masterlist| Masterlist of all Masterlists

Even though you believed you were going to be in some serious trouble when you got back to work, you were glad you stepped into that car. You were Tom's assistant and he requested your help in a task, so you weren’t really breaking any rules, right? And Tom said you were still working and that he would clear all this up with Mr. Harrington, so why were you still nervous? Was it because you left the property of your place of work still in the clock? Or was it because you were sitting with a rather attractive man inside his car and trusting that he wouldn’t try anything weird, like kidnapping you? Whatever the reason may be, you couldn’t ignore the feeling that you seemed to be taking a ‘leap of Faith’ with going with Tom, yet it all felt right. The subtle sound of Christmas music came from the car's radio and the heat from the vents provided a warming feeling deep within you. It surprised you to know that he had chosen to play Christmas music because you assumed with his schedule, holidays weren’t as important anymore. However, that proved to be untrue as a certain sparkle appeared in his eyes when he pulled into a parking spot, he jumped out of the car and rushed over to your side to help you out.

“Come on love, we have a lot to do if we want to make that tree look less sad!” He exclaims and tugs on your arm, much like a child would do with a parent. You laughed at the tall man, who beamed with a bright smile on his lips, as you struggled to keep up.

“What should we get first?!” He says, enthusiastically to you.

“Maybe more ornaments?” You suggest and his excitement only grows.

“Yes! And then we should get garland to wrap around the ornaments! And the presents!” He bounces on his toes, ever so slightly, but you notice it and think to yourself, how can a 33-year-old be this excited?

You follow him over to a section of the hobby store that was entirely dedicated to Christmas. Shelves were lined with garland, ornaments, lights, light-up statues, everything you could think of to make the holiday one to remember. Both you and Tom began pulling things off the shelves, anything to make his hotel room look more festive for his guests. A part of you wished you were able to be there to enjoy some of these decorations but you knew you were just ‘the help’ so you kept that thought to yourself. When your shopping cart was fully loaded to the rim, you decided to check out. Reaching into your purse for your wallet, you pulled out some cash but Tom put his hand out, indicating you to stop.

“Oh, don’t be silly love, I got this. This is my hotel room we’re decorating and this was my idea, so I’ll pay for it,” He says.

“Yeah, but it is my place of work so it’s only fair I pitch in,” you fight back but it proves to be useless when the total rings up and he already had a credit card inserted into the bottom of the reader.

“Maybe next time,” he shoots you a wink, causing your cheeks to redden before he slips the card out of the reader and back into his wallet. You help grab the bags and load them back into the cart as you head back out to the car. The drive back to the resort was quiet, aside from small talk, which was rather pleasant. Speaking with Tom in a quiet setting was beautiful and calming, something a lot of people don’t get to enjoy if you weren’t in his inner circle. A part of you was felt like any other fan, excited about being in an intimate setting with him, but the other part of you knew you were just doing your job. Gathering the bags in your hands, you follow Tom back into the hotel and into the elevator, where you two were forced to stand nearly squished against each other, thanks to a large number of guests flocking to the car before the doors shut. You felt your cheeks heat up at the close proximity you were to Tom but kept your lips sealed and your thoughts to yourself before the doors opened to the penthouse; everyone else left you sooner.

“Thanks a lot (y/n) for helping me with this. I don’t think I could’ve done it all alone plus it’s more fun to decorate with some company,” Tom says, as he sits the last ornament on the tree. He takes a few steps away from the tree, to take in the glorious sight before him, with you coming to stand beside him.

“It’s my pleasure and this tree looks so much better now,” you comment.

“I think it is because of you, my dear. You are the one who picked out the ornaments so you made this tree this beautiful. Beautiful people tend to make everything around them beautiful too; makes sense if you ask me,” he says, smiling softly at you, eyes glistening in the lights from the tree. His bluish-grey eyes turned another color as they reflected the lights, making him that much more attractive and leaving you in a trance of sorts. It felt like a scene from a movie; no sound, no movement, just you and him staring into one another’s eyes, until being saved by a ringing phone. He swallowed and slowly backed away from you before saying,

“I should probably get that.”

You couldn’t help but frown at his departure but you had to shake the sadness away; you still had a job to do. Looking to the bedroom, you saw him pace back and forth, obviously anxious about something, so you figured that you should go. Finding a scrap piece of paper, you scribbled on it before placing it on the coffee table in the center of the room and grabbing your belongings, leaving the room without him noticing. What am I doing? I work for the guy! How could I be so stupid as to think someone like him would be remotely interested in someone like me? I’m just a hotel worker; not even a fucking manager! You scold yourself as you sliver to the elevator and ride back down to the lobby, where about a dozen or so guests were waiting to check-in. Wishing you had your old job back, you stop to watch the guests wait to check-in, excitement and wonder coming from their faces. The children were why you chose this job. The look of their little faces was the purest form of innocence that you hoped they never lost sight of, but you knew that most of them would lose that wonder as they grew older. The magic of Christmas always fled from the youngest and truest believers as time went on and it hurt your heart. Why couldn’t Christmas be as magical for adults as it was for kids? Sure, the belief of someone flying over the world and delivering presents to every child in one night was gone, but what about the feeling? The excitement you would feel seeing the tree go up or the lights outside? How about all the traditions? When did that all go away and why did it have to?

----------------------֍------------------------------------

Tom’s POV

“Sorry about that, (y/n) that was just…” I let my thoughts trail off as I notice the emptiness of the hotel room and the piece of paper folded in half on the coffee table. I go to pick it up, feeling my heart race in my chest as I read;

Tom,

Thank you for today. I had a really nice time and I’m glad you’re happy with your room now. I forgot I…. had a prior engagement I said I would be at so I had to leave; hope that’s alright. I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning with some breakfast and you can give me a rundown on all your plans for the day. I am so sorry incredibly sorry.

Have a goodnight,

Y/N

I swallowed a lump that had appeared in my throat and crumbled up the paper. So that was it? She only saw today as a requirement for her work? Is that how she saw me? Just as her boss or something? Because she was certainly more to me than just a hotel worker or an assistant; I thought she could tell. Why couldn’t she have just come and talk to me if she had a problem? Did I say something that offended her? Did she not trust me? These questions and more haunted my subconscious as I sigh and get myself ready for bed. I turn off all the lights in the living room before going to brush my teeth. I take out my phone and open my photo gallery, quickly finding the photo of (y/n) I snuck. She looked absolutely beautiful as she was holding a light display, the colors and glitter from the decoration reflecting onto her face. It just slightly illuminated her delicate features and I remember I had sucked in a breath of air, as she had taken all of mine out of my lungs. I smile to myself as I thought back to that moment and now? She’s gone and I can’t imagine why. I decided just to go to bed and I figured I would come up with a solution to getting (y/n) back sooner.

The next morning, I woke up rather early to get ready for my friends. Daniel had called me last night before (y/n) and I…well whatever almost happened with us, is irrelevant now. Finally, after being stuck in Denver for 24 hours, he had called to tell me that he and everyone else were on their way to the resort. Somehow, the former “Golden Trio,” as they were infamously known as, all had no plans and were able to fly out to Colorado for Christmas. Now, we all knew how risky this trip might go, with all of us together around who knows how many fans are staying at the resort, but we hadn’t been together in nearly 20 years. I was glad to be having some of my friends with me again. Because when you work on a project with the same people, every year for 10 years, you gain friends for life.

“Tom, good to see ya, mate!” Daniel said, when I opened the door after hearing a knock on the door.

“Hey guys, glad you all could make it! So sorry to hear about such a delay, though!” I try to sympathize with my friends but I’m sure it fell on deaf ears because they shared a similar look of annoyance as if to say, “like you have any idea what we’ve just been through.”

“Well, it was certainly a nice, warm, welcome to the State of Colorado,” Emma said, sarcasm dripping off her tone of voice.

I smile sadly, trying to avoid further awkwardness, hugging the girl as I feel her sigh, tension dissipating from her muscles.

“Wow Tom, this place is so well decorated! Did you do this by yourself?” Rupert asked as he took in the festive environment of my room.

“Oh no, of course not. I’m not good at decorating at all! I had some help,” I say, smiling at the not-so-distant memory of decorating with (y/n).

“Wait, you hired someone?” Emma asked.

“Not exactly. The resort sent me a…personal assistant of sorts,” I try to explain to the three actors who just had blank expressions on their faces.

“Why would the resort send you an assistant?” Daniel asked.

“I’m not sure, she said it was because the resort wanted to offer their services 24/7,” I explain what reason (y/n) had given me.

“Who’s she?” Rupert asks a light of cheeky demeanor glistened in his eyes.

“Oh (y/n), my assistant,” I say, a grin showing itself on my lips.

“Wow, (y/n) what a beautiful name! She must be really special,” Emma said.

“She is and I’ve only known her for 48 hours. She’s supposed to be coming back today to help out but, now I’m not sure if she’s going to,” I frown, really not sure what was going to happen with (y/n).

I wasn’t quite sure what I felt for (y/n) but I knew I wanted to get to know her better and I wanted to make sure she knew she could trust me. Just then, there was a knock on the door. My heart drops, hoping it was her.

“Good morning, Mr. Felton. I’m here for whatever you need me to help you with,” (y/n) greeted me when I opened the door. What was she saying? I told her she could call me Tom; where is this Mr. Felton crap coming from. Oh, her note. Maybe this is what she was talking about. Maybe she thought she needed to stay professional whenever she was around me; was that why she left suddenly?

“Good morning, Miss (y/l/n). Yes, please come in,” I say, standing to the side so she could come in the room.

“Thank you, well I brought some coffee and a selection of our best food for breakfast from our…” She suddenly stopped talking and she seemed to be frozen in place.

“(y/n) are you alright?” I say, standing closer to her. She was looking directly at the “Golden Trio” that was currently sitting in the living room, chatting away. They all stopped and looked up at her, and smiled at her.

“Hello, you must be (y/n) Tom’s told us all about you,” Emma says, standing from the couch where she sat with Daniel, to shake (y/n)’s hand.

She still seemed to be in some sort of trance until she saw Emma’s hand extended to her.

“Oh yes, sorry, I got a lot on my mind. It’s really nice to meet you, Miss Watson,” (y/n) kept up with the politeness.

“Oh please, call me Emma. Makes me feel so old hearing my last name first,” She says as we all chuckled.

“Well Emma, this is an honor. I am a rather a big fan of your work,” (y/n) complimented.

“Oh, thank you, that’s so sweet,” Emma says, seemingly still not believing she’s as talented as people make her up to be. Sure, she knew she was a talented actress, but she was always humble about it, ever since we were kids. One of the many things people tend to love about her.

“Hey now, you never said you were a fan of mine!” I try joking with my assistant, her cheeks turning red as she avoided my eyes set on her.

“You didn’t ask,” she said, before greeting Daniel and Rupert and telling them how much of a fan of theirs she is.

“Hold on, is this like a Harry Potter reunion?” (y/n) asked, finally letting her guard down a bit.

We all starting laughing as the resort worker just stared at us.

“You can say that,” Rupert said.

“Wow, this is, how long has it been since the four of you have been together for more than just a day” (y/n) asked.

“A good twenty years. We’ve seen each other since then obviously, but in more than just passing than really spending time together. After the eighth movie wrapped up, we all went our separate ways. And considering I was getting into some trouble with fans back home, I decided to get away from all the craziness and I wanted to invite some friends to spend some time with me, so I wouldn’t be alone, you know?” I say, giving the whole background story so (y/n) could fully understand why I was here and why the “Golden Trio” was here, too.

I could tell, just by looking at her, that she was trying hard not to freak out; she really is a big fan, then. It was rather adorable if you ask me. She was biting the corner of her bottom lip, quite harshly too, and her eyes would bounce between the three actors around the fireplace.

“Well, the Harrington Ski Resort is thrilled to have all four of you here, but why did you make the reservation for ten?” (y/n) questions me.

“Well, we have teams of security so they all their own rooms, and then I have a few more friends coming tomorrow so I wanted to make sure everyone had their own space,” I explain.

“Alright, so what plans do you have for today, Mr. Felton?” (y/n) asks and I’ve about had enough of her formalities.

“Um about that, may I speak to you in private please?” I ask and she nods timidly.

“If you all would give us a minute, help yourselves to some food,” (y/n) says, just as a waiter came in the room with carts of food for everyone to share.

“What’s going on, Mr. Felton?” (y/n) said, when I shut the doors to the bedroom.

“First of all, please, just call me Tom. Second, I read your note last night; what was that about?” I go straight to the point.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tom.”

“Oh, I think you do (y/n). Yesterday was amazing; I haven’t had that much in so long and we seemed to have been getting on really well. And then we have…well I’m not sure what exactly happened in front of the fireplace but I wouldn’t mind that happening again. But then you just up and leave? And leave a note with a lack of proper explanation. Did I push you into something you weren’t comfortable with? Did I offend you somehow? If I did something wrong, please tell me, so we can try and work it out,” I say, almost pleading with her.

“No, it’s not that,” she says, pacing on the opposite side of the room than me.

“Then what is it? Do you not trust me? Are you uncomfortable being around me?”

“No, it’s not any of that!” She says, a little more frustrated than before.

“Then what?!” I say, just as she had.

“I can’t tell you,” she says, avoiding looking or getting close to me.

“And why not? I don’t understand why you left so suddenly last night or why you can’t even look at me right now,” I say, hearing my voice crack as I grew more desperate for an answer.

“Because how I feel about you right now, is going to get me in trouble. I felt something last night by the fireplace and I can’t allow myself to continue to feel like that. I am your assistant and while I’m here, that’s all I can be. I don’t know what I felt but I know it’s dangerous and I know I can’t keep feeling like that as long as I work for you. Mr. Harrington would surely fire me if he ever found out and I really need this job because I want to become something more than what I am right now. Do you understand?”

Wow, I definitely didn’t expect her to say that now. But she felt something between us last night too? And that’s why she left! She was scared of what she felt at the fireplace last night. I don’t blame her; I felt it too. But she needs to know she can allow herself to feel things.

“Look (y/n) I’m so glad you said something. I felt something last night too and it scared me too. I don’t know what that was either but I liked it and I want to feel that again. As for your job, I know this is so important to you, so I won’t do anything that would jeopardize whatever plans you have for this job; I promise. But, may I suggest something?” I ask and wait for her approval. She simply nodded.

“How about we don’t tell anyone about…whatever we may from this? I want to explore whatever last night was, but only if you want to of course. I think we should start off as friends, a little more intimate than just boss/coworker but I want to really get to know you before we decide to take anything further. Although, I don’t believe we’re going to learn anything about the other that won’t make us want to go further with a friendship, but just in case. How’s that sound?” I reason with her, nervous about how she was going to react. I figured with her confession of some feelings for me, she must agree with my idea.

“I think that sounds perfect, Tom,” she says, smiling up at me. I mirror her expression, finding a smile of my own.

“Would it be weird if I just hugged right now?” I ask, still unsure what to do with this, new information.

“Of course,” she says, slowly moving closer to me until she stood just inches from me. She craned her neck to look up at me. I slowly move closer to her, my arms making their way around her waist. She stood on her toes to grow a few inches higher so she could wrap her arms around my neck. I sighed, content with the feeling of her in my arms. She smelled like peppermint; it reminded me of a candy cane. Her skin was so soft and her hair was sprawled across my face but it didn’t matter. We stayed like that for a while, just staying close to one another and enjoying the warmth from the other until we felt completely content. Pulling away from one another, I smiled at her, her face showing the same happiness as mine had before she spoke up.

“I have a question and you can say no if you want.”

“You haven’t even asked it yet,” I say to her as she nervously wraps some of her hair behind her ear.

“Right, okay, well I wanted to see if maybe since Daniel and Emma and Rupert are here, could we watch some Harry Potter? I know it’s been a long time since any of you have seen the films, but I have so many questions to ask,” she says, pulling on her bottom lip.

“Well, I would love to answer all your questions but we’ll have to ask the others if they’re up for it,” I say fondly to her.

“Oh, wait, work. Do, do you need me to do anything for you?”

“What I need you to do is watch the Philosopher’s Stone with me and my friends,” I grin at her.

“As long as they say it’s okay,” she adds.

“Oh, I’m sure they won’t say no to you, much like I can’t seem to,” I admit, rubbing the back of my neck.

Her cheeks tinted pink, just a bit, but I caught it before it disappeared.

“What about work?” She asks.

“Well, I’ll talk to Mr. Harrington and tell him some chores I need someone else to do for me. I’ll make sure you won’t get in any trouble,” I say to the girl, who’s eyes just light up. I guess I was starting to make an impression on her.

“That would be amazing, Tom, thank you,” she says, coming to me for a second hug. It wasn’t as long as the first one but it meant just as much. They have just been hugs but for me and (y/n) it was our way of expressing our feelings for each other; it was perfect.

We walk back into the main living area where we see the “Golden Trio” deep in a conversation about what the last twenty years have been like.

“Hi guys,” Emma says, looking over to me and (y/n).

“Hi, so (y/n) here has something she would like to ask you guys,” I say, looking to my right to the girl who somehow grew more nervous than I’ve ever seen her.

“Sure sweetheart, what’s on your mind?” Daniel asked, bringing all the attention to (y/n).

“Well, I know you all are probably annoyed with all the questions you’ve gotten over the years about Harry Potter, but I was wondering if you all wouldn’t mind if we watched the first movie together? I have a lot of my own questions I would love to have answers too but if you guys don’t want to go down memory lane again, I completely understand,” (y/n) asks, rather quickly, but I think she still got her point across.

“You’re right, I don’t think any of us have seen those movies in such a long time, and yes, we do get kind of tired of all the questions. We still get asked questions about the film series, even after all these years. However, any friend of Tom’s is a friend of ours, and if you really want to ask questions as we go through the film, then I don’t see what harm that’ll do. It might be embarrassing for us to see ourselves twenty years younger than we are right now, but it might still be fun,” Daniel said, grinning at the other members of the Wizarding World around him.

(y/n) just squeals a bit in excitement and it surprised all of us. “Sorry, I’m just really excited to finally be able to ask all the questions that I’ve had for so many years,”

“Hey, it’s okay. And hell, it’ll be wild seeing ourselves so young. I bet we can still say a lot of the spells too,” Rupert added.

“Oh man, that was going to be one of my questions,” (y/n) said, frowning, before Rupert shot her a quick apology.

“Does someone have the films with them right now?” Emma asks.

“I do,” I say, walking over to the entertainment center that sat under the television.

“You travel with them, don’t you?” (y/n) teased.

“Of course, I do! You never know when you’re going to need to see these!” I say, proud of the work and character I did in those films. It launched a career for all of us and opened so many doors for so many other films or shows. We owe all our credit to our success as actors to those films and if it wasn’t for them, I don’t know what we would be doing now. I couldn’t speak for the others, but I was happy with being able to go back and watch the work we did for so many years, especially having so many people joining the fandom nearly 10 years after the last film was released. I will forever hold Draco in my heart and be grateful that people still respond to him, even in negative ways. I always laugh and apologize when people say they hate him and his attitude because he is the exact opposite of me and I still hope people stick around to know the real me.

Tags: @tloveswriting @angelinathebook @lunalovecroft @hobby27 @slutforfics @thinkinghardhardlythinking @to-my-beloved-fandoms-2

#Tom Felton #tom felton fanfic #tom felton x reader #tom felton x you #tom felton x y/n #daniel radcliffe #Emma Watson #Rupert Grint #slytherin #Gryffindor #Harry Potter #potterhead #pottah #hermione granger #Ron Weasley #HOLIDAY FLUFF #fluff #pining #longing

59 notes · View notes

kayrogers · 4 years ago

Text

sugar baby ][ r. drysdale

50 shades / CEO au

Paring(s): ceo!ransom x curator!reader

Inspo: the embarrassing amount of ransom smut I've read

Word Count: 2300+

Warning(s): cursing, implied smut, unequal power-dynamic, mention of kinks, and ransom being the hot douche he is

Part: part 1 | part ??

A/N: imma be real with y’all I saw knives out in theaters like three times and I am absolute ransom trash, I apologize

It was already a shitty day.

By the time you had reached Thrombey Selects, you were on the verge of frustrated tears and you hadn’t even gone into your interview yet.

Your day started normal enough, you prepared for your interview and organized your portfolio about ten different times before you could run out the door. Coffee was a better option than actual food for breakfast as the thing really filling your stomach was anxiety. You had only gotten your masters recently and it was a miracle that you were given an interview at Thrombey Selects, only having pulled together minimal art galleries — most of which were done as part of getting your degree in the first place.

Then there was the subway. It felt like it took forever to get to the Lower East Side, especially being sat between two men with no concept of personal space and a snot-nosed two year old giving you a stink eye across the aisle. And to make matters worse you got a coffee spilled on your dress right as you walked off the train. The woman who spilled it actually had the audacity to scream at your face, and say it was your fault, like she wasn’t nose-deep in her phone. Luckily, you had left your apartment super early and you stopped at the nearest department store you could find. A too-expensive little black dress later and you were on your way to Thrombey Selects. And then it down poured and by the time you walked into the building, every inch of you was drenched in water.

You took a deep breath, approaching the receptionist with rain droplets falling from your hair and onto the floor. She looked up at you with an unimpressed gaze, stating that you’d be meeting with a Mr. Drysdale ‘whenever he felt like showing up’. You weren’t exactly sure what that meant but you took it as a chance to dry off.

Stepping away towards an empty hallway you were quick to work, taking up residence next to a decorative plant and ringing your hair out into the pot. Taking off your cardigan was the most work, the grey material sticking to your skin like glue. You undoubtedly looked like a madman, wrestling to get the knit off and finally slicking it onto the floor to reveal the tight little number you bought.

“Quite the weather, huh?” A deep male voice said from behind you.

You jumped and nearly tripped over your heels as you turned around to find the source. That source being a very gorgeous man with piercing blue eyes. He had a confident smirk and carved features, it was almost like he was created by a sculptor in Rome.

“Oh- oh my gosh! Sorry, I um yeah... kinda got caught in the rain.” You blush with a sigh, still taking in the stranger’s appearance.

He dressed sharp, yet casual. Adorning himself in a black turtleneck and pants, accompanied by a brown trench coat and Chelsea boots. The accessory on him which drew the most attention though was a large, flowery scarf. You suddenly felt very aware of the less glamorous state of your dress and reached for the cardigan you so ungraciously plopped on the floor.

“You’re [Y/n], right? [Y/n] [Y/l/n]?” He shamelessly looked you up and down while saying that, only making you blush more.

“How do you know my-“

“Because I’m interviewing you. The name is Hugh Ransom Drysdale, but you can just call me Ransom. The help call me Hugh.” His lips curled into a wide smirk and he shook your hand as it changed into a white-toothed grin.

‘The help’ stuck in your head for a moment and nearly made you frown. Any man who talked like that came from money, lots of money. And he clearly wasn’t the type to be polite about it.

“Let’s head up to my office, Honey.” And with that the two of you were on your way.

You could help but feel his eyes on you with every step you took, each click of your heels hitting the floors like a deafening clock. He opens a door to reveal a sleek, modern office room complete with a portrait of Harlan Thrombey on the back wall. You would recognize that face anywhere after reading his novels repeatedly, his picture always located in the back. He was the reason you applied here in the first place, he was passionate and creative. Any man like him would be expected to have a taste for the arts.

Ransom took his seat behind the desk and you sat in front of him gripping your portfolio tightly while he pulled out a Manila file.

“It’s interesting that grandad picked you for the interview... from the looks of it, you’re extremely under qualified compared to the rest of the staff.” Ransom immediately listed off in a twisted tone, dismissive and intrigued all at once.

You pulled a tight-lipped smile, “and yet, here I am.”

He looked up from the file, blue eyes shooting into your own holding intent you could not read. The smirk appeared on his face once more.

“Tell me about yourself, [Y/n]. I want a better understanding.” You suddenly felt small in that moment, you knew what he was actually telling you.

‘Show me why I should give a fuck about you.’

“Uh- well I’m a hard worker. I come from a low income family so I’ve been working since I was 14, in my mom’s diner. I still serve to keep up with rent, but that’s at a classier place no offense to my mom. Art has um always been my passion though... I’m sorry, am I doing this right?” You bit your lip, staring across to see Ransom sporting a sneaky smile you didn’t understand.

“How bout I help you along? Are you prepared for a lot of physical work? How much do you exercise a week? I know you may think being one of our curators is easy work, but I like to run things differently here.” That confuses you.

You know how curation works, hell it’s why you got your degree but the only physical thing you ever did was hang paintings on a wall.

“Uh- I mean I workout when I can but I’m pretty busy. I serve so I get a lot of time on my feet. But, I’m sure I can handle whatever you throw at me!” You answered honestly and watched as he quirked an eyebrow.

“I’m sure you can Miss [Y/l/n]. So... any significant others?” Warmth filled your face at his question.

“No I am single- sorry I just don’t understand what this has to do with being a curator.” You finish with a smile to hide how unsure you were.

Ransom just grins back, “oh that is because I am opting you for a better position. Higher up, better pay grade, and more personal work with me. Here take a look,” He reaches into his desk and pulls out a black file, tossing it to you.

Opening the folder shows you a contract that makes your eyes nearly bulge out of your head.

‘Sugar Baby’ is in bold at the top.

Reading through, you become flustered seeing the requirements and perks. The pay is definitely better, but is it worth the submissive role he intends you to play? Calling him ‘Sir’? Your cheeks burn as you keep flicking through, seeing all his kinks and desires written in ink. The particular emphasis on bondage and the sub/dom dynamic made heat pool between your legs. You run your thighs together in instinct, missing how his eyes light up at the response.

“You don’t have to give me an answer right now. In fact, my cell is on there, take a few days to look it over and text me. If not, I can still offer you that basic paid internship of a position.” His eyes were intense when they met yours, hiding the gears which were in overdrive behind their deep blue.

He was manipulating you and he wasn’t even shy about it. You were ashamed to think that you didn’t mind it. This was insane! Completely unethical and gross, but you found yourself considering the position all the same. Especially given the rut you found yourself in for quite a while now in the sex department. Graduating and entering your career didn’t leave much time for any sexual encounters, excluding your dominant hand.

“Yeah- uhm I’ll definitely have to get back to you. Not that I’m not interested-“ Your voice betrayed you, coming out quiet and almost naive.

“- it’s a lot. Sleep on it, Babe.” He stood up and you took that as your signal to leave which you were thankful for.

“Thank you, Mr- sorry.. Ransom.” You stood as well, closing the folder and holding it tightly in your hands.

You move to grab your sopping cardigan but he scoops it up before you can.

“I’ll have our dry cleaners handle this, don’t need a potential employee getting pneumonia today. Take my jacket, I’m sure I’ll be getting it back soon.” He matter-of-factly states and hands you his trench coat.

You sling it on, feeling small in the garment made for the clearly muscular man. Even in your heels he towered over you.

“Thank you.” There’s a small smile on your face and you head towards the door.

He walks behind you, his hand finding the small of your back as he opens the office door for you.

“Can’t wait to hear from you, Miss [Y/l/n].” Ransom’s voice is low and his breath fans on the back of your neck as you exit and the door clicks behind you.

It was about 11 PM in your apartment as you sat on your bed thinking of perhaps the longest pro-con list you could with a glass of wine in hand.

You had been surfing on your laptop, gathering as much information as you could about Ransom Drysdale and the idea of being a ‘sugar baby’.

‘Pros: He’s gorgeous. We have a lot of the same kinks. It’s a lot more money than the internship. I’ll probably get some nice clothes out of this. I can stop waitressing. He’s really really hot. I have the opportunity to live my dream and work at my dream company, and get some good sex on the side.’ You thought, biting your lip and thinking too much about what he looked like without clothes on.

‘Cons: this is a very unprofessional proposition and definitely a little demeaning. He’s clearly a douche. The ‘help’ comment. I don’t know if he even is that good in bed. I don’t really know this man at all and now I’m basically signing a portion of my life to him. If he doesn’t think I’m good in bed, am I getting fucked over??’ You took a large gulp of wine, eyes focused on the computer screen in front of you.

Ransom’s crystalline eyes stared back at you through the screen, the picture from a Ralph Lauren photo shoot.

“Fuck, he’s a model too.” You muttered with a groan.

Of all the valid negatives that filled your mind, the heat pooling below your stomach at the thought of him taking control of you and your life felt much stronger. Were you a little messed up to even be considering this so heavily?? Fuck, probably.

But even so, the idea tantalized you in such a way that had you reaching for the folder to read through his demands once again.

You didn’t quite like the demands of you working out 4 times a week and completely overhauling your diet. Sure, you probably shouldn’t have been eating the amount of microwaveable and junk foods you usually did but that's none of his business! But perhaps these things could be amenable within the contract? You decided you wouldn’t take part unless they were.

But most importantly, you wouldn’t decide on anything without a good night’s sleep.

The next morning you stared at the contract as though it were the most important thing you could sign in your life. A weight settled on your shoulders and you avoided the piece of paper for the rest of the morning. Instead you decided to run through your daily routine, taking a shower and getting dressed for the day. You made yourself a cup of coffee and stared at your small apartment with a slight frown.

Reality rushed through you as you realized the position you were in before this opportunity presented itself. You have tremendous debt from school, even with the scholarships you had received. The shoebox you lived in was already barely affordable while you practically worked yourself to death at the upscale bar-restaurant you were currently employed with. The idea that you could leave all this and live lavishly on the payroll of one of the wealthiest families in New York, was one which had been growing on you enormously.

Impulsively, you grabbed your phone and typed his phone number into your messages.

‘Hello, Mr. Drysdale. Or I guess I should say, Ransom.

This is [Y/n] [Y/l/n]. I have thought over your offer and though I have a few concerns with certain aspects of the contract... I would be glad to talk them over with you and get to an agreement we are both comfortable with. I am indeed interested in this position.

When would you like to go over the details?’

You typed out the message, writing in the most professional manner you could (despite the content of the proposal). Pressing the send button sent a series of sparks through your skin and up your spine, butterflies filling your stomach.

Within minutes though, there was a response.

‘Saturday night. Be ready at 7 PM sharp. I will send a car for you. Can’t wait ;)’

----------------------------------------------------------

taglist(s):

sugar baby -

permanent -

@ultrunning @jesseswartzwelder

#ransom drysdale #ransom drysdale imagine #ransom drysdale x reader #knives out imagine #chris evans imagine #ceo au #50 shades au #sugar daddy au

148 notes · View notes

davidmann95 · 4 years ago

Note

So... Morrison’s 10 part interview on All-Star Superman, along with all other older Newsarama articles, just seem to have ceased to exist. One does not simply live without having those interviews available to reread... Can I find them anywhere else?

Rejoice! I finally borrowed a computer I could put my flash drive into, and emailed myself my copy of the Morrison interview. Here it is below the cut, copied and pasted direct from the source way back when, available again at last:

Three years, 12 issues, Eisners and countless accolades later, All Star Superman is finally finished. The out-of-continuity look at Superman’s struggle with his inevitable death was widely embraced by fans and pros as one of the best stories to feature the Man of Steel, and was a showcase for the talents of the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant.

Now, Newsarama is proud to present an exclusive look back with Morrison at the series that took Superman to, pun intended, new heights. We had a lot of questions about the series...and Morrison delivered with an in-depth look into the themes, characters and ideas throughout the 12 issues. In fact, there was so much that we’re running this as an unprecedented 10-part series over the next two weeks – sort of an unofficial All Star Superman companion. It’s everything about All Star Superman you ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

And of course there’s plenty of SPOILERS, so back away if you haven’t read the entire series.

Newsarama: Grant, tell us a little about the origin of the project.

Grant Morrison: Some of it has its roots in the DC One Million project from 1999. So much so, that some readers have come to consider this a prequel to DC One Million, which is fine if it shifts a few more copies! I’ve tried to give my own DC books an overarching continuity intended to make them all read as a more coherent body of work when I’m done.

Luthor’s “enlightenment” – when he peaks on super–senses and sees the world as it appears through Superman’s eyes – was an element I’d included in the Superman Now pitch I prepared along with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid back in 1999. There were one or two of ideas of mine that I wanted to preserve from Superman Now and Luthor’s heart–stopping moment of understanding was a favorite part of the original ending for that story, so I decided to use it again here.

My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the “shamanic” meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.

I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to “reboot” Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short...

Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did...in the persona and voice of Superman!

We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.

My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.

I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman, whose name I didn’t save but who has entered into my own personal mythology (a picture has from that time has survived showing me and Mark Waid posing alongside this guy and a couple of young readers dressed as Superboy and Supergirl – it’s in the “Gallery” section at my website for anybody who can be bothered looking. This is the guy who lit the fuse that led to All Star Superman).

After the 1999 pitch was rejected, I didn’t expect to be doing any further work on Superman but sometime in 2002, while I was going into my last year on New X–Men, Dan DiDio called and asked if I wanted to come back to DC to work on a Superman book with Jim Lee.

Jim was flexing his artistic muscles again to great effect, and he wanted to do 12 issues on Superman to complement the work he was doing with Jeph Loeb on “Batman: Hush.” At the time, I wasn’t able to make my own commitments dovetail with Jim’s availability, but by then I’d become obsessed with the idea of doing a big Superman story and I’d already started working out the details.

Jim, of course, went on to do his 12 Superman issues as “For Tomorrow” with Brian Azzarello, so I found myself looking for an artist for what was rapidly turning into my own Man of Steel magnum opus, and I already knew the book had to be drawn by my friend and collaborator, Frank Quitely.

We were already talking about We3 and Superman seemed like a good meaty project to get our teeth into when that was done. I completely scaled up my expectations of what might be possible once Frank was on board and decided to make this thing as ambitious as possible.

Usually, I prefer to write poppy, throwaway “live performance” type superhero books, but this time, I felt compelled to make something for the ages – a big definitive statement about superheroes and life and all that, not only drawn by my favorite artist but starring the first and greatest superhero of them all.

The fact that it could be a non–continuity recreation made the idea even more attractive and more achievable. I also felt ready for it, in a way I don’t think I would have been in 1999; I finally felt “grown–up” enough to do Superman justice.

I plotted the whole story in 2002 and drew tiny colored sketches for all 12 covers. The entire book was very tightly constructed before we started – except that I’d left the ending open for the inevitable better and more focused ideas I knew would arise as the project grew into its own shape...and I left an empty space for issue 10. That one was intended from the start to be the single issue of the 12–issue run that would condense and amplify the themes of all the others. #10 was set aside to be the one–off story that would sum up anything anyone needed to know about Superman in 22 pages.

Not quite as concise an origin as Superman’s, but that’s how we got started.

NRAMA: When you were devising the series, what challenges did you have in building up this version of the Superman universe?

GM: I couldn’t say there were any particular challenges. It was fun. Nobody was telling me what I could or couldn’t do with the characters. I didn’t have to worry about upsetting continuity or annoying people who care about stuff like that.

I don’t have a lot of old comics, so my knowledge of Superman was based on memory, some tattered “70s books from the remains of my teenage collection, a bunch of DC “Best Of...” reprint editions and two brilliant little handbooks – “Superman in Action Comics” Volumes 1 and 2 – which reprint every single Action Comics cover from 1938 to 1988.

I read various accounts of Superman’s creation and development as a brand. I read every Superman story and watched every Superman movie I could lay my hands on, from the Golden Age to the present day. From the Socialist scrapper Superman of the Depression years, through the Super–Cop of the 40s, the mythic Hyper–Dad of the 50s and 60s, the questioning, liberal Superman of the early 70s, the bland “superhero” of the late 70s, the confident yuppie of the 80s, the over–compensating Chippendale Superman of the 90s etc. I read takes on Superman by Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Alan Moore, Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko and many others.

I looked at the Fleischer cartoons, the Chris Reeve movies and the animated series, and read Alvin Schwartz’s (he wrote the first ever Bizarro story among many others) fascinating book – “An Unlikely Prophet” – where he talks about his notion of Superman as a tulpa, (a Tibetan word for a living thought form which has an independent existence beyond its creator) and claims he actually met the Man of Steel in the back of a taxi.

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential “Superman–ness” that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star’s tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He’s Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles.

Newsarama: Grant, what are some of your favorite moments from the 12 issues?

Grant Morrison: The first shot of Superman flying over the sun. The Cosmic Anvil. Samson and Atlas. The kiss on the moon. The first three pages of the Olsen story which, I think, add up to the best character intro I’ve ever written.

Everything Lex Luthor says in issue #5. Everything Clark does. The whole says/does Luthor/Superman dynamic as played out through Frank Quitely’s absolute mastery and understanding of how space, movement and expression combine to tell a story.

Superboy and his dog on the moon – that perfect teenage moment of infinite possibility, introspection and hope for the future. He’s every young man on the verge of adulthood, Krypto is every dog with his boy (it seemed a shame to us that Krypto’s most memorable moment prior to this was his death scene in “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow.” Quitely’s scampering, leaping, eager and alive little creature is how I’d prefer to imagine Krypto the Superdog and conjures finer and more subtle emotions).

Bizarro–Home, with all of Earth’s continental and ocean shapes but reversed. The page with the first appearance of Zibarro that Frank has designed so the eye is pulled down in a swirling motion into the drain at the heart of the image, to make us feel that we’re being flushed in a cloacal spiral down into a nihilistic, existential sink. Frank gave me that page as a gift, and it became weirdly emblematic of a strange, dark time in both our lives.

The story with Bar–El and Lilo has a genuine chill off ammonia and antiseptic off it, which makes it my least favorite issue of the series, although I know a lot of people who love it. It’s about dying relatives, obligations, the overlit overheated corridors between terminal wards, the thin metallic odors of chemicals, bad food and fear. Preparation for the Phantom Zone.

Superman hugging the poor, hopeless girl on the roof and telling us all we’re stronger than we think we are.

Joe Shuster drawing us all into the story forever and never–ending.

Nasthalthia Luthor. Frank and Jamie’s final tour of the Fortress, referencing every previous issue on the way, in two pages.

All of issue #10 (there’s a single typo in there where the time on the last page was screwed up – but when we fix that detail for the trade I’ll be able to regard this as the most perfectly composed superhero story I’ve ever written).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother, more seamless collaborative process.

NRAMA: The story is very complete unto itself, but are there any new or classic characters you’d like to explore further? If so, which ones and why?

GM: I’d happily write more Atlas and Samson. I really like Krull, the Dino–Czar’s wayward son, and his Stalinist underground empire of “Subterranosauri.” I could write a Superman Squad comic forever. I’d love to write the “Son of Superman” sequel about Lois and Clark’s super test tube baby.

But...I think All Star is already complete, without sequels. You read that last issue and it works because you know you’re never going to see All Star Superman again. You’ll be able to pick up Superman books, but they won’t be about this guy and they won’t feel the same. He really is going away. Our Superman is actually “dying” in that sense, and that adds the whole series a deeper poignancy.

NRAMA: Aside from the Bizarro League, you never really introduce other DC superheroes into the story. Why did you make this choice?

GM: I wanted the story to be about the mythic Superman at the end of his time. It’s clear from the references that he has or more likely has had a few super–powered allies, but that they’re no longer around or relevant any more.

For the context of this story I wanted the super–friends to be peripheral, like they were in the old comics. The Flash? Green Lantern? They represent Superman’s “old army buddies,” or your dad’s school friends. Guys you’ve sort of heard of, who used to be more important in the old man’s life than they are now.

NRAMA: Some readers were confused as to how the “Twelve Labors” broke down, though others have pointed out that Superman’s actions are more reflective of the Stations of the Cross (I note there’s a “Station Café” in the background of issue #12). Could you break down the Twelve Labors, or, if the cross theory is true, how the storyline reflects the Stations?

GM: The 12 Labors of Superman were never intended as an isomorphic mapping onto the 12 Labors of Hercules, or for that matter, the specific Stations of the Cross, of which there are 14, I believe. I didn’t even want to do one Labor per issue, so it deliberately breaks down quite erratically through the series for reasons I’ll go into (later).

Yes, there are correspondences, but that’s mostly because we tried to create for our Superman the contemporary “superhero” version of an archetypal solar hero journey, which naturally echoes numerous myths, legends and religious parables.

At the same time, we didn’t want to do an update or a direct copy of any myth you’d seen before, so it won’t work if you try to find one specific mythological or religious “plan” to hang the series on; James Joyce’s honorable and heroic refutation of the rule aside, there’s nothing more dead and dull than an attempt to retell the Odyssey or the Norse sagas scene by scene, but in a modern and/or superhero setting.

For future historians and mythologizers, however, the 12 Labors of Superman may be enumerated as follows:

1. Superman saves the first manned mission to the sun. 2. Superman brews the Super–Elixir. 3. Superman answers the Unanswerable Question. 4. Superman chains the Chronovore.  5. Superman saves Earth from Bizarro–Home. 6. Superman returns from the Underverse. 7. Superman creates Life. 8. Superman liberates Kandor/cures cancer. 9. Superman defeats Solaris. 10. Superman conquers Death. 11. Superman builds an artificial Heart for the Sun. 12.Superman leaves the recipe/formula to make Superman 2.

And one final feat, which typically no–one really notices, is that Lex Luthor delivers his own version of the unified field haiku – explaining the underlying principles of the universe in fourteen syllables – which the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. G–Type philosopher from issue 4 had dedicated his entire life to composing!

You may notice also that the Labors take place over a year – with the solar hero’s descent into the darkness and cold of the Underverse occurring at midwinter/Christmas time (that’s also the only point in the story where we ever see Metropolis at night).

It can also be seen as the sun’s journey over the course of a day – we open in blazing sunshine but halfway through the book, at the end of issue #5, in fact, the solar hero dips below the horizon and begins the night–journey through the hours of darkness and death, before his triumphant resurrection at dawn. That’s why issue 5 ends with the boat to the Underworld and 6 begins with the moon. Clark Kent is crossing the threshold into the subconscious world of memory, shadows, death and deep emotions.

Although they can often have bizarre resonances, specific elements, like the Station Café, are usually put there by Frank Quitely, and are not necessarily secret Dan Brown–style keys to unlocking the mysteries. I think there might be a Station Café opposite the studio where Frank Quitely works and the “SAPIEN” sign on another storefront is a reference to Frank’s studio mate, Dave Sapien. At least he’s not filling the background with dirty words like he used to, given any opportunity

NRAMA: For that matter, do the Twelve Labors matter at all? They seem so purposely ill–defined. They seem more like misdirection or a MacGuffin than anything that needs to be clearly delineated.

GM: They matter, of course, but the 12 Labors idea is there to show that, as with all myth, the systematic ordering of current events into stories, tales, or legends occurs after the fact.

I’m trying to suggest that only in the future will these particular 12 feats, out of all the others ever, be mythologized as 12 Labors. I suppose I was trying to say something about how people impose meaning upon events in retrospect, and that’s how myth is born. It’s hindsight that provides narrative, structure, meaning and significance to the simple unfolding of events. It’s the backward glance that adds all the capital letters to the list above.

Even Superman isn”t sure how many Labors he’s performed when we see him mulling it over in issue 10.  When you watched it happening, it seemed to be Superman just doing his thing. In the future it’s become THE 12 LABORS OF SUPERMAN!

NRAMA: And on a completely ridiculous note: All–Star Superman is perhaps the most difficult–to–abbreviate comic title since Preacher: Tall in the Saddle. Did you realize this going in?

GM: Going into what? Going into ASS itself? In the sense of how did I feel as I slowly entered ASS for the first time?

It never crossed my mind...

Newsarama: I’d like to know a little more about Leo Quintum and his role in the story. He seems like a bit of an outgrowth of the likes of Project Cadmus and Emil Hamilton, but in a more fantastical, Willy Wonka sense.

Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.

I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.

Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.

Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.

What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.

And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.

In one way, Quintum could be seen to represent the creative team, simultaneously re–empowering a pure myth with the honest fire of Art...while at the same time shooting a jolt of juice through a concept that sells more “S” logo underpants and towels than it does comic books. All tastes catered!

I have to say that the Willy Wonka thing never crossed my mind until I saw people online make the comparison, which seems quite obvious now. Quintum dresses how I would dress if I was the world’s coolest super–scientist. What’s up with that?

NRAMA: Was Zibarro inspired by the Bizarro World story where the Bizarro–Neanderthal becomes this unappreciated Casanova–type?

GM: Don’t know that one, but it sounds like a scenario I could definitely endorse!

Zibarro started out as a daft name sicked–up by my subconscious mind, which flowered within moments into the must–write idea of an Imperfect Bizarro. What would an imperfect version of an already imperfect being be like?

Zibarro.

NRAMA: I’d like to know more about Zibarro – what’s the significance of his chronicling Bizarro World through poetry?

GM: It’s up to you. I see Zibarro partly as the sensitive teenager inside us all. He’s moody, horribly self–aware and uncomfortable, yet filled with thoughts of omnipotence and agency. He’s the absolute center of his tiny, disorganized universe. He’s playing the role of sensitive, empathic poet but at the same time, he’s completely self–absorbed.

When he says to Superman “Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so different. So unique. So unlike everyone else?” he doesn’t even wait for Superman’s reply. He doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but his own, ultimately.

NRAMA: The character is very close to Superman, so what does it say that a nonpowered version on a savage world would focus his energy through that medium? Also, does Zibarro’s existence show how Superman is able to elevate even the backwards Bizarros through his very nature?

GM: All of the above. And maybe he writes his totally subjective poetry as a reflection of Clark Kent’s objective reporter role. The suppressed, lyrical, wounded side of Superman perhaps? The Super–Morrissey? Bizarro With The Thorn In His Side?

But he’s also Bizarro–Home’s “mistake” (or so it seems to him, even though he’s as natural an expression of the place as any of the other Bizarro creatures who grow like mold across the surface of their living planet). He feels excluded, a despised outsider, and yet that position is what defines his cherished self–image. He expresses himself through poetry because to him the regular Bizarro language is barbaric, barely articulate and guttural. And they all think he’s talking crap anyway.

It seemed to make sense that an interesting opposite of Bizarro speech might be flowery “woe is me” school Poetry Society odes to the sunset in a misunderstood heart. He’s still a Bizarro though, which makes him ineffectual. His tragedy is that he knows he’s fated to be useless and pointless but craves so much more.

NRAMA: Zibarro also represents a recurrent theme in the story, of Superman constantly facing alternate versions of himself – Bar–El, Samson and Atlas, the Superman Squad, even Luthor by the end. Notably, Hercules is absent, though Superman’s doing his Twelve Labors. With the mythological adventurers in particular, was this designed to equate Superman with their legend, to show how his character is greater than theirs, or both?

GM: In a way, I suppose. He did arm–wrestle them both, proving once and for all Superman’s stronger than anybody! And remember, these characters, along with Hercules, used to appear regularly in Superman books as his rivals. I thought they made better rivals than, say, Majestic or Ultraman because people who don’t read comics have heard of Hercules, Samson and Atlas and understand what they represent.

For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground.

Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon (the original panel description was of something more like the famous shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf from “From Here To Eternity.” Frank’s final choice of composition is much more classically pulp–romantic and iconic than my down and dirty rumble in the moondirt would have been, I’m glad to say).

Newsarama: Tell us about some of the thinking behind the new antagonists you created for this series (at least the ones you want to talk about...): First up: Krull and the Subterranosaurs...

Grant Morrison: We wanted to create some throwaway new characters which would be designed to look as if they were convincing long–term elements of the Superman legend.

We were trying to create a few foes who had a classic feel and a solid backstory that could be explored again or in depth. Even if we never went back to these characters, we wanted them to seem rich enough to carry their own stories.

With Krull, we figured a superhuman character like Superman can always use a powerful “sub–human” opponent: a beast, a monster, a savage with the power to destroy civilization. For years I’ve had the idea that the familiar “gray aliens” might “actually” be evolved biped dinosaur descendants, the offspring of smart–thinking lizards which made their way to the warm regions at the Earth’s core.

I imagined these brutes developing their own technology, their own civilization, and then finally coming to the surface to declare bloody war on the mammalian usurpers! It seemed like we could develop this idea into the Krull backstory and suggest a whole epic conflict in a few panels.

Dom Regan, the Glasgow artist and DC colorist, saw the original green skin Jamie Grant had done for Krull, and suggested we make him red instead. Jamie reset his color filters and that was the moment Krull suddenly looked like a real Superman foe.

The red skin marked him out as unique, different and dangerous, even among his own species. It had echoes of Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur that played right into the heart of the concept. A good design became a great design and the whole story of who Krull was – his twisted relationship with his father the Dino–Czar, his monstrous ambitions – came together in that first picture.

The society was fleshed out in the script even though we see only one panel of it – a gloomy, heavy, “Soviet” underworld of walled iron cities, cold blood and deadly intrigue. War–Barges that could sail on the oceans of heated steam at the center of the Earth. A Stalinist authoritarian lizard world where missing person cases were being taken to work and die as slaves in hellish underworld conditions.

NRAMA: Mechano–Man?

GM: An attempt to pre–imagine a classic, archetypal Superman foe, which started with another simple premise – how about a giant robot villain? But not just any giant robot – this is a rampaging machine with a raging little man inside.

Giving him a bitter, angry, scrawny loser as a pilot turned Mechano–Man into a much more extreme and pathological expression of the Man of Steel/Mild–Mannered Reporter dynamic, and added a few interesting layers onto an 8–panel appearance.

NRAMA: The Chronovore – a very disturbing creation, that one.

GM: The Chronovore was mentioned in passing in DC 1,000,000 and would have been the monster in my aborted Hypercrisis series idea. It took a long time to get the right design for the beast because it’s meant to be a 5–D being that we only ever see in 4–D sections. It had to work as a convincing representation of something much bigger that we’re seeing only where it interpenetrates our 4–D space-time continuum.

Imagine you’re walking along with a song in your teenage heart, then suddenly the Chronovore appears, takes bite out of your life, and you arrive at your girlfriend’s house aged 76, clutching a cell phone and a wilted bouquet.

NRAMA: One more obscure run that I was happy to see referenced in this was the use of Nasty from the old Mike Sekowsky Supergirl stories. What made you want to use this character?

GM: I remembered her from the old comics, and felt her fashion–y look could be updated very easily into the kind of fetish club thing I’ve always been partial to.

She seemed a cool and sexy addition to the Luthor plot. The set–up, where Lex has a fairly normal sister who hates how her wayward brother is such a bad influence on her brilliant daughter, is explosive with character potential.

They need to bring Nasty back to mainstream continuity. Geoff! They all want it and you know you never let them down!

NRAMA: Speaking of Mike Sekowsky, I’m curious about his influence on your work. I have an odd fascination with all the ideas and stories he was tossing around in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Jason’s Quest, Manhunter 2070, the I–Ching tales – and many of the characters he worked on, from the B”Wana Beast to the Inferior Five to Yankee Doodle (in Doom Patrol), have shown up in your work. The Bizarro Zoo in issue #10 is even slightly reminiscent of the Beast’s merged animals.

GM: Those were all comics that were around when I was a normal kid, prior to the obsessive collecting fan phase of my isolated teenage years. They clearly inspired me in some way, as you say, but certainly not consciously. I’d never have considered myself a particular fan of Mike Sekowsky’s work, but as you say, I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into the DC Universe work I’ve done. Hmm. Interesting.

While I’m at it, I should also say something about Samson and Atlas, halfway between old characters and new.

Samson, Atlas and Hercules were classical mainstays of old Superman covers, tangling with Superman in all those Silver Age stories that happened before he learned from his friends at Marvel that it was possible to fight other superheroes for fun and profit, so I decided to completely “re–vamp” the characters in the manner of superhero franchises. Marvel has the definitive Hercules for me, so I left him out of the mix and concentrated on Atlas and Samson.

Atlas was re–imagined as a mighty but restless and reckless young prince of the New Mythos – a society of mega–beings playing out their archetypal dramas between New Elysium and Hadia, with ordinary people caught in the middle – and Superman.

Essentially good–hearted, Atlas would have been the newbie in a “team” with Skyfather Xaoz!, Heroina, Marzak and the others. He has a bullish, adolescent approach to life. He drinks and plunges himself into ill–advised adventures to ease his naturally gloomy “weighed down by the world” temperament.

You can see it all now. The backstory suggested an unseen, Empyrean New Gods–type series from a parallel universe. What if, when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in 1971, he’d followed up his sci–fi Viking Gods saga at Marvel, with a dimension–spanning epic rooted in Greek mythology? New Gods meets Eternals drawn by Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson? That was Atlas.

Samson, I decided would be a callback to the British newspaper strip “Garth.” Although you may already be imagining a daily strip about the exploits of time–tossed The Boys writer, Garth Ennis, it was actually about a blonde Adonis type who bounced around the ages having mildly horny, racy adventures.

(Go look him up then return the wiser before reading on, so I don’t have to explain anymore about this bastard – he’s often described as “the British Superman,” but oh...my arse! I hated meathead, personality–singularity Garth...but we all grew up with his meandering, inexplicable yet incredibly–drawn adventures and some of it was quite good when you were a little lad because he was always shagging ON PANEL with the likes of a bare–breasted cave girl or gauze–draped Helen of Troy.

(Unlike Superman, you see, the top British strongman liked to get naked. Lots naked. Naked in every time period he could get naked in, which was all of them thanks to the miracle of his bullshit powers.

(Imagine Doctor Who buff, dumb and naked all the time – Russell, I’ve had an idea!!!! – and that’s Garth in a nutshell.

(Sorry, I know I’m going on and the average attention span of anyone reading stuff on the Internet amounts to no more than a few paragraphs, but basically, Garth was always getting naked. In public, in family newspapers. Bollock naked. Let’s face it, patriotic Americans, have you ever seen Superman’s arse?

Newsarama Note: Well, there was Baby Kal-El in the 1978 film...

(Brits, hands up who still remember the man, and have you ever not seen Garth’s arse? Do you not, in fact, have a very clear image of it in your head, as drawn by Martin Asbury perhaps? In mine, Garth’s pulling aside a flimsy curtain to gaze at the pyramids with Cleopatra buck naked in foreground ogling his rock hard glutes...).

Anyway, Samson, I decided, was the Hebrew version of Garth and he would have his own mad comic that was like an American version of Garth. I saw the Bible hero plucked from the desert sands by time–travelling buffoons in search of a savior. Introduced to all the worst aspects of future culture and, using his stolen, erratic Chrono–Mobile, Samson became a time–(and space) traveling Soldier of Fortune, writing wrongs, humping princesses, accumulating and losing treasure etc. Like a science fiction Conan. Meets Garth.

Fortunately, you’ll never see any of these men ever again.

Newsarama: How have your perceptions of Superman and his supporting characters evolved since the Superman 2000 pitch you did with Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer? The Superman notions seem almost identical, but Luthor is very different here than in that pitch, and so is Clark Kent. Did you use some aspects of your original pitch, or have you just changed his mind on how to portray these characters since?

Grant Morrison: A little of both. I wanted to approach All Star Superman as something new, but there were a couple of specific aspects from the Superman 2000 pitch (as I mentioned earlier, it was actually called Superman Now, at least in my notebooks, which is where the bulk of the material came from) that I felt were definitely worth keeping and exploring.

I can’t remember much about Luthor from Superman Now, except for the ending. By the time I got to All Star Superman, I’d developed a few new insights into Luthor’s character that seemed to flesh him out more. Luthor’s really human and charismatic and hateful all the same time. He’s the brilliant, deluded egotist in all of us. The key for me was the idea that he draws his eyebrows on. The weird vanity of that told me everything I needed to know about Luthor.

I thought the real key to him was the fact that, brilliant as he is, Luthor is nowhere near as brilliant as he wants to be or thinks he is. For Luthor, no praise, no success, no achievement is ever enough, because there’s a big hungry hole in his soul. His need for acknowledgement and validation is superhuman in scale. Superman needs no thanks; he does what he does because he’s made that way. Luthor constantly rails against his own sense of failure and inadequacy...and Superman’s to blame, of course.

I’ve recently been re–thinking Luthor again for a different project, and there’s always a new aspect of the character to unearth and develop.

NRAMA: This story makes Superman and Lois’ relationship seem much more romantic and epic than usual, but this one also makes Superman more of the pursuer. Lois seems like more of an equal, but also more wary of his affections, particularly in the black–and–white sequence in issue #2.

She becomes this great beacon of support for him over the course of the series, but there is a sense that she’s a bit jaded from years of trickery and uncomfortable with letting him in now that he’s being honest. How, overall, do you see the relationship between Superman and Lois?

GM: The black-and-white panels shows Lois paranoid and under the influence of an alien chemical, but yes, she’s articulating many of her very real concerns in that scene.

I wanted her to finally respond to all those years of being tricked and duped and led to believe Superman and Clark Kent were two different people. I wanted her to get her revenge by finally refusing to accept the truth.

It also exposed that brilliant central paradox in the Superman/Lois relationship. The perfect man who never tells a lie has to lie to the woman he loves to keep her safe. And he lives with that every day. It’s that little human kink that really drives their relationship.

NRAMA: Jimmy Olsen is extremely cool in this series – it’s the old “Mr. Action” idea taken to a new level. It’s often easy to write Jimmy as a victim or sycophant, but in this series, he comes off as someone worthy of being “Superman’s Pal” – he implicitly trusts Superman, and will take any risk to get his story. Do you see this version of Jimmy as sort of a natural evolution of the version often seen in the comics?

GM: It was a total rethink based on the aspects of Olsen I liked, and playing down the whole wet–behind–the–ears “cub reporter” thing. I borrowed a little from the “Mr. Action” idea of a more daredevil, pro–active Jimmy, added a little bit of Nathan Barley, some Abercrombie & Fitch style, a bit of Tintin, and a cool Quitely haircut.

Jimmy was renowned for his “disguises” and bizarre transformations (my favorite is the transvestite Olsen epic “Miss Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #95, which gets a nod on the first page of our Jimmy story we did), so I wanted to take that aspect of his appeal and make it part of his job.

I don’t like victim Jimmy or dumb Jimmy, because those takes on the character don’t make any sense in their context. It seemed more interesting see what a young man would be like who could convincingly be Superman’s “pal.” Someone whose company a Superman might actually enjoy. That meant making Jimmy a much bigger character: swaggering but ingenuous. Innocent yet worldly. Enthusiastic but not stupid.

My favorite Jimmy moment is in issue #7 when he comes up with the way to defeat the Bizarro invasion by using the seas of the Bizarro planet itself as giant mirrors to reflect toxic – to Bizarros – sunlight onto the night side of the Earth. He knows Superman can actually take crazy lateral thinking like this and put it into practice.

NRAMA: Perry White has a few small–but–key scenes, particularly his address to his staff in issue #1 and standing up to Luthor in issue #12. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this character.

GM: As with the others, my feelings are there on the page. Perry is Clark’s boss and need only be that and not much more to play his role perfectly well within the stories. He’s a good reminder that Superman has a job and a boss, unlike that good–for–nothing work-shy bastard Batman. Perry’s another of the series’ older male role models of integrity and steadfastness, like Pa Kent.

NRAMA: There’s a sense in the Daily Planet scenes and with Lois’s spotlight issues that everyone knows Clark is Superman, but they play along to humor him. The Clark disguise comes off as very obvious in this story. Do you feel that the Planet staff knows the truth, or are just in a very deep case of denial, like Lex?

GM: If I had to say for sure, I think Jimmy Olsen worked it out a long time ago, and simply presumes that if Superman has a good reason for what he’s doing, that’s good enough for Jimmy.

Lois has guessed, but refuses to acknowledge it because it exposes her darkest flaw – she could never love Clark Kent the way she loves Superman.

NRAMA: Also, the Planet staff seems awfully nonchalant at Luthor’s threats. Are they simply used to being attacked by now?

GM: Yes. They’re a tough group. They also know that Superman makes a point of looking out for them, so they naturally try to keep Luthor talking. They know he loves to talk about himself and about Superman. In that scene, he’s almost forgotten he even has powers, he’s so busy arguing and making points. He keeps doing ordinary things instead of extraordinary things.

NRAMA: The running gag of Clark subtly using his powers to protect unknowing people is well done, but I have to admit I was confused by the sequence near the end of issue #1. Was that an el–train, and if so, why was it so close to the ground?

GM: It’s a MagLev hover–train. Look again, and you’ll see it’s not supported by anything. Hover–trains help ease congestion in busy city streets! Metropolis is the City of Tomorrow, after all.

NRAMA: And there’s the death of Pa Kent. Why do you feel it’s particularly important to have Pa and not both of the Kents pass away?

GM: I imagined they had both passed away fairly early in Superman’s career, but Ma went a few years after Pa. Also, because the book was about men or man, it seemed important to stress the father/son relationships. That circle of life, the king is dead, long live the king thing that Superman is ultimately too big and too timeless to succumb to.

NRAMA: There is a real touch of Elliott S! Maggin’s novels in your depiction of Luthor – someone who is just so obsessive–compulsive about showing up Superman that he accomplishes nothing in his own life. He comes across as a showman, from his rehearsed speech in issue #1 to his garish costume in the last two issues, and it becomes painfully apparent that he wants to usurp Superman because he just can’t be happy with himself. What defeats him is actually a beautiful gift, getting to see the world as Superman does, and finally understanding his enemy.

That’s all a lead–in to: What previous stories that defined Luthor for you, and how did you define his character? What appeals to you about writing him?

GM: The Marks Waid and Millar were big fans of the Maggin books, and may have persuaded me to read at least the first one but I’m ashamed to say can’t remember anything about it, other than the vague recollection of a very humane, humanist take on Superman that seemed in general accord with the pacifist, hedonistic, between–the–wars spirit of the ‘90s when I read it. It was the ‘90s; I had other things on my mind and in my mind.

I like Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman?” from Superman #247, which ultimately poses questions traditional superhero comic books are not equipped to answer and is one of the first paving stones in the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Watchmen and beyond, to The Authority, The Ultimates etc. Everyone still awake, still reading this, should make themselves familiar with “Must There Be A Superman?” – it’s a milestone in the development of the superhero concept.

However, the story that most defines Luthor for me turns out to be, as usual, a Len Wein piece with Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson– Superman #248. This blew me away when I was a kid. Lex Luthor cares about humanity? He’s sorry we all got blown up? The villain loves us too? It’s only Superman he really hates? Genius. Big, cool adult stuff.

The divine Len makes Lex almost too human, but it was amazing to see this kind of depth in a character I’d taken for granted as a music hall villain.

I also love the brutish Satanic, Crowley–esque, Golden Age Luthor in the brilliant “Powerstone” Action Comics #47 (the opening of All Star #11 is a shameless lift from “Powerstone”, as I soon realised when I went back to look. Blame my...er...photographic memory...cough).

And I like the Silver Age Luthor who only hates Superman because he thinks it’s Superboy’s fault he went bald. That was the most genuinely human motivation for Luthor’s career of villainy of all; it was Superman’s fault he went bald! I can get behind that.

In the Silver Age, baldness, like obesity, old age and poverty, was seen quite rightly as a crippling disease and a challenge which Superman and his supporting cast would be compelled to overcome at every opportunity! Suburban “50s America versus Communist degeneracy? You tell me.

I like elements of the Marv Wolfman/John Byrne ultra–cruel and rapacious businessman, although he somewhat lacks the human dimension (ultimately there’s something brilliant about Luthor being a failed inventor, a product of Smallville/Dullsville – the genius who went unnoticed in his lifetime, and resorted to death robots in chilly basements and cellars. Luthor as geek versus world). I thought Alan Moore’s ruthlessly self–assured “consultant” Luthor in Swamp Thing was an inspired take on the character as was Mark Waid’s rage–driven prodigy from Birthright.

I tried to fold them all into one portrayal. I see him as a very human character – Superman is us at our best, Luthor is us when we’re being mean, vindictive, petty, deluded and angry. Among other things. It’s like a bipolar manic/depressive personality – with optimistic, loving Superman smiling at one end of the scale and paranoid, petty Luthor cringing on the other.

I think any writer of Superman has to love these two enemies equally. We have to recognize them both as potentials within ourselves. I think it’s important to find yourself agreeing with Luthor a bit about Superman’s “smug superiority” – we all of us, except for Superman, know what it’s like to have mean–spirited thoughts like that about someone else’s happiness. It’s essential to find yourself rooting for Lex, at least a little bit, when he goes up against a man–god armed only with his bloody–minded arrogance and cleverness.

Even if you just wish you could just give him a hug and help him channel his energies in the right direction, Luthor speaks for something in all of us, I like to think.

However he’s played, Luthor is the male power fantasy gone wrong and turned sour. You’ve got everything you want but it’s not enough because someone has more, someone is better, someone is cleverer or more handsome.

Newsarama: Grant, a recurring theme throughout the book is the effect of small kindness – how even the likes of Steve Lombard are capable of decency. And Superman gets the key to saving himself by doing something that any human being could do, offering sympathy to a person about to end it all.

Grant Morrison: Completely...the person you help today could be the person who saves your life tomorrow.

NRAMA: The character actions that make the biggest difference, from Zibarro’s sacrifice to Pa’s influence on Superman, are really things that any normal, non-powered person could do if they embrace the best part of their humanity. The last page of issue #12 teases the idea that Superman’s powers could be given to all mankind, but it seems as though the greatest gift he has given them is his humanity. How do you view Superman’s fate in the context of where humanity could go as a species?

GM: I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. It’s really simple. We can continue to tell ourselves and our children that the species we belong to is a crawling, diseased, viral cancer smear, only fit for extinction, and let’s see where that leads us.

We can continue to project our self-loathing and narcissistic terror of personal mortality onto our culture, our civilization, our planet, until we wreck the promise of the world for future generations in a fit of sheer self-induced panic...

...or we can own up to the scientific fact that we are all physically connected as parts of a single giant organism, imagine better ways to live and grow...and then put them into practice. We can stop pissing about, start building starships, and get on with the business of being adults.

The ’Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.

The key theme of the ‘Dark Age’ of comics was loss and recovery of wonder - McGregor’s Killraven trawling through the apocalyptic wreckage of culture in his search for poetry, meaning and fellowship, Captain Mantra, amnesiac in Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be. Ha hah ha.

Newsarama: The structure of the 12 issues involves both Superman’s 12 labors and his impending death. Do you feel the threat of his demise brings out the best in Superman’s already–high character, or did you intend it more as a window for the audience to understand how he sees the world?

Grant Morrison: In trying to do the “big,” ultimate Superman story, we wanted to hit on all the major beats that define the character – the “death of Superman” story has been told again and again and had to be incorporated into any definitive take. Superman’s death and rebirth fit the sun god myth we were establishing, and, as you say, it added a very terminal ticking clock to the story.

NRAMA: When we talked earlier this year, we discussed the neurotic quality of the Silver Age stories. Looking at the series as a whole, you consistently invert this formula. Superman is faced with all these crises that could be seen as personifying his neuroses, but for the most part he handles them with a level head and comes across as being very at peace with himself. You talked about your discussion with an in–character Superman fan at a convention years ago, but I am curious as to how you determined Superman’s mindset.

GM: I felt we had to live up to the big ideas behind Superman. I don’t take my daft job lightly. It’s all I’ve got.

As the project got going, I wasn’t thinking about Silver Ages or Dark Ages or anything about the comics I’d read, so much as the big shared idea of “Superman” and that “S” logo I see on T–shirts everywhere I go, on girls and boys. That communal Superman. I wanted us to get the precise energy of Platonic Superman down on the page.

The “S” hieroglyph, the super–sigil, stands for the very best kind of man we can imagine, so the subject dictated the methodical, perfectionist approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I keep this aspect of my job fresh for myself by changing my writing style to suit the project, the character or the artist.

With something like Batman R.I.P., I’m aiming for a frenzied Goth Pulp-Noir; punk-psych, expressionist shadows and jagged nightmare scene shifts, inspired by Batman’s roots and by the snapping, fluttering of his uncanny cape. Final Crisis was written, with the Norse Ragnarok and Biblical Revelations in mind, as a story about events more than characters. A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.

The subject matter drives the execution. And then, of course, the artists add their own vision and nuance. With All Star Superman, “Frank” and I were able to spend a lot of time together talking it through, and we agreed it had to be about grids, structure, storybook panel layouts, an elegance of form, a clarity of delivery. “Classical” in every sense of the word. The medium, the message, the story, the character, all working together as one simple equation.

Frank Quitely, a Glasgow Art School boy, completely understood without much explanation, the deep structural underpinnings of the series and how to embody them in his layouts. There’s a scene in issue # 8, set on the Bizarro world, where we see Le Roj handing Superman his rocket plans. Look at the arrangement of the figures of Zibarro, Le Roj, Superman and Bizaro–Superman and you’ll see one attempt to make us of Renaissance compositions.

The sense of sunlit Zen calm we tried to get into All Star is how I imagine it might feel to think the way Superman thinks all the time - a thought process that is direct, clean, precise, mathematical, ordered. A mind capable of fantastical imagination but grounded in the everyday of his farm upbringing with nice decent folks. Rich with humour and tears and deep human significance, yet tuned to a higher key. We tried to hum along for a little while, that’s all.

In honor of the character’s primal position in the development of the superhero narrative, I hoped we could create an “ultimate” hero story, starring the ultimate superhero.

Basically, I suppose I felt Superman deserved the utmost application of our craft and intelligence in order to truly do him justice.

Otherwise, I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t watched my big, brilliant dad decline into incoherence and death. I couldn’t have written it if I’d never had my heart broken, or mended. I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t known what it felt like to be idolized, misunderstood, hated for no clear reason, loved for all my faults, forgotten, remembered...

Writing All Star Superman was, in retrospect, also a way of keeping my mind in the clean sunshine while plumbing the murkiest depths of the imagination with that old pair of c****s Darkseid and Doctor Hurt. Good riddance.

Newsarama: This is touched on in other questions, but how much of the Silver/Bronze Age backstory matters here? What do you see as Superman's life prior to All-Star Superman? (What was going on with this Superman while the Byrne revamp took hold?)

Grant Morrison: When I introduced the series in an interview online, I suggested that All Star Superman could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne‘s New Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?

This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended All Star Superman as a direct continuation of the Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘Age’ specific.

I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. All Star isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.

All Star Superman is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.

Which is to say, we wanted our Superman story be about life, not about comics or superheroes, current events or politics. It’s about how it feels, specifically to be a man...in our dreams! Hopefully that means our 12 issues are also capable of wide interpretation.

So as much as we may have used a few recognizable Silver Age elements like Van-Zee and Sylv(i)a and the Bottle City of Kandor, the ensemble Daily Planet cast embodies all the generations of Superman. Perry White is from 1940, Steve Lombard is from the Schwartz-era ‘70s, Ron Troupe - the only black man in Metropolis - appeared in 1991. Cat Grant is from 1987 and so on.

P.R.O.J.E.C.T. refers back to Jack Kirby’s DNA Project from his ‘70s Jimmy Olsen stories, as well as to The Cadmus Project from ’90s Superboy and Superman stories. Doomsday is ‘90s. Kal Kent, Solaris and the Infant Universe of Qwewq all come from my own work on Superman in the same decade. Pa Kent’s heart attack is from ‘Superman the Movie‘. We didn’t use Brainiac because he’d been the big bad in Earth 2 but if we had, we’d have used Brainiac’s Kryptonian origin from the animated series and so on.

I also used quite a few elements of John Byrne’s approach. Byrne made a lot of good decisions when he rebooted the whole franchise in 1986 and I wanted to incorporate as much as I could of those too.

Our Superman in All Star was never Superboy, for instance. All Star Superman landed on Earth as a normal, if slightly stronger and fitter infant, and only began to manifest powers in adolescence when he’d finally soaked up enough yellow solar radiation to trigger his metamorphosis.

The Byrne logic seemed to me a better way to explain how his powers had developed across the decades, from the skyscraper leaps of the early days to the speed-of-light space flight of the high Silver Age. And more importantly, it made the Superman myth more poignant - the story of a farm boy who turned into an alien as he reached adolescence. I felt that was something that really enriched Superman. He grew away from his home, his family, his adopted species as he became Superman. His teenage years are a record of his transformation from normal boy to super-being.

As you say, there are more than just Silver Age influences in the book. Basically we tried to create a perfect synthesis of every Superman era. So much so, that it should just be taken as representative of an ‘age’ all its own.

In the end, however, I do think that the Silver Age type stories, with their focus on human problems and foibles, have a much wider appeal than a lot of the work which followed. They’re more like fables or folk tales than the later ‘comic book superhero’ stories of Superman when he became just another colorful costume in the crowd...and perhaps that’s why All Star seemed to resemble those books more than it does a typical modern Marvel or DC comic. It was our intention to present a more universal, mainstream Superman.

NRAMA: In your depiction of Krypton and the Kryptonians, you show the complexity of Superman’s relationship between humanity and Earth even further. Krypton has that scientific paradise quality to it, but the Kryptonians are also portrayed as slightly aloof and detached, even Jor-El. But from Bar-El to the people of Kandor, they’re touched by Superman’s goodness. What do you see as the fundamental difference between Kryptonians and Earthlings, and how has Superman’s character been shaped by each?

GM: My version of Krypton was, again, synthesized from a number of different approaches over the decades.  In mythic terms, if Superman is the story of a young king, found and raised by common people, then Krypton is the far distant kingdom he lost. It’s the secret bloodline, the aristocratic heritage that makes him special, and a hero. At the same time, Krypton is something that must be left behind for Superman to become who he is - i.e. one of us. Krypton gives him his scientific clarity of mind, Earth makes his heart blaze.

I liked the very early Jerry Siegel descriptions where Krypton is a planet of advanced supermen and women (I already played with that a little in Marvel Boy where Noh-Varr was written to be the Marvel Superboy basically). To that, I added the rich, science fiction detailing of the Silver Age Krypton stories and the slightly detached coolness that characterized John Byrne’s Krypton, which I re-interpreted through the lens of Dzogchen Buddhist thought, probably the most pragmatic, chilly and rational philosophic system on the planet and the closest, I felt, to how Kryptonians might see things.

We also took some time to redesign the crazy, multicolored Kryptonian flag (you can see our version in Kandor in issue #10). The flag, as originally imagined, seemed like the last thing Kryptonians would endorse, so we took the multicolored-rays-around-a-circle design and recreated it - the central circle is now red, representing Krypton’s star, Rao, while the rays, rather than arbitrary colors, become representations of the spectrum of visible light pouring from Rao into the inky black of space. In this way, the flag, that bizarre emblem of nationalism becomes a scientific hieroglyph.

Showing Krypton and Kryptonians was also important as a way of stressing why Superman wears that costume and why it makes absolute sense that he looks the way he does. I don’t see the red and blue suit as a flag or as rewoven baby blankets. There’s no need for Superman to dress the way he does but it made sense to think of his outfit as his ‘national costume‘.

The way I see it, the standard superhero outfit, the familiar Superman suit with the pants on the outside, is what everyone wore on Krypton, give or take a few fashion accessories like hoods and headbands, chest crests and variant colors. In fact, all other superheroes are just copying the fashions on Krypton, lost planet of the super-people.

Superman wears his ’action-suit’ the way a patriotic Scotsman would wear a kilt. It’s a sign of his pride in his alien heritage.

Newsarama: Although All–Star Superman ties in with DC One Million, you style of writing has changed dramatically since then. How do you feel about One Million now?

Grant Morrison: I just read it again and liked it a lot. Comics were definitely happier, breezier and more confident in their own strengths before Hollywood and the Internet turned the business of writing superhero stories into the production of low budget storyboards or, worse, into conformist, fruitless attempts to impress or entertain a small group of people who appear to hate comics and their creators.

NRAMA: Obviously, this book is the most explicit SF–Christ story since Behold the Man, only...happy. Superman/Christ parallels have existed for decades, but this story makes it absolutely explicit, from laying his hands on the sick and dying to...well, most of issue #12. You’ve dealt with Christ themes before, particularly in The Mystery Play, but outside of the comics, how do you see Superman as a Christ figure for the “real” world?

GM: The “Superman as Christ” thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.

When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?

The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone. This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.

It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements that have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman. I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.

NRAMA: Continuing the religious themes, in issue #10, you have Superman literally giving birth to himself, both philosophically and as a character – a nice little meta–moment showing how Superman inspires a world where he is only fiction. How did that idea come about?

GM: It came from the challenge we’d set ourselves: as I said, issue #10 had been left as a blank space into which the single most coherent condensation of all our ideas about Superman were destined to fit.

I wanted to do a “day in the life” story. So much of All Star had been about this threat to Superman himself, so we wanted to show him going about a typical day saving people and doing good.

Then came the title “Neverending,” which comes from the opening announcement – “Faster than a speeding bullet!...” of the Superman radio show from 1940, and seemed to me to be as good a title for a Superman story as any I could think of. It seemed to distil everything about Superman’s battle and his legend into a single word. And the story structure itself was designed to loop endlessly, so it went well with that.

On top of that went the idea of the Last Will and Testament of Superman. A dying god writing his will seemed like an interesting structure to use. Then came the idea to fit all of human history into that single 24 hours. And then to show the development of the Superman idea through human culture from the earliest Australian Aboriginal notions of super–beings ‘descended” from the sky, through the complex philosophical system of Hinduism, onto the Renaissance concept of the ideal man, via the refinements of Nietzche and finally, down to that smiling, hopeful Joe Shuster sketch; the final embodiment of humanity’s glorious, uplifting notion of the superman become reduced to a drawing, a story for kids, a worthless comic book.

And also what that could mean in a holographic fractal universe, where the smallest part contains and reflects the whole.

Of course the next panel in that sequence is happening in the real world and would show you, the reader, sitting with the latest Superman issue in your hands, deep within the Infant Universe of Qwewq in the Fortress of Solitude, today, wherever you are. In “Neverending,” the reader becomes wrapped in a self–referential loop of story and reality. If you actually, seriously think about what is happening at this point in the story, if you meditate upon the curious entanglement of the real and the fictional, you will become enlightened in this life apparently. According to some texts.

NRAMA: On a personal level, you’ve explored all types of religions and philosophies in your work. What is your take on religion and how it influences humanity, and the Christian take on Jesus Christ in particular?

GM: I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars. At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.

Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.

Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic ‘divinity” at work.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf: just close your eyes and say hello. “God” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).

This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists...but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of 4 cannot do but children of 6 can.

Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it.  This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.” However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.

Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics. Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.

Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.

As Peter Barnes wrote in “The Ruling Class”, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”

Newsarama: When we spoke earlier this year, you talked about some of your ideas for future All Star stories. Are you moving forward on those, or have you started working on different ideas since then?

Grant Morrison: I haven’t had time to think about them for a while. I did have the stories worked out, and I’d like to do more, but right now it feels like Frank and Jamie and I have said all there is to be said. I don’t know if I’m ready to do All Star Superman with anyone else right now. I have other plans.

NRAMA: You end the book with Superman having uplifted humanity – having inspired them through his sacrifice and great deeds, and with the potential to pass his powers on to humanity still there. Do you plan to explore this concept further, or would you prefer to leave it open–ended?

GM: I may go back to the Son of Superman in some way. At the same time, it’s best left open–ended. I like the idea that Superman gets to have his cake and eat it; he becomes golden and mythical and lives forever as a dream. Yet, he also is able to sire a child who will carry his legacy into the future. He kicks ass in both the spiritual and the temporal spheres!

NRAMA: The notion of transcendence – always a big part of your work. But the debate about All Star Superman is whether or not it "transcends its genre." Superman becomes transcendent within the series itself, and inspires the beings on Qwewq, but does the work aspire to more than that? Is it simply the greatest version of a Superman story, and that’s enough?

GM: That would certainly be enough if it were true.

It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

It’s a big old Paul Bunyan style mythologizing of human - and in particular male - experience. In that sense I’d like to think All Star Superman does transcend genre in that it’s intended to be read on its own terms and needs absolutely no understanding of genre conventions or history around it to grasp what’s going on.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent, ‘Zibarro’ crap. That’s what my Final Crisis series is about too.

NRAMA (aka Tim Callahan): Continuing with the theme of transcendence: The words "ineffectual" and "surrender" are repeated throughout the book. Discuss.

GM: Discuss yourself, Callahan! I know you have the facilities and I should think it’s all rather obvious.  

NRAMA: What was the inspiration for the image of Superman in the sun at the end? (I confess this question comes as the result of much unsuccessful Googling)

GM: I didn’t have any specific reference in mind - just that one we‘ve all sort of got in our heads. I drew the figure as a sketch, intended to be reminiscent of William Blake’s cosmic figures, Russian Constructivist Soviet Socialist Worker type posters, and Leonardo’s ‘Proportions of the Human Figure‘. The position of the legs hints at the Buddhist swastika, the clockwise sun symbol. It was to me, the essence of that working class superheroic ideal I mentioned, condensed into a final image of mythic Superman, - our eternal, internal, guiding, selfless, tireless, loving superstar. The daft All Star Superman title of the comic is literalized in this last picture. It’s the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the Enlightenment project - an image of genius, toil, and our need to make things, to fashion art and artifacts, as a form of superhuman, divine imitation.

It was Superman as this fusion of Renaissance/Enlightenment ideas about Man and Cosmos, an impossible union of Blake and Newton. A Pop Art ‘Vitruvian Man‘. The inspiration for the first letter of the new future alphabet!

As you can see, we spent a lot of time thinking about all this and purifying it down to our own version of the gold. I’m glad it’s over.

NRAMA: Finally: What, above all else, would you like people to take away from All Star Superman?

GM: That we spent a lot of time thinking about this!

No. What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that?

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colorist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.

My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honoring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.

#All Star Superman #Grant Morrison #Superman

31 notes · View notes

xanderwithanx · 3 years ago

Text

Chloe does night-time diary posts on HER tumblr, so I'm going to start doing them here, sometimes. It would be nice if you read it, but, please, don't feel obligated! This is more for me to write.

(I got tired of my normal journal, I guess. It's full of bad poetry anyway. Besides, where's the thrill of losing anonymity in a physical notebook?)

I've basically been asleep and depressed for several days, because I had withdrawal after not being able to get my adhd meds. But, I got it today, and DID THINGS. (This is SO much better than before!)

Today, I went to a small café or restaurant (focused on tea) called Alice's Teacup that was Alice in Wonderland themed! My long-standing obsession with Alice in Wonderland knows no bounds. It was a really cute place. I got pumpkin pancakes, and some really good iced tea. Like... REALLY good iced tea.

Still, it seemed like the entire place was geared towards having a pot of tea and snacks with your friends, which left me a bit lonely. The person I asked couldn't come, and by the time I heard back, I was more than halfway there. Still, I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and watched Monty Python on my phone, so I still had a good time!

I dressed pretty eccentricly and effeminately all day, but, with my facial hair, I was ALWAYS coded as a man, even by people on the street! Pastels, a stupid hat, a crop top, and facial hair was a winning combination.

On my way, I was stopped by some guys soliciting for charity. I don't make a habit of stopping for strangers on the streets of Manhattan. What if it's a scam? What if I'm being pressured to buy something? What if it's a strange political rant? But, I had already taken my earbuds off, I wasn't in a hurry, and I'm terminally polite. The first guy said he liked my energy, which seemed to come from a genuine place, because I liked his too!

They were asking for donations for a breast cancer charity, the United Breast Cancer Foundation. After a discussion, it seems like the charity helps pay medical debt, medical bills, and other practical needs, which is much better than *some* others I could name. I regretted not being able to give their minimum there, as it was pretty high, but told them I'd give what I could when I got on the website.

I... did not. Money is tight, because I'm bad and irresponsible with money, even though this is more than a worthy cause. I didn't NEED to go to that tea place, and I don't NEED to spend so much money on food. Sure, I can justify it: I wanted to go to that place for so long, and it was near the college anyway! But, if I was responsible with money, you KNOW my friends direct fundraising drives would go first, worthy charities second. Still, I feel bad about it.

Then, I went to the college library, to get books to start my thesis research. I have literally been unable to go to the college itself, aside from getting my ID, so this was great! There just wasn't a reason. It was... very empty. I went to the library stacks, which was deathly quiet and deeply haunted by the old books. I half expected something to pop out at me, as I turned the stacks, but I wasn't even paranoid or anxious. It was like I was in something else's house. I was welcome, but on thin ice.

I picked up an irrelevant psychology book on the "schizophrenia problem" from the 1930s, out of morbid fascination, and quickly put it down when it threatened to shatter in my hands.

Some students walked past (which was a suprise in those monastic basement library stacks), and I added something to their conversation, in a totally natural and casual way. But, omg the poor girls, I made them jump! Luckily, I'm the least threatening person on earth, and we laughed it off.

After a lot of hunting, I got 5 out of my 10 books (for the most part)! (The rest are, sadly, online. I like to read physical copies.) Strangely, I only came in with a list to get 3 books out of 6.

Most of the books I got are about art in the AIDS crisis, which is the core of my thesis, I think, all with different value. One about exhibitions, one about the larger narrative of those gay artists, and another contradicting the larger narrative.

I also got a book about "Art and Homosexuality". Just, the parallel construction of both "art" and "homosexuality" across cultures and times, from earliest history to the modern age. It wasn't on my initial list, but I'm really excited to read it.

Finally, I got a book called "The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel", about the pain and spectacle of punishment in Medieval and Renaissance European art. I'm mainly interested in Italian Renaissance art of the crucifixion--and its masochism--for the second quarter of my thesis.

The rest are online, and Should mostly focus on Bacchus in the Italian Renaissance (especially through art) and what I call the art of "gay liberation", concurrent with the AIDS crisis (i.e. The Cockettes). These two topics make up the last half of my thesis.

I'm SO excited to get started!!

I even got to cross the college's sky-bridges! (The college is a few skyscrapers.) Still, the loneliness and novelty were kind of the same thought. Imagine if I had been here before COVID, or, if COVID hadn't happened. Who would I have been able to meet? What would the college buildings mean to me? Because, for now, they're just buildings. But, I got to see the street from above, and that was amazing!

Just walking through New York--the Upper East Side--on a cool, sunny day was beautiful. It takes 20-30 minutes to get from my place to the college (and the tea place), but it was great being able to listen to my music (a lot of They Might Be Giants on the playlist today) and see the city. You know, people, super cool old architecture being pushed out by terrible new architecture, and pigeons.

Oh my god, the pigeons. I took pictures, but none of them are good. I kept thinking about how pigeons and doves are functionally the same. We domesticated pigeons, which is why they're here, and no one is stopping to notice them? Even the ones that were splotched with pure white, like doves? There's only so many pigeons you can take until they're just white noise and a nuisance, I know, so don't think I'm blaming anyone! But it's so hard to look away from these quirky little birds.

Also, at one point my walk, I was vaping very strategicly. The mental task of searching through library stacks will do that to you, when you already have an addiction to nicotine. I made sure no one was around, and no one would be affected. I stopped on a corner next to an old, ornate Catholic church while the traffic light changed, and I almost juuled right next to a priest! I'm glad I stopped. I don't believe in Hell, but, I would have walked down there myself had I vaped at a priest. Still, the church advertised itself as LGBT+ friendly, so maybe they aren't so trigger happy on the damnation. Either way, I DIDN'T vape at a priest today, which is good.

Once I got back, I spent a few hours watching things with my amazing girlfriend Chloe, who you may know here as @cisphobiccommunistopinions. She is so beautiful, and I love her more every day, every time I see her. God, it's almost been 5 years!

I just wish I could spend more time with her. She's in Virginia, and I'm in New York. Like she said to me earlier, I'm flighty at the best of times, and, with my lack of object permanence for the digital world, I find myself not giving her the attention I deserve, or, the full connection I long to have with her. We used to live together. Luckily, someday we will live together again! All these problems won't be forever, and we can live together again.

We watched a lot of things, but we're pretty deep into Serial Experiments Lain right now. It's a postmodern anime from the 90s, and, wow, do I have no idea what's going on in it. It's about the internet, and potentially schizophrenia as well. However, I'm obsessed! One day I'll be able to crack this artistic code, and it's unreality, thematic knots, and double-meanings. I will probably understand it better on the second watch. I don't see myself in Lain, but I see my 14 year old self in her, when I had just developed schizophrenia. Her cyberpunk fate seems like it's railroaded towards tragedy, but I want to save her, even if it's silly and irrational.

I told Chloe that I was scared about spilling apple cider on my library books, and she referred to it as "The Great Apple Juice Disaster of September 11, 2021." To which I said that it was the second worst thing to happen in New York on that date. It was funnier if you were there, and also were in my brain at the time.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm meeting some online acquaintances from the college's "Queer Srudent Union" at a Japanese Culture Fair in a park. (I do not know which park.) It emphasizes "fun"! I don't know them very well, but they're friends with the one person I know irl, so it should be good.

Tomorrow night, I should Probably head downtown to check out a gallery show by MFA (masters of fine arts) students at Hunter! After all, I was in a group project with one of them, and they're absolutely brilliant. I missed the Thursday gallery opening by a landslide, because of the aforementioned lack of adhd meds and Being Asleep, which I infinitely regret. I could have listened to all the artists and curators talk about their art and exhibition! Maybe I could have even talked with the artists and curators. But, it's best for me to go sooner, rather than later, so I don't forget. And, I REALLY want to go.

It's "This dialogue which happened to be present in all other dialogues" at the Alyssa Davis Gallery. From the email I got, "Each of these works observes a threshold of transition. [...] [These] intimations [are] of a frame of mind shared by the artists. These works perform, record, access, engage, document, and entrap, embalming the viewer within the gallery space."

sgp is a really good artist, by the way. Their work is just next-level. Be sure to check out their art, if you have a chance. Let me link their portfolio: https://saragracepowell.com/

(I highly suspect spg and the other member of my group project ghosted me afterwards, but I understand. I was really in over my head. Still, they're both really sweet and kind people, don't get it twisted!)

I ALSO really want to see The Cake Boys. They're performing at the 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn on September 26th. (It's only $15!) They're the only all drag king collective in NYC! (Are... there any Other all drag king collectives out there?) Other than the fact that a lot of them are trans or nonbinary, which I love, this show is a totally non-judgmental competition for over 40 drag kings! I've heard their shows are hilarious and unique.

I just have to wait until I have $15 to spare. I... didn't eat dinner tonight, because I'm irresponsible with my money and don't want to ask my parents for money... again. Don't worry, it's literally fine, and I don't make a habit of doing this!

Which reminds me! For my birthday, my parents gave me a gift card to Lush! I'm definitely going to Lush tomorrow, which will be great. I would describe my personality as "Lush store employee acosting you about a bath bomb demonstration", so I'll fit right in.

I also made a transition timeline, to show how much I've changed on testosterone. For the better, I hope! I really believe I'm becoming, if not Have Become, the man I was always meant to be. It's so strange to look back at who I was not too long ago, and to know the absolute pain I was in. It's also strange, in a good way, to see the man looking back at me in the selfies. I'm so much happier now! Much more candid in my pictures, at least. But, I know that I'm so much more comfortable as myself than I was even 6 months ago. It's strange. Sometimes I think to myself, "I don't pass yet; I'm not who I Need To Be yet." Then, I look at my selfie from today, and... I'm THERE. My mind just hasn't caught up with my amazing, natural, normal reality.

The end. I have to get ready for bed, (even though I could be partying on a Saturday night in the city. I'm lame.) If you actually read this, I am kissing you on the mouth right now. I hope it made you calm down tonight, like a terrible bedtime story. If you didn't read it and just skipped to the end, don't worry: you did the rational thing.

#long post #diary entry

2 notes · View notes

spaceskam · 5 years ago

Note

What a fabulous list! How about #4 for Boy Meets World (loooooooved this show as a kid!)

BMW 4. Character A has a rule of only dating people for two weeks before breaking up with them until they find a bag and decide they are in love with the owner.

"You are… so good at that.”

“You’re not bad either.”

Alex pushed off the couch and quickly started getting dressed. Michael stayed laid out on the couch and it had Alex so thankful he hadn't brought him to his place. As hot as he was, time was up.

"Where are you going? Stay," Michael said, flashing that charming smile and making grabby hands. Alex looked away and buttoned up his jeans.

"Look, you're cool," Alex said, "Super hot 'n all, but I don't know if we're a good match."

Michael shifted on the couch. "You barely know me, Alex. We've only been fucking around for two weeks. Why don't we go on like an actual date? You know, have a conversation before we dive into each other's pants."

"Kinda late on that front, don't you think?" Alex asked, sparing him one last glance as he pulled his shirt over his head. Michael did not look amused.

"So that's it?" he asked. Alex licked his lips and pushed away the thoughts of how he was good in bed and could make him laugh and could cook annoyingly well. Alex Manes did not do relationships and he wasn't about to start just because someone was good at what they did.

"Sorry."

"Oh, god damn it, Alex! I liked that one!"

"Then you date him."

Alex smiled at Maria's middle finger that was unceremoniously shoved in his face. Liz just giggled on the other side of him.

"You know how Alex is. He thinks he's too cool for romance," she said. He scoffed.

"I don't think I'm too cool for romance. I think I'm young and hot and college is the time for exploring your sexuality. And I want to explore all avenues before I settle."

"Okay, exploring is one thing. Banging everything that is down to fuck is something else entirely," Maria teased as they found an empty booth in the back of the student union. They all slipped in only to find a backpack tucked in the corner.

"I'm just expressing myself and I always have safe sex, so leave me alone. Whose bag is this?" Alex rambled, gesturing towards it with his head as he reached to dig his veggie burger out of the bag Liz had placed on the table since it was her day to buy lunch.

"Don't change the subject," Maria pressed, "Michael was good for you. Nice, smart, and he likes you even when you're a dick."

Alex rolled his eyes and cracked a smile. "Look, he's just not worth settling down for."

"How do you know? I know him better than you do and you were the one sleeping with him," Liz chimed in.

"Oh, not you too!" Alex groaned, still smiling, "Nah, but for real, did you see someone get up from this table?"

The girls sighed, "No."

Alex took a bite of his burger before pulling the bag onto his lap and unzipping it.

"What are you doing?" Liz asked.

"Seeing if there's a name anywhere."

"Dude, don't go through it, just bring it to lost and found."

"And walk all the way to campus police? Who do I look like?" he asked. They both rolled their eyes but didn't prod any further so it felt like they were going to let him continue.

He pulled out a thick, labeled binder and tried to flip through it. All the notes were meticulous and impressive to the point he raised his eyebrows, but there wasn't a name. It was just pages upon pages of math and other smart shit. There was even a tab for a coding class which was wild because he thought he knew everyone who was going into coding. Since that provided no answers, he dropped it back in the bag and dug some more.

He found a pack of bandaids, a tiny notebook full of doodles, a broken up protein bar that happened to be Alex's favorite, and a pair of bulky headphones that were attached to an iPod Touch.

"Oh, Alex, c'mon, let's just bring it to lost and found," Maria sighed the second she spotted his giddy smile.

"It's for research!"

"It’s probably illegal!”

“Shush,” Alex said, swatting them away as he unlocked the iPod that didn’t have a password, “Who even has an iPod touch anymore?”

“Someone whose things you shouldn’t be going through,” Liz said, giving a sweet smile when he glared at her.

Annoyingly enough, the owner didn’t have any pictures of themselves or even any friends on it. The background picture and the lock screen were both just a Jedi sitting on the Iron Throne that was so dorky that it was almost endearing. When he began going through the gallery, Alex was faced with really old memes mixed in with fucking math memes. It wasn’t until he got to one that was mocking a syntax error, though, that he found himself grinning to the point he had to smack his hand over his mouth.

“Oh no,” Alex breathed, his eyes widening. Liz pressed into his side to peer over his shoulder.

“What? What is it?” she wondered.

“His memes,” Alex whispered, heart thudding in his chest, “They’re funny.”

“Oh no.”

“I think I’m in love.”

Maria, ever the pessimist, rolled her eyes. “You can’t be in love with someone you don’t know.”

“Look, Maria, you don’t get it,” he insisted, “Whoever owns this bag not only has good taste in protein bars, fantastic notes, and is a coding whiz, but he has funny memes. We’re basically meant to be.”

“How do you know it’s a guy?” Liz asked, “Could be a girl.”

“Why are you trying to break my heart? I just fell in love and you’re already trying to take him from me,” Alex accused. Both girls laughed and shook their heads at him. It came perfectly in time to Alex opening his iTunes app to see a flood of late-90s/early-2000s pop-punk that caused him to gasp. “Guys, he has Sum 41, Sublime, Blink, Green Day, The Offspring, Paramore, shall I go on?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Maria corrected, giving a shocked laugh towards Liz.

“Oh my God, he listens to fredo disco, I’m sold, I’m genuinely in love. You said I wouldn’t settle down, well, this person has gotten me to settle,” Alex sighed wistfully. Liz and Maria seemed to both think he was simply being dramatic, but he was serious. If anyone was worth his time and effort, it was the owner of this bag. Who else would he find that was this perfect? “I’m serious!”

“That’s completely superficial. They could be a horrible person,” Maria said. Alex groaned, going back to the home page of the iPod looking at the apps. He had sudoku. Further inspection showed that his high score on expert was 8 minutes. What a fucking dreamboat.

“Well, we’ll see. We’ll find out who this belongs to and we’ll see who’s right and you can apologize at my wedding,” Alex decided.

“Okay, fine,” Maria laughed, “We’ll see.”

Before Alex very reluctantly turned the bag into lost and found, he put a piece of paper in it that requested the owner to call him.

Parting with the bag was painful at best, but he didn’t know how else he could figure out the owner unless he turned it in. Besides, if he randomly did run into the owner while still in possession of it, it would be very difficult to explain that he didn’t steal their bag.

That night, Alex dreamed of who the owner could possibly be. He liked to think that he was hot and smart and good in bed. If Michael Guerin sometimes replaced his fantasy then no one needed to know. It was simply who was fresh on his mind. The fact was that in two days tops, Alex would get a call and he would find the love of his life. Simple as that.

Except the call never came.

“It’s been three days! He had to have seen it by now,” Alex grumbled, pouting helplessly as he walked between Liz and Maria.

“I guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” Maria said, squeezing him in a side-hug even though she was smiling.

“Which is so unfair,” Alex groaned, dragging his feet even more.

“Maybe he’s in one of your coding classes and has your number already and is scared to call you,” Liz offered. Alex furrowed his eyebrows.

“Why would they be scared to call me?”

“Maybe they’re straight. Or a girl. Or not looking for a relationship,” Maria chimed in. Alex pouted.

“I can’t believe I’m already gonna die alone.”

“Such a drama queen.”

As pathetic as he felt, Alex made his way to class and decided to check out every person there. He had taken a picture on his phone of the bag which turned out to be genius since he could easily compare it to everyone in there. Sadly (or maybe not since none of them were his type), the owner wasn’t there.

His last, ridiculous decision was to wait outside the classroom until the next class to see if anyone in that class had the bag. He sat there like a creep, staring a little too intently at each bag that passed. He couldn’t figure out just why he was so fucking desperate. Well, yes he could. There was something about that stupid bag that just felt like it was meant to be. He wanted that damn happy ever after.

How was he supposed to know that he already knew the owner?

Alex felt his stomach drop to the floor as he saw the bag on the back of a very familiar curly head. He ducked behind a stack of books before Michael noticed him waiting and let himself panic for a couple of seconds. Of course. Of fucking course.

“Code red,” Alex hissed into his phone after calling Maria and Liz in a group call, “Code motherfucking red.”

“What?” Liz asked excitedly.

“I found the owner of the bag,” Alex said, pausing for dramatic effect, “It’s Michael.”

“Ha!” Maria said, “I knew it!”

“You did not!”

“Well, I knew he was good for you. Apparently, you think he’s good for you too, you just were too busy trying not to get to know him that you didn’t notice,” Maria pointed out. Alex let out an annoyed whine, stomping his foot on the ground.

“Well, what do I do now? He probably hates me for being a massive dick.”

“Hate to say I told you so, but…”

“Could you at least wait until I’m not in the worst situation of my life?”

“Is it really the worst?”

The voice that said that addition was much deeper than both Liz and Maria’s voices and caused Alex to jump, dropping his phone and fumbling to catch it. It was a very, very embarrassing thing that was only made more embarrassing whenever he turned to see Michael standing there.

“Call you, huh?” he asked. Alex slowly lifted the phone back to his ear.

“I’ll call you back,” he said, quickly ending the call as he looked to Michael. He’d never felt so uncomfortable before. But then again he’d never really liked someone before. He’d spent days accidentally fantasizing about Michael while trying to fantasize about backpack guy and two weeks before that sleeping with Michael who had made him laugh like no one else even though he really tried to not get to know him. And now he really, really wanted to get to know him.

“So…” Michael trailed off, pushing up onto his toes.

“You didn’t tell me you were dorky on top of being hot,” Alex said instead of anything clever. Michael snorted.

“Dude, I tried. I tried to get to know you. I liked you a lot and wanted to date you. You pushed me away. And suddenly you find my bag and, instead of giving it to me, you write your number down, stick it to my iPod, and give my bag to lost and found. You might just be the king of mixed signals,” Michael said. It took a lot of Alex not to scream. He was a dumbass.

“I didn’t know it was your bag.”

“You saw it multiple times, Alex. Did you really not pay any attention to me at all?” Michael asked. Alex sighed and pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes.

“You know that MTV show from back in the day called Room Raiders where they would go through people’s rooms and decide who they wanted to date based on that instead of, like, looks or personality. Like, you get an inside view of who they are by the way they keep their space, you know?” Alex explained. Michael didn’t answer, so he continued. “Basically, I got that with your bag. I was being a dick to you because I thought that was easiest, but when I went through your stuff, I‒”

“You went through my stuff?”

“I realized I really want to get to know you,” Alex said a little bit louder. Michael glared at him.

“You’re a real dick.”

“I know.”

“And mean.”

“Yeah.”

“And you totally don’t deserve to go out with me or even talk to me again.”

“Fair.”

“But,” Michael sighed, “I guess I could take you paying for a meal as payment for you going through my shit.”

Alex snapped his head up. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah,” Michaels said, smiling, “Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two.” Alex tried not to be too obvious about how giddy that made him.

“Yeah, maybe. So… Tonight, maybe?” Alex said, trying to sound smooth like he did the first time he asked Michael out. Michael just snorted and turned to walk into class.

“Call me.”

No matter how mocking his voice was, Alex still felt like he won the goddamn lottery.

#malex #malex fic #michael guerin #michael guerin fic #alex manes #alex manes fic #roswell new mexico #roswell new mexico fic #rnm #rnm fic #my fic #prompt

74 notes · View notes

candyheartharry · 5 years ago

Text

Fall Apart - Part II: Bewitched

Author’s note: Hi dolls! 💘 Sorry it took me forever to get the second part up and ready, it took a while to get some inspiration for it, but of course as soon as I got it, I had it done in one day lol. Once again our series playlist can be found here, and if you’d like to be added to the tag list at the end drop me a message and let me know, feedback is EXTREMELY appreciated, happy reading ✨ PART I

Although you and Calum had shared friends, it wasn’t until the two of you started spending more time together that these two groups began to intertwine, but it was going to be just you while he and the band were all around the world on a small promo tour. You’d kept up with him a little while he was away, receiving occasional texts and snapchat videos from wherever he was, usually either a nice picture of the scenery or a video of him and the other guys doing something funny.

It had been a little while since he was away, and you really weren’t too sure when he was supposed to be back due to a few commitments they hadn’t quite confirmed before they left, so the most he could give you before he left was a two week window on when he might possibly be back home again.

In the meantime, one of your friends who worked for an art museum downtown had invited you to an early preview party for a new temporary exhibition that was opening at the museum, so since you had nothing better to do on a Wednesday evening, you got dressed up enough to try to not look out of place among donors to the museum and fancy people who had memberships. Since she worked there she had to be there early, so you were going to be arriving by yourself and meeting her there. As you made your way through the entrance after presenting your guest pass card to the attendant at the welcome desk, you promptly made your way to the bar to help yourself to your one complimentary drink of the evening.

You had tried texting your friend to let her know you were there, but knew that since this was technically a work event for her it might be a little while before she could respond and come say hello. Until then, you decided to take a look around the exhibit that everyone had come to see. Since it was an early preview, it was obviously packed full of people who you never would’ve imagined yourself at a party with. Many people who were leading discussions in small groups crowded around the ornate frames on the wall gave off the obvious vibes that they were professors of some sort, mostly due to their use of words like “tone”, “depth”, and conversations about color choices. Others seemed like doctors, or lawyers, or stockbrokers, or maybe multi-million dollar luxury real estate agents who had so much money they decided to make very large annual donations to the museum in the name of charitable giving. There were of course others who you could tell were just membership holders out for a nice evening, and now that you think about it, you were a little surprised you hadn’t run into any of your other friends, assuming that you weren’t the only one your friend Cora who worked there had invited.

After a while of doing your best to see what types of painting and small sculptures were in this new exhibit over everyone else crowded closely around them, you still hadn’t heard from your friend, so you decided to take a break from listening to conversations about “what this shade of blue here means versus the other shade of blue in this area” and made your way out of the gallery over to the elevators that brought you upstairs earlier. Once you entered the glass elevator, you decided on going up one level to the contemporary floor. When the doors opened one floor above, there was instantly a difference in the atmosphere, not just because this area felt more spacious and open, and the pieces were much larger and not in ornate gold frames, but the first room of the gallery was completely empty with the exception of two security guards who welcomed you once they realized they were no longer alone.

After admiring a few pieces near the entrance, you followed a distant noise across the first room into the next to see where it was coming from. The only sound in the otherwise quiet gallery came from a massive mountain of speakers stacked from the floor to the ceiling, playing very quietly, but playing slightly ominous music overlapped with a few various sound effects and dialogue from movies and TV shows every now and then. Something about how gigantic and illusive this mountain of speakers was drew you in, and you found yourself wanting to stop and listen rather than explore the rest of the empty gallery. Of course, since the gallery was empty due to everyone else being downstairs, the bench across from this colossal structure was empty as well. You decided to take up a seat across from the speakers and recorded a quick video of the scene for your Instagram story. After posting, you put your phone away in the small clutch purse you brought, and decide to enjoy the peace and quiet compared to the party full of people you don’t know that you had just left.

It was nice in its own way, the quiet accented by the almost white noise coming from the speakers. It should be unsettling, but it was almost calming. Something about it felt like it was putting you in a trance, it was something so monumental, it almost felt like it had a secret that if you watched and waited long enough it would let you in on what it knew.

“Mind if I join you?” a familiar voice interrupts your from your thoughts. You look up to your right to see Calum grinning down at you, dressed in a black and white striped shirt that looked very nice on him, and a drink in his own hand. “Oh my god, Calum, hi!” you exclaimed while you instantly broke into a smile of your own after you realized who it was speaking, and rushed to set your drink down on the bench to your left before turning back to open your arms up to him.

He accepted your invitation into your open arms, starting out for a hug before he was even properly seated yet, both of your arms wrapping around his broad back and he squirmed to set his drink next to yours behind your back so he didn’t spill it on you. Once his hands were free they wrapped carefully around you, pulling you closer into him.

“Oh my god, you’re the last person I ever expected to be here, when did you get back?!” you ask once you both pull apart.

“I got back pretty late yesterday! Did you come with anybody else?” he asks as he leans around behind you for the two drinks, handing yours back to you as he holds onto his own.

“No, it’s just me. I didn’t know anybody downstairs so I just came up here,” you told him. It was still just the two of you in the gallery with the speakers, which have gotten his attention. The backing track its playing almost sounds like music that should be playing in a horror movie when the antagonist is introduced, but the overlapping track is a scene from Pride and Prejudice.

“Damn, what’s the first song you’d want to play on these if you got to pick?” he asks, turning to you before he takes a sip of his drink. You look away from him and back up at the towering mountain of speakers across from you both and think about your answer.

“Are we choosing loud songs or sad songs?” you ask, needing to narrow down what type of answer he wants to know.

“Well my answer is by Cigarettes After Sex, so pick something different for variety’s sake.”

“Can I be super cliché and go with The Less I Know The Better, Tame Impala. You said your band, but what’s your song?” you ask, shifting your position a little so that you’re facing him a little more.

“Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby,” he replies, and even though it’s just the name of the song, for some reason hearing the way he says ‘baby’ gives you chills.

“So what brings you up to the contemporary floor in the first place? Didn’t want to hang out with all the art critics downstairs?” you ask to change the subject. “Oh, you posted on your Instagram, so I came to find you,” he replies casually, sending your heart into your throat, so you take a sip of your drink to try to calm down. “Plus some of the Picasso’s downstairs looked like they could’ve also been villains on Courage the Cowardly Dog, so,” he adds with a shrug, making you laugh.

Neither of you said anything for a moment, even though there was so much you both wanted to say. He wanted to tell you every detail about his time away: the cities they went to, the people they got to meet, how he spent time with his mother which made him feel the most like himself he had felt in a while, but he probably wouldn’t tell you about how about halfway into the trip he realized he missed you a little more than he normally missed his friends when he was away. You wanted to ask him all about what he saw in the countries he had left, he always had such a more interesting life than you did, but that wasn’t all you wanted to talk about. You wanted to tell him about how mundane your life was here back at home while he was gone, and that the most interesting thing you had done was meet up with an old friend from your hometown who was passing through on a business trip. You wanted to tell him how ever since he had been gone, you had been hearing his new song on the radio nearly every time you started your car, so it almost felt like his way of saying hello even when he wasn’t around. You wanted to tell him how the barista at the coffee shop inside the bookstore you both liked had asked where your friend was the last time you went, and how you realized you actually felt kind of lonely when you told her that he was out of town. Instead you both just sat in the silence for a little while more, and listened to the mountain of speakers play a scene from the 1996 Romeo and Juliet overlapped with organ music that sounds like it could be in a haunted house.

“I missed you,” he admits after a moment’s silence. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice that his left hand is resting on the bench in the space between you two, and when he feels you noticed it he moves his hand ever so slightly closer towards you almost in an invitation that he wants you to take it.

“Sorry, I cant help it that I’m just so charming,” you tease him, nudging him with your shoulder, which makes him laugh and shake his head. When he stops laughing and is just smiling softly at you still, you place your hand on top of his.

“I missed you, too,” you continue more seriously, giving him a soft smile of your own. “The stripes are a nice look, by the way,” you add after not so subtly checking him out. You’d be lying if you said he didn’t look fucking amazing, but telling him that word for word would very likely get to his head.

He slides his hand out from underneath yours to properly hold your hand now, leaning down to place his drink on the floor before he guides you to stand up from the bench you had been seated at. “Do you want do dance with me?” he asks once you both are standing.

“Calum, this is literally a sample of a Pink Floyd song and dialogue from Titanic,” you try to oppose, setting your own now empty glass on the bench where you had been sitting. Instead, he guides you into a twirl while he shrugs his own shoulders.

“I know what I said,” he continues, reaching for your other hand and pulling you in so that you both are standing with your elbows bent and your joined hands are level with his chest, so close that if you were to let go you could reach out and touch him, but you knew better than to give in so you kept them safely joined in his in the space between you both.

In the daytime, the gallery is lit up from the natural lighting that the skylights allow, but in the evening, the darkness casts an inky blue across the room, with just a little light coming from the moon and from the occasional spotlights that illuminate certain pieces of the artwork.

“You’re supposed to say that I look nice too, you know,” you playfully point out as Calum guides you both around in a circle in the empty gallery in front of the speakers. He grins down at you before he extends his arm and lets go of your hand to guide you into a twirl again. After he spins you around he doesn’t join both your hands again, and places his free hand on your waist to pull you just a touch closer than you were standing before.

“You know I always think you look nice,” he replies. ‘Nice’ isn’t the word he wants to use, he wants to use amazing, incredible, entrancing, beautiful, captivating, but just ‘nice’ will have to do for now. Distance must have made you both a little bolder, because this evening there seems to have been an unspoken, but mutually recognized tension between you two. Staring into his eyes is almost too intense, even more so once you catch him looking away to glance at your lips for a moment, so you look away yourself to admire another piece in the gallery across the room.

You notice you’ve been in the gallery for so long now that the track on the speakers has looped back to the beginning, when you hear the same scene from Pride and Prejudice playing again. “You have bewitched me, body and soul,” is the first line you notice has started playing back, and you notice as well that Calum has started to look around the room at the other art. You take the moment to admire how he looks in the shadows of the darkness, searching to see if he’s any different now than when you left him. His hair looks like it was recently cut a little shorter, and he’s gone back to black instead of a silvery blonde. You’ve always thought the contrast of the two reminded you of night and day, and now he’s gone back to night.

“You have bewitched me, body and soul,” repeats again, now mixed over the bridge of a Lana Del Rey song you both like. He notices the song and meets your gaze again. He almost asks why you’re staring, but lets it slide in hopes you’ll return the favor eventually and let him do the same someday without questions. This time he’s the one who notices your gaze down to his lips, seeing if his smile still starts on the same side of his mouth that you remember.

He inches his face just a little closer to yours, embracing the boldness he seems to have found in the time he was gone. “Hey,” he says softly in attempt to get your attention. Your eyes flash back up to his, and he notices how where you’re standing allows you to be lit up perfectly in the moonlight.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s unfortunately time to call it a night. Everything wrapped up downstairs a little while ago,” a security guard announces from the archway, causing you to both nearly jump out of your skin in surprise. “Okay, thank you,” Calum nods to the guard. He drops his hand from your waist and takes a few steps back to the bench to pick up your discarded cups. You reach for your clutch purse and hold it in both hands in front of you, following his lead back to the elevators once he asks if you’re ready.

He throws away the cups in a trashcan by the doors after pressing the call button, and shoves his hands into his pockets while you wait. When the doors open, he extends an arm in gesture for you to enter first, and he follows behind before pressing the button for the main floor. In the process, you notice the time on the silver watch on his wrist reads that it’s nearly 11:00 PM, meaning you and him must’ve been up there alone for nearly an hour and a half, and neither of you had realized. You press your back against the glass to try to ground yourself again after whatever that was between you that had just happened back upstairs. He doesn’t turn to you, and instead stays just a step ahead with his back facing you the entire short ride four floors down.

“Did you drive yourself or do you want a ride?” he asks as you two exit the building through the lobby. You both fall in step side by side across the courtyard outside. “Oh, no, it’s fine, I drove myself. Did you park in the deck across the street?” you ask in return.

“Yeah, I’m over in that one, Cora gave me a pass for a reserved spot on the first level with my invite, did she give one to you too?” he replies, referring to your friend who had invited you both in the first place, and ended up never seeing the entire night. You nod in reply as you both make your way to the crossing. You had thought for a moment upstairs he might’ve been about to kiss you or say something at least before you were interrupted, but if he was going to act like everything was normal, so were you.

As you make your way into the parking deck across the street, you notice your cars are both just a few spaces apart from each other. You both stop in the empty spaces between to say goodbye before going your separate ways. “Let me know when you want to get coffee at the bookstore again, it’s been too long since I’ve been able to go,” he says after a moment.

“I’m ready whenever you want to go! The girl who always rings us up was asking about you the last time I was there,” you tell him, which makes him smile. It’s always nice to hear the home misses him just as much as he misses home whenever he’s away.

After you get your keys out of your purse, he holds open his arms to wrap you in a hug before you go, and you step into the space you’ve missed so much while he was gone. You close your eyes as he buries his head against your neck, pulling you in for the most proper hug you’ve had in a long time. You don’t realize it at the time, but the last time you’ve felt so secure and safe while wrapped in someone’s arms was his own the last time you saw him at his house the day before he left for the airport.

“Get home safe,” he requests, rubbing his hand across your shoulders before he lets go. You still feel so electrified from whatever sort of trance you both must’ve fell under in front of the speakers earlier that you can’t let him leave before giving a quick, still friendly and as casual as you can make it kiss to his cheek before you step away from him. You tried to act as if was an old habit between you both, your usual routine whenever you part ways, but you’ve never kissed his cheek before, and you both know it no matter how hard you try to not acknowledge it. Once you’ve stepped back, he doesn’t know what to say, and all he can do is blink at you for a moment.

“Be safe, I’ll see you soon. Let me know once you get home,” he requests again in attempt to snap himself out of it while he takes a step backwards towards his own car. You nod and ask him to do the same, heading around to the driver’s side of your own car in the process. Once you’re both safely in your own cars, you give each other a quick wave from the window before you go your separate ways.

You were all he could think about while he was gone, and now that he’s back it seems that you’ll be all he thinks about while he’s home as well.

tag list: @yessii-i @rexorangecouny @calssunflower @notsooperfect @outofmylimitcal @ayee-style @madbomb

51 notes · View notes

pudding-on-parade · 5 years ago

Text

Rambling about Lylanir

Just contemplating rules and culture and, y’know, world-building stuff. Also to-do lists. It’s mostly meant for me because I find that “writing” helps me to clarify things in my own head, but if you want to read along, feel free. :) I’ll warn you that it’s really long, and I’ll probably edit it over time to make it longer still. Or maybe shorter, if I delete things I’ve gotten done. WHO KNOWS WHAT I’LL DO???!!

Right now, I’m just working in Edit Town mode. I’ve moved in a placeholder Sim (who will be annihilated when I start adding the real population; I love that you can do that in TS3) so that I can let the world run a bit so that it generates service Sims. Currently, I’m deleting some rabbitholes I don’t want and adding some that I do. Also, some lots for some of the Ambitions functions. Like, do not want school but do want stadium, police, and military, so I’ve deleted/put those down.

Also do want:

A spa. Partly rabbithole, partly playable. I want it to be a hot springs. Gonna use one of the world’s empty 64x64 lots for it, I think. Maybe a little smaller, but still a big lot. The DV spa rabbithole is pretty elvish-looking, so I might use a rug instead...or I might decide elvish-looking is OK for a spa. Mostly, I just want it to be pretty and relaxing.

A junkyard. I wish there were more period-appropriate junk piles, but I’ll make do with the “normal” ones. I also want to look at the “Inventing Overhaul” mod I have. I think I remember that you can replace the inventable objects with other things. I’d like some more slightly-advanced but closer to period-appropriate things than the advanced tech that mod uses. Like, inventing telescopes, for instance. Not sure I’ll be able to do that because I have zero TS3-modding skills, and if I can’t, I’ll settle for them inventing anachronistic stuff, mostly because I just love inventor Sims and the blacksmith’s house in the village is already furnished with an inventing station.

Business, criminal, theater, and science rabbitholes.

An art gallery that’s really more of a studio, with easels and sculpting stations and that Store glass-blowing/jewelry-making thing. maybe the toy-making thing from the Store and stuff like that. I’m going back and forth as to whether this stuff should be part of a residential home for a Da Vinci-like Sim or if it should be a community lot so that everyone of an artistic bent can use the stuff. I’m currently leaning more toward the latter.

A non-rabbithole, playable boarding school for the less-agrarian kids. Not sure what I need to do in TS3 to make that work. Need to do some reading/thinking about it.

Something for vampires, but definitely not a typical “Vampire Lounge.” I’m thinking....Well, the town has a monastery. It has a big, explorable, and very gothy tomb under it. Kinda thinking the “brothers” will all be vampires.

Maybe want:

A hospital rabbithole. I can’t decide if I want the medical careers (including custom ones I have, like nursing) in this world. I know I won’t be sending people there to birth babies -- mostly because of travel time -- so otherwise its only function would be careers, so....I don’t know. The world’s alchemy-heavy, and I have some custom elixirs for curing illness and such, so maybe a hospital is unnecessary.

A salon. Makeovers might be nice. A super-gay medieval stylist would be hilarious. Tattoos...maybe. In the real world, tattooing goes back to at least ancient Egypt, but I’d need to download some more appropriate designs than what the game comes with. I’m not sure this is important enough to me to go to that effort.

Wish I could have: A fire station. But that requires the fire truck and that’s pushing anachronism tolerance waaaaaay beyond my threshold. :)

Then, I need to go into all the prebuilt lots and edit them as needed. Like, I know because I looked that some of them have all modern kitchen appliances. Do not want.

Once all that’s done, all the service Sims ought to have been generated. So the next step will be making them over so they look right. Because they generate like this:

Yeah, that’s not gonna work. *laugh* But, I’ll only need to change hairs and everyday outfits, so it shouldn’t take long. What will take a long time will be making the playables, given the CAS lag I have. Which hopefully won’t be as bad since this Mods folder will be much lighter on the hair than my “normal” folder...

So, some ideas about this place’s environment and culture and all that:

Its climate will be temperate with all four seasons but on the cooler side. Longer autumn/winter/spring, shorter summer. Mostly to make farming a little harder. Lifespans will be longer to match because I like to take my time with things. Horses, of course, will be integral to this world.

Traveling won’t be allowed, so it’ll be an isolated culture with no one immigrating or emigrating once I’ve got the population set. UNLESS I decide to “network” in one or two other historical worlds of a similar era using the Traveler mod. I don’t know that I’m up for setting up more than this world, though. *laugh*

I’ve been putting in some thought about this place’s culture and while I don’t have much figured out yet, I DO know that this place is definitely going to be fantasy with only a medieval-esque veneer. But I also want it to have an unusual culture, not an LOTR-like sort of epic fantasy. This means it’s going to diverge a lot from the real Middle Ages, and I’m not gonna care. Given that, I’ve decided to go all out on some fantasy things.

Like, I’m going to use the dragons that came with Dragon Valley. I’m not quite sure how yet. I might limit them to supernatural Sims having them, maybe only one kind of supernatural having them. Maybe as a sort of witch familiar? Not that I don’t want witches to have cats, of course! *laugh* Maybe dragons can be fairy companions...

That said, obviously supernaturals will be integral here. :) But there won’t be superstition or stigma about them. No witch trials/burnings or anything like that. They’ll just be...people. Well, OK, if I do a feral werewolf colony, they’ll probably be feared, but otherwise? People will be cool with the supernatural, even embracing them and seeking to become one, i.e., those monastic vampires. Even though the vampires are probably gonna kill people. For population control, if nothing else.

For the supernaturals....I’ve downloaded a bunch of skin color ramps, I think they’re called. The things with ranges of unnatural colors on one slider. I’ve never used them. I think I’m going to use them for at least some of the supernaturals, designating a color family for each type of supernatural. I also have a mess of unnatural hair color presets, and I’ll do unnatural eye colors, too. I want to do this partly because I think it’ll be visually interesting and very different from what I’ve done in all my Simming before, but mostly because I’m curious to see how the Advanced Genetics that are part of NRAAS’s Story Progression (as well as a mod I have that blends parental hair colors) will handle such things. I’m hoping for some interesting results, especially with supernatural hybrids.

Speaking of witch burnings...Religion. If there is one at all in this world, I’m definitely not doing anything from the real-world West. Probably won’t even do anything like the Sims Medieval style of religion. I’m not sure if the “monastery” will be related to religion at all, in fact. Currently, I’m leaning toward it being the vampires themselves who are worshipped by everyone else or at least by all the humans. Like, people could send them sacrifices to be drained in exchange for...something. :) I have no idea what right now. But I’m toying with a “backstory” about vampires that they are perhaps technologically advanced and not even former humans. Maybe they’re aliens, maybe they’re time travelers. Maybe they’re stranded in Lylanir, maybe they came deliberately as observers or something. Mostly, I’m thinking this because I want to be able to use the science station to make forbidden fruit seeds because I want to use Plantsims. *laugh* I can utilize that big-ass tomb under the monastery to hide some more advanced tech.

But one cultural thing that I am certain of: It’s going to be an egalitarian society. None of this female oppression bullshit. I don’t want it to be female-dominated, either, but just....equal. So, women don’t have to be married and push out a dozen babies if they don’t want to. And they can wear comfortable, practical clothing, including pants. And they don’t have to cover their hair. And they can be badass warriors if they want to be. All that stuff.

A bit of culture I’ve invented, following on from women not having to cover their hair, is that women above child-age will wear braided hairstyles, and the more elaborate the braiding, the higher the status she has. Because only those with status would have time to sit for hours and braid (or have someone else braid) their hair. I’ve downloaded a bunch of elaborately-braided hairstyles, and I’m looking forward to using them.

And I want to think of something similar for men, but I’m having a hard time coming up with something. I’d be fine with complex braids for them, too, but alas such hairstyles don’t seem to exist for males. At least, not very many of them. Maybe tattoos, if I make them more expensive than the game charges for them? If that, then I need to move a salon up to the “Do Want” list.

And that’s enough, I think....FOR NOW!

#lylanir #long mindless rambling

2 notes · View notes

linguisticswithlester · 6 years ago

Text

Let Me Memorize Your Eyes - Chapter Six: First Step

Rating: NA

Chapter: 6/?

Word Count: 2734

Warnings: I think this chapter is free of any, but if you find one let me know!

Notes: I really didn't think this chapter would be up today because I have been so unmotivated to write but look, its up and I actually enjoy this chapter! And I hope you guys will too!

Summary: Phil is a struggling artist with bruised trust and Dan is a talented baker working in a coffee shop trying to forget his smoldering past. When their paths cross will Dan end up being Phil’s new muse? Or will he be the one thing keeping Phil from putting a brush to canvas ever again?

[Read on AO3]

[Start at the Beginning]

The Next Day

Dan arrived at work a few minutes early to be ready for his new night shift. The cafe stayed open later than the usual cafe being as they closed at eleven. Switching shifts wasn't really that big of a deal to Dan, it meant he could sleep in longer in the mornings. However, he did like being off earlier so he could go do whatever he wanted in the evening but, whatever. Dan glanced at the clock, it was almost three. He grabbed his purple apron off the hook with “Dan” tapped above and slid it on. An apron wasn't anything new to Dan but, that purple was. Wrapping it around his back and tying it in the front, Dan found the staff computer and clocked in.

A few hours had passed and nothing really exciting happened. He was working with Becca that night, so she kept him busy when things slowed down. He has grown to like her and her need to over share things. She really was a nice girl; she just didn't have anyone to talk to that didn’t spill milk out of their nose for fun at her house, so her coworkers become her best friends during the day. Until they can find someone to help cover the night shift, it was going to be Dan and Becca together most nights.

Chime.

The bell above the door rang, causing both Becca and Dan to glance over.

“Hello, Phil!” shouted Becca as she unfolded her arms and left the counter her and Dan were leaning on and went over to great the man. Dan’s stomach dropped at the sight of the raven haired gentleman. He saw him yesterday for a brief second in a passing glance but other than that, the last time he saw him was his first day of work.

“No glasses,” Dan thought to himself as the man tuned to greet Becca.

“How are you? Is your day going good?” Becca asked with a lot of enthusiasm when she reached him. He looked up at her and his fringe swung with the movement.

“Hey Bec, yeah work was long but, I survived.” The man replied as a breathy laugh cut off the last word. He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

“Well, I’ll get you a cup of coffee with extra sugar then.” Becca stated has she patted his sweater covered arm. “I see that you’ve got your backpack with you again. Are you working on something special? I have seen that bag more times this week than I have in the whole month of June.”

Dan couldn’t hear what was said next as another customer came in ringing the bell. Dan took the order but, was distracted by the way that man’s lips moved when he talked. He couldn’t hear him but, by with the way his facial expression stole the show, Dan new it was something he was passionate about. It also looked like he could hold his own with Becca which was something that one needed in order to be friends with her.

Dan filled the order and by the time the customer came up to grab their order, Becca was back from bringing Philip his coffee. He was still sat in the very back booth that he sat in the first time.

Dan and Becca were back to leaning against the counter in the front where they could watch for customers and continue talking. This time Dan started the conversation.

“Hey, who was that?”

“Who was who? Phil?” Becca replied nudging her head forward towards the very last booth, uncrossing her folded arms and placing them on each side of her on the counter.

Dan raised his right eyebrow as in answer to her question. Did he prefer Phil? Or Philip?

“Yeah, I guess.” He said with a slight shake of his head.

“Oh, that’s Phil. He has been coming here for a few months now. He usually keeps to himself and doesn’t talk that much. He does incredible art work though. I’ve seen some of it when I pass by his table to bring him his coffee; It’s amazing. It’s so realistic and that’s just with pencil. He told me he used to paint on canvas too but, he never told me why he stopped. I think he's going to be featured in a new art gallery soon that they are going to be hosting at the college. He's super excited but also sounds really nervous but, that’s to be expected I guess. He comes here, well, I guess, every day or almost every day and he used to never have is art stuff with him though. I'm excited to see what he's working on and if he’s going to paint again.”

“Oh, you seem to know him pretty well. Are you guys friends?” Dan asked looking over at the raven haired beauty. “Are you guys...dating?”

Dan didn't know why but the thought of Becca and Phil together didn't sit well with him. He didn't want to be with Phil; he had Carol but, it still would sting if she said yes. And Dan didn't even really know him at all really. Dan just knew that he was uniquely beautiful person.

Becca let out a loud puff of laugh and quickly covered her mouth with her hand when the only two customers looked their way.

“Me and Phil? Dating? That is something I've never heard before!” Becca let her laugh out but with a quieter filter on this time still covering her mouth. “I only talk to Phil for briefs periods of time when he comes in everyday to get his coffee. He usually never stays longer than the time it takes to make his order. Like I said, he usually keeps to himself so I was surprised that I’ve seen him in here all last week and today.”

“Oh, okay” Dan said with his head tilted to the side.

“So he's an introverted artist that loves coffee… Intriguing.” Dan thought to himself as Becca finished her reply. Dan didn't have much friends in Manchester, most of his friends lived in London. They hardly ever came to visit him. Carol followed him out here to make sure he was healing properly and, of course because she loved him…

But Dan would love to have a friend that he enjoyed hanging out with and returned the feeling. Having someone to play video games with and eat take out was something Dan needed. Carol used to do all of those things with him but, as she has grown, she has grown away from Dan and so have her hobbies. There is nothing wrong with that. Dan would just like a friend and he's apparently got his eyes set on a man he doesn't know anything about but, his name is Phil. Something about his presence is calling and it told Dan they could be great friends one day.

“You should go say hi” Becca interrupted Dan’s thoughts that caught him off guard.

“I should…” Dan said under his breath but not realizing he actually said it out loud. “Wait, what?”

“You should go say hi. He really is a nice gentleman; he won’t bite. Go see if he needs a refill on his coffee or something. You've been staring at him the whole time he’s been sitting there so might as well do something about it.” Becca gave Dan’s shoulder a shove.

“Go! You won’t regret it and I need some entertainment; tonight's been too slow for my liking. Do it for me.” And with that, she gave Dan one final shove that pushed him out from behind the counter.

“Oh my god...I can't do this… I don't talk to random people… Well, all I'm doing is going over there to see if he needs more coffee. That is literally my job...I can do that…ugh.” Dan tried to contain his heart beat and his thoughts; there was literally nothing to be nervous about. He didn't know him and yet, his body was acting like Phil was his childhood crush.

First Step.

Dan straighten out his apron.

Second Step.

Dan’s hands rose to meet his head full of unruly curls to are sure they were in somewhat of a decent state.

Third Step.

Dan had this. This was his job but, God. Why was Phil making him so nervous? He has only said a few words to him days ago.

Dan arrived at Phil’s booth, “Oh God...Dan you need to say something and not just stand here like a creeper.” Dan’s thoughts tried helping him out but, his mouth didn't want to form any words.

Phil slowly raised his head to look over at Dan.

“Hey...do you need another coffee?” Dan managed to choke out has the man looked at him.

Phil looked down and reached for his empty cup that once held his sugary drink.

“Umm… Yeah, why not. I'll be here for a while longer so some more caffeine won't hurt.” Phil said has he handed his cup of coffee to Dan.

Dan tried to say sure but it got stuck in his throat along with anything else he tried to say. Trying to not be awkward wasn't something Dan was good at.

Right as Dan was going to turn away it was like the thing blocking his throat disappeared and his words came it like they were coated in butter.

“I'm Dan by the way. I don't think I've seen you in here in a while.” Dan decided it would be best not to mention he saw him walking on the street yesterday; that may be too much to add.

“Oh well hey, Dan. My name’s Phil. Although, I apparently tell cute baristas it’s Philip with one ‘L.’ Which isn't technically a lie; my grandmother still calls me that.”

Dan breath got caught on a word that flew past him...cute… did Phil really think Dan was cute?

“But I usually just go by Phil.” Phil added with a little laugh that was a lot deeper than Dan expected. “But, yeah, I'm usually only in here towards the evening. I get off work around six most days so I head over here to get re-caffeinated. I had a weird day the day I was in here early. Most days I would still have been sleeping. But now, I’ve been coming here to work on some things I need to finish. It's hard to concentrate in my flat because I can just lay in bed and binge Netflix. Here I actually have to work.”

Dan couldn't help but look down at the notebook that was laying in front of the man with a pencil laying across the page. It was full of waving lines making up the top half of the page. It was a face; it looked like it was someone he knew...

Before Dan could get a good look, Phil must have noticed Dan’s eye drop to the table because he immediately closed the sketch book.

“Sorry, I'm just getting back into drawing and such again and it’s not some of my best work.” Phil said resting his hands in his lap and raising his shoulders.

“Yeah, no problem. I should have better control on where my eyes go anyway. I'm sorry.”

Shit.

“No, it’s fine. I used to not have a problem with people looking at my work. I just haven't had anyone want to do so for a while. And I actually haven’t been creating much lately so these are all rough drafts. Maybe once I finish one of the projects I'm working on, I can show it to you? If you'd like?”

“I would love to.” Dan could not believe he was actually talking to Phil. He seemed like such a nice guy. Maybe they could actually be something one day….

____________________

“Oh my God…” Phil thought to himself as he left the cafe that night. He finally found out the name of the barista he has been drawing; Dan… he never would have guessed but, it suits him. Phil has been drawing this random boy since he saw him over a week ago. He didn't know why but, every time he started to draw it always turned into Dan somehow. He hardly knew anything about him but, he was all Phil saw.

Phil was taken by surprise when he came up to introduce himself. Phil was not expecting that. He had been so focused on what he was drawing, he didn't even hear Dan walk up beside him; it was a pleasant break from staring at lead coated paper. Phil was still trying to recover from his past relationship and he was taking it day by day. However, for some reason, this boy has pulled on Phil’s heartstrings. Phil didn’t know what he was feeling or what he should be feeling but, he was nervous. He once though Andrew was nice and caring. There was something about him too… and Phil was wrong. He had such a hard time trusting others but, he felt that he could trust Dan... Maybe just a little bit; it flustered Phil.

There was something about him that made Phil feel like one day they might actually be friends. He learned that Dan has the night shift now until they find a replacement so Phil would be seeing him more often than not now and he wasn't going to lie, that was a little exciting.

Out with the excitement and in with the cringe. Phil just remembered… he called Dan cute. He didn't realize it came out of his mouth until it was too late. He wanted to go dig a hole and lie in it right then and there but, Phil played it off like it was supposed to be there. He could never flirt but, that one slipped out. The boy never pressed him about it so Phil was hoping that he hadn't noticed. He just hope it sounded cool when he said it.

“Oh my god.” Phil thought again, “My sketch book!”

Not only did Dan see part of what Phil was drawing earlier, which was another portrait of the not so empty name tagged barista, Phil left his sketch book right on the table where he was sitting. He remembered putting all the pencils, erasers, pens and, whatever else he used into their own little bag and picking up all the papers he tore out. He also remembers picking up the book and setting it aside so it was out of the way while he picked up his mess. He grabbed his bag and his cup and headed for the door to say his goodbyes and return the mug but, he must have forgotten to go back and get his sketch book. It was probably lying right by the window on the booth, just waiting for someone to find it and go through. There were sketches in there that he didn't want anybody to see; things that were really personal to him and bad memories drawn out from months ago… and now sketches of a barista he just learned the name of…

God.

What if Dan found it?

____________________

It was closing time soon after Phil had left; Dan was surprised he stayed so long. He was there for more than a few hours but, Dan got why though. It is hard to concentrate at your home because your bed is just right there constantly calling out to you.

Dan started wiping down tables and picking up leftover trash from the last few customers that stopped by last minute. Becca locked the doors and wiped down the glass portion of the window; somehow children’s handprints always found a way to decorate the glass.

Dan got to the booth Phil was sitting at.

“Huh? What is this” Dan said as he tucked the towel he has been using into one of the apron’s front pockets and picked up an old notebook with random page’s sticking out throughout the book. Dan inspected the cover, it had a beautiful geometric houseplant drawn on the front with lots of smaller doodles surrounding it. He flipped it over to find that even more small sketches and doodles littered the back. It looked like a mess but, it looked like Phil’s.

“Phil must have left his sketch book here...”

#LMMYE #phan fic #fanfic #ao3 #artist/baker au #they actually talk this time #who would have thunk'd it #i hope you guys like this chapter #i dont hate it #so there's that #dan and phil #dnp #phan

14 notes · View notes

jinkies-its-a-writer · 7 years ago

Text

What I Wouldn’t Do || Clark Kent

Pairing: Clark Kent/Superman x Reader

Word Count: 2,868

Warnings: Multiple mentions of character death, some possibly upsetting themes on those lines.

Prompt: Based on parts of Superman Returns the movie, and Super Sons the comic.

Listen While You Read: What I Wouldn’t Do

Superman was back.

Nowadays news spread fast. But news of Superman? It spread like a wildfire through a forest suffering from a five-year drought. Which wasn’t that far from the truth.

The entire world was ecstatic. Bubbling with rumors about where he had disappeared to, and why. So of course, as a reporter, guess what you were expected to cover. And lucky you, look who had resurfaced just in the nick of time to be your little desk buddy again.

Clark Freakin Kent

Fan Freakin Tastic

Of course, you already knew his dirty little secrets; but he didn’t know yours. Not yet. But man were you going to give him an earful once you could just get him alone. There was no need to rush anything. The man had made you wait.

Five Freakin Years

The least you could do was wait five more minutes.

He sauntered into the office like he had never left. Like everything had been peachy when he walked away. Like everything was still supposed to be alright.

Co-workers passed by, slapping him on the back. Like it was just normal for someone to disappear for five years. Like it was okay.

It wasn’t okay. Not for you. Maybe it was a good thing for the public though. Superman back to save the day again. Great. When you were starting to move on. To believe he wasn’t coming back. He had to ruin it. And he had no idea.

“Hey, (y/n-“

A silent breeze brushed past him, and he was left staring at your empty chair. If you opened your mouth, you doubted you would be able to control what came out of it. You were afraid you might forgive him.

He was flying low. Still mourning.

You pulled out your cell, your thumb hovering over the send button.

We need to talk. You know where to find me.

You were in the kitchen of your apartment, fixing up an extra plate for the man with the cape. Was inviting him over the right thing to do? He had been in a funk for the past week, and it was getting harder by the minute to ignore him. He needed someone who understood just how deep his pain ran. He needed you. And maybe you needed him a little too.

The intercom buzzed and you let him in the building. You put the finishing touches on the meal, setting the table and placing the dirty cooking utensils in the sink.

A sturdy and customary three knocks sounded on the door.

“Jon, sweetie, can you get the door?” You grabbed a washcloth and began to wipe off the counter, erasing all evidence of your labor.

“Hi!” Your son greeted the man with his usual grin.

Clark’s eyes widened. “Uh, hello. I’m sorry, I must have the wro-“

“Nope, come on in, Clark!” You shouted from inside the apartment. As he entered, you walked around the island and watched the two interact.

“So. Who might you be?” He bent down to the boy’s height, sticking his hand out in greeting.

“I’m Jon.” His small hand grasped Clark’s large one, and the older gave it a firm shake, returning his smile.

“Well, Jon, I’m an old friend of your…” His eyes darted to you.

“Mom’s.” You replied, arms crossed.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, your… mom… and I go way back.”

He rose, letting his eyes wander around your apartment. The lower levels of your bookshelf now filled with children’s books, bins of toys tucked in corners and under tables, the fridge an art gallery of finger paintings, popsicle sticks, and alphabet magnets. Pictures of the two of you cluttered tabletops, cartoons flashed on the T.V., light up sneakers sat next to your work shoes by the door, a handmade superhero cape hung on the coat tree, a coloring book and crayons lay scattered on the coffee table. Much different than the last time he had been here.

“Would you show Mr. Clark to his seat?” You ruffled his hair as he looked up at you.

“Yes, mama.” He bounced on his toes, grabbing Clark’s hand and dragging him to the table.

“We’re having mac and cheese!” He jumped into his own chair and waited patiently for you and your guest to get seated.

“So why’s it… blue?” Kent poked at the cheesy blue pasta in front of him.

“It’s blue food Friday, of course.” You locked eyes with him as you took a swig from your cup, an unreadable expression covering his features.

Your dinner conversation varied, the main topic of interest seeming to always make its way back to the man of steel himself. Clark seemed to relax a little though, as did your son, starting to get to that sleepy stage that came before drifting off.

“Alright, little man. Time to get ready for bed.” You stood up, straightening out your clothes.

“Mama, I’m not…” He yawned, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “…tired.”

“Nice try. Come on, let’s go brush those pearly whites.”

“Okay...”

After getting him settled, you returned to find your kitchen spotless, Clark placing the last dish in the cupboard.

“Thank you.” You took a seat at the island.

“You’re welcome…” He sat down beside you, his expression more serious now that the two of you were alone. “I didn’t know you had a child.”

You looked down at your socks, studying the threads.

“There’s a lot of things you…” You sighed closing your eyes for a few seconds before continuing. “…I… I didn’t… Lois did.” Those words hurt. It felt like someone was twisting a knife in your gut. The gnawing and tearing in your stomach as the words tore out of you. “He’s yours, Clark.”

The two of you sat in silence, tears threatening to slip down your cheeks. And then they did. Pouring, spilling into your lap. Dampening the fabric of your pants. Your soft gasps for air. Your back heaving.

“I miss her,” you lifted your eyes to meet his, tears trailing down his face. “Clark, I miss her... I miss her so much…”

He placed his hand tenderly on your arm, and you rushed into him. The two of you slid to the floor, desperately clinging to one another as your bodies shook. Through the pain, both of you understood each other.

“There was nothing… nothing you could have done.” Feeling him tense at your words, you pulled away, wiping the tears from your eyes.

“Yes, there was, if I just-“ His tears were full of anger now. Anger aimed at himself.

“No. No there wasn’t.” Your voice lowered nearly to a whisper. “Sometimes we lose people… Sometimes we have to keep going without them… I had to keep going without either of you. But you have me, Clark. Don’t go through this alone like I did.” You reached your hand you, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “I’m here.”

“Mama?”

Your son stood a couple of feet away, his Superman onesie still a little big around his feet. His stuffed duck hung limply from his left hand.

“Why are you sad?”

“Come here, baby.” You opened your arms and he shuffled over, melting into your lap. You held onto him tightly, burying your face in his coconut-scented hair. “We were thinking about your other mommy.”

“And that makes you sad?” You ran your fingers through his locks as you tended to do whenever you cuddled.

“Sometimes when you think about something happy, like mommy Lois, it makes you sad.”

“Why?”

“It makes you sad because you miss them being happy with you.”

“Oh.” He twirled his fingers in your hair, a habit he picked up from you.

“But sometimes it makes you happy too.”

“Can you be happy? I don’t like when you’re sad.”

You let out a laugh, giving him a squeeze.

“I’ll try, baby.”

“Okay.” He continued swirling your hair through his fingers. “Is Mister Clark sad about mommy too?”

Clark tried for a faint smile. “I was friends with your mommy a long time ago.”

“Really?” He sat up straighter in your lap, facing the older man.

“Yep.” His smile stretched a little wider, almost reaching his eyes.

“Tell me a story about her!” Excitement flowed through him. There were only so many stories you could tell him about her yourself.

“Manners, Jon.”

“Please?” He was practically bouncing, even though less than a minute ago he was almost asleep.

Clark met your eyes. “I guess if that’s alright with your mom.”

You smiled. “Only if someone can get himself into bed before I can count to five.” You removed your arms from around your little superhero. “One…”

He jumped up so quickly that he left his duck behind, lying on the floor.

“Here, don’t want to forget Chicken.” You held the stuffed toy out in Clark’s direction.

“Chicken? I hate to tell you, but that’s a duck.” He took the toy in his grasp, studying it thoroughly.

“Yes, a duck named Chicken.”

He gave you a quizzical look.

“Don’t look at me. He is your son after all.” You turned, heading towards the living room. “And don’t make it too long. He won’t fall asleep until you’re finished.”

Clark sat beside Jon’s bed. The boy had asked him to stay until he fell asleep. His son. Of course, it wasn’t like he hadn’t ever entertained the idea of having children of his own someday. If he had children he wanted to be a good parent like his had been. A good father. And so far he had missed five years of his son’s life. His and Lois’s son. It was still so hard excepting the fact that she was gone. Not gone like he had been. Gone forever. How had he let this happen?

The boy beside his rolled over in his sleep. “Goodnight, Superman.”

Clark lowered his voice to a whisper. “Goodnight, son.”

He rose, heading out to the kitchen to find you scooping up a couple bowls of ice cream.

“How…?” He stared at you dumbfounded.

“How, what? How did I figure it out? How long have I known? How did you think that a pair of glasses would protect your secret identity?” You swung the ice cream scoop around as you spoke.

“He called me Superman… Did you…?”

“Did I tell my five-year-old son that his father is Superman? The guy that hasn’t even been on the planet for his entire life? Are you kidding me? He idolizes you, of course, someone who looks exactly like Superman – because you are – would probably process in his half-asleep mind as his hero.”

He looked a little disappointed with your words. “Oh.”

You slid him a bowl and headed towards your couch.

“I am curious to hear the answers to those other questions though.” He joined you on the couch, taking a bite of the cold desert.

“Clark, you sat across from me for years. I spent the majority of my day staring at your face. It only took me like a week to figure you out. But it didn’t really matter, did it?” You stirred the contents of your dish slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“Nevermind. Sorry, I don’t mean to make this a pity party for myself. Just forget it.”

“No, please, tell me what you were going to say.”

You sighed, dropping your spoon, the metal clinking against the glass of the dish. “Lois and I were best friends. We both joined the Daily Planet around the same time, worked together, helped each other out, hung out in our free time. Neither of us had many other friends besides each other. You know all that, but here’s the part you obviously never figured out. One day this new guy shows up, same time as Superman mind you, and the office goes into a superhero frenzy. Lois and I get drawn in different directions at work, and all her free time is spent trying to figure out this Superman guy. So I keep working on my assignments, doing my job, going home and keeping myself busy. Now this Clark guy he gets put across from me, and we chat constantly, and I realize I’m starting to fall for this sweet, dorky guy who listens to me and cares for other people more than himself. He’s always devoting his time to helping his coworkers and never says a mean word to anyone. And then I realize whenever he vanishes Superman appears. I tried to brush it off as a coincidence. At the same time, Lois becomes the token reporter for everything Superman all those inside scoops and whatnot. But wait, it’s not just a one-way street. The way Clark looks at her, the way he’d drop what he was doing whenever she asked him to. So I bury my feelings. The two people I’m closest to are in love with each other. I want them to be happy so I back out. Focus on my work. Then Clark says he’s going on some trip – how nobody ever saw through those lies I’ll never know – and suddenly Superman’s gone. A couple of months later Lois tells me she’s pregnant. I know who’s it is, she doesn’t have to say anything. But she doesn’t know everything that I do, so I tell her. Months later Jonathan Samuel Kent is born. About a month after that Lois wants to take a breather and grab some stuff from work, I offer to pick it up for her, but she says she just needs to have a little while to herself. A couple of hours later an officer shows up at my door. Lois had listed me as Jon’s legal guardian if anything ever happened to her. I never thought that anything would actually happen. Suddenly my best friend is gone and she leaves me in charge of her child. The most precious thing in her life. And he’s only a month old. So now those two people closest to me are both gone and I’m left with a little of each of them brought together in this tiny baby. Eventually, the adoption papers go through. And I did it. I’m doing it. The best I can. And now a week ago his father shows back up. No clue how things have changed. And now he’s back but he’s broken without her. And it’s just... The whole thing is a mess, Clark.”

You picked up a spoonful of ice cream and shoved it in your mouth.

“I’m so sorry, (y/n).” He stared directly into your eyes, his mind still processing everything you had said. “I should have been here. You shouldn’t have had to go through all of this on your own. Nobody should have to go through so much on their own.”

“I want Jon to get to know his father. I want him to know you are. Who you really are.” You resumed stirring your dessert. “But I have to know you’re going to stick around. That you’re not going to disappear again. You’ve got to prove to me that you want to get to know your son, Clark.”

“I do. I want to get to know him. I haven’t wanted something so much in my entire life.” His face was taught with determination. “I’m not missing any more of his life. I’ve missed so much already.”

“Good talk, but now you’ve gotta back it up. Family game night’s Sunday at six.”

“Alright…” The corners of his mouth turned up slightly before falling again. “And I’m sorry… I … I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”

“Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything. It was a silly little crush, and I got over it. Besides, it was a long time ago.”

“But still, I hurt you. That’s what I’m sorry for.”

“Yeah, big deal, you hurt my feelings by what? Falling in love?”

“With your best friend.”

“Yes, and she loved you.”

“I was happy for you guys, Clark. Yeah, maybe it hurt a little, but you two were so perfect for each other. I was just happy that you were both happy.”

“And then I left. I’m the one who messed things up.”

“It’s only human to make mistakes. And look at the bright side, you’re back now. You can make up for lost time. It’s far from too late for that.” You stood up to take your bowl out to the sink, done discussing old feelings with him. Old feelings that were resurfacing the longer you were around him. You couldn’t do that to Lois or to Clark. To fall for him again.

Clark followed you out to the kitchen, not really giving you the space you wanted to get your feelings under control.

“I should get going. Thank you for the talk, and the dinner… You’ve done such a good job raising Jon… I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Just don’t be a stranger, okay?”

He nodded. “Does this mean you’ll stop ignoring me at work then?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ll take it.”

The two of you made your way over to the front door.

“Goodbye, (y/n).”

“Goodbye, Clark. Fly safe.” You smirked, watching the extraterrestrial walk away.

173 notes · View notes

pockets-of-peace · 7 years ago

Text

On a lighter note; having new furniture is really starting to inspire me to get my butt in gear to decorate our home. I’ve never been one to have a ton of “decorative” stuff; first, hubs and I are both pretty freaking nerdy and our nerdy stuff takes up a lot of prime decorative real estate, but also, I’m not the type of person to keep a bunch of useless stuff around, and I consider “decorative pieces” to be pretty useless.

At one point, when we first moved into our house, I attempted it. But then Liam came along, and everything nice went into boxes. And between him and R being careless, they pretty much destroyed the furniture that I only passively liked in the first place.

So now with a new(ish) space, and new duds, I’m finally feeling the urge.

I started with the china cabinet. We currently have my Gram’s china cabinet “in holding” for when ever my mother gets her life together and can take it. That’s probably not going to happen (and everyone knows it), but if I’d have let it stay with aunt L she would have gotten rid of it without even telling anyone, and mom does really want it, so.... it now lives with us. I’ve wanted some sort of hutch or large microwave cabinet for a really long time, I had a lot of ideas for one already. I had a blast putting together a group of stuff for the top

I was going for the “could possibly be a display in an antique store” feel. The pig cutting board, and the basket of vintage cooking utensils I got from my gram’s kitchen. (When we packed up her apartment for her to go live with my aunt she let me go through the kitchen and take whatever I wanted) The scale I also got from her. She let me borrow it when I was first married, and then never let me give it back. Both the lilies and the lavender are fake, because I kill everything I touch. This is the full cabinet:

Pretty dated, but it’ll do for now, and it looks better than it has in years. I’m saving that top right spot for maybe eventually having a Hestia shrine in there.

This is my current project:

Family command center in the hallway. Obviously the lilies have been moved. Kinda been put on the back burner for a bit due to bills and life. But I need 4 more totes for it, they will be the bottom six leaving the top three empty. I want a large white board calendar centered behind it. On the side not with a light switch I plan to put another large white board for Liam’s use to play on and such. Plus a few hooks for my purse and his backpack. Maybe something to hang keys on. Right now the keys are in the white bowl but that’s ceramic and R is proving to be entirely too rough with it. The big bin holds shoes.

For the living room, my plans a more minimal. This is where we house the majority of my books and a lot of nerd culture stuff, plus a big part of his Lego collection, and my giraffe one which does not go with my ideal decor. We also have a few of Liam’s bigger toys here. This room is lived in and shows it. So I’m thinking a core color scheme. Some new throw pillows and a gallery wall behind the sofa with an eclectic mix of frames in the color scheme.

This is what we agreed on

Against grey-ish walls. I do intend to paint, but all I’m going to do is go to the company that the contracted painter purchases from and get a better quality paint. I like the color, but the paint is literally the cheapest bucket they could buy and is SUPER shitty.

I’d like another accent color, but I’m not fond of coral or peach, and I know R would object to any sort of pink hue. Lime would be pretty, but I’m not sure I’d like to live with that. Maybe pops of gold foil? Oh, and wood tones. We love the look of wood.

Cue Pinerest board with living room setups in that color scheme.

You can probably actually dive into the rest of my pinterest from that link, if you do, you’ll quickly see I have a thing for blue lmao

Home decor is literally the very last item on our list of priorities to put money towards, even below personal wants... unless I find a piece I like when thrifting, but it’s rare I buy home decor when I thrift. (mostly because for the longest time I had no where to put them!) So... who knows how long it’ll take to get this place the way I see it in my head, but I have been avoiding decorating our home for .... most of the time we’ve lived together. It feels nice to finally want to do this and to be inspired.

#little bits of life

7 notes · View notes

blastoisemonster · 4 years ago

Text

Super Game Boy Borders Megagallery

Nintendo’s Super Game Boy was a special SNES accessory that allowed Game Boy cartridges to be played on a TV screen, turning handheld vidya into home console classics. Despite being both born in 1991, me and my cousin started getting into videogames with the advent of Nintendo 64′s release, and the closest thing we had to such peripheral was Pokèmon Stadium’s Game Boy Tower. Back then, we thought this was a Pokèmon-exclusive prerogative, and that only Stadium could elaborate those cheerful thick borders around the game’s screen. Well, we were wrong!

The Super Game Boy provided many enhancements for whatever cartridge was plugged into (which you may read in detail here in this amazing blog), yet moreover, it added a thick, wonderfully drawn border around every game, filling up the TV screen’s extra space. This SNES peripheral had something like a dozen borders pre-installed, and if those weren’t, by any chance, enough, one could even draw new ones making these decorations very personalized! After the Super Game Boy’s release, Game Boy games that got published after that had a personalized border in their data, perfectly reflecting their theme and aesthetic!

We already know how extensive Game Boy and Game Boy Color libraries are, so I could only imagine how many of these personalized borders existed. Google researches also proved to be unsatisfactory, as they only showed a few ones in small resolution. Once again, my only option was to roll up my sleeves and do a collection of these things by myself. Fellow gamers, I present to you...

BLASTOISEMONSTER’S ULTIMATE SGB BORDERS GALLERY!

The gallery turned out to be composed of 384 images, so I couldn’t put them all here. Above is the link to an Imgur gallery much like I did with my Pokèmon sticker album time ago, so yeah, give it some time to load and enjoy! I still have to add titles to each border; the thing is, I did such chore yesterday, but Imgur fucked up and didn’t save anything, so for my sanity’s sake, I’m going to do that way later. For now, enjoy the colours and the toony stuff and the adorableness!

I must say, this hasn’t been easy to round up, actually, and I’m sure I’m still missing a few more borders (Wario Land II borders change depending on its level but I’ve only added the title screen one, for example), but I can add them on a later phase, and so far this is surely the most complete border gallery ever rounded up. With such a big resolution, as well! In order to take a snapshot of these, I used BGB’s Game Boy emulator, wihich is very light, high-performing and full of nice options! I could enable both the SGB border and GBC graphics, so screencaps came out to be very colorful.

I don’t think there’s anything more to say: now that I saw every single border imaginable, I can declare that, obviously, Japanese-exclusive titles took most advantage of these decorations, while western companies mainly disregarded it. That’s why, while taking pics of these graphical quirks, I’ve come up with a selection of top 5 worst and top 5 best borders. Buckle up!

TOP 5 WORST SUPER GAME BOY BORDERS:

Battle Crusher. This ties up with many other games which have decided to have, as a border, their literal title splashed all over. It isn’t too bad, but definitely unoriginal.

Tamagotchi. A bit too... empty, don’t you think? I would have preferred the titlescreen plethora.

NHL Hockey ‘96. Like said before, a lot of sport games have bad borders. Not all of them, but most western releases fill up their decorations with publisher logoes and nothing more, like this one above. I suppose it’s to emulate a stadium filled with advertisings, but it’s still not nice to see.

NBA 3 On 3 Featuring Kobe Bryant. HE’S STARING AT ME D:

Superman. This is not a joke. Let alone the border (which is just sunrays), that is the actual titlescreen of this game; I even waited for a logo splash to come out, but nope, developers decided to let its SGB border do the trick for them, which means that on a normal Game Boy all you’d see is an uncoloured, empty lineart bust of Superman. No names, no nothing, just his square-jawed face probably scanned from a children’s colouring book. Wanna know who made this obcenity? Titus. Wanna know what else Titus made with Superman? Yeah, I think you know very well.

TOP 5 BEST SUPER GAME BOY BORDERS:

Beatmania GB II. Whoa there, Beatmania doesn’t fuck around! First they take you in a dark alley, then into a scifi-themed tower! Maybe not the best places for a dance-off, but damn if they’re cinematic!

Meitantei Conan - Karakuri Jiin Satsujin Jiken. I never really got into the anime when it came out years ago in Italy, but I’ve always been fascinated by murder mistery stories. Detective Conan SGB borders‘s whole series show a wide array of cartoon characters on their title screens, and Conan on the border. They look a lot like an episode screencap, and everything’s still very colorful but dark enough to make it somber and misterious. If these games turn out to play like Phoenix Wright, I’d love to give them a try!

Donkey Kong. Tying up with many other borders (especially from Arcade Classics series), Donkey Kong turns your TV screen into an arcade machine! This one’s my favourite becase it’s so colorful, but the ones mentioned before are pretty accurate to their real life counterparts!

Tsuri Sensei. This was very hard to choose, because turns out that there are a lot of Japanese Game Boy games (especially mahjonng and fishing ones) which have, as borders, beautifully rendered, semi-realistic outdoor landscapes. They’re so idyllic, so pictoresque! You can almost feel the gentle breeze and taste the fresh air! Looking at those shores makes me so eager for summer and sunny days! And one special mention goes to Othello World, which ties up with Tsuri Sensei but shows a much more surreal landscape, with Alice and the White Rabbit as cameos!

Hamster Paradise. This wins everything: it’s got my favourite animal ever all over the screen, how could I say no? In all honesty, I’m a sucker for cute animals, so every pet-simulator with snuggly muzzles all over the place (yeah, even adorable dragons!) have instantly won my heart. <3

But hey, this is only a small selection from that big gallery! There are many other styles and recurring themes and you’ll surely find your favourite. Go check it out, I haven’t spent months assembling it for nothing, heh! xP

#Guides

0 notes

whereintheworldisclairerans-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Heyyyyyyyy

WOW Sorry it’s been so long you guys! I’m currently sitting in my now 100% furnished and decorated apartment in Madrid, listening to the numerous buses and people talking to each other in the street in Spanish and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been here a little more than a week now and it’s starting to feel like I’m here to stay. Just in time for me to leave again! Ha. We’ll get there though. So very much catching up to do, I don’t even know where to begin. Probably where I left off would be good, would’t it? That would be... Hamburg? I think so.

Our direct train did, in fact, end up being a direct train *hooray*. Jordan and I were both extremely productive and sketched a plan for my apartment (which ended up being pretty accurate) and wrote out goals, aspirations, etc. After waiting outside of our AirBnb for a while because we didn’t know which doorbell to ring, we found ourselves living in the land of luxury with a.... wait for it.... KING SIZE BED. After sharing full size beds (and/or mattress on the floor or just straight up floor) for the month, it was pretty exciting to starfish out and each have plenty of room. We made our typical dinner of pasta and wine and each hung out on our respective social medias, got caught up on emails, etc. We woke up around noon the next day and decided to treat ourselves to brunch. Jordan, being the TripAdvisor master of the trip, found us the perfect little place that was a brunch BUFFET. I honestly don’t know why more brunch places at home aren’t like that. You pay for the plate and a drink and then you just pick whatever you want. You can eat and eat and eat and ITS AMAZING. After stuffing ourselves to the brim, we decided to walk it off and spent the day rambling through the city center. It was lovely because Hamburg reminded us both remarkably of Denver, just with a lot more water. There was very similar architecture and the general vibe just felt like home. It was simultaneously comforting and a little bit heartbreaking, given that I don’t know when I will be home next. *cries a little* We decided to go shopping for some warmer layers, and I mooned over a backpack in an outdoors store. Which, despite the best efforts of the salesman, I did not end up buying. We ended the afternoon in yet another gorgeous park with warm chocolate and banana crepes before walking the three miles back to our AirBnb. That night, we decided to double check the check-in time of our reservation for Berlin, hoping that we could go into the city earlier to make the most out of our time there. And it was then that we had our first and only issue with any booking or accommodation. The AirBnb host in Berlin had canceled our reservation the day after we booked it (several weeks earlier) and we were never notified. So in a scramble, we had to book another one, that ended up being way farther outside of the city and nearly twice the cost. (AirBnb has compensated me a little, but to say it was inconvenient would be an understatement). We couldn’t check into Berlin until 4pm, so we decided to hit the brunch place again the next morning and properly stuffed ourselves before getting on the train.

And what a train ride it was. German trains are such a joke. We had become quite the pros at arriving on time, finding seats together and getting settled before departure. This time, however, the train just continued to sit there and sit there. We didn’t care, we had music and seats and that was all that mattered. Until everyone started to leave the train. We rolled our eyes, cringed and prepared for another travel day like the one from Zurich to Cologne. Luckily though, we asked the people next to us what was going on. They explained that the train route had been changed and that it was no longer going to the Berlin Central Station, but to the West Station. If we wanted to, we could run with the other 500000 people to catch a train leaving in 5 minutes, or we could stay on this one and arrive slightly later. SURPRISE we stayed on the nearly empty train, which ended up going to the central station anyways. Suckers. We did, however, get in much later than we had anticipated and we had booked tickets to this film festival that one of Jordan’s favorite bands did the score for. So we hustled to the AirBnb, dropped all of our stuff and then immediately left again to the complete opposite side of town. We followed the hipsters from the train, to the bus, to this cool set of warehouses, where we arrived half an hour late but nothing had started yet. Beers and popcorn in hand, we chatted with a super nice Spanish girl for a while before taking our seats to watch the movies. The theme for the night was on politics, with a specific focus on the nuclear bomb, so the first movie was Dr. Strangelove and the second was a documentary called The Bomb. 10/10 would recommend seeing both. It was very powerful and a cool experience. The next day was the day we had been waiting for the whole trip, the only thing that we had booked before we left, the Moderat concert! It ended up being Jordan’s big hipster day out, that started with her getting a tattoo, then some kombucha (and a coffee for me) and then we walked around the East Side Gallery (art that was done along the wall in the 90s), before heading home to get ready for the show. We had originally planned to get there early, but you all know how that goes... So we ended up arriving with the massive hoards of people getting off the train, then casually walking through a forest to get to the venue, where we promptly stood in line for two hours waiting to get in. We completely missed the opening band, and the first few songs of Moderat’s set, but it was worth it once we were in. We were able to make our way down to the front of the massive venue and danced our asses off. And then we got a snack before the looooooong trek home, where we literally squeezed into the metro with thousands of other people (where I met a very nice Spanish woman) and then onto a bus, and then a long walk back to the apartment. It didn’t matter though because we were both in incredibly good moods and it felt like we were in 7th grade again, dancing in the street and obsessing over how good the show was.

The next day was our “historical Berlin” day, where we saw more of the wall, learned about the failed and successful escape attempts, and what life was like on the East side. From there we went to a museum called “Topography of Terror” which was quite frankly the most depressing and terrifying thing we did our whole trip and maybe in my whole life. Without getting too into it, it was a museum about how Hitler came into power, and a very thorough documentation of what he did with it. The scary part, though, was in how many parallels there were in 1930s-40s Germany and 2017 in America. Food for thought. To get ourselves even more depressed, we went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was hauntingly beautiful. Our spirits were lifted though hearing the peals of laughter coming from the small children to whom the giants stones were nothing more than a playground, something for them to play “hide and go seek” behind. We decided to treat ourselves to Asian food for dinner, and went to this beautiful restaurant, that was full of upper middle class couples and playing rather explicit rap. It was an interesting evening. Our last day in Berlin was a pretty mellow one, traveling for a month was catching up to us and we spent the day chilling in a park and in a cute little coffee shop. That night we made ourselves our last plates of pasta and wine and binged Grace and Frankie.

AND THEN WE WERE OFF TO MADRID! A 4 hour flight and 3 metro trains later we arrived at MY APARTMENT! I cannot even begin to describe the relief that I felt at realizing that it was a real place, I hadn’t been scammed and that I really did have a place to live for the next few months. Jordan really didn’t feel well, so I left her sleeping and spent the day getting the immediate things we needed (AKA sheets and my credit card) and signing my lease. We ordered pizza to properly break in the apartment, and though it was rather loud that night in the apartment, definitely a wake up call to the fact that I voluntarily chose to live in international student housing, it has since gotten much better. The next day was the second day that we had been waiting for the entire trip - IKEA DAY! We took a half an hour long metro ride and then a 15 minute walk and loaded me up with (almost) everything I needed. It was a hilariously exhausting trip back, but we managed to carry everything that we bought in our hands, trekked back to the metro and then to my apartment. I am the kind of mover that likes to get everything done in one day, so I dragged Jordan out again and we had the BEST TIME. All that we had left to buy were hardware (screwdriver, fan, etc) and home goods (laundry detergent, trash bags), so we did some google mapping until we found what we thought was the perfect place. And then it was closed. Dejected, exhausted and done for the day, we started to make our way back home. We had passed this little store selling coffee makers and specialty coffee, and Jordan recommended that we stop in, knowing how much I need my morning fix. The guy who helped us was unbelievably friendly, and pointed us in the direction of a store two blocks away that would have everything else we needed. We went there next, to be helped by two more incredibly nice guys and got EVERYTHING. Arms full of shopping bags, we went to pick up some takeout for dinner and I realized that I had forgotten the one thing that I actually really needed, trash bags. I left Jordan with all the stuff, ran back into the shop to grab some and realized I didn’t have any cash. The machine could only do credit card transactions over $5, so the guy just let me take them and told me to just pay him tomorrow. Can you believe that?? I love this place.

The next day, after a few more shopping adventures, we decided to tourist around a little. First stopping at Atocha (the train station) to pick up our train tickets for Barcelona the next day, then going to el Retiro (park) and around downtown to get back home. We tried to get to bed early that night because our train left at 8am the next day, but naturally only slept for about 4 hours. We dragged ourselves out of bed, managed to make it to the train station on time, and 2.5 hours later we were in Barcelona! It was incredible to be back in the city that originally made me fall in love with Spain and we headed directly for the beach, where we spent the whole day listening to the familiar anthem of “Cervezaaaaaa beer agua waaaaaater cervezaaaaa sangriaaaa.” Jordan was not a fan, but I felt completely at home. It alternated between being sunny and cloudy all day, which made it the perfect temperature for swimming and laying. I was thrilled. It was dinnertime before I knew it, and we treated ourselves to a Menu del Dia, where Jordan had her first paella, patatas bravas and crema catalana. We were so relaxed that we nearly missed our last train, but we did in fact make it back to the apartment nearly 18 hours after left. We slept hard that night, and then it was Jordan’s last day. We spent our last few hours together relaxing, packed up her things, went to the store, and then had one last dinner and gelato. I went with her to the airport, and we sat together and looked at photos to kill time before we parted ways. I fought back tears the entire way home and then was greeted by all the roommates heading up to the terrace for a free drink. I decided to join them to try to be social, but wasn’t really in the mood and after a polite amount of time went back to bed.

I’ve spent the past couple days on my own running errands and getting settled in. I went for my first run around el Retiro, caught a gorgeous sunset along Gran Via, opened a bank account, joined a gym and am basically 100% settled in. I have a few more things to get done today, and then tomorrow I’m to Sweden for the weekend to visit Hanna! I can’t believe it, I got to see her just a few months ago in Colorado and now again! WOOO Europe is the best.

I’ll be there until Sunday, and then will spend next week doing more exploring of Madrid and maybe taking an overnight trip somewhere (since I have two travel days left on the Eurail pass whooo whooo). I’ll try to do better keeping you all posted!

1 note · View note

damn-agi · 7 years ago

Photo

THIS IS YOUR LOVESTORY WITH J-HOPE!!! <3

You have a normal teenager life. You are a really good student, you are really beautiful and you have a boyfriend. Life in Seoul can be really fun for some people, but for you, it was a normal life with its up and downs.

You were getting ready to go to school, and you hear a voice calling you from the window. It was your boyfriend. ^^ His name is Hyun, he is really tall and handsome, and he is the most popular guy in your school. You didn’t want to let him wait, so you left your house. You see him with his car, and get in it. Hyun: Hey babe! Let’s hurry up because we can be late again. Y/N: Ok. .. In the car were you, your boyfriend, and his friends. They were like those guys that everyone has respect for, and they are really muscular, but not really smart. :D They were laughing and talking about some girls, as always, while your boyfriend … umm was kinda doing the same. You have became his girlfriend , more to own respect from the others, than for true love. But anyway, you always pretend to be happy with him, and you think that he pretends too. But what’s the point?!!.... You just arrived at school, and get off the car. While Hyun and his friends were walking forward you faster, you moved your head to the school’s door and you see that someone new had came. He was tall, with cute messy hair, and with a large jacket (because it was really cold), and he had his bag too. This meant that he was a new student. He seemed as a friendly person, and you would like to say “hi” to him, but you hear that voice again!! >.< Hyun: Y/N, hurry up!!! I’m waiting you, and I’m freezing so you better hurry. Y/N: I’m comin’, I’m coming. You started to walk but you kept your head behind to look at the new guy. Anyway, you really needed to hurry, so you just started to run then. You arrived at the inside of the school, and your boyfriend put his arm around your shoulder, because he wanted to look cool in front of the others. Hyun: Just try to smile!! We need to show them that we are the best couple! You: Seriously?!! I just don’t want to! And we’re not the best couple. How can we even be a couple, when you keep going out with other girls and just spent a few time with me! You took off his arm of your shoulder, and you were angry now. Hyun didn’t say anything, but just saw you with some serious eyes, and then left. Afff, he was so annoying. Anyway, you started moving faster because you didn’t want to become late for your class again. You entered your class and get at your seat. You take off your books, as always, but you see that next to you was staying a guy. Usually, that seat stays empty, so you got curious to see who was seating in there. Wow, you see that the new guy was seating in there!! Whaatt?!!! This meant he was at the same class with you. You were looking at him, and you see that he saw you too, and smiled to you. *embarrassed . Aff, you could feel that your cheeks became red, and you see that he was starting to laugh because of your red face. #.# Pheww, but this whole situation finally stopped when your teacher comes into the class. This was your Korean class, and you really liked the teacher of this class. The teacher: Good morning my cuties!! You seem really bright today, as always ^^, and to make your day even more bright, I want to introduce you guys a new student. Can you please come here, and introduce yourself? J You see that the new guy left his seat, and went next to your teacher, with his face towards your class. J-Hope: Hello everyone!! My name is Jung Hoseok, but you can call me J-Hope. Umm, before moving in here, I was living in Gwangju , which is my birthplace, and I came in here to make my dreams come true. I want to be an amazing rapper, and a great dancer too. I hope I have made the right choice for coming here in Seoul. I also hope to make new friends in here, and you guys should know that I’m really friendly and I can get along with everyone. Ahh, I don’t know what else to say! Oh, since I’m seeing these girls looking at me like *o*, I also have to say that I’m single! ^o^ So, I guess that’s it! Nice to meet you all. J Teacher: Thank you, Hoseok! You can take your seat now. J And, now let’s move to our new lesson …… Class finished, and you decided to go out for a bit. After your Korean class you always go to a bar next to your school. You went in there alone, like always, and took a seat. You ordered strawberry juice. While waiting for your drink, you see that, the new guy was staying right forward you. He was drinking coffee, and he was just staying at his phone. You really wanted him to just stay concentrate in there, so you could see at him without getting embarrassed. But, he raised his head and noticed you. He smiled to you and made a sign for you, that meant, that you could sit in his table if you wanted. You would really like to know him better, so you decided to sit in there. J-Hope: Hey! You: Hi!! J-Hope: Sooo, you already know my name, right? Can I know yours? You: Haha, yes! My name is Y/N. And, nice to meet you. J J-Hope: Cute name!! ^^ Nice to meet you too. Well, I know this was like super fast, but I should go now. I’m so so sorry!!! And don’t think that I found you boring, but I just have to do smth in my house now. Would you like to go out with me this evening? You: It’s ok!! And thanks, but I already have a boyfr….. J-Hope: Hahaha, no no!! I meant, would you like to spent the evening with me? So, I can know you better too. You: ooooh, right!!! Omgg, this is really embarrassing! Sorry for understanding it in the wrong way! And I guess I will come. ;) J-Hope: :D Yaay!! Where can I take you? You: Oh, this is my address ( you tell him your address) . Thank you!! J-Hope: Np! Byee~ …..

The evening came really fast, and your palms were sweating, and you were quiet nervous. Since you had butterflies in your stomach, you couldn’t even find the right outfit, and you end up being wear like a rainbow. Still you looked cute. But something was making you even more nervous!! Why are you feeling butterflies in your stomach, from a boy who you have been knowing just for an hour?!! That’s weird. Anyway …. You were prepared , and you suddenly see that someone has arrived and has started to chat with your mom. You got excited, so you decided to go downstairs. You saw your mom chating with a guy, and when he turned his face to your direction…. Oh noooo!!!! You see that he was your boyfriend! (Awkwarddd!!) You: Oh hey, Hyun!! ^^ What’re you doing here? Hyun: Heyy!! Umm, what I’m doing here?? Hehe, you’re my girlfriend, right? You: Of course I am! I just … asked. Hyun: I would like to spent the evening with you today! I also talked with your mom, and she agreed. ;) You: Oh, ‘-.- cool!! Of course! J Can we leave since now, because I’m ready! :D Hyun: Uuh, of course! Come on! You kissed your mom, and then left your house with Hyun. Eeh, it wasn’t as you expected, but whatever … you and your boyfriend hadn’t passed the evening together since a long time. Hyun: You don’t look really happy babe! What’s wrong? You: Well, I didn’t ummm, eat anything after I came from school, and now my head is starting to hurt, and …. Hyun: Ok, ok!!! XD No need to explain all of that! You better stop before my headache start too! XD .. You got angry, and you didn’t say anything, except looking at Hyun with a serious look. You: Oh look, Hyun, the modern art is going to be shown today at the art gallery. Can we goo, pleaseeee!!! *o* Hyun: Umm, ok whatever! If you want to…

You and Hyun entered the art gallery, and wooow it was so full of people! But you got a bit worried, for J-Hope, because he would go to your house, and he will not find you in there. You don’t even have his phone number!! The last time you two met, you gave him just the address of your house. >.< He will feel sad. Hyun: What are you thinking Y/N? You should be happy, since we are in this place now! You: I am happy! I just … reminded something! .. Anyway, let’s go and see that masterpiece overthere! Hyun: :D Ok, let’s go! .. Woow, it was a painting of Maurice Utrillo, who you love really much!! *O* Hyun: Hmm, I think this one has been crazy! XD You: -.-, heyy, don’t offend him!! It’s not called crazy, it’s just called art!!! Duh! Hyun: I personally would like to go and see that other painting over there, because I’m not enjoying seeing this, because I personally don’t get it! ‘XD You: Uff, okay go! I hope you understand the other one. … Hyun went to another painting, while you were still staring at Maurice Utrillo’s art! <3 You really love his style! That painting has such a big meaning, inside of those dark colours. *o* While you were enjoying the painting, you hear someone whispering to your ear : Hey!! You turned your head, terrified, and oooh, you see J-Hope. You: Oh my god! You scared me! And hey! J-Hope: Haha, sorry! Didn’t mean to. Btw, do you always come to the art gallery when someone asks you out, or was it just with me? XD You blushed: Haha, noo!! And, I’m so sorry about tonight! It’s just, my boyfriend wanted to go out with me today! It was as a surprise for me too, because he doesn’t do those kind of things usually! J-Hope: It’s ok!!! I understand it! I personally went to your house, and your mom explained me everything! And I came here just by coincidence. I weren’t following you, I just love art in general! You: J I believe you! I’m happy that I saw you here. J-Hope: Me too! J Hyun: Umm, hello!! Did you drop anything? J-Hope: Oh hello! You must be Y/N’s boyfriend! Nice to meet you, I’m J-Hope! The new guy. J Hyun: Noone asked for your personal information, so you better leave now! J-Hope: Oh okay! Sorry, and Bye! You: Bye J-Hope! J .. J-hope left, and you hit at your boyfriend’s face! You: How can you be such an idiot?!! >.< He is a new guy from school, and he just needs some new friends. Hyun: Oh, and why you? Our school has a lot of people, why should he choose you!! You: Maybe because I’m the only normal in school, and because the others are all like you!! >.< (You started crying from anger.) Hyun: Oh,don’t you even dare to cry!! I’m leaving now, and you better hurry up tomorrow for school! You: Are you kidding? I’m not going to pass my life with a jerk like you! So bye bye!! Hyun: Whaattt??!!! Did you … just break .. up with me? You: Oh yes! That’s right! I broke up with you! Now go at your real girlfriends and cry to them!! Because you know what? I don’t care! I have never cared! I will never care! Goo nowww!!! Crryyy, if you want! >.< I’m leaving first! .. you didn’t wait for Hyun to say anything, and you just left the art gallery! You were crying from anger, but somehow you felt your soul relieved from that stupid person! You were running to catch the bus , which goes to your neighbourhood, but you hear a voice calling you. It was J-Hope. J-Hope: Y/N, waaiiit!!! You stopped running, and he came closer you. Since you were still crying, he gave you a warm hug, and you were doing the same. That hug happened for around 5 minutes. And then you two just stand back. J-Hope started wiping away your tears, and cleaning your face. You: Ah, thank you! You’re so sweet! J J-Hope: Np! ^^ Are you feeling better now? I saw everything. You: Oh, much more better! You may be surprised, but I didn’t really love him. So I feel much more happier now! And, sorry for what he said to you earlier! He is like that with everyone, not just with you. J-Hope: Oh yea, I noticed that! J No, I didn’t get angry! I understand him. “Another guy was talking to his girlfriend” You: Ohh, please!! But what, when I see him with a lot and a lot of other girls!! J-Hope: Haha, I don’t know what to say! You: J It’s ok! I want to thank you once again! ;) J-Hope: Would you like me to take you home? Maybe you need a rest. You: Pff, noo!! I told you, I feel much more better. J-Hope: Haha, ok! Would you like to go anywhere then? You: Umm, what if we just sit in there? I feel lazy to go somewhere else! Haha. J-Hope: Haha, of course! Let’s go! … You two went and sit on a bench. J-Hope sit first, and when you sit he grabbed your legs and put them on his thighs. J-Hope: Sorry if you find this awkward, I just like to do this to my friends. :) You: No, I find this really cute! ^^ I do this with my friend too. :) J-Hope: Cool.~ Sooo, do you wanna talk about anything? You: Umm, haha let me think! ;) Why did you move here in Seoul? J-Hope: Oh, right! Good question. Well, as I said at my class presentation today, I came in here to make my dreams came true. ^^ I have always loved Seoul, and I moved in here with my family. I also have a sister, who will have a much more brighter future in here. I want to be a successful rapper, and why not a kpop idol! :D You: Wow, that’s so cool!! I hope your dreams come true, and I know that’s going to happen because all the people who work hard in here, get what they want at the end. :) J-Hope: ooh, that makes me really happy!! ^`^ Thanks! …. You two stayed there for a long time, talking about different things, and you really enjoyed talking with J-Hope. He was such a “shiny” and smart person. :) You: Wow, the time passed really quick! I better go home now. :) J-Hope: Well, talking with smart people like you always takes a long time. Would you like me to take you home? You: Oh you’re sooo sweet! Okay, thanks! ^^ … you two left the bench, and started walking towards your neighbourhood. J-Hope was standing forward you and he was holding your hand. You finally arrived in front of your house. J-Hope: Well, here it is. Home sweet home. :) You: Yess, haha!! ^^ Thank you once again! For all the things. J-Hope: Anytime! ;) …. Before leaving, J-Hope grabbed your head and pulled it closer his, and you were actually expecting a kiss, but he just touched and moved his nose with yours. ^^ That made you giggle!! You: Is this another habit you have with friends? J-Hope: Haha, actually no! I just wanted to do this with you. :) You: Okay, haha!! I should go now, byeee~ J-Hope: Byeee~ ….You went to your home, and you saw that your mom had fallen asleep, so you took a blanket and covered her up. You also gave her a goodnight kiss, and then went up, to your room. Your heart was flying from happiness, and you were thinking about all the sweet moments you had with J-Hope today. ^`^ He was such a perfect guy, and when you remind that you were with a person like Hyun, you hate that part of your life. Breaking up with him was the right thing to do. And the coming of J-Hope in Seoul was such a really good thing too. ^^ You were feeling a bit tired, so you decided to go and sleep right away. Ehh, you had a feeling that you were going to dream about rainbows today! :D ….

You woke up really happy, got ready, ate breakfast, and surprisingly you were earlier than other times. Maybe, because you hated Hyun pressure on you every morning! The idea that you got rid of Hyun, makes you so happy!! ^^ You left your house, and started to walk to school. Wow, it has passed a long time since you have walked to school, because Hyun always drove you to school. Anyway, you don’t want to think of him anymore. Now you think that J-Hope will become a really important person in your life. ^^ You were walking and walking dreaming about different things, and finally arrived at school. You were looking around to find J-Hope, but maybe he was just late. So you went to your class, and see that only some of your friends were in there. Wow, haha you were like so early today!! Your teacher came and you started class. But weirdly, J-Hope wasn’t coming. The first class finished and he wasn’t coming. You started to feel a bit scared, and nervous. So you decided to go out, and breathe some fresh air. You went nearly the school outdoor, when you listen at something. You move your head to see, and omgggg , it was J-Hope … and. and… Hyun!! Hyun was hitting to J-Hope and he was shouting like really hard. J-Hope was covered of blood, and he was looking really scared!! Oh noo!! T.T You take out your phone to call someone, but you listen at Hyun’s voice : Guys, take the bi**h to the place!! After that you felt some big hands covering your eyes, and they took you and put you in a car. You were shouting really loudly: HEEEELP!!! But the car moved really fast! You couldn’t see anything, you could just hear to Hyun’s friends voices! You: You idiots, where are you taking me?!!! Leave me alone!! Lee: Shut up!!! You will now see how bad is to break up from Hyun!!! And wow, fuck! Just for a guy like J- whatever his name is!! You: His name is J-Hope, and if you think I broke up from Hyun just because of him, then you are wrong!! Now stop this fucking car, get me out of here, or I swear I … will throw you both to the river!! >.< Lee: Did you listen her John?!! XDDD She will throw us to the river!! You have closed eyes girl, so you better just shut up because you are making me angry!! .. You didn’t talk again during the ride, and you felt those two grabbing you and letting you somewhere!They finally took off the robe of your eyes, and you could see that you were in a small dirty place! You: Helpppp!!! Pleasee!!!~ Oh come on, what do you even want from me??? >.< ToT Lee: You’ll see!! … That’s all he said, and they both left. You were staying in a shineless, dirty place now all alone!! But you were feeling more nervous for J-Hope, than yourself! Imagining what Hyun was doing to J-Hope now, was making you to suffer! You covered your face with your hands, and started to cry. You could never imagine that Hyun would react like this!! Also you feel so so bad for J-Hope, because he shouldn’t be part of this situation at all! While you were thinking about these things, you hear the door opened, and you see Hyun. He came close you, and touched your face. Hyun: You …. I hate you right now!!! >.< You: Look Hyun, let’s just talk slowly okay! Hyun: Nooo, I don’t want to talk slowly with you!!.. he just hit at your face, and you could feel the hardness!! You: Hyun, stoppp!!! Stop being this, okay? I know you can be a flirt, and an idiot, and someone who doesn’t appreciate art, but .. you are not evil!! Listen to me, you are not like this!! Just be yourself please!! I’m begging you, please! T.T Hyun: It’s too late now, Y/N!! I’m sorry! You: Sorry, sorry for what?? (You were shaking him.) Sorry for whaaaat Hyun!!! Tell me, hurry up!! Hyun: Okay okay!! I hit at J-Hope really badly and let him alone somewhere near here! And … he is losing a lot of blood! You: OH nooo, fuckkk!! Please, hyun !! If you really love me, than just let me go!! Pleaseee! Hyun: I guess you’re right! I’ve been such a jerk, and I can’t believe that I have almost killed someone! This is not who I am! You: Waa, yea yeaa!! Now can you let me go, please? .. Hyun, let you go, of that old house, and you left that place! You walked a bit more, and you see him … omggg T.T!! You: J-Hooope, don’t worry I’m here now! J-Hope: Y/N? H.. e..y!! You: No,no don’t talk!! I will help you, I promise!! You finally found your phone, and called an ambulance. Omgg, J-Hope was losing a lot of blood, and this was all your fault!! You were feeling really bad! J-Hope: Y/N, can .. y..ou please come clo…ser? You: Of course! T.T You closed up your face to J-Hope’s and he kissed yo..u!! It was a slow nice kiss, and he was pouring hot tears from his eyes!! Omgg, he was crying, and you started to cry too!! You had that feeling of losing someone precious! But, suddenly the ambulance had arrived, and when they saw J-Hope, they got him to the car, you got into the car too and so you were moving to an hospital. You were praying during all the ride, because you really cared for J-Hope, and now just thinking of him made you cry. ToT The ambulance arrived at the hospital, and they took J-Hope with a barrel, and a doctor took him in one of the hospital’s rooms. You couldn’t go to the room, so you were just waiting inside the hospital. Looking at those nervous faces of other people who were waiting for their relatives, made you feel something weird in your stomach. After half an hour, finally a nurse comes out of the room where J-Hope was staying, and she started to talk with you. Nurse: Don’t need to be worried girl! Your boyfriend will be recovered, but you did a really good job by calling the ambulance, because in cases like this, help should come really fast! You: Pheww, thank god!! Oh, actually i’m not .. his girlfriend! I can say i’m just a really good friend! Nurse: Well, you can say what you want, but when a person loses a lot of blood, he starts to talk about different things. And the doctor had noticed that he was repeating your name a lot. :) You: Ooh, that makes me happy! :) But can I please see him now? I really need to. Nurse: I know what you feel. You can go in there, but don’t make him many questions. Go now sweety! :* You: Oh, thank you so much!!! ~

You entered in the room that J-Hope was resting, and you see that he wasn’t sleeping. When he sees you, his whole face became happy, and he gave you a warm smile. J You went near the bed, and you were petting his head. You: Oh, J-Hope!! I was so scary! I thought I could lose you! T.T You should know that I really care about you, and in you I have found some missing parts of me. You are such an amazing person, and if someone should be in this bed right now, that should be me. I started all of that situation, and you shouldn’t be the one who would get hurt. ToT I’m so so so sorry, for ever… J-Hope: Shhh, come here! He moved a bit, and grabbed your head to kiss you. He was kissing you with the same warmth, and with one hand he was touching you hair, and with the other hand he was wiping away your tears. During all that kiss, you couldn’t stop crying. But they were love tears, and they were the tears who were telling you that he was the one, the one that would love you all along. And your tears were right, you and J-Hope became the most strong and lovely couple of all the times. And the secret of all that, was just the true love. That love behind the tears. <3

So that’s your lovestory with J-Hoooope!! ^^ Sorry for making it a bit dramatic, but anyway I hope you guys like it. Oh, the lovestory with Jin will be the last one. But I can’t promise that I will write it soon. XD Love yaa, byeee!~

#bts #j-hope #love story #fanfic #moodboard #aesthetic #true love

8 notes · View notes