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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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THEN REPLACE THE DRAFT WITH WHAT YOU SAID TO YOUR FRIEND

And more to the point here, vice versa. Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is slow, because you'll guess wrong. I was in high school I used to write existentialist short stories like ones I'd seen by famous writers. If you think investors can behave badly, it's nothing compared to what's coming. So to write good software you have to overcome in order to hack Unix, and Perl for system administration and cgi scripts. Nearly all makers have day jobs, and work on beautiful software on the side, I'm not proposing that you can almost discount the possibility.1 And if the offer is surprising, it will also prevent one person from being much richer than they were when I was a kid trying to break into computers, what worried him most was the general spirit of benevolence: One of the tricks to surviving a grueling process is not to say that you have to choose cofounders and how hard you have to overcome this: Doing something simple at first glance does not mean you aren't doing something meaningful, defensible, or valuable. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. There are now a few VC firms outside the US. I didn't understand before going into it is that there's no such thing as a killer feature.

Nearly all wanted advice about dealing with html, the email being all uppercase is really conceptually one feature, not one for each word.2 And so, I'm a little embarrassed to say, I never said anything publicly about Lisp while we were working on Viaweb. Palo Alto was not originally a suburb. And Microsoft is going to get replaced eventually, why not now?3 They'd prefer not to deal with before.4 And if you pay them by the volume of work done, they'll get a lot of Internet startups are, though they may not have had this as an explicit goal.5 When we were kids I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. You'll remind them of themselves.

When I got to Yahoo, I found myself thinking: I can understand why German universities declined in the 1930s, after they excluded Jews. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat it occasionally than if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. Subject line becomes Subject foo. Java: C is too low-level. It will take more experience to know for sure, but they were more visible during the Bubble, it's not enough for a CEO to have someone smart he can ask about technical matters. The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. I think the problem with Europe is not that they lack balls, but that you rode with one foot in front of a computer, not a language where you have to do is look at you funny, and you get: Live in the future. What are we unconsciously ruling out as impossible that will soon be possible?6

That's what I did, and it will be higher. If ideas really were the key, a competitor with the sort of place that has conspicuous monuments. My latest trick is taking long hikes. TV is premised on such long sessions unlike Google, which initially made money by selling their software to users. Here are some of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. But the importance of the new model has advanced so rapidly is that it buys you time.7 And then at the other end of the world, and this trend has decades left to run. I never actually gave it, because the company would go out of business, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that technology was going to have a convenient knob you can twist to decrease the productivity of programmers gets measured in lines of code. They're all at the mercy of email too. You don't need to worry about and which not to.

In Robert's defense, he was skeptical about Artix. Even if you've never had a sharply defined identity. And they won't dilute themselves unless they end up net ahead.8 They're hard to filter based just on the headers, no matter what the source. The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company's future. A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the old world of credentials and into the new domain totally ignorant, you don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. There's no real answer. Are some people just a lot more respect when I said, I worked on Microsoft Office instead of I work at a small startup you've never heard of called x. Y Combinator ends up being more like an older brother than a parent.

Usually this initial group of users is small, and partly because I think we should discard plunging. It means he makes up his mind quickly, and follows through. And that might be convincing. Is there a downside to ramen profitability? Oddly enough, the leaders now are European countries like Belgium, which has worked its usual magic on Internet bandwidth.9 But coming up with good ideas involving databases?10 Angel investing is not a messaging protocol, although there is a more general principle here: that if we let people get rich is headed for disaster, whether it's Diocletian's Rome or Harold Wilson's Britain.

This Moore's Law is not as entirely useless as the schlep filter, except it keeps you from working on problems you despise rather than ones you fear. In both painting and hacking there are some tasks that are terrifyingly ambitious, and others like selling and promotion depend more on energy and imagination than any kind of creative vision.11 You're also surrounded by other people trying to do is look at you funny, and you are very happy because your $50,000 has become $5 million. You can filter those based just on the headers, no matter how small it is. This one squeaked by with a probability of 99. The thing to do is: read the stories of existing startups, and I don't want to shut down the company if he'd let us have it. He said We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning.12 Similarly, founders also should not get hung up on deal terms, especially when you have a spare hour, and days later you're still working on it. One day, we'd think of ourselves as the next Google and dream of buying islands; the next, we'd be pondering how to let our loved ones know of our utter failure; and on and on. Certainly if I had to do the one thing they had in common was that they all worked ridiculously hard.

Notes

So if you get nothing. Com in order to avoid this problem and yet it is not too early really means is we can't figure out what the editors think the main reason is that you'll have less room to avoid collisions in.

You know in the chaos anyway. Many famous works of art are unfinished. The aim of such regulations is to give each customer the impression that the guys running Digg are especially sneaky, but those don't scale is to use an OS that doesn't lose our data. 17 pilot in World War II the tax codes were so new that it's bad to do others chose Marx or Cardinal Newman, and we don't use code written while you were able to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to represent anything.

So as an experiment she sent their recruiters the resumes of the markets they serve, because for times over a hundred and one different qualities that help in deciding between success and failure, which merchants used to end investor meetings with So, can I make this miracle happen?

This was made particularly clear in our own Web site.

The philosophers whose works they cover would be a predictor of high school is that you're not sure.

Those investors probably thought they'd been pretty clever by getting such a different type of x. Parker, William R. Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation in which I removed a pair of metaphors that made them register. There was one of the VCs want it to colleagues.

The answer is no longer needed, big companies don't want to live inexpensively as their companies that grow slowly tend not to grow as big.

I worry we may be loud and disorganized, but in fact had its own. There is something in this article used the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson. Founders weren't celebrated in the past, and for recent art, they only like the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the first year or two, and there was a refinement that made steam engines dramatically more efficient.

Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1981. But it is generally the way they do for a seed investment in you, what if they don't, working twice as fast is better than the set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to assume the worst—that an eminent designer is any good at acting that way. To a kid. If you actually started acting like adults, it could become a so-called signalling risk is also to the code you write has a spam probabilty of.

Is this unfair? He did eventually graduate at about 26. Currently the lowest rate seems to have to go to a partner from someone they respect. In A Plan for Spam.

An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp, though. And the expertise and connections the founders are effective. The founders who had worked for a monitor.

Software companies can even be working on what people will give you 11% more income, which have evolved the way starting a startup, but Joshua Schachter tells me it was. Perhaps the most general truths. The original version of Word 13.

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citrineghost · 3 years ago

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Avoiding Scams on Freelancing Sites

Hi there! I almost just got scammed today, and I’m going to take the LITTANY of red flags from this interaction and use it to teach you all about how to avoid scams.

I am not making very much money right now. I just lost one of the accounts I was writing for, so I am not not even making enough to pay my rent. So I am desperately looking for work. And, like many people desperately looking for work, my panicking subconscious is willing to see a red flag and brush it under the rug because

“I’m probably being paranoid.”

So, to all of my lovely artists, writers, editors, and other types of freelancers who are desperately looking for work, I would like to create a comprehensive list of things that you should NOT FUCKING IGNORE while looking for a job. Actually, the list will be formatted as things you should expect from your employer/interviewer and if these things are missing, get the fuck out of there.

1. Reputable Platforms

The first thing you should be expecting is to use reputable platforms. If you’re being asked for a virtual interview, you should expect your interviewer to invite you via Skype, Discord, (Maybe slack if they’re middle-aged), perhaps Whatsapp, or whatever website you’re using to find your job.

DO NOT go for interviews on Telegram. This app has been reported as very commonly being associated with scams. This is where my recent experience took place.

2. Willingness to Verify Legitimacy

The first thing you should do when being in contact with an interviewer or HR is ask them to verify their identity.

This may not be necessary if doing a video call with someone pictured on an official company website, receiving emails or texts from addresses/numbers that are listed on an official company website, or if the job you’re being interviewed for was applied to directly on the company website. In these cases, you are not likely to be scammed, as you’re working with verifiably information.

If you meet someone on Indeed, Fiverr, Upwork, or any other freelancing/job site, keep your contact within the website’s chat system, email system, or whatever. This is how you remain protected under the hiring site’s TOS/Legal whatever. If you get scammed because you took your hiring process elsewhere, they will not help you.

That being said, if you DO take your interview off the site, it should be somewhere reputable and you should ask for your interviewer to verify their identity before doing literally anything else. The best way to get them to verify their identity is to ask them to email or text you from an address or phone number listed clearly on the official company website, by asking them to show you their state ID and checking it for photoshop influence, or by asking to do a video call for the interview and seeing for yourself that you’re being interviewed by someone who is pictured on the official company website as an employee.

3. Clear and Professional Procedures

Any professional working as an interviewer or human resources personnel will have a skillset related to communication and organization. When being interviewed you should expect a number of questions about your skills and how you’re valuable to the company, etc. However, this is easy to fake, as a scammer. What you need to look out for is that they show a clear amount of structure.

If you’re asked for an interview, no real company will demand you be quick about responding. If they’re interested in an interview, a legitimate company is not likely to ask you to do the interview immediately. They will ask you to schedule an interview time with them. They may ask if you have availabilities that day, but they will not just start interviewing you immediately.

After the interview, any professional company will tell you that they will get back to you when they’ve made a decision about your interview. No professional company will tell you to wait for an indefinite amount of time while they talk to HR peers. If a company Does want you to wait, because they intend to make a quick decision, they will give you an expected wait time, as that is the courteous and professional thing to do. They will not expect you to be on-call for this period of time. A time projection is simply to give you an idea of what to expect. For example, “I’ll be in touch within the next 1-3 hours about the results of your interview. Thank you for your time.”

Furthermore, if you are accepted for a job, any professional company will make a clear outline of exactly how they plan to introduce you into company life. They will respect your time and ask you to schedule things with them. For example, “Is there a period of 2-3 hours within the next few days where you would be available for an orientation?”

No professional company will demand you do anything at any particular time. That is not how legitimate professionals treat new employees. You will be asked to schedule things with them. Even when you’re assigned work hours, if the exact hours you’re applying for are not listed in the job description you applied for, they will ask you to fill out some kind of time sheet to outline your availabilities, then schedule you for times within that outline.

4. Doesn’t Show Signs of Money Scamming

There are two major red flags when it comes to money scams. Your interviewer should never ask you what bank you use and your interviewer should never ever tell you they’re going to send you a check, unless they send your paycheck as a check.

One of the more common scams at the moment is run by people pretending to be members of legitimate companies, hiring freelancers for things like proofreading and editing. These remote positions may require home office hardware, right? The interviewer will tell you you’re missing some hardware and software that are required for the job. Then they’ll tell you that they will send a check that you can cash and use to buy the required materials.

This is even sketchier if they email you front and back images of the check and tell you to print it and then deposit it through mobile banking. The way this works is that, if you cash the check successfully, you will then buy the list of software, which is usually completely unrelated to the job you’re being hired for, then they will cancel the check, which hasn’t cleared completely. That leaves you with ~$2k dollars less in your bank and their money right back where it started in theirs. Presumably, the scammers are the ones selling the software. So, that $2k dollars you just spent is also going into their bank account.

Professional companies will never offer to send you checks to buy products. If they have official hardware or software that they want you to use, they will buy it themselves and then send it to you. There is never a reason why a new hire should buy hardware or software out of their own bank, whether they have been given money for it or not.

Furthermore, a legitimate company will never ever pay you before you have signed and sent your contract to them. One of the obvious giveaways of the scam I was almost caught in was that I was sent the contract last night and I asked if I could send it in today, since it was getting late. The interviewer agreed. I signed it in the morning and then asked him if I should send it in a reply to the email I got the original contract from or if there’s another email I need to send it to. He completely ignored my question, asked me how I was doing, and then went into the check-related information so I could buy software.

The issue was bothering me ALL DAY. I knew there was something extremely weird about that, so I asked again a few hours later. His response? “You have nothing to worry about.” ?????? I was aghast. I wasn’t worried at all! I just wanted an answer! If he had simply told me to respond to the email I’d gotten the contract from, I might have fallen for his scam! What a terrible scammer smdh

A Non-Exhaustive List of Other Red Flags

Your interviewer shows a poor grasp on the language

If your interviewer is making frequent grammatical errors that are glaringly obvious to any native speaker, that is a huge red flag. HR reps and interviewers are hired because of their communication skills. It is highly unlikely that someone who makes non-native-like errors is legitimate unless they are actually openly non-native, in which case, it’s not so alarming.

Your interviewer is showing impatience or demanding you at certain times

If your interviewer is telling you to “report back by 8am tomorrow” without any kind of prior agreement that this is an acceptable time for you to meet, that is extremely unprofessional and shows a lack of patience. Scammers want to get to the meat of their scam quickly and will use an air of professional superiority and authority to scare you into moving faster than necessary.

Your interviewer shows a lack of opening and closing statements

Along the lines of the clear processes that I mentioned above anybody who is initiating you in the job you’re taking should show clear opening and closing statements. What I mean by this is: professionals in human resources or management positions will not keep you as a social hostage. If you’ve been discussing how you’ll begin training or somesuch, they will not just leave you hanging. You should have a dedicated time slot where you will have your discussion and, at the end of it, your supervisor should make a closing statement. For example, “It looks like our time is running out for today. What would be a good time to pick this up tomorrow?”

If you feel like you are “on-call” and unable to leave the room because the interviewer or supervisor keeps messaging, has not outlined a time slot for you to talk in, won’t seem to let you go, or shows no indication of stopping, that is a really bad sign. Either the company is legitimate and TERRIBLE at professionalism (a great sign you should run anyway), or this is a scammer intent on getting you to follow their instructions as soon as they can.

Your interviewer ignores time zones or gets them wrong

When I was contacted about doing an interview yesterday, it was 4:30pm. I did the interview and was told I got the job. Immediately after, without asking if I was free, he began listing off instructions and things I was to expect. It wasn’t until 7:30pm that he sent me the contract and asked me to review it, sign it, and send it back that I finally asked if I could do that tomorrow. The interviewer was supposedly on the west coast and knew that I was on the east coast. He agreed by saying “Alright” and then told me to report to him “by 8am your time.”

There are 3 things about this that are weird. The first is that he demanded I show up at 8am to continue where we left off. Any professional would have asked when I’m available the next day to continue. the second is that he said “your time” instead of saying EST, as most professionals in the US would be apt to do. And, lastly, I showed up at 7:50am, ready to continue, because I’m that desperate that I’m willing to be pushed around, and he showed up at 9am on the dot. He had gotten the time wrong. Nobody who works professionally on the west coast is incapable of adding 3 hours to their time. It was a rookie mistake, or a mistake made by someone in a completely different time zone than they say they are.

When asked to verify their identity, your interviewer attempts to reassure you or refuses

When I finally was fed up and knew this must be a scam, I politely asked my interviewer to verify his identity by either showing me his US ID or by contacting me from his email or phone number listed on the official company website. He sent me a photoshopped nametag with a completely different person’s name and photo on it and said it was the company ID of the HR director.

I have never seen a facade fall so pathetically. Why would literally any even remotely legitimate person do such a thing? It was sad, really. He deleted the message in less than a minute - no doubt to keep me from looking at it long enough to see how badly it was photoshopped - and then aggressively reassured me that the company meant me no harm and would pay for everything, etc. Any real professional would have simply sent me an email from the legitimate address, stating that they’re legitimate, and then continued on with the initiation process.

Learn from My Mistakes

I hope some of this was helpful for all of you lovely freelancers trying to find work. I thought I would know a scam when I saw one, and I did have a Bad Feeling about this whole thing, because it did feel too good to be true, but I was desperate enough that my judgement was heavily clouded, and that could happen to anyone.

Don’t ignore red flags - especially these ones. Stick up for yourself. Avoid confirmation bias. I looked things up repeatedly to confirm that the company was legitimate and that it’s normal to do things like mobile deposit a printed check and so on. Every time, I found an explanation that suited me. I even tried to cash the check. The only reason it didn’t work was because there was an error with the name on the check because I recently legally changed my name and PayPal was having some kind of issue updating in some areas of its website. It was after that that I realized this was all crashing down and I needed to reassess it all. Don’t let yourself get that deep into it.

#job hunting #job #interview #hiring #scams #advice #psa #important #upwork #freelancing #writing #writeblr #editing #ghostpost

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jjuzoir · 4 years ago

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Homare Arisugawa General HCS

request: “Hi Sora! I never see any art/writing for my boy Homare from A3! (Maybe because his dialogue is so ridiculous.) Would you mind writing something for him?” from tlali

a/n: ahhh i don’t think i’ve ever taken so long in a request jdjdndnd but i just wanted to make it right because i love homare so much❕ he deserves everything and more i just HDHSJJA we need more homare love 🤬 his dialogue is hilarious and i feel like we need to appreciate his style more no more homare slander 🙅

word count: 1667

- He smells like earl gray tea. No one knows why since he uses unscented soaps, he says it’s probably because he spends most of his time drinking or around tea.

- He’s very particular about his hair, he uses very specific shampoos and conditioners that he will absolutely not share or change unless he notices his hair needs it. Talking about his hair, it’s naturally kind of dry so he uses a lot of hydrating products which leaves him with the softest, most fluffy hair ever. It’s like touching a cloud.

- One of his favorite gifts given to him is a tie given to him as a birthday gift by his members. Everyone pitched it, including Izumi, and Azuma picked it out. It’s black, much like his everyday tie, but it’s got a small embroidered snowflake.

- He’s got three main pairs of glasses; his everyday ones he keeps at hand when he goes out, his at home ones which are (according to him) less flattering, and his driving ones. Keep in mind he can’t drive, he doesn’t even own a car.

- He can speak french and latin, and he’s super loud about it too. He’ll sometimes slip in french phrases and no one will understand other than Chikage and it’s just a mess - Muku is always so amazed that he knows two other languages too and probably asks him to teach him sometime.

- Definitely has the prettiest handwriting when it comes to the roman alphabet, he writes in ink and with fancy pens that cost more than Banri’s tuition.

- Absolutely has a bunch of business cards printed out, each with its own quote made by him. Sakyo thought it was such a waste printing them until he realized that no matter how many Homare took when he went to run errands he always gave them all, to whom? No one knows.

- He’s very well respected in the literary community, which still shocks pretty much everyone. He gets stopped often by fans or people who’ve read his work, it happens at least once a day and Izumi really doesn’t… she doesn’t understand, poor girl.

- He’s not that good with phone calls, he’s not bad but he definitely prefers texting or just talking face to face. To him there’s just a certain level of discontent he doesn’t like that doesn’t exist in other mediums.

- His favorite shows are either comedies or heavy hitting detective shows, there is no inbetween. You’ll walk in on him watching a sitcom leave the room and walk in on a serial killer chase down.

- About his love for detective shows, his favorite pastime is trying to solve the mysteries with the main character. He’ll rewatch the episode so many times to try and pick up clues, he’ll take notes and come to a conclusion and he loves the feeling of getting it right.

- In the same spirit as the statement above, absolutely got Tsumugi and Sakyo hooked on some of his favorites and they hang out to talk about the latest episodes and the overarching mystery. The conversations can tend to get kind of heavy very quick, more than once Muku thought they were investigating a real crime and almost fainted.

- He looks like he’s probably allergic to wool sweaters, they make his skin itch and he always needs to use a shirt underneath them - so he tends to buy those expensive anti-allergic ones that need to be washed in a very specific way that could probably pay Tsuzuru’s whole college debt and it takes a lot of restraint from the playwright not to steal one and sell in the black market.

- Talking about Tsuzuru, he often gives him writing advice. Said advice tends to be very useful, like keeping a pen and notebook on him in case anything comes to mind during the day or writing daily to help ease him into a style, etc. Homare genuinely wants him to bloom into a writer and is willing to beta-read anything Minagi needs, be it a script or a sleep deprived rambling about the gay subtext in Nocturnity.

- Arisugawa sets himself reading goals each month, he likes to read at least one book. He prefers poetry books or classic english literature, but he also likes to read romance books or really bizarre dystopian novels.

- Has read more books than most people in the company and can give very detailed recommendations if you give him like a day.

- Sings operas in the shower, unless stopped he will keep going until the second act. Surprisingly good falsetto, but one time Tenma thought it was a Banshee for a second and almost cried into Juza’s chest.

- He’s not only an overly emotional drunk but also a loud drunk, he’s already quite loud but when he’s downed half a bottle of wine and a shot of vodka he’s louder than the Summer Troupe combined. Because of this, Izumi tends to restrict his alcohol intake when they’re at the dorm.

- I can see him being very big into musicals, not all musicals but a very specific niche; classic horror novels turned into musicals. He’s a very big fan of both the German and Korean versions of Dracula, his favorite song is probably “Zu Ende” or the Korean version of “It’s Over”. He also likes the Frankenstein musical too, but overall he finds Junsu’s Dracula more interesting thus his preference.

- He will talk your ear off if you mention any musical though, be it a classic like Phantom or something newer like Heathers.

- A very big fan of Ghibli movies, he told me so himself today. He really likes Spirited Away though, it’s a movie he’s watched so many times but he’s still completely enamoured by it; he probably has made the Winter Troupe watch it at least once and Hisoka definitely knows the beginning of the movie by heart now.

- Homare is also really good at drawing, not like Kazunari but he’s probably the second best. He learned by analyzing and looking at artists he admired and picking up on their techniques. A true Renaissance Man™️.

- I feel like he’d also have a bunch of skills that are kind of, useless? He can probably carve wood and make candles, he also took a course in glass blowing probably. Arisugawa just wants to try everything at least once, his motto is probably to explore and learn as much as possible, not just about art but the world (he can be surprisingly smart if you have a dictionary at hand).

- Very observant, just in general. Which can be both good and bad, it’s good because it helps him understand the situation in ways others might not but it leads to him to sometimes overthinking things and behaving in manners which may annoy or hurt others.

- He also has a hard time trying to react to social cues, as seen in game, with certain people. While he’s worked it out with the Winter troupe and the Mankai company he still struggles when it comes to new people.

- Will make little tunes he sings in the shower that kind of become a little daily song, each day there’s a new one he’ll hum.

- He also canonly makes music and he makes contemporary electro-pop, you cannot change my mind. He probably also mixes opera and classical music into his tunes, which can go from 1 minute to 10, so you end up with a very cool mix of orchestra and techno-pop - it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but he’s probably got his own niche group.

- Now, into more romantic HCs...

- He’s a good flirt, a very good flirt. They may sound weird looking back at it, but his pickup lines work and they work well.

- He knows when to stop pursuing someone too. He senses even a bit of discomfort and he’s backing away, won’t ask anything. Very big on consent and unless stated absolutely explicitly he’ll keep his distance.

- A true gentleman, please - he’ll never let his dates pay, always open the doors for them, will even do the “walk on the inside of the sidewalk” when he’s walking you home.

- His favorite dates tend to be ones where you get to know more about each other, not always necessarily by talking though. Being able to go into a bookstore and look at the books, seeing the ones you pick, what you pick at a cafe or restaurant, it all helps him draw a better picture of who you are and he likes to think it helps you get to know him better too.

- He’s very in tune with his S/O’s feelings but is afraid of overstepping any boundaries which may lead to some miscommunication at the beginning of the relationship. But it’s workable and it wouldn’t be that big an issue in the long run as long as his partner is willing to help him understand them.

- Not big on PDA, thinks certain things should remain inside - not to say he wouldn’t talk for hours about his partner to anyone who listens but things like kissing or hugs tend to be behind closed doors. He’s okay with hand holding and maybe a kiss on the cheek though!

- Likes wearing matching outfits with his S/O, thinks it shows how they’re “one in spirit, heart, and mind” and will not stop pointing it out to the point even married couples feel single as they hear him ramble on about the subtle coordination in your color schemes to create a perfect contrast.

- Notices the smallest things like how much sugar you like in your drinks, the telltale signs of when you’re lying or uncomfortable, how you act when you’re too cold or too hot, and learns it by heart.

- Homare is also the kind of boyfriend who’d confront the waiter if they get your order wrong, he’s not ashamed of it either.

- He kind of just wants to make sure you’re doing well and happy, he’s a gentleman.

- Damn… I love him so much

#—🎀 a3!#a3!#a3 #act! addict! actors!#act addict actors #homare arisugawa #homare arisugawa x reader #a3 homare #a3! homare #a3 homare x reader #a3! homare x reader #a3! x reader #a3 x reader #a3! fanfiction #arisugawa x reader #winter troupe #—✒️ sora’s scripts

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rizumary · 4 years ago

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Like A Soda Pop (part.2)

This was the highest peak of Hajime Iwaizumi’s delicate springtime of life—according to Tooru, who definitely didn’t have any say in Hajime’s love life. At all. (Or, the one where Iwaizumi got overwhelmed by a kouhai’s not-entirely-unwelcomed romantic advances and Oikawa did have any say in his love life, after all.) [Iwaizumi/OC; confession fic]

Writer: nutteu | AO3 version [part 1] ー [part 2]

There were days that felt like Akeno; soft, airy cotton candy days filled with wondering eyes and quick-silver heartbeats. Where his hands trembled with the confusion of wanting to hold Akeno’s hand or to punch the wall because he was too overwhelmed by her.

But, there were also days when Hajime felt like he ached so deep within his marrow. The cramp from their latest bout of harsh practices, the looming threat of competitions, the painful anxiety of losing, of not being able to play a little bit longer—just a little bit more—

For people like Tobio, like Ushijima, even Tooru, the ache must have been filled to the brim with growth and potentials. But for Hajime, it felt like bone deep weariness and fear. That it wasn’t enough, that he didn’t try hard enough, that eventually, he wouldn’t be able to catch up no matter how hard he worked for it. He was neither the gifted nor the talented. All he had was his love for volleyballs, and the stubborn, unmoving desire of reaching the pinnacle of championships with his team.

On those days, he smiled less, hit the balls harder than ever, took every cramp and ache in his muscles. He came early, went home the last. On those days, there was nothing he would like to do but scream, and practice until his legs give out; nothing but staying away from everyone and curl up and cry. The juxtaposing needs made him tired, so tired.

Tooru knew, of course he knew. On those days, he gave as good as he could; teased less, and pacified the other members when they were worried about Hajime’s unusual walls he erected around him. They all got used to it, in the end, letting him vent out his frustrations instead of coddling him. Joked around and acted like he didn’t run himself to the ground just the day before. They didn’t ask, because there were certain things that couldn’t be shared unless they were awake in the middle of the night, or too tired to pay attention properly after a rigorous training camp.

Akeno Hana brought a change to that—abruptly, with her brand of awkwardness and earnest intention.

When everyone else had left, she waited in the gym for him, sitting on the polished floor with a terrifying focus on her delicate face. Hajime almost jumped in surprise when he realized that he wasn’t alone. The irritation was fast to catch up to him. Tooru really needed something to gag his stupidly big mouth. A fist, preferably.

As if reading the hard lines on his face, Hana shook her head and talked first to soother his fraying nerves. “No one told me, they wouldn’t. No one sells you out, Iwaizumi-senpai. Although, they’re as worried as I am. I just—“ she hesitated, and Hajime let out a long sigh. It wouldn’t do anything to snap at her just because she was on the wrong place, at the wrong time.

He reached for his bottle of water and towel, and sat next to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t mad at you. Things are just… difficult for me sometimes,” he said. He didn’t know why he bothered explaining this to her. He never did, not even to Tooru; not even to his mom, though she probably understood anyway. Maybe it was the way Hana just showed to him that she perceived and paid attention more than anyone thought, maybe it was the patience he saw in her eyes, maybe it was because—

Oh, God, he thought, heaving a deep sigh that suspiciously wavered at the end. He was tired, he was so tired. Worrying about his passion, the continuation of his education, his career path—it all built up inside his chest, and in days like these, he couldn’t rationalize it, couldn’t clear his head enough to control his mind and emotions.

Hana nodded, and took the box of something that he assumed was a bento. She unwrapped the cloth covering, and he noticed, out of his will, that her hands was delicate, pretty. Acutely in contrast with his calloused, blistered hands. He wanted to try holding her hands, he thought, and shook his head to banish the thought away. Hana didn’t seem to notice, thankfully.

“I, uh, I made this,” she started, sounding shy and proud. “I remembered that you mentioned you like these, and—and you made me chicken karaage too when I was sad. I wanted to help you too, senpai. But I don’t know if I can do something that actually counts, so I thought—maybe at least I can cheer you up with these?”

Hajime looked over, and was stunned to silence. On the red bento box, alongside the regular assortments, were agedashi tofu that glazed so beautifully Hajime was reminded of his hunger. But above the dish, and the fact that he hadn’t eaten since lunch, the fact that she remembered, that she cared enough to try to cheer him up with this—Hajime swallowed, his throat felt dry all of the sudden. He forgot how to speak, for a moment.

“I—“ he croaked out, and was startled to realize that his eyes were watering. She must have been puzzled as to why he looked like he was about to cry right now, because she suddenly rambled in frantic manner, gesticulating with her hands as her small face scrunched up in worry and panic.

“Of course you don’t have to eat these if you don’t want to, senpai!” she hurried to explain. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to intrude or to patronize! I swear, I just—“ she bit her lip, and looked at him with pale, pleading eyes. “I just wanted to help. Please, let me help, Iwaizumi-senpai.”

He managed a small smile, and took the bento from her hands; felt an electric current ran through his fingers when they brushed against hers. “No, this is more than enough, Akeno. Really,” he said, when Hana still looked unconvinced, “you’ve helped a lot by just being here.”

And that might be too honest, contained more implications than what Hajime would be willing to admit right now, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it back or play it off as something mundane when Hana flashed him the most brilliant smile, happiness etched into the creases around her eyes. He smiled back, stronger, more sincere this time. They were silent after that, but it didn’t feel stifling. Just a comfortable silence to fill in the scant inches of distance between them.

On days like these, Hajime usually wore himself out until he couldn’t think, couldn’t stay awake long enough to let the fear consumed him. But this, he thought as he looked over to Hana’s still smiling face, it felt nice, too.

Hana confessed, out of the blue. Or not so much out of the blue for literally everyone.

It seemed like, Akeno still had one last surprise for him. The biggest, most unexpected surprise that actually felt like a massive, enormous bang in Hajime’s heart: a confession.

(Or maybe, just maybe, Hajime was too busy being conflicted with himself, too busy being enamored by Akeno Hana’s soft, sunny, enveloping charm, to notice that once again, Tooru was right. Hajime really was too dense about romance.)

At first it was like any other day. Of course, it wasn’t any other day. In his defense, Hajime rarely ever got the chance to marvel and enjoy the full extent of Valentine’s Day. Mostly because Valentine had no business at all in the volleyball court. It didn’t matter whether the whole school was in tizzy from the hormone buzz, if coach said lapped until they collapsed, then they’d lapped until they collapsed—Valentine’s Day or not.

Which was probably why Hajime didn’t suspected anything when Akeno walked alongside him, wrapped in her winter uniform and a pink scarf. It suited her, he thought, glancing down at the top of her head. She seemed… nervous. Or maybe she was just cold. She insisted on coming with him to the club, and it was pretty early in the morning. Maybe he could offer her his jacket, too? Yeah, he could do that.

When he opened his mouth to offer, however, Akeno ran ahead of him, before stopping, and extending something on both hands. For a moment, the world stopped. Hajime lost the words forming on his lips as he stared, open-mouthed, at the small, blue box in her gloved hand. She was bowing, her hair falling into curtains and hid the majority of her face, her voice though was as clear as the sun after a rainy day.

“I like you, Iwaizumi-senpai!”

For a heart-stopping second, there was nothing but the faint sound of the students in the distance; the echo of Akeno’s confession ringing in his mind; his accelerating heartbeat beating drums in his ears. He stood there, stock still, too shocked to wrap his head around the situation. Did Akeno… just say that she liked him? Like, the girl who had been charming him left and right and leaving him feeling warm and fuzzy, was actually here, offering him a box of chocolate, and confessing to him? What?

Unfortunately, his mouth only caught up with the last part. “Uh,” he croaked out, hesitant, bewildered, overwhelmed. “What?”

Akeno looked up then, and Hajime suddenly had the epiphany that her reddened face since they met this morning wasn’t just from cold. But because she was holding this in. She looked—afraid, but determined.

“I fell in love with you since the first time we met, senpai,” she said, her voice wavering for a little bit, before strengthening. “I have heard things about you from Kyoutani, but the first time we met, I was immediately taken by your charm. You were so kind even when I was embarrassing myself, you were patient with me, you helped me a lot, you paid attention to me, and you—“ she stopped to take in a breath, and powered through, as though if she didn’t get this out right here, right now, she wouldn’t be able to let out everything in her chest. Her eyes were bright with affection and determination and shyness, but her next words carried on without a hitch.

“You made me feel welcomed. You made me feel accepted and protected, cared for and cherished. I’m so happy when you asked me about things I like, when you mean it, when you hold me as I tripped, when we played together in the arcade. Every day we ate our lunch together, I felt the happiest because I could sit by your side and get to know you more. I’m thankful, that you let me know you in return, and that you trust me enough to open up to me.” There was a small smile playing on the curve of her lips, almost shy, full of happiness as she recalled her memories of them together. “I—I know that there are other girls who you like better than me, but senpai, I, too, wanted to shine in your eyes because in mine, you are the only one I’ve ever had the eyes for.”

Their breaths puffed out in small rush of fog, eyes wide as they stared at each other. Hajime, every so slowly, took the box of chocolate from her hands, and stared at it in amazement. Akeno’s previous words played in continuous repeat inside his head. He was—surprised, extremely so. But his chest felt so warm, despite the weather. It was just that he didn’t know what to say, didn’t trust himself enough to talk properly.

Akeno must have translated his silence into objection, because she seemed even more flustered than before, and her words started to jumble together. “And! I just thought—I thought, I wanted senpai to know about my feelings. Because they feel like they’re about to burst from my chest. Like—like a soda pop! I just wanted you to know, that I like you, senpai! And that you are very precious to me, and I’m thankful for all your helps as well, and that you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. So—so um—oh my god, what am I doing—“ she squeaked at herself, and looked up at Hajime with pleading eyes. “so—I just want to say—I like you so much, Iwaizumi-senpai.”

When Hajime still didn’t move, or say anything, Akeno visible gulped, and grinned stiffly. “Um, anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.” She laughed, awkward and very much still high on nervous energy. “Have a nice valentine!”

As she left him, he could faintly hear her murmur, “a nice valentine? Does that even make sense? Stupid Hana!” as she hit her head with her hand. Hajime took a long ass minute standing there, looking at her retreating back, and back to the box that he was pretty sure contained chocolates on his hand.

Everything was happening too fast for him to comprehend, and it almost felt like a dream. But it wasn’t. It didn’t feel so. Because the weight of the box was real, and Akeno’s swaying hair was still in his sight as she left, and the warmth that slowly spread inside him despite the coldness on his face was very much real. This wasn’t a dream. Akeno had actually confessed to him. As in, she liked him.

“Oh my Gods,” he whispered out brokenly after long minutes just staring at the spot where Akeno disappeared. “Oh my Gods she likes me too. Holy shit.”

The revelation, the sudden intensity of happiness, the giddiness that made him lost his breath. Hajime laughed, in disbelief and slightly hysteric because—he just couldn’t believe it. She liked him, as in liked him. . A romantic type of like, the one with fast heartbeats and the unbearable urge to hold their hands, or spend time with them, or smiling when they talked excitedly about their passion. The type of like that now had become one of the spotlights in his delicate springtime of life.

And then, he realized that for the entirety of the confession, he just stood there looking like a dead fish. “Oh my Gods,” he groaned, frustrated and panicked. He hoped Akeno didn’t make the wrong assumption. But then again, she might have. He didn’t even deign her with any answer whatsoever. Which, was fair. She didn’t ask him out or anything back there. So… so it was fine right? Right, it was fine that he didn’t answer because there was never a question to begin with. She just confessed her feelings, and then—and then Hajime could talk to her about his feelings too, and maybe then, he could ask her out. Yeah, sure, he could do that. He just needed to calm down first, and tried to wipe the giddy grin on his face.

(He didn’t meet Akeno for the rest of the day, but Tooru had seen the box of chocolate in his bag, and was so insufferably smug that Hajime had to punch him. He ate the chocolate at home. It was a tad bitter—she probably took the wrong type of chocolate—but it warmed his heart nonetheless.)

Akeno didn’t come to the club anymore after that. She avoided him in the hallways, didn’t come to their usual lunch time, didn’t reply to his messages, didn’t pick up his calls, even Kyoutani was at loss. Hajime was, to say the least, panicking. No, it wasn’t right, he was an absolute wreck.

He was worried about it to the point of considering just ambushing her after classes, but she would just squeak and run as she did these past few weeks. The other players had been asking about her, too. “Did you guys get into a fight?” they asked, or something like, “There’s finally a problem in the paradise, huh?” which would get a glare from Hajime, typically. He couldn’t exactly tell them that it wasn’t a fight; it was a confession, which was mutual, but they both were too dumb to deal with it properly.

It went on for about a month, before Hajime finally snapped, and turned to Tooru.

That motherfucker laughed. Of course he did. He spent his sweet ass time rolling on Hajime’s mattress, after eating Hajime’s cookies, laughing at Hajime’s misery. It hadn’t even been five minutes and Hajime had regretted this decision, very much so.

“So, in conclusion, she confessed to you, but was too nervous to ask you out and just hightailed it out of there?” Tooru asked, after calming down and wiping tears from his eyes.

“Yeah,” he replied curtly, frustrated and was five seconds away from throwing Tooru out of the window.

“And you were so shocked that you didn’t even say anything? And then you just stupidly thought she’d come around after that?”

He wanted to punch Tooru for that, but in the end, he just conceded with a defeated, “Yeah.”

Tooru exploded into another bout of obnoxious laughter. “Oh my Gods!” he wailed, “oh my Gods, Hajime, this is precious! I can’t believe it!” he dissolved into another giggle, as Hajime groaned and rubbed his face with both hands. He should have never asked Tooru, this just increased his blood pressure and made him consider murder.

Finally, though, Tooru took a pity on him, and said, “Iwa-chan, hana-chan is a simple girl, you know? She likes cute and cool things, she forgets anyone else is in the room when she talks to you, she cries eating your bentos, and she makes you handmade chocolate on valentine. You don’t need grand gestures, just give back what she gave to you—sincerity and clear affection.”

Hajime was stunned for a moment. He actually half-expected Tooru to joke about this and didn’t actually give a useful advice. But he was surprised yet again. He considered it for a moment, and Tooru left him to it after some more teasings.

Something simple, something she liked, and something he knew meant a lot to her. For the first time in weeks, Hajime might have a clue about what he should do. He just hoped that he was right, that it would be enough to win Akeno back.

It was almost six in the morning, and Hajime barely slept a wink last night. He stared at the ceiling in his room hard enough to make himself dizzy, as if he could drill a hole through it. After spending ungodly hours at the arcade yesterday, and quite possibly losing his pocket money for two weeks and several blood vessels from anger and frustration at the crane machine, he finally got the god forsaken thing that thought—wished—would help him and his ironically comedic, disastrous, wonderful crush on Akeno Hana.

He managed to sleep at ten, and then woke up at one am, thinking about ugly things that might transpire when he confessed. He tried to calm himself down, but the thoughts of what if she lost interest, what if she got heartbroken, what if she—kept him wide awake until 4 in the morning. Finally, the memories of spending time with her, the soft curve of her smile, the shine in her eyes when she talked about arts and her dream, the way she looked so sincere, so pretty on the day she confessed, calmed his nerves down. Enough to catch a little bit of sleep.

It didn’t last long, though. He was sleep deprived, was running on nervous energy, and his stomach felt like a knife had been twisted into it. When he finally couldn’t take it, he took his phone from the charging station, and, before he could lose the short burst of bravery, dialed Akeno’s numbers. He knew that girl had a habit of running late to school. This might the only time when she wouldn’t be aware enough to reject his call.

As he predicted, the call connected, and Akeno’s groggy voice greeted him from the other side. She sounded like a child abruptly woken up from a nap. It was cute, but Hajime wasn’t going to be distracted by cute things. Regardless if the said cute things came from the very person he liked. Whom he was going to confess to. Today. In just a moment. Oh Gods, he wanted to throw up.

Instead, he strengthened his resolve, and said, “Go get ready. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Akeno sounded more awake then, cautious. “But… why, senpai?”

Why indeed. But Hajime couldn’t just back off now. He didn’t want to. A month filled with uncertainty about their relationship and the abrupt absence of Akeno in his life, was enough to fill his courage. He didn’t want to go through that again. “I really need to see you, Akeno.”

There was a soft hitch of breath, and then Akeno’s trembling voice. “Y-yeah—uh, I mean, yes, I’ll get ready. Um, take care on your way here, senpai.”

Akeno was already waiting on the front porch when he got there. She looked nervous, but there was a hesitant happiness that peeked through her pale eyes. Her mom waved at him from the door jam, and he bowed, nervous and awkward all at once. They parted with a knowing look from her, and walked to the nearest bus stop that Akeno usually took.

They walked side by side in silence, the both of them too nervous to break the tension between them. It was as if they were waiting on the edge, and Hajime felt like throwing up again. Even playing in tournaments didn’t feel nerve-wracking, even if both the tournaments and Akeno Hana were just as important to him.

Akeno was the first to break the silence, however, by tripping on the side of the road, over nothing. Hajime’s quick reflexes prevented her from falling over and scraped her knees on the pavement, and she shot him a grateful smile. “Thank you, senpai.”

And maybe it was the familiarity, of holding her like this when she was about to fall, of the words he hadn’t heard in a month, of the smile he hadn’t seen much these days, that he just blurted out, “you’re so clumsy. If you got any clumsier than this, you might trip and lose your head, you know?”

Akeno, affronted, choked on air and replied, “Hey!”

He chuckled, and straightened her up. He started walking again, and Akeno followed his lead. Still looking ahead, he started pouring his heart out, so his gut could finally stop twisting, and his heart could finally calm itself down, and he could breathe once the truth was out.

“You’re so clumsy, and you easily got lost if someone didn’t hold your hand. You’re such a crybaby, and sometimes you’re either embarrassed too easily, or entirely too shameless. You look adorable either way.” Next to him, Akeno let out the trademark squeak of protest.

“You have no sense of personal space, and yet I like it when you’re close. Your eyes look the prettiest when you talk about your art; I just realized that you give your whole attention to me when I talk—and I like that as well. You always wake up late, you got these crazy eyes whenever you’re playing crane games, you cook well but you suck at making confectionaries. You are such a mess of genuine feeling and wonder, and I like you too much to even think about a proper confession.”

Next to him, Akeno had stopped walking completely, and instead was staring at him with wide, wide eyes. So he turned, and smiled, and said, “I’m sorry it took me so long to figure this out,” he pulled out the item from his pocket, and keeping his fist close around it, he offered it in front of her. “Happy white valentine,” he said. “I got this for you, and you better like it because I didn’t just spend my time torturing myself in that cursed machine, and not getting a wink of sleep because I was too nervous.”

“Too nervous for what?” Akeno finally spoke after being shocked still for so long.

“To ask you out, of course,” he said, and it felt so easy, sliding off his lips in light cadence. It felt alarmingly natural on his tongue, like it waited his whole life to reach this delicate springtime of life to finally say it. “Instead of, you know, running away after the confession.”

At that, Akeno finally snapped out of the trance and pouted at him. Even pouting like that she still looked unfairly cute. Hajime was indeed going insane. Simp, he faintly heard Tooru’s voice whispered viciously in his head, complete with the shit-eating grin.

“Hey! It’s not nice to embarrass people like that!” she yelled, high pitched and patting her cheeks to alleviate some heat. They looked appropriately reddened. “I was nervous, okay. You know I do stupid things when I’m nervous, senpai,” she whined, and he chuckled low.

He stepped closer to her, and slowly, carefully, brought his hands to where Akeno’s were and wrapped them around bunny plushy he had tried so hard to get, her soft smiles in mind every time he failed to get it. Hana’s eyes widened, pale irises recognizing the object in her hands immediately, and held back a sob as she realized that Hajime remembered. “So, how about it? Will you go out with me? I promise I’ll make you karaage any time you like, and I made really good confectionaries, and you can steal all my jackets as you like and we can get you all the bunny plushies in the world and—“

And Akeno was laughing, crying, taking the bunny plushy from his hands and rushed forward to envelope him in the tiniest, warmest hug he had ever received in his whole life. “Yes,” he heard her saying, then, more clearly than ever, like a ringing bell in the foggy morning, “yes, I’ll go out with you, Iwaizumi-senpai!”

And really, if people looked at them weird because they were hugging on the side of the road, crying and sniffling and giggling like middle school girls, Hajime could honestly give less than half a shit, because he was too busy wrapping his head around the unfathomable happiness that filled his heart to the brim. Oikawa was going to be insufferably smug, Hajime was too happy to even feel frustrated though.

Because they were shyly holding hands on their way to the bus stop, the bunny plushy safely strapped to Akeno’s bag, and her smile was bright enough to light the whole world. Hajime’s world, at least. And as he looked at her, smiling softly at the radiant joy on every line of her face, he felt his heart beat so loud he could hear it in his ears. Like his feelings and happiness and sheer force of affection for Hana was about to burst.

Like a soda pop.

#iwaizumi hajime #akeno hana #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi x oc #iwaizumi hajime x reader #haha couple #iwaizumi fanart #iwaizumi fanfic

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livlepretre · 3 years ago

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Are there any real life moments or feelings that have made their way or informed scenes in any of your fics? Not asking about anything very deep or personal (unless you want to go there). For example, something as small as knowing specific places or sensations and using that to inform scenes better.

Oh tons and tons!

I did get lucky in two respects with writing tvd fic specifically--

I'm actually a painter in real life, so all of those details about using oil paints are from long years of personal experience, as well as all of the parts about drawing. The show is dreadfully wrong about the technicalities of how paint works, like, in just about every scenario, so it does grant me some satisfaction to write about it for real. (and to pretend that Klaus isn't an awful painter) (Writing about Elena as a writer is so much the same, though-- it's special as a writer to get to access a character who also writes, because there's that immediate connection to the process and the feelings that go with it)

The other is that the Originals happens to be set in Nola (for some reason), which I know better than any other place on earth. When I write about that, I'm really writing a love letter.

In general, I try to write about the places I really know well-- Nola and NYC are both pretty drawn out as portraits of those places just because I've spent so much time there (but, ummm, notice that all they seem to do in NY is drink and look at art, which is basically how I spent my 20s there ha) I picked Barcelona for SWBS in particular because I've actually been there, so I could write about my impressions of it (which get heightened in memory... and maybe that's a good thing for fiction) so much better than if I had picked, say, Marseilles where I've never been. That also extends to writing about the feelings certain places evoke-- the descriptions from the Met and the Frick, the air of nostalgia about them, the descriptions of the hall of broken Greek statuary, are all taken from a journal I was working in back when I was spending the winter in New York City and having a bizarrely melancholy time spending all day by myself at the Met.

Experience in the landscape is part of that. Every rural place feels different, and drawing on the physicality of the locations I've spent a lot of time hiking in like New Hampshire for example has really grounded the work. Also, paying attention to the things that are interesting-- I paint landscapes, mostly, so the shape of the land, the color and quality of the lighting, the kinds of flowers and trees and rocks, even the weight or lightness of the air itself, are all things which draw my attention anyway, so it's very natural for me to want to add them to fic-- and they all evoke really powerful sense memory for me, so I try to overlay that with any writing about emotions or introspection.

A lot of the details that fill the story in are just taken from personal interests-- like the books Elena reads in the library are almost all books I've read and loved, and which are influences one way or another on that story. Same for the hapless cooking experiments.

There's obviously also a ton in FE that I've gotten from talking to other people-- I personally have a knack for killing all plants I touch, but my mentor loves to garden, and invites me to paint in his garden all the time, so that's taken from him; I'm far too impatient for yoga or meditation, but again, that's the sort of thing my sister really benefits from, so I've talked to her about the experience of it a lot.

I think the creeping around old houses and snooping through shut in antique curiosities is like a very prime memory from my childhood. My grandfather had this ancient enormous ramshackle house from the 1860s that definitely used to be lots of different smaller buildings but were at some point seamed together; now, my grandmother was a legitimate hoarder (I'm being completely literal, like she makes the hoarders on TLC look like jokes), and there were lots of rooms that were shut off from the main part of the house because they were so full of dusty old interesting things, as well as a few outbuildings like that. My grandfather was very old, in his 90s, when I was a child, too old for him to really keep the house up, so my cousins and siblings and I used to run wild all through this house playing hide and go seek in those shut off rooms and corridors and finding lots of weird and inexplicable objects my grandmother had bought at auction back in the 50s and 60s and piled up high at the house. There were six hundred year old vases mixed in with old record players from the 60s, sewing kits from the 30s and boxes full of letters my great-grandfather had written and little statuettes from India and China and Vietnam sitting atop little two hundred year old painted tables. Just the wildest mix of mundane artifacts from my grandparents' actual lives mixed in with all of these beautiful old objects my grandmother used to collect. I think a lot of Elena's creeping around and hunting through drawers and going down corridors to peer into secret rooms probably stems from that childhood immersed in my grandfather's house, and then all of the time I spent as a teenager helping my mom go through it all and try to make sense of it after he died-- there's probably a weird level of specificity to the names and mechanics of different antique objects and furnitures in FE because I had to learn all about it to help my mom categorize and sell all of those things.

And that kind of takes me to one of the main things I really wanted to write about in this fic-- a detailed and empathetic dive into depression. It's never sat well with me that depression is so often so poorly depicted in media, especially on tv, and that it gets treated like a story arc (tvd season 4 is one of the worst offenders in this regard-- Elena's depression and grief from her brother dying is like a 4 episode arc and it's offensive). I had very severe depression as a teenager, compounded with a lot of grief, and I will probably always be melancholy because some things are just indelible. As a teenager, I was very much so hemmed in by death, and I was very frightened all the time; I was really broken by that experience, and I used to think the loneliness had sunk so deep inside of me that I couldn't even feel lonely anymore, or wish for anyone else. I was probably about 26 before I finally healed from this. These feelings are all probably major reasons why I'm drawn to Elena Gilbert as a protagonist, and why I read her as I do-- I know there are a lot of people who disagree with my interpretation of her, and it's possible that I am so convinced of my character reading of her because I was 20 and still battling in the heart of all of that trauma from my teen years and I felt a resonance with her. So, in writing FE in particularly, and SWBS to a lesser extent, I wanted to write about depression as honestly, openly, and lovingly toward the depressed as I could. I also wanted to write about loneliness, and grief, and what it's like to emerge from those things-- slowly, painfully, with lots of stumbles and hard, hard days. I can recognize that the depictions of depression in FE are ultimately just a reflection of my own personal experience wrestling with it-- but I'm trying to tell an ultimately hopeful story, capable of staring down into the deepest darkness and still clawing its way up into the light. Learning to write honestly about these feelings was hard-- I was so used to protecting myself and pretending that I wasn't something that had once been smashed to pieces that I found myself downplaying the emotions in my writing, being less honest. There came a point there where I realized this story was only ever going to be what I wanted it to be if I did get really honest, as much as possible. I often think of this story as being especially dedicated to the readers who recognize that experience-- and I hope it does, ultimately, read as a story about healing, as dark as it is.

#sevensistersofsussex #asks #on writing #fairytale ending #swbs #personal

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mymelodyheart · 4 years ago

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Miles Between Us Chapter 1 ~Stories She Wrote~

PICTURE SOURCE

PART 2 OF WONDERWALL SERIES

Hey guys, I'm back and thrilled to give you part 2 of WONDERWALL series, Miles Between Us. It is a continuation from my holiday ficlet, All I Want For Christmas Is You. If you haven't read the first part, I suggest you do if you wish to get an insight into Jamie and Claire’s history (Here is the link) Otherwise, this ficlet can also be read as a stand-alone.

I know All I Want For Christmas Is You ending was bittersweet, but it had to be done. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a Part 2 in this series. I had to leave the story open to possibilities if it is to have a chance of growing. And besides, making this into a series allows me to take breaks from writing and refresh my brain in-between ficlets. So I hope this next part of the story will make up for leaving you hanging all these weeks.

Anyway, before you continue, I'd like to thank you for reading, commenting and giving feedback to my stories. They're all very appreciated even if I sometimes don't comment back. As a hobby writer, I always look forward to your response, and they spur me to continue writing. Without the readers, I wouldn't be here. So thank you for being part of my writing journey.

If you wish to read this on AO3, here is the link.

So now everything is said, without further ado, I wish you all happy reading. ❤️

Previously ...

Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp and James Fraser met and fell in love during the Holiday Seasons. Unfortunately for their budding relationship, after two weeks of a whirlwind romance, Claire has to return to London to finish some work commitment that could take a year to fulfil. It doesn't help matters that Jamie's PTSD condition prevents him from visiting her as loud city noises can trigger panic attacks. They are both in love with each other and are willing to find out where their relationship will head to. But can they find a compromise to bridge the gap of hundreds of miles to give their love a chance?

After sitting on her bed most of Saturday working on her laptop, Claire Beauchamp rolled her neck and stretched her back, her arms extending above her head. She flinched when her joints cracked.

Over the past few days, her boss, John Grey, forwarded manuscripts and drafts from the author she was working with. She hadn't eaten anything all day, and her stomach was beginning to grumble, and her eyes blurry from reading.

She'd read so much in the past hours, she was practically cross-eyed, and the bridge of her nose hurt where her specs rested. Words upon words had sifted through her brain, but now the lines were beginning to blur together.

She glanced back down on her laptop and opened a file in her document folder, her eyes scanning through lines she knew by heart. She'd been going through her own work lately wondering if she had what it takes to be a writer. Someone who would give her an honest opinion ought to read it before contemplating getting herself a literary agent if she was to start a new chapter of her life and take that leap of faith in her dream career.

A sudden urgency took over, and she needed Annalise to read her work, like right now. Which reminded Claire, her friend was away with Willie, shopping and sight-seeing. He was staying over their place for the weekend for the first time since she and Annalise left Lallybroch. After declining their invitation to join them earlier, the loved-up couple left her to her work with the promise of dinner when they returned.

She was about to reach out for her cold coffee from the bedside table when Raiders of the Lost Ark's theme song blared from her phone. At the same time, a picture of her uncle Lamb appeared on the screen. He was wearing a high-crowned, wide-brimmed, weather-beaten fedora hat and had a lopsided grin plastered to his thickly stubbled face. Rugged, she thought, just like her favourite pair of distressed leather boots, and very Indiana Jones.

Smiling, she tapped the answer button and put the phone on speaker. "Uncle Lamb! Long time no speak!"

"Sweetheart," he started in a deep familiar voice, "how are you?"

She frowned and pushed her laptop aside. Something was off. "Oh you know, same old ...just finishing work and ..."

"On a Saturday?" he asked, cutting her off.

"Look who's talking."

He chuckled. "You're young. You should be out. There are so many things to do in London ...especially on a Saturday. "

Claire rolled her eyes but opted to change the subject instead. She wasn't ready to give her reason for working overtime nor share her future plans nor talk about the handsome Scot she met during her holidays. Not just yet, anyway. "So ...to what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice, dear uncle?"

"What?" he said gruffly, pretending to sound offended. "Can't I call my favourite girl in the world and check up on her?"

She mentally sighed. Something must be up since her uncle never called. It was always she who usually phoned, and when he did call on a rare occasion, it was either because something had happened or he was in London. She dismissed the latter since she knew he was in Papua New Guinea. The next conclusion she landed on was his health but thought it absurd. Her uncle was strong as an ox, ate healthily, only smoked the occasional cigar and regularly went for doctor's check-up, a requirement in his job as an archaeologist travelling to remote places.

Unless. "You sound suspiciously chipper. Let me guess ...you met someone. There's a woman in your life."

He coughed like he was choking on a drink. "No! Why would you say that?"

Alright, he sounded repulsed by the idea enough. Or was that denial? "I don't know. You seem so ...how shall I say it ...unlike yourself. You normally skip the niceties and get to the point."

He lets out an impatient breath. "Claire, darling, am I really that awful?"

"No," she replied, ignoring the ache in her throat. She missed their time together but tried not to make it apparent in her tone. He was a busy man, and the last thing she wanted was her uncle worrying. "You don't seem like you're rushing off to anywhere. It's rare you sound this relax."

"It's way past my bedtime already," he sighed. "And besides, work is on stand-by at the moment until we get the license to start digging on site. People here are so damn laid back, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to process the paperwork. I'm not about to hand out cash to speed things along even if bribery is rampant here."

"I see. So you're in Port Moresby then?"

"Yes. As soon as we have the license sorted out, we'll be flying to Lae first thing tomorrow. Hopefully, anyway." He cleared his throat. "Speaking of paperwork, I received an email from my lawyer. Your trust fund has matured, dear. I'll send you the details where to go to and who to contact, and maybe you can start planning your life. Perhaps take a sabbatical and travel with me if you wish."

Ah yes, the trust fund.

After her parents died, everything they had owned was put into her trust fund by her uncle to secure her future. She'd already received a small lump sum when she turned eighteen, and the money had afforded her, though small and cramped, a decent rental two-bedroom apartment in London with high windows, which was premium in this expensive city. And Annalise, her best friend and roommate made enough money to help pay the ridiculous expensive utility bills. Her own wage just about covered the other expenses with almost nought left for savings, but she hadn't worried knowing there was money in place in her name. She was counting on it to support herself when she pursued her dreams of writing.

"About that, I think I'll let that sit in the bank for a while. It's not like I need the money right now, nor do I have the time to spend it."

"As you wish," her uncle replied. "And another thing I need to discuss with you ...South Lodge ..."

"What about South Lodge?" South Lodge should have been her family home if her parents hadn't died, and she knew it was a highly coveted property because of its historical significance. It was never put into the market for sale since her uncle thought it wasn't his place to decide. It was put on a twenty-year lease to a high profile politician, its payments going towards her trust fund.

"The lease is up, and the occupants will be moving out soon. Unfortunately for you, that information made it to the local news and you were mentioned as the legatee. So don't be surprised if you're bombarded with offers now that your name is out. I'm willing to bet, property investors and developers will be itching to get their hands on it."

Claire took off her specs and pinched the bridge of her nose. God, she hated adulting, paperwork and dealings with lawyers. Maybe she should just sell South Lodge and be done with it, so she could concentrate on her future plans. What do I need a five-bedroom house with one acre of garden in Oxford for? "I'll think about it, uncle. I just have a lot of things going on at the moment. I'm quite sure those things can wait."

"Of course dear."

"Thank you for letting me know." She thought of Jamie, and the Highlands and how much life was a lot simpler there. She really needed to double her effort to tie up loose ends in London and have a heart to heart talk with Annalise. Is her relationship with Willie serious? If not, her friend would have to eventually find a new roommate. After quickly glancing at her bedside clock, she realised they would be here soon and hopefully with a takeaway. Annalise did mention something about sorting dinner out tonight.

"And Claire?"

"Yes?"

"Your upbringing hasn't been the most ideal. Enjoy the money and treat yourself. Don't spend your life doing things that don't bring you joy."

She smiled. Her uncle must have had a rude awakening of some sort to sound so philosophical. Or probably, he did meet someone special. Either way, she wasn't going to push for any answers for now. She really needed to get out of bed, do a few stretches and have a shower before Annalise, and Willie arrived. "I'll try," she finally said.

"Good. I'll let you get back to whatever you're doing."

"Sadly, yes." She shut her laptop and got out of bed. "Take care of yourself, alright? And I'll phone you sometime next week after I've figured out our time differences."

"Absolutely, sweetheart. Talk soon."

"Love you, uncle Lamb."

"Love you, too."

She terminated the call with a swipe on her screen and rubbed her eyes. She'd been working for seven hours straight, and her eyeballs felt like they're made of sandpaper. Glancing at the corner table, she smiled when she saw Jamie's gifts. Willie had brought them with him when he arrived last night from Inverness. She knew Jamie was making up for his absence, but it couldn't be helped when there's the danger of his PTSD condition worsening in the city. To her delight and surprise, he'd sent her a leather-bound journal, a framed selfie photo of them together, driftwood bookends he made and a box of her favourite Lindt chocolate.

With a contented sigh, she made a mental note to call Jamie after dinner. And to ask her boss first thing Monday morning if she could take her work to Scotland the following weekend to surprise her boyfriend. After all, she was just taking her uncle's advice, and after the work, she'd put in the last couple of weeks, and the extra hours she planned to do the next few days, she deserved a little joy in her life.

..........

Claire leaned forward, and nervously examined her best friend's face. Annalise was hunched down, scrolling her laptop, tongue darting out as she read the paragraphs on the screen.

What's that look for? Doesn't she like it? She couldn't tell. It was the first time she's showing her work to anyone, one of the stories she had written during her spare time before embarking a career as an editorial assistant for Dreamcatcher Publishing Company. She needed to hear her friend's opinion to know if she even had a small chance of becoming a writer.

Annalise took her sweet time, and Claire wasn't sure if her inscrutable expression was a deliberate act to prolong the suspense, or if she genuinely had no reaction to what she's reading. If it was the latter, Claire would definitely kiss her dream of being a writer goodbye. If it's the former, she's going to strangle her friend for making her suffer.

She heard the door to the apartment open and close, followed by the sound of keys jangling and heavy footfalls, announcing the arrival of Willie. He'd stopped by to order some food at a local Indian takeaway while Annalise headed straight home to prepare the table for dinner. Instead of calling out to him, she held her breath for Annalise's response.

Just when Claire was starting to accept her hope of being a writer would never amount to anything other than a pipe dream, she saw the reaction she impatiently waited for. Annalise's mouth formed a comical O, followed by her eyes' widening and random shallow sighs.

Yessssssss!

This was massive. Despite Annalise having seen works from established authors Claire had edited for, she'd never witnessed her friend looked this excited. Annalise simply couldn't hide her gobsmacked expression, even if she tried.

"Oh, dear Lord," she whispered, her gaze flicking to Claire and then back to the screen. "Why didn't you tell me you had this? I knew you wanted to be a writer, but this ..."

"So?"

Annalise took a massive deep breath, her fingers almost shaking. "Oh my God, Claire."

"Oh my God, wot? Oh my God good or oh my God, bad?" Claire asked, even though she already knew deep in her bones, what the answer was. But she desperately needed to hear the words.

"This is bloody good," she said, as she went back to a previous page, and reread it all over again. After a couple of minutes more, a slow smile started to spread across her face, as she stole a few cheeky glances over at Claire.

Claire knew she could rely on her friend to tell her the truth. If her work had been bad, friend or not, Annalise would have been forthright and told her the hard facts. Nevertheless, she tamped down her own growing excitement. "The question is though ...is it good enough for the mass?"

Without hesitation, Annalise nodded vigorously, her blue eyes big as saucers. "Oh, Claire, are you kidding me? You really have no idea, have you? Of course, it is! I need to read the rest. Please tell me it's finished."

Claire relaxed for the first time and slumped back against the headboard of her bed, relief soothing her wild heartbeat. "It's finished."

Annalise let out a whoop as she gripped the laptop tightly. "Oh my God! Give me everything ...I won't be able to sleep tonight if I don't read at least one more chapter of this story."

"I've got ten more finished materials."

"Oh my God, oh my God! You're killing me. I want it all."

Willie poked his head by the frame of the doorway to her bedroom and eyed them suspiciously. She wasn't sure what he expected to find, but his eyes narrowed when he saw Annalise's flushed face.

"What are ye both up to?" he asked, frowning. "Ye sound like ye're looking at porn on the internet."

Annalise grinned and motioned him over. "Sort of."

Willie hesitantly entered the room. "Sorry?"

"In actual fact, much better than porn ..." Annalise announced, smirking at Claire.

"Annalise!" Claire wheezed when it dawned on her, her friend must have been reading the sex scene part.

Annalise reached out and reassuringly squeezed Claire's hand whilst looking at Willie. "Take a look at this. Claire wrote it."

Annalise handed the laptop to Willie, and both of them earnestly watched his face to gauge his reaction. As he sat down on the edge of the bed and read, Claire knew he would be the real test. Willie being a bloke, she didn't expect him to have the same reaction as Annalise, but she hoped he would appreciate the storyline and plot. Claire already understood, if her story was going to be good enough to be published, its success would be based on women's purchasing power. If he liked her style of writing even a smidgen, then she would be laughing.

Claire held her breath in anxious anticipation, and approximately a minute and a half later, she got her response.

His eyes bulged out, and then the tips of his ears glowed with red. In all sort of ways, he was so similar to Jamie but yet so different. But there's no mistaking how vibrantly their ears always lit up when they're embarrassed. Or moved.

"Kind of explicit," he commented hoarsely, before tucking a tongue into his cheek as if trying to find the right words to say. "But it is an intriguing story with great flow and interesting characters. It's no' the genre I would typically read, but the first few paragraphs of what I've seen so far are riveting. It makes me want to read more."

Annalise, enthusiastically nodded in agreement and waved a hand in the air. "There it is."

"Ye have a gift, Claire," Willie added, eyes still fixed on the screen and working overtime as his focus became more intense. "The dose of mystery ye've woven into the lines is remarkable and intelligent."

She felt herself beaming in vindication. "Thank you."

He briefly glanced up at her. "Now that I remember, Jamie did vaguely mention ye wanted to be a writer."

"That's the plan," she beamed.

"Good. Because if ye can produce something like this, then yer talent is wasted on editing other people's work."

"She's got ten more finished stories," Annalise piped in.

Willie arched an eyebrow at Claire and continued reading, and when he finished, he shook his head and let out a low whistle. "Is Jamie the inspiration for this story?"

Her face heated. "I ...ah ...wrote that years ago. And ...um, I've revised and edited it a million times in the past. I wanted Annalise to read it first and find out if it's good enough to be published."

Annalise grinned at Willie, still looking a little flush like she was having a physical reaction to the few lines she'd read earlier. "So what do you think?"

Willie didn't miss Annalise's excited reaction to the story. "It's verra good but I didnae realised graphic scenes affected ye so much. Ye're beet red!"

"Only when it's very well written," Annalise smirked, taking the laptop from his hands and moving towards him to sit on his lap.

Willie pulled Annalise closer and kissed her, and Claire sighed. It's both beautiful and terrible being in the presence of people, so in love. While she's ecstatic to see her best friend smitten and happy, it made her sad that Jamie couldn't be here with her. She missed him terribly, and it's only been a fortnight since she had last seen him.

After a few seconds of watching them unashamedly snogged in front of her, Claire clapped her hands, and they both immediately pulled away. "Right, that's enough you two. So, where's the dinner I was promised?"

Suddenly looking self-conscious, Willie promptly lifted Annalise from his lap, plonked her down onto the bed and jumped up, and Claire couldn't help but grin at him.

"Right on it," he muttered, before disappearing from her bedroom.

Annalise laughed and playfully shoved her shoulder. "Passion killer."

Claire ignored the jest. "So you really think I should publish my story?"

Her friend nodded excitedly. "Absolutely! You should have let me read it sooner. From what I've seen so far, you have good, solid material, and I'm convinced, when I read the rest, it will not disappoint." She stood up and smiled. "Come on, in as much as I'm all fired up after reading your story, I'm famished." She got up and left the room.

Instead of moving from her position, Claire stared at her work for a few seconds and just breathed. Although Willie and Annalise were sincere with their praises, she couldn't help but still feel nervous. This next step in her life could either turn out to be huge, or it could get her mocked out of a dream career she loved.

Pushing aside her doubts and thinking of Jamie, she quickly compressed a copy of her story's file and sent it to him via email to read, hoping he would like her written work too. Who knew, maybe, after reading it, he would be as fired up as Willie and Annalise.

After hearing the whoosh of the email sent, Claire launched herself off the bed to join her friends, looking forward to Jamie's reaction later and daydreaming of a future in Scotland with her love.

#melodyheart #wonderwall #milesbetweenus #Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser #claire beauchamp #jamie fraser #outlanderfanfic

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carol-effing-danvers · 3 years ago

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Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here.

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out.

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice.

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him.

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event.

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person.

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds.

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed.

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply.

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has.

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific.

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying.

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out.

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak.

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time.

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal.

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about?

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go.

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either.

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too.

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing.

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve.

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself.

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself.

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

#forever bitter about what they did to steve #steve rogers #captain america #the avengers #marvel

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strideofpride · 4 years ago

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DAIR APPRECIATION WEEK 2021 DAY ONE: Why do you love Dan and Blair?

I broke down what I love about Dan and Blair into five parts under a read more below. The tldr is: their compatibility, their parallel arcs, their slow burn, the larger message it would've given GG if they were endgame, and finally their mature, adult relationship (aka "pure and simple love").

Warning: I basically wrote a fucking essay lmao. Cited my sources and everything.

I. Compatibility

Dan and Blair have great chemistry sure, but they have something that I don't think any other pairing on the show really had: common interests. They were pseudo-intellectuals who could talk about books, literature, art, etc. with each other ("Dan and I have a real connection. We did things like visit the Dia and debate Charbol versus Rohmer..."). And I know in TV world all anyone cares about is chemistry, but in the real world the key to a long lasting relationship is common interests.

And yet they are also still an opposite attracts pairing, just in the best way, where they are opposite in personality and background, but still share lots of common interests. Blair was the rich mean girl from the Upper East Side and Dan the "poor" loser from Brooklyn, but they still can relate to one another, they can still find stuff to talk about together, they still come to enjoy each other's presence and friendship.

And back to their chemistry: it isn't steamy chemistry 100% all the time (although they can certainly go there). Their's is a sweet chemistry, a chemistry where it's clear that they respect each other, that they know each other on a deep level, that they understand each other more than anyone else. It's a chemistry that you believe could lead to a satisfying marriage one day.

And I know I've said this before, but to me Dan and Blair are just soulmates.

II. Parallel Arcs

I am such a sucker for when two characters' life journeys parallel one another and Dair had that in spades. In season 1 especially, they were both dealing with the abandonment of a parent (Dan's mom/Blair's dad), they both lost their virginities and entered into sexual relationships with much more experienced partners (Serena & Chuck), and they both had their sights set on one school (Yale & Dartmouth - although come season 2 this became Yale for Dan, giving them even more in common).

I've also already talked on here about how you can parallel all of their other romantic/sexual relationships to one another, as well as how they both were abandoned by their best friends sophomore year. And, they both have a bad habit of going back to the same person over and over again (again, Serena & Chuck).

To me, Dan and Blair are almost narrative foils. Dan's relationship with his father starts out pretty solid but deteriorates over time - Blair's relationship with her mother is the exact opposite. Dan pines, while Blair loves to live in denial. Blair sees her life as a movie, Dan sees his life as a novel.

And that makes it all the more satisfying to see them come together, to learn to appreciate their differences, to accept their similarities, to see them grow together (albeit briefly) over seasons 4 and 5.

III. Slow Burn

A lot of people on here use this word incorrectly. If the characters kiss during season 1 (unless it’s under false pretenses) it’s not a slow burn! But Dan and Blair are a true slow burn (whether or not that was intentional).

From that hallway scene in 1x04, it's clear that Dan and Blair have a deeper connection and understanding of each other than they are letting on. We get brief glimpses into that in 1x15, 2x08, 3x18, and 3x22. All of that very slow build up makes it all the more satisfying when they become friends in season 4.

I truly think the W arc is the best written arc of the entire show. You very slowly see them accept their common interests, grow to begrudgingly respect one another, even begin to accept that there might be an attraction there. It never feels rushed, when they kiss in 4x17, it's earned (I use this word a lot - buckle in).

And then, yeah, the Louis arc was fucky (I stand by that they should've kept the love triangle Dan vs. Chuck, or Dan vs. Louis, all three was too much). But Dan standing by Blair through everything she went through that season was beautiful, to see her depend on Dan in her darkest moments, to see her realize that he's the one who will always be there for her...it just really, really worked.

And so that moment when Blair finally calls him "Dan" to his face, when it becomes clear they are finally going to be together...it's one of the single most satisfying moments in the entire show. Because, again, it was earned.

IV. Larger Message

As this video essay posits, the showrunners were left with a choice after the 2008 economic recession: "Either adjust to the times or lean further into an escapist fantasy where extreme wealth is the status quo...and lean they did. For the sake of providing their audience with an escape, the dark underbelly of extreme affluence became the show's core theme. The more it began to sell cynical opulence as standard escapism, the more the writers and fans turned on the less wealthy characters."

Furthermore, by revealing Dan as Gossip Girl, "It transitions him from pretentious soft boy to borderline sociopath, actively ruining the lives of his friends, family, and crush just to get a foothold in Upper East Side society. And then the show did something it had seldom deemed to do for a less wealthy character: it rewarded him...And thus, the show presented us with the most insidious message of all: wealth, privilege, and power corrupt...and that's okay."

By having Chuck & Blair and Dan & Serena as endgame, GG became one of the most cynical shows on the planet, where (to quote Constance Grady) "all relationships are transactional".

But yet: "The sole bright spot in the midst of this cold universe in which relationships are bought and sold like real estate came in the form of Blair’s brief season four romance with Dan...it marked the last hurrah of the first version of Gossip Girl: In a world in which money is so powerful that it makes romantic relationships indistinguishable from prostitution, Dan and Blair were working to create an authentic, meaningful bond outside of the influence of wealth and privilege."

If Dan and Blair had been endgame (and Dan hadn't been GG - although we all know that one is bullshit anyway), it would've been a rebuke to that ideology, it would've shown that there is more to a good marriage than a shared tax bracket, that a genuine connection is more important than wealth and privilege. That abuse does not equal love.

But alas, that was not the story they wanted to tell I guess.

V. Mature, Adult Relationship (aka "Pure & Simple Love")

I am personally not much of a fan of grand romantic gestures. I often find them shallow, childish, and showy. To me, it is far more romantic for Dan to have secretly written a book about Blair, for Blair to submit Dan's article to Vanity Fair, for Dan to say "it wouldn't to me" when Blair asks if it would matter if she was pregnant with another man's child (especially since this moment is (take a shot here), you guessed it, earned - we know he's being honest because we already saw him do this with Milo).

Now, I am personally not as much of a fan of the Met Steps moment as everyone else (Blair's desire to be royalty is probably the thing I like least about her), but that was probably Dan's grandest romantic gesture and yet...it's still so simple. It's really just a plastic tiara and a cab ride. Which is what makes it so beautiful. Because it's not about the money or the extravagance or showing off to anyone else...it's about Dan showing Blair he truly knows her. And to me, that's the healthiest way to do a romantic gesture.

I also love their bad sex arc in 5x18 because a) it's real - most real world couples don't have earth shattering sex the first time together, it takes time to learn what your partner likes and needs and b) because they actually (after getting drunk at Dorota's & Nate's) communicate about it and work out their problem like adults.

Because that's the thing about Dan and Blair - it's a real adult relationship. It's not a never-ending game of cat and mouse, it's not a fallback, it's not a bad habit...everything else just melts away when they're together. They grew and changed together...they learned to put aside their prejudices and see each other beyond their facades. They became better people together. They always had someone they knew they could turn to.

And that's what true love is supposed to be.

#I hope this is coherent #people will deserve a medal for actually reading the whole thing #dair #gossip girl #dairaw21 #dan x blair #dan humphrey #blair waldorf #gg meta #otp: dan loves me for me

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twdeadfanfic · 3 years ago

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You say that you don't want to be on Leah's shoes and that you try to see her side but you would choose Daryl and why to see her side, when she's hateful, made Daryl choose her over his family (when she won't do it for him) and tortured him, and she and her people are murderers, so why you keep writing that you hate her yet then you write you see her side and you blame Daryl.

Okay.

I'm going to start this with a DISCLAIMER because I've experienced firsthand what is to get on the bad side of both people that hate and that love Leah: I do not like her relationship with Daryl, I hate it and I hate even more the way it was written, so I am in no means trying to defend it, or her.

So, with this out of the middle, I' want to answer in two parts.

It got long because I tried to just not hate just for hating (because when I'm mad and heartbroken I am...really not nice) but actually give my ideas and thouhts on her and her relationship with Daryl, so I'm going to put it after read more.

I said I wouldn't like to be in her shoes. Yes, I mean it, I don't need to like her for that (And I don't hate her per se, more the writing, and her relationship with Daryl.)

Why? She will probably have to choose between Daryl and her family. Of course I can go and tell you, oh, of course I'd pick Daryl over anything else. And in my heart it'd be truth. But the thing is, I don't know and I can't know. Because I love Daryl, but I've never had a family the way Leah does, so it's not the same for me to say that of course I'd pick Daryl.

On one hand, Daryl. She loved him and she still does, and can't you blame her, he is Daryl Dixon after all. On the other, her family. It's clear how much they mean to her and how strong their bonds are, not to mention she's brainwashed by Pope, and even with that, she's protective of her brothers and tries to stop Pope from hurting them or yelling at them.

So, yes, even if her family is bad and murderers, they're still her family, she still cares for them, she can't see them as murderers, much less brainwashed like she is...and she still cares for Daryl, because he is Daryl. So, I believe that it's a very hard decision to make, if she has to, and that's why I'm always so on the fence as to what will happen and what she will do.

Second part, Leah being hateful and all that. Again, disclamer, I don't like her and I hate her relationship with Daryl, but...

Do you know why I think she's so unlikeable and such a dull, uncharismatic character and an awful love interest?

Bad writing. It's not her, per se, it's bad writing, and unreliable writing. (Also, of course, their relationship having no base and no build-up...despite the chance to have done it right).

Her relationship with Daryl, their backstory, changes every episode, and so does her.

Her first episode. We have a woman in the woods who meets Daryl, they barely have any interaction or connexion, but suddenly they're close. She tells him a sobbing story about her family, and they're in shagging terms and in love, without us knowing how or what, and never showing their love, trust, intimacy, nothing, what for.

Next scene, again without build-up, their relationship seems very consolidated.

And, out of the blue, without a reason, she asks Daryl to choose her, meaning leaving back his family.

For what we are told in that episode, she knows that Daryl is looking for Rick, she knows why, she knows what happened, she knows about his family and Daryl's story with them. Then, moving to the new season, when Daryl is the cell, she seems to know him very, very well, like he told him everything about him and everything he's done, when she says that he's done bad shit too, that he's talking to her, that she knows him.

So, what we're left to feel, even since her first episode, is that she's someone toxic that out of the blue made Daryl choose her over his family, despite her knowing Daryl's story with his family...that's bad.

And it's made worse when Daryl Dixon, a character whose main trait used to be loyalty and love for his family, ends up choosing her (without us having seeing why or their love)...but she's gone.

But, what happens now, with this new season? Unreliable writing.

As I said, when Daryl is on the cell, she speaks like she knows him deeply (and that's what we were told in their first episode together too, even if badly written), more than almost anyone perhaps...

...yet, it doesn't seem she knew about Alexandria or Hilltop, despite knowing it all, and knowing about Daryl's family.

I believe this is because, since the reapers were looking for a place to stay and food, for plot reasons the writers needed that place to be Maggie's, not Alexandria or Hilltop, so they needed Leah not to know...but now, it just looks like bad unreliable writing to me.

Might be (but this is mostly my writer mind) that she did know about those settlements but didn't want to bump into Daryl as she felt he abandoned her, or didn't want to have to kill his family and maybe himself, unless she needed to...but I don't see it. The Leah we more often than not see, would have murdered them no question...but as her writing is unreliable, the Leah they tried to sell us in episode 7 for like 3 minutes only, the one Kang says is sweet, caring and protective and Daryl fell for, that one, I guess she'd have tried not to kill them.

Let's assume she doesn't know about the settlements.

Going back to the point, unreliable bad writing, and does she know or not know Daryl so deeply?

In episode 7, she's talking to Daryl, about having a group, yada yada, and she says how Daryl's always on his own, so he can't understand what is like to have a group that relies on you and that you have to provide for.

What???

Leah believing that goes against everything we've been told before. That she knew about Daryl's family and Daryl's time with them, and why he, back when he was with her, didn't dare to face them and felt guilty. She knew he had a group that he lived with, helped, proved for...like, just an episode ago, she knew. Now she doesn't.

The writing is just...why so bad? It baffles my mind.

But, if we look at it that way...if she didn't know Daryl had a group to provide for and rely on him...then it's not that bad that she asked him to stay with her? It'd be understandable, she wouldn't be so hateful, she didn't know... But it's not really the case, it would be if it weren't because when she asks, she uses the word family! She talks about Daryl's family! She does too when he's in the cell! But now she thinks that Daryl never had a group to provide for and rely on him, and he on them? What is his family then???

Seriously, the writing kills me.

They don't know how to write their relationship, just that they want people to support it and ship it, so they try to put everything in it that they think people might like (wrongly), and change it from a scene to another...maybe that's why they never bother to build it up, I even doubt they thought about it, that it was just "Daryl has a love interest now" and didn't care to think why or developed it, it's something that doesn't interest them, as they just want it to further the reapers plot and to make Daryl have a love interest.

They don't know why to write her either, and it looks like they just try to badly make a character that people might seem cool and so they went like: Loner, fighter, strong, loving, sweet, mean, caring, protective, murderer, harsh, family person, loyal...without actually caring to make a person and build her up, to the point she has no personality, no charisma, nothing, and that she changes from scene to scene, unreliable, bad writing.

But they're trying to sell her and the relationship hard.

Even though, each episode, is clear they didn't know each other...because the writers didn't care that they did, because their relationship changes from episode to episode, because it was not important to write it or build it, I guess. And it's a shame that this is Daryl's grand love story, with no intimacy, trust, or nothing, and it kills me.

I don't think that Norman saying that what gets Daryl is sweetness, and Leah actually being harsh and cold at the beginning... and now Kang saying that she's sweet and trying to badly show it for 2 minutes in an episode, is coincidence, honestly, I think she's done it for what Norman said and for what clearly, we all think too.

And you know what Norman said (sure he wasn't expecting this bullshit of a romance for Daryl lol), if Daryl ever fell in love, he'd mate for life...well, there it is, his long live romance, whether she dies soon or lives the whole season.

And it's such bullshit that it's so badly done, and written, with so little care.

Anyway, I've talked enough and I'm going to piss off 99% of you enough without needing to write more lol.

EDIT: I feel I took this anon as an attack and now I think it might not have seen so, apologies, but I still stand with I have written.

#man I wrote a fucking essay #see what my teachers had to deal with #and my students had to deal with now

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angst-fairygodmother · 4 years ago

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Light Fingers (The Umbrella Academy)

Diego’s vigilantism brings him repeatedly across the path of a young cat burglar. But as he finds himself developing feelings for the thief, he begins to wonder if there’s more to her than meets the eye, and whether they’re really on opposite sides. And as their relationship deepens, it brings with it a plot involving his estranged adopted father, and threatens to destroy all of them.

CHAPTER 11: ON THE CASE

Word Count: 3369 Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x Reader Rating: T Content Warnings: swearing, references to violence (canon-typical) Cross-posted to AO3: here

Previous Chapter: Normalcy || Masterlist

A/N: Sorry it’s taken me so long, my loves. This chapter was rough. And I’m not a mystery writer, so I can only hope it satisfies.

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“So,” Diego said around a mouthful of cereal, absently scratching Duncan’s head with his other hand. “Who exactly are we looking for?”

“John Miller. Assistant archivist at City Hall,” you explained stirring your coffee. “He plays pool with my fence and a few others on Thursdays. I mentioned I was looking for a big score with a flexible timeline, something to work on in the background between things. He put us in touch.”

“And you’re sure it was Miller that sold us out?”

“He’s the only option.” You shrugged.

“What about Derek?” Diego offered, frowning.

You froze, staring at him, agape for a moment.

“No. No way,” you shook your head. “The only person I’ve known longer is my brother, and maybe yours. There’s no way he would do that. I trust him.”

Duncan whined, sensing your distress and circling the counter to press himself against your leg instead of Diego’s. You absently placed your hand on top of the dog’s head, comforting him if not yourself.

“I just had to ask. Cover all our bases,” Diego said, trying to placate you.

You glared for a moment, before deflating with a sigh. “I know…”

“Other than city hall, do you have any leads?”

“No…” you admitted. “But if he’s not at his office, maybe someone there will know where to find him. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Maybe...this is a mistake and we should just leave it…”

Diego frowned. He’d never known you to just give up, not for anything. And yet, he had been hoping you would, scared for your safety and how things might play out.

“That’s a change from what you’ve been saying,” he observed cautiously.

“I know but...if Miller ratted us out, and Reginald hired extra security, the kind that use real guns and shoot first, don’t ask questions...what if he also did something to...silence loose ends?”

You hated that you were suggesting it, didn’t know if it was even probable. But you had to say it out loud. You just hoped that by calling him Reginald and not Diego’s father, it would make the suggestion seem less horrible, although it didn’t seem to be working well on yourself.

“Isn’t that all the more reason to keep looking? If someone is hurt, or dead, because of my father, and we’re the only ones who can put those pieces together, we have a duty, don’t we?”

You chewed nervously on your lip. “I...you’re probably right.”

“I could go alone if you’re worried?” he offered. “You’d be safe that way.”

“Diego,” you sighed, fixing him with a level look. “That makes no sense. I’m worried that this is too dangerous for the two of us together, why the hell would I let you do it alone?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Are you trying to reverse psychology me?” you gaped at him, scandalized.

He shrugged. “Did it work?”

“You don’t have to convince me to do anything, Diego. I’m not going to give up, even if we probably should.”

“Good. But, we should be on our guard.”

“Are we ever not?”

“Even more on our guard than usual,” he said, rolling his eyes.

City Hall proved to be a quick dead end; the only thing John Miller had left behind was an office that looked like it had never been used.

“There must be something,” you fumed, running your fingers anxiously through your hair as you paced the empty room. “This can’t be it.”

“We could try asking? Or find a phone book?” Diego suggested, shrugging.

“We’re going to need more to go on than a name when it’s as common as John Miller. There’s probably twenty of them in the area.”

“Good point. Trash can.” Diego pointed to the unassuming bin under the desk.

“What?” You frowned at him in confusion.

People always forget to empty the trash can, and throw out all kinds of things. Like receipts.”

“Worth a shot.” You sighed, circling around to kneel down and take a peek inside.

Diego was right that when trying to erase the fact he’d ever existed, Miller had forgotten that little detail. But it didn’t look at first glance like it would be all that helpful, just old napkins and cigarette butts. You grumbled something about him being a fire hazard and sighed, resigning yourself to rooting through.

“Jackpot,” you muttered before tossing a balled up receipt for ‘May’s Clean-n-Dry’ to Diego. “Think we can do something with that?”

“It’ll narrow things down at least.”

“Great. Then let’s get out of here. We’ve hung around too long already.”

It took several more hours, before you were able to narrow down from a radius near the dry cleaner’s to an exact address. The sun was setting as you approached the unassuming brick-faced building. You scowled at it, almost annoyed that for something likely so important it looked so...ordinary.

“So he lives on the second floor,” you said, reviewing the notes you had jotted down throughout the day. “Alone. We should split up and approach from multiple angles, in case this is a trap.”

“No. We go in together,” Diego argued.

“Diego, be reasonable. I don’t like it either. But we both know it’s the best way to do this.”

“Y/N…” he frowned, expression deepening at your determined and somewhat annoyed look in return. “Fine. But I’m going in the front door. If he’s there and expecting trouble that’s where he’ll expect it from.”

“I’d argue with you about being overprotective, but that was already my plan anyway.”

You leaned over and kissed him swiftly, trying to comfort him and sooth your own nerves, seeking some sort of reassurance in it that the two of you, together, could handle anything that might come. His hand wrapped around the back of your neck, clinging to you and answering your emotion with his own desperation and need.

“Showtime?” you asked when you parted finally, quirking an eyebrow at him and smirking excitedly.

“Yeah,” he nodded, voice quiet.

You slipped out of the car, immediately wrapping your powers around you to blur the sight as you crossed the street and circled the building. It wasn’t hard to find a fire escape and open window, slipping inside and crouching in the shadows to wait for some sign of Diego. Glancing around, you noticed that the apartment looked like it had been tossed, clothing and personal belongings scattered.

The front door creaked open and Diego slipped inside, freezing immediately as you heard a sound from the next room.

Suddenly, Miller burst through, not noticing either of you as he tossed the room further, like he was looking for something.

“John Miller?” Diego asked, stepping into the center of the room and making the other man freeze, wide-eyed.

“Are you here to kill me?” he asked, strangely calm.

“Now why would we do that, John?” you asked, leaning against the sill you had just come through.

He shrieked, jumping to look at you, fists raised. You watched him standing there, trembling, and frowned, casting a look over at Diego.

“B-b-because of the robbery. The warehouse. You’re mad it was a setup, right?”

“You knew?” Diego snapped, pulling a knife. You rolled your eyes and waved for him to stand down.

“Now why would you sell me out John?” you cocked your head. “Seeing as I’ve never done anything to you.”

“It wasn’t me! Please you have to believe me! The old man came to me!”

“What old man?” Diego snapped. “Tell us everything.”

“No. No. I can’t. I have to get out of here! We all have to get out of here!”

You were starting to suspect that John was going to cry, or piss himself. He was terrified, certainly not the sort of man you had expected. He didn’t seem like the sort to be a criminal mastermind, or even an informant. Something wasn’t adding up, again, and you were starting to get really angry about it.

You sighed, rubbing your temple. “You got in over your head, obviously. And you’re scared. Talk and maybe we can help you.”

“You can’t. No one can.” He shook his head. “He’s going to kill me.”

“We can protect you,” Diego offered, holding out his hands placatingly. “You just have to tell us everything.”

“No. No one can protect me. You least of all.”

“We can,” you insisted. “If you just calm down and tell us exactly what happened.”

“You don’t understand. He paid me a lot of money to bring the plans to you. To get you to break in. Not just any thief. He told me your name, where to find you, who to contact. He wanted you.”

“He...what?” Diego asked, voice catching.

“What was his name?” you forced out past the lump of fear in your throat.

“You did what he wanted. I know too much. I’m a loose end. I know how this works. Now if you’re not going to kill me, I have to get out of here. I have to hide. Maybe he won’t find me. But I have to go.”

“What. was. his. name?” you asked. You knew the answer. But you needed to be sure, to hear it.

“Hargreeves.”

“Fuck,” you sighed.

Diego looked pale, like he might be sick. You felt the same.

“Get out of here,” he told Miller, shaking his head.

“Just trust me, alright?” you asked, holding Diego’s gaze. “We’re not going to engage, we’re not going to do anything risky. Just take a quick look around and see what we see.”

“No. Y/N. It’s too dangerous. And what if we find something?”

“Then...I don’t know. we should probably go to Eudora? You said yourself that we’re the only ones who can make this connection, so we have to do something. Right?”

He was chewing nervously on his lip, a habit you were pretty sure he’d picked up from you at some point.

“But he’s also your father, and I get it if that makes this complicated for you…”

“Going to the police will mean we have to explain how we know. And having something concrete.”

“That’s why I said Dora, specifically. She’ll be more understanding than most. Maybe she’ll be able to help us swing it so that we don’t end up in jail too. Either way, that’s assuming we can figure out exactly what’s going on.”

“We won’t find anything sitting out here. Let’s go.”

The pair of you stayed in the car, parked across the street from the infamous Umbrella Academy for another several minutes.

Diego, you could tell, was nervous to reenter the place he’d grown up in and left behind long ago. There were so many memories within those four stone walls for him, and most of them were bad. You almost expected him to balk at the last moment and ask that you go alone. And you had made contingencies in your mind for just that purpose. But Diego was never one to run from a fight.

You, on the other hand, were terrified to potentially confront your father and brother in law, for both Diego’s sake and your own. You hoped that the building was empty, or that the only beings inside were Diego’s mom and...whatever one classified Pogo as (and you weren’t sure that wasn’t “your husband is pulling your leg about just how weird it was growing up in that house”). But none of your luck had been good so far, so it seemed like too much to hope.

“We should get going…in there and...g-get it over with...” Diego said haltingly.

“We don’t have to if you’re not comfortable. I can come back alone or something,” you rushed to assure him, catching his stutter immediately.

He shook his head. “No. Let’s finish this.”

You gave his hand a gentle squeeze while the other fell to the door handle. He returned the gesture with a strained smile and a determined glint in his eye. Without speaking, it was like the pair of you counted to three, synchronizing.

The Academy towered over you both, casting a looming shadow even from across the street. You swallowed and set about to work.

“Diego?” a voice said, stopping your husband short. Slowly you both turned toward the door on your right. “What are you doing here? Who’s she?”

“Is Dad here, Luther?” Diego asked instead of answering questions.

“No, he should be home soon. Don’t try to tell me you’re here to see him though. I know that’s not true.”

“No. We’re looking for answers.”

Luther seemed more confused than combative. You let your eyes wander over your brother-in-law’s large form and decided that was probably for the best.

“Answers? Answers to what?” his voice raised slightly.

You practically feel the way Diego tensed beside you, his hand subtly dropping to one of his knives. You stretched your fingers to dance over his and try to get him to ease off, for now.

“Diego, what’s going on? And you still haven’t answered who she is.” Luther pointed a finger accusingly at you.

“I’m Y/N,” you said, offering a smile and stepping forward to shake Luther’s hand, only to retreat when he shifted as if expecting you to launch an attack. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Diego,” you didn’t like the tone of Luther’s voice now, a warning, or a scolding maybe.

“We don’t have time to explain Luther. We just need to take a look around before Dad gets back.”

“No. Not unless you tell me why.”

“I...had a run in with some guys that tried to kill me,” you said, choosing your words carefully. “I have reason to believe your father might be involved, and convinced Diego to help me...snoop.”

“You've always been selfish, Diego,” Luther snapped, face darkening in anger and disbelief, and Diego scowled back, “but this is a new low. I can't believe you'd turn on us for some girl.”

“She is not just 'some girl', Luther!” Diego had drawn his knife in a blink and pointed the tip of it at his brother.

You flinched. You didn’t want it to come to a fight between brothers. Even if Diego probably could handle it physically, and pretend he was fine with it emotionally, it didn’t seem right to you.

Luther scoffed disbelievingly.

“She’s my wife. I love her, I have to protect her. We…” Diego hesitated, afraid of how easily the words felt like they could roll off his tongue. “We’re family.”

“What would you know about family? You ran away from yours as soon as you could!”

“We didn’t have a family growing up. This, between Y/N and I, is real, not forced because our father thought it would make us easier to control.”

“What exactly makes her so special?”

“Y/N sees me. I’ve never been a number to her, or our last name. I’m just me. And she cares about me, flaws and all. She’s been here for me no matter what. She makes me happy. Really happy.”

“And that’s enough?”

“What else is there?” you asked softly, shrugging apologetically.

Luther turned his glare on you. “I wasn’t asking you.”

“Don’t talk to her like that, Luther,” Diego warned. “I made a decision. Now get out of our way.”

“No.”

“Don’t make me do this, Number One. I will.”

He shifted into a different stance, one you recognized from the boxing ring when he wanted to taunt his opponents and look weaker than he really was. Luther seemed to take the bait, raising his fists, and the two brothers circled each other slowly in the foyer of that house.

You stepped back, neither of them seeming to notice you anymore. Your heart fluttered, and nervously you wondered if you should stay in case Diego needed your help. Part of you wanted to step in and put a stop to it, to remind them that they were family too and should be on the same side.

But then your logical mind kicked back in. The watchdog was distracted. Now was going to be your best, probably your only, chance to slip away and look for answers. If you moved quickly, everything would be fine. You rationalized that this was probably part of Diego’s plan, and you slipped away.

Most of the house was just empty rooms, storage and old bedrooms, places that hadn’t been lived in in years. You passed one with drawings on the walls, chicken scratch and frantic pen and wondered whose mind had been so excited that they couldn’t look for paper (you had your suspicions though). Another with scuff marks in the door and holes in the walls, as surely Diego’s as anything you’d ever seen.

‘At least now he uses a board to practice,’ you thought, smiling softly.

Passing further down the hall, you found a back stairwell and followed it up, circling around a balcony strewn with memorabilia of the famed Umbrella Academy and of the exploits of Reginald Hargreeves. You scowled. The whole building was a monument, a museum of one man’s ego and you wanted to light it all on fire.

Reigning in your temper, you tried one of the doors on the upper level, easing it open to reveal a cluttered space that was quite clearly a study.

“Alright, Reginald. Tell me your secrets. It’s the least you can do,” you breathed, slipping inside and shutting the door behind you.

Immediately, you went to the desk, piled high with papers and journals. There was too much to stop and read. You needed more to go on, so you started leafing through, looking for some sort of system or organizational mark. You swore under your breath after a few minutes of hunting. Of course there was nothing that straight-forward. He was too smart for that.

Just as you were considering giving up, you found a folder full of papers stamped with D.S. Umbrella Co. letterhead. Most of them were just lists: dates, locations, item descriptions, something you thought might be crate numbers or license plates, names. You frowned, tugging at your lower lip as you read through them, looking for something. On one page, the date a few months prior, was the name of someone you recognized as a missing person. But there was so little else to go on. Still, you pulled it out and shoved it in your coat pocket, planning to take it and study it in more detail later.

You returned the rest of the folder to the drawer and straightened to go. Then something you had missed before caught your eye and you paused.

Underneath a pile of what appeared to be invoices for building materials and construction equipment, you found a journal, red-leather embossed with the letters RH, apparently hastily hidden. Easing it carefully out, trying to disturb everything around it as little as possible to cover that you had found it, you flipped the obviously important book open and began to read.

First was a list of locations, some crossed out, some with initials or marks next to them, and eight circled, including one you recognized as your parents’ home address. Your jaw clenched angrily and you kept reading, finding notations about which children he had found, how’d he’d acquired them, and added in a different ink at another time their numbers and abilities. Skimming a few more pages, you realized that this book was full of observations about the seven children and their raising/training. A chill ran down your spine when you realized that there were also notes about you. Eventually you shook yourself, trying to absorb the information was taking too much time, and irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Flipping to the end, you scanned the last entries. Much of it was in code, and you growled in frustration, but one date caught your attention: your wedding date. Starting there, you began to study and puzzle through every entry, wishing you had a pen and paper to help you.

Before you could get very far, a hand fell on your shoulder and you gasped, spinning around to defend yourself.

Instead, you felt rooted in your spot by the cold glare of Reginald Hargreeves.

#Light Fingers #it's been 84 years...#I'm sorry #I promise the next update won't take nearly so long #Diego Hargreeves x Reader #The Umbrella Academy fic #the working title was [Pink Panther Theme] and I should have just left it #it would have really set the tone of the chapter I think #I even looked to see if it had a proper name besides 'The Pink Panther Theme' so I could use that #it didn't #so my stubborn brain refused to use it because I didn't want brackets in a title #instead we have this less exciting or accurate title

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weirdsideblog · 4 years ago

Note

Hello! How would it play out (in the same timeline as your three part story) if Tony had to eat Peter again, but this time, had to act like it was dangerous in order to protect him?

Oh what an angsty idea! Thank you for this! The greatest struggle of a vore writer is figuring out “when the heck would they even need to do that?” but I think I have a decent explanation, hopefully this is what you meant.

Naturally this is still safe vore, but as the ask says, there’s a lot of talk about unsafe vore, as well as an evil character threatening it, so if you’re very squeamish about that, take care. As always, not St*rker

Tony’s head ached. That was the first thing he registered. The second thing was that he was lying on a cold concrete floor, surrounded by concrete walls and a concrete ceiling, a cell of some kind. The third was that he was alone.

He couldn’t remember what had happened or how he’d gotten here, but he knew he’d been with Peter. At least he was fairly sure. Now Peter was nowhere to be seen. Tony flexed his stomach, just to check if he’d tucked him away without remembering it, but there was no Peter there either.

That could mean a number of things, and he told himself not to panic yet. It was possible that his memory was wrong and Peter hadn’t actually been with him at all. Or he could have escaped and might be planning a rescue. There was a good possibility that whoever had kidnapped them didn’t want them scheming together about how to escape, and was simply holding them separately, too.

Or Peter could be dead, but Tony instructed himself strictly not to go there.

He looked up quickly when the door opened, and his heart lurched. Two men, armed with guns, flanking a taller man with graying blond hair came into the room. He recognized them. It would be hard not to, after the narrow escape he and Peter had had before.

The blond man held a jar, with a tiny figure huddled inside. They were still all the way across the room, but there was only one person it could be.

“Hello Stark,” said the man with the jar, and he came close, close enough for Tony to see Peter, who had scrambled up and pressed against the glass like he could force his way through. “I believe I have something of yours.”

He had to be careful now. Show too much attachment, and they would surely use Peter against him even more. Show too little, and they might decide he was useless to their cause and get rid of him. Tony said nothing, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Peter’s scared face.

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen the boy with you before. I know you work together.”

“We do,” Tony agreed. They could have that for free; it was no great secret anyway.

“I’m sure you remember when you escaped from us last month?”

Tony certainly did. They’d used a shrink ray on Peter then, too, and Tony had been so desperate not to allow him to be captured like that that he’d swallowed the kid whole. And now he had been captured like that anyway, just as Tony had feared.

“You’re lucky you got off so easily,” he said, forcing himself to look up from Peter. “People who try to kidnap me have a history of getting much worse.”

“I’m sure.” The blond man laughed. “But surely you won’t blow us up when I have this?” He gave the jar in his hand a little shake, and Peter lost his footing and stumbled.

“Ideally, no.” Tony watched Peter again, so tiny and vulnerable, and out of his reach. The kid had made it clear he had not enjoyed being eaten, despite knowing he was safe, but Tony wondered if he might want to be hidden now. Tony himself certainly did. “What’s the idea with having him so small,” he asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“I thought this little intern could serve as a visual aid,” said the man. “You see, there you are. Tony Stark, Iron Man, top of the world, and people like me—we look like this to you, don’t we?”

Tony knew to let him have his monologue, watching Peter in the jar he held up, trying to think.

“You eat up dreams, you eat up lives, and they’re nothing to you. Why should they be, when you’re the man at the top? One might say you’re top of the food chain.”

Under different circumstances, Tony would definitely have laughed at that choice of imagery, but when the person talking about eating people was a possibly-unhinged stranger holding a tiny Peter, dread settled into his heart.

“People like me, we’re just like him to you, aren’t we?” The man gave the jar another little shake. “Bite size.”

Tony stopped breathing.

“I’d certainly love to take the illustration one step further.”

He started to unscrew the jar, and Peter scrambled against the side.

“No!” Tony started forward—the only thing keeping him in place before had been he unspoken threat of harm to Peter if he moved, but now—

“Come any closer and I drop him.”

There it was. Tony froze.

“As I was saying...” the man tipped the opening of the jar over his hand, and Peter only just managed to stay inside.

“I get your point.” Tony clenched his hands at his sides to keep them from shaking. “No visual aid needed.”

“Just to be sure.” The man tried to get Peter out of the jar again.

“Stop!”

“Hmm.” Mercifully, the jar was turned upright again and the lid screwed back on. Peter curled up at the bottom, arms wrapped around his head like he could shield himself. “I’d hate for such a perfect snack to go to waste. Maybe you could help me prove my point instead.”

“I-“

“Catch.”

Tony reacted just in time to catch the jar and its tiny occupant, his heart nearly beating out of his chest. He withdrew against the wall, holding the glass with shaking hands.

“It’s me or you, Stark.”

Did he mean... Tony couldn’t believe their good fortune, but he made himself look horrified anyway.

“You would be more fitting, but I’d be happy to assist if for some reason you’re not willing.”

“What the hell do you think I am,” he snarled, practically vibrating with the need to do exactly what was asked of him.

“It’s nothing you haven’t done before. Just more literal this time.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’ll take him back, then.”

“No!” Tony clutched the jar to his chest, flinching when one of the other men pointed a gun at his head.

“I don’t think I made myself clear,” said the blond man. “You have three options. Eat the boy, give him to me, or die, and then I can eat him anyway.”

Tony was still. He had never wanted to swallow anyone more than he did right now, but he had a role to play. He was conflicted, after all, he was scared, there was no good option (ha!) and he needed to sell this more than he’d ever sold anything in his life, and he’d sold a lot of things. He looked at Peter in the jar and his scared face, and could only hope the kid was just playing along, too.

“Well?”

“He’s just a kid. Whatever you have against me, he’s got nothing to do with it.”

“That doesn’t sound like one of the choices I gave you.”

Tony made a great show of swallowing hard. “I can’t...”

“Then I’ll do it,” said the blond man, almost cheerfully, and now Tony really did feel sick. “Say your goodbyes.” He chuckled. “I doubt you’ll be one to mourn him for long.”

Peter’s mouth moved, saying what Tony guessed to be “Mr. Stark?”

“Wait.” He wrapped his hands around the jar as fully as possible. “Wait, I- he stays with me.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a very great comfort while you’re killing him.”

Tony said nothing. He wanted to get Peter out of the jar and gulp him down immediately, safe from anyone who wanted to hurt him, but the version of himself he was playing at the moment wouldn’t do that. He did tip Peter carefully out of the jar (he went readily) and hold him securely in his hands instead.

“You’re going to swallow him alive,” said the man. “More fun that way. If you try to put him out of his misery first, my man will shoot.”

If this was different...Tony tried not to think about that. Peter would be safe, so there was no need to think about what he’d do if he wasn’t.

“Don’t make me do this.” Please, please, hurry up and ‘make’ me do this.

“If you waste another ten seconds, he’ll be mine.”

“Kid…”

Peter was shaking in his hands. Surely he knew. He’d done this before, he had to know. Tony prayed his terrified expression was just him playing his own role. Playing it very well, too.

“Ten,” said the man, starting to count down.

“Mr. Stark?”

What would he say? What would he ever say, if this was real? Peter was staring at him, holding on tightly to his finger, his little chest heaving. (Please be acting, please be acting, please be acting.) Then he burst into tears. Tony’s heart sank.

...

Tony was a good actor. At least Peter hoped he was. Otherwise, he was so screwed.

It wasn’t hard to play along. Peter felt too small and helpless anyway, and he’d just had a complete stranger threaten to eat him multiple times. Unless there was something he didn’t know, he was about to be safe, but he was also about to be eaten anyway, and a little reassurance that the two weren’t mutually exclusive would be nice.

Experience told him he’d be fine. (Experience telling him he’d survive getting eaten, who’d have imagined it?) He’d done this before, after all, and been completely fine. He would have liked to hear it from Tony’s mouth himself, but surely, surely he’d be fine.

“Ten.” The blond man started counting down to when he’d take Peter away and then he wouldn’t be fine, and Tony just looked at him.

“Mr. Stark?”

Peter didn’t know what he wanted, besides Tony in general. He certainly didn’t want to be eaten by him, safe or not, but he definitely didn’t want the other man to get him, and he just—just—just started to cry, apparently. Great.

Tony smoothed his hair with the lightest fingertip, and that was good, that was nice, and then the blond man reached the end of his countdown and Peter shrieked as the world swooped and he was shut quickly inside Tony’s mouth.

That was gross. He’d forgotten how gross it was. It was even grosser when Tony’s tongue (dear God, he’d forgotten about that, too) moved under him, nudging gently at his chest, and maybe it was supposed to calm him down, but he just tried to hold it off. Tony thankfully got the hint and stopped.

Outside, they were demanding Tony swallow him, or they would shoot. His breath whooshed in the back of his throat, sometimes catching like he was going to cry, and he really was great at this acting stuff. Hopefully. Ninety-five percent certain. Maybe ninety.

Peter guessed he’d find out soon enough. At any rate, it was probably polite to make sure he went down (he shuddered) as easily as possible. He uncurled himself and stretched out, with his legs pointing toward Tony’s throat, and waited with his heart pounding fit to burst.

It happened all in a flash. He was squeezed against the roof of Tony’s mouth, a muscular ripple rolled over him, and his heart dropped into his toes. He twitched once, starting to fight, but he forced himself still again. It was Tony, and he was eighty-five percent sure that meant it was okay. And struggling wouldn’t save him anyway.

Everything around him lurched when Tony coughed, probably only slightly, but it was a massive sound to Peter. Before he had time to wonder if he’d hurt him somehow, an especially tight ring of muscle rolled over him and he tumbled into Tony’s stomach.

He’d forgotten just how gross this was, too, how slimy. He scrambled, completely disoriented in the pitch darkness and the slippery slime and the soft, yielding walls, fighting panic. (It was Tony, it was Tony, he was supposed to be safe here. Hopefully.)

“No!” Tony cried out, and Peter was thrown to the side with a sickening squelch. “No, you can’t!”

“Mr. Stark!”

He was struggling with someone, pleading with them, what were they doing to him? Peter was helpless.

Whatever was going on ended quickly, for better or for worse, and Peter tried to get his bearings again. Tony was coughing like he was going to throw up, but Peter stayed put. He hoped that was by design. Still, it sounded pretty painful, and he ventured to touch the wall of the stomach and just… pet it lightly. He couldn’t explain it, but it seemed like the thing to do.

“Are you okay?” he asked as soon as it was done.

Tony didn’t answer, probably still being watched.

“Mr. Stark? Cough once if you’re okay.”

Tony coughed, very deliberately, and Peter breathed again.

“I’m like, mostly sure, but I’m okay, too, right?”

Tony coughed again.

“Okay. That’s- that’s good.” Peter leaned against him. “I thought so, but I wanted to make sure, cause, you know.”

He shivered a little. If this was different... well, it wasn’t. Peter tried to put the thought out of his mind. He was safe. Tony wasn’t going to kill him, or have to know that was going on and be powerless to stop it, and-- Peter squished himself against the wall. It was Tony, and he was keeping him safe.

It felt strangely familiar. Tony’s heartbeat, his breathing, the warm softness that almost seemed to cradle him, slimy and disgusting as it was. Peter found himself relaxing slowly. It was scary to be this small, and it was nice to be held by someone he could trust, even in such a weird way.

Just like the first time he’d been here, it was almost nice, once he got over the fact that he’d been eaten alive. Everything around him was Tony, and in addition to being just… really weirdly awesome, it was a very safe feeling, being kept securely inside his mentor like this. He was also very much trapped here until Tony chose to release him, but that added to the feeling of safety too.

He smiled. No way was blond guy getting him now.

…

Peter knew. Thank God, he knew he was safe.

Tony curled up on his side, difficult now that they had tied his arms behind his back, but he was harder to observe this way. They were probably going to leave him alone for a while now, to think on his guilt and…well. Best not to think about what this could be.

Peter snuggled up to him, quite safe, and so trusting, too. Tony curled around him, even though he was already around him anyway, and held perfectly still to feel his every tiny movement. After some time, Peter went very still and relaxed, and Tony suspected with no small amount of awe that he might be asleep.

He made a point of breathing more slowly so as not to disturb him. All the while, his mind raced with half-formed plans of how they might escape again.

Eventually, Peter stirred, and squirmed a bit. “Mr. Stark?”

“Right here,” he murmured, too quietly for anyone who might be spying on them to hear.

“Just making sure.”

They both jumped when War Machine crashed through the ceiling.

#v.ore #v/ore #soft vore #safe vore #protective vore #g/t vore #marvel vore #avengers vore

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bookcoversalt · 5 years ago

Note

Have you noticed the latest edition of Charlie Bowater can only draw one (1) face? She did The Princess Will Save You and Cast In Firelight both YA Fantasy set to be released this year. And they are how you say... the same fucking cover

Ah yes so you saw the same tweet I did

I know I literally just posted that we cannot outlaw book covers from looking like each other, but ! Oof!

The only thing that softens the blow here is that Charlie has improved at representing nonwhite features such that characters look like POC rather than tan white people, although,, that bar was low. Anybody remember the ACOTAR coloring book.

(Would you have guessed that 2/3 of these people are nonwhite? Or even that they’re supposed to be three different men? I guess all the men in Prythian have the same haircut?)

But that minor victory is mostly lost in the quagmires of the fact that Charlie’s style is to give everyone instagram face:

I wouldn’t even call this “Sameface” necessarily: that implies limitation, that an artist is only capable of drawing a single facial structure competently. Bowater is incredibly technically talented, she just chooses to give everyone catlike fae eyes and the cheekbones of a starving nymph. (My previous post on this here.)

But I don’t really blame her for that, or for these hilariously identical, nearly devoid of personality covers. Artists are allowed to do whatever they want. Artists who make art for covers are being art directed by designers and marketing teams who bear responsibility for how the finished pieces turn out.

No, this is our fault, as a community and an industry and..... society, kind of, for valuing character portraits that are “pretty” (“pretty” being an extremely loaded, culturally subjective concept) over art that actually Says Something About The Story. Bowater’s style happens to dovetail perfectly with what we currently collectively find pretty, and so we’ve put her art on a pedestal at the cost of everything else art can or should do for our stories.

And this is understandable: in contemporary western culture, pretty is a value unto itself. Seeing our characters portrayed as pretty denotes them as special, as smart, as powerful. It’s almost impossible to de-program ourselves from that reaction. There are approximately five kajillion studies on how beautiful people are at personal and professional advantages; how they’re perceived to be happier, healthier, more successful, and how those perceptions can translate into realities. (Nevermind how thinness and whiteness enter that equation, see above note about “pretty”.) I would love to see more “average” or weird- looking characters abound (and be accurately visually represented) in the YA/ Genre lit sphere, but for now... everyone is pretty.

Which sometimes means everyone is pretty boring.

But that’s just the specific, "What’s the deal with Bowater’s success in book circles and her style and all the sameiness” part of this equation. What if we backed up and asked: why character art at all? Beyond a question of “pretty”-ness (and general obvious Artistic Quality), why do we gravitate towards it, what's the purpose of it, how does it fall flat in a general sense, and how can it be utilized more effectively?

This is something I think about all the time. I follow writers on social media (because..... I am a writer on social media, regrettably), and we have an enormous collective boner for character art. “Getting fanart [of the characters]” is one of the achievement pinnacles constantly cited when people get or want to get published. Commissioning character art is something we reward ourselves with, or save up for (WHICH IS GOOD AND CORRECT. FREE ART IS GREAT BUT DO NOT SOLICIT IT. PAY YOUR ARTISTS). And like???? Same????? We love our stories because we’re invested in our characters. Most humans, even prose writers, are visual creatures to some extent, and no matter how happy we are with our text-based art, it’s exciting to see our creations exist in that form. So we turn that art into promo material and we advocate for it on our covers-- because it’s so meaningful to us! It goes with the story perfectly!! Look at my dumb beautiful children!!!!!

But on an emotional level, it’s hard to grasp that it only means something to us. Particularly when you take into account the aforementioned vast landscape of beautiful visual blandness of many characters (in the YA/ genre lit sphere, that’s pretty much all I’m ever talking about), character art can be like baby photos. If you know the baby, if that baby is your new niece or your friend’s kid, if you’ve held them and their parent texts you updates when they do cute shit, you’re probably excited to see that baby photo. But unless it’s exceptionally cute, a random stranger’s baby photo isn’t likely to invoke an emotional reaction other than “this is why I don’t get on facebook.”

Seeing art of characters they don’t know might intrigue a reader, but especially if the characters or art are unremarkable-looking, it’s doing a hell of a lot more for the people who already have an emotional attachment to that character than anybody else. And that’s fine. Art for a small, invested audience is incredibly rewarding. But like the parent who cannot see why you don’t think their baby is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY IN THE WORLD???? I think we have trouble divesting our emotional reaction to character art from its actual marketing value, which.... is often pretty minimal. This is my hill to die on #143:

Character portraits, even beautiful ones, are meaningless as a marketing tool without additional context or imagery.

I love character art! I’m not saying it should not exist or that it’s worthless! Even art that appeals to only the one single person who made it has value and the right to exist. And part of this conversation is how important for POC to see themselves on covers, whether illustrations or stock imagery, particularly in YA/kidlit. I’m not saying character portrait covers are “bad”.

I am saying that I have seen dozens and dozens of sets of character art for characters who look interchangeable, and it has never driven me to preorder a book. (Also one character portrait for a high-profile 2019 debut that was clearly just a painting of Amanda Seyfriend. You know the one. There’s nothing wrong with faceclaims but lmfao, girl,,,,)

I’m sure that’s not true for everyone! I am incredibly picky about art. It’s my job. There’s nothing wrong with your card deck of cell-shaded boys of ambiguous age and ethnicity who all have the same button nose and smirk if it Sparks Joy for you.

But if your goal is not only to delight yourself, but to sell books, it’s in your best interest to remember that art, like writing, is a form of communication. The publishing industry runs on pitches: querys, blurbs, proposals, self-promo tweets. What if we applied that logic to our visuals? How can we utilize our character design and art to communicate as much about our stories as possible, in the most enticing way?

Social media has already driven the embrace of this concept in a very general sense. Authors are now supposed to have ~ aesthetics. “Picspams” or graphics, modular collages that function as mini moodboards, are commonplace. But the labor intensity and relative scarcity of character art visible in bookish circles, even on covers, means that application of marketing sensibility to it is less intuitive than throwing together a pinterest board.

Since we were talking about it earlier, WICKED SAINTS, as a case study of a recent “successful” fantasy YA debut, arguably owed a lot of its early social media momentum to fanart.

(Early fanart by @warickaart)

The most frequently drawn character, Malachiasz, has long hair, claws, and distinctive face tattoos. WS has a strong aesthetic in general, but those features clearly marked his fanart as him in a way even someone unfamiliar with the book could clearly track across different styles. Different interpretations of his tattoos from different artists even became a point of interest.

(Art by Jaria Rambaran, also super early days of WS Being A Thing)

Aside from distinctiveness, it's a clear visual representation of his history as a cult member, his monstrous powers, and the story’s dark, medieval tone. The above image is also a great example of character interaction, something missing from straightforward portraits, that communicates a dynamic. Character dynamics draw people into stories: enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, childhood rivals, platonic life partners, love triangles, devoted siblings, exes who still carry the flame-- there’s a reason we codify these into tropes, and integrate that language and shared knowledge into our marketing. For another example in that vein, I really love this art by @MabyMin, commissioned by Gina Chen:

The wrist grip! The fancy outfits! These are two nobles who hate each other and want to bone and I am sold.

In terms of true portraits, the best recent example I can think of is the set @NicoleDeal did for Roshani Chokshi’s GILDED WOLVES (I believe as a preorder incentive of some kind?):

They showcase settings, props, and poses that all communicate the characters’ interests, skills, and personality, as well as the glamorous, elaborate aesthetic of the overall story. Even elements in the gold borders change, alluding to other plot points and symbology.

For painterly accuracy in character portraits on covers, I love SPIN THE DAWN. The heroine looks like a beautiful badass, yes, but the thoughtful, detailed rendering of every element, soft textures, and dynamic, fluid composition form a really cohesive, stunning illustration that presents an intriguing collection of story elements.

The devil isn’t always in the details, though: stark, moody, highly stylized or graphic art with an emphasis on textural contrast and bold color and shape rather than representational accuracy can communicate a lot (emotionally and tonally) while pretty much foregoing realism.

The new Lunar Chronicles covers are actually the best examples I found of this (Trying to stay within the realm of existing bookish art rather than branch into All Art Of Human Figures Forever):

Taking cues from styles more typical of the comics and video game industries. (Games and comics, as visual mediums, are sources of incredible character art and I highly recommend following artists in those industries if you want to See More Cool Art On Your Timeline.)

TL;DR: Character art and design, as a marketing tool (even an incidental one) should be as unique to your story and your characters as possible, and tell us about the story in ways that make us want to read it. I tried to give examples because there are so many ways to do this, and so many different kinds of art, and I could give many more! But I’m bored now. So to circle all the way back:

These are not just bad because they look like each other, although that is embarrassing and illuminating. These are bad covers (although,,,,, PRINCESS is the far worse offender, at least FIRELIGHT suggests a thoughtful cultural analogue) because a desire for Pretty Character Art overrode the basic cover function to tell us about the story. We get no sense of who these people are, what their relationships are, what these books are about beyond the most general genre, or why we might care. The expressions are vague, the characters generic-looking, the compositions uninteresting and the colors failing to be indicative of anything in particular.

They’re somebody else’s baby pictures.

(And yes, that’s the CRUEL PRINCE font on PRINCESS. I better not have to do a roundup post but it’s on thin fucking ice.)

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